xhjl03

[xhjl03]

The longer I stare at this resume the more I think about sharpening my knives and plunging one directly into my throat

[xhjl03]

I am moving to Chicago in a few weeks. It's scary, especially because I don't have a job yet. But the best part is that there is nobody who gives a shit about me within 700 miles AND I will be leaving alone so there is nobody to come check up on me and notice if I'm spiraling. I could do so much harm to myself and there would be nobody to notice or stop me.

[xhjl03]

I never wanted to be 26. Not because I think I'm old or aging is wrong—but because I've spent a quarter of a century on this planet and all of it has sucked. Life is pointless. "Life isn't about having a point, it's about enjoying it!" Well guess what, I haven't been doing that either. I've been on and off antidepressants for over half my life (on and off as in, I should really really be on them but I can't afford it). I was 12 when my middle school found out I was suicidal. The only thing that has changed is my gender and my ability to Not Talk About It.

I've said it before. Everyone claims that your 20s suck and your 30s are better, but it's not about feeling unsuccessful, even though I do. I just don't think I can take four more years of this, minimum. My existence is an obligation to the people that care about me. I do not live for myself, for my own enjoyment. But even so, every day I feel more and more that I should just be selfish and ungrateful and just do it. Maybe that will make it easier for everyone to be angry at me versus sad.

[xhjl03]

being alive is a prison and i want to be free

[xhjl03]

I thought that I was safe because I didn't self harm as a depressed teen but here I am, almost 26, relapsing after only three months when I started a year ago.

[xhjl03]

I am supposed to move from Boston to Chicago in July. I can't help feeling terrified. I will have no friends left in Boston by that time, and rent is insanely expensive. But I am so worried that I'm making the wrong decision. Though I'm not sure there's a right decision.

My best friend is going to grad school. I am happy for him, truly. But last night when I tried to express the fact that there's a high chance we will never see each other again, he refused to accept that. It was "No, I'll come visit." (With what money? He won't have a job.) And it was "You're like family. Of course we'll see each other again."

That's not the point though. It's nice to hear that he cares about me. But his program is three years long and twenty hours' drive away from Chicago. That's a long time. So much can happen in that time. Quite frankly, I believe that he will meet tons of new people to be friends with that are better at sex and actually share his interests and our relationship will become obsolete.

On my end, I can't even look that far in the future. I have to take my life by weeks, wondering if tomorrow will be the day that I finally snap and throw myself off a bridge. I have no confidence I will make it three more years. I will be moving to a new city soon. No family around, no friends. Probably living alone in a tiny studio. I am going to be isolated. I don't think it will end well. But I think that's part of my urge to move, to sever the last of those ties that make me worried about scarring my roommate, to have him walk in and see me dead, or have to worry about paying rent on his own.

There is some comfort in isolation. There is no comfort in uncertainty.

[xhjl03]

It feels like the rope that's holding me back from killing myself is so worn and frayed that every little thing feels like it's going to be the One To Break The Rope. Then another thread snaps and it gets tighter but doesn't break. I don't know when the final thread will really snap. I don't know when I will finally collapse under the weight of stress. I wish I could find that load-bearing thread so I could just cut it manually and get it all over with.

[xhjl03]

When I was back in my childhood home last October, I was sitting on the floor when I looked at my old desk. I used to hide under there when I was stressed or upset or afraid. At some point—I must have been no older than 14, because I think that's when I was no longer able to fit—I had written with a Sharpie "I don't think I'll live long enough to graduate college."

I'm 25 now. Almost 26. I graduated from undergrad four years ago. When I see other people talk about finding these sort of messages, they mention how proud they are for making it so much further than their younger selves could have imagined.

I'm not proud. It feels awful, actually, to know that I've been living in complete and total misery for over a decade. I've been trudging along for years out of a sense of obligation and guilt towards the people that love me. In some ways, I'm worse than I ever was as a teenager. I used to be passive suicidal. I used to just hope something bad would happen to me. But now I have to spend so much energy actively resisting the urge to take a bunch of pills that I saved from my surgery, drink as much vodka as I can stand, and then go jump off a bridge. I look at the third rail warning signs and mentally gauge how easy it would be to climb that fence, wondering if they turn off the electricity after midnight when the trains stop running. I look up how to get a gun in this state (not easy) and look up if you can still get carbon monoxide poisoning from cars.

I don't think I realized that there were different types of depression as a kid. Back then, I felt the traditional sense of sadness where I could barely get out of bed and where my panic attacks were rocking back and forth and hyperventilating. You could tell I was depressed.

I go to work every day. I was going to school every day when I was enrolled. I shower, cook dinner, clean my house, walk the dog. But I ache. I'm angry all the time, I'm stressed, and I'm so tense that when the nurse tells me to relax my muscles I can't because I don't know how. My panic attacks are silent now. I keep working through them with my mind racing with all the different ways I could die and just end it right now until they stop and I suddenly feel so tired that I could almost fall asleep at my desk.

I don't remember being a teenager. But I do know that the sheer frustration and anger and hopelessness that I feel now is new. Teenage me felt like I was trapped in a steel box with no windows, so I never tried to do anything. Adult me is trapped in a normal room with the windows boarded up from the outside and the door walled up with concrete and I'm screaming and banging on it but every just thinks I have to try for a little longer and I'll get it open.

I'll be 26 in May. I have spent more than half my life being bounced from therapist to therapist and trying a dozen different antidepressants. It's not worth it. Everyone says your 20s are the worst and things get better in your 30s and jesus fucking christ I can't do four more years of this.

[xhjl03]

Life feels so lackluster and pointless. I'm poor, struggling, stuck in a dead-end job, have no friends, no romantic prospects, not future. There's no point. Sometimes I think that there's a future but there isn't. I've been disappointed time and time again, unable to progress in any meaningful way. I end up with more obligations and responsibilities, and not in a positive way. I just feel like I'm prolonging the inevitable release of death. Except I can't just die, because there are people who depend on my existence so I'm just stuck. This life is not my own. It is not for me. For over a decade I've lived just because someone would be sad/upset, or they need something from me. I don't live because I enjoy it.