I’m feeling better now, both with my sickness and with my mood, but I’ve got some thoughts I’d like to share. I’ll just start with what I posted on my Mastodon last night:
My robe sleeve just got under my laptop’s “A” key and ripped it right off, and of course I can’t fit it on together exactly correct anymore. Now it’ll just wobble on the keyboard and fall off at the slightest stress until I cough up $1000 for a new laptop. God, my life is sad.
I spend thousands and thousands on the must mundane basic garbage imaginable and yet I can never really have anything. I’m too sick to even go to a party tonight, probably brought on by daring to go on a road trip. And I’m just 29; my body and mind just go downhill from here. 😔
I’m seriously depressed. I’ve never made anything of myself, I can never get anywhere no matter what I do, and nobody can ever help me. I feel like somehow I missed my shot at life and all that awaits ’til death takes me is the torment of unhappiness.
What are the replies? Well, one person just posted “🤗 “, which really did make me feel a bit better. Another person replied “I am so sorry you are going through this. It’s okay to feel this way sometimes.” Yeah, sure, I get it’s okay to feel that way sometimes, but I’d really rather not have a life that made me feel like that. I deserve better, yet at every turn when I start thinking my life might actually get better, that I might actually get closer to the life I always deserved, the universe smacks me down in some fashion, as if to say “Haha Adamas Nemesis, you don’t really deserve anything other than being thrown onto the dung heap”. It makes me mad.
Speaking of the life I deserve, another person said “We have to forge our own ideas of what getting somewhere looks like, even if it’s at a snail’s pace.” Which sounds a bit too much like “lower your expectations” for comfort, but I get the logic of “a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step”; you’ve gotta start somewhere. It’s just that I already feel like I missed out on basically my entire youth, never having had any opportunities in my life (childhood included) that were worth a damn, and even if I did get somewhere at a snail’s pace I’d be too old to really enjoy it in the way I’d like to.
It’s not like I’m giving up or anything; indeed, “forge my own idea of what getting somewhere looks like and advancing toward it even if only at a snail’s pace” basically is my strategy going forward. It’s just…I’m extremely dissatisfied with how my life has turned out and very likely will turn out. If it was because of bad choices I made or my own ineptitude or lack of ability I would, perhaps perversely, be more accepting of it, but the truth is no matter how much I pore over it I did the best I could with the resources and opportunities I had; it’s just that they weren’t worth much. I wasn’t worth much, as far as the world around me was concerned. And that’s really, really sad. It gnaws away at my very soul more and more with each passing year.
Another comment: “As long as we are here it’s not too late. 🤍 ” Sounds like some obligatory platitude you’d give someone who suggested suicide, but I do appreciate the sentiment, even if it doesn’t make me feel any better emotionally. This, though?: “Nobody here would want you to go away. I hope you can find some help for your depression.” Bah! My depression? Yeah, I’m the problem. 🙄 That honestly kinda set me off when I read it. This is why since childhood I’ve been really reluctant to follow the usual advice and open up about how I really feel about anything in my life or really about anything else, because whenever I do everybody, including people who should be dear family members (!), presume that I’m the problem, that the problem lies with me. When I seek solace and maybe, when I dare to hope against hope, solutions, all I get is attacks directed against me that hit straight at the heart.
Well, this time I did get one sincere effort at a solution to one of the problems I identified: “Also depending on the particular laptop you have, perhaps a repair or replacement could be made?” As it turns out I don’t have a warranty or protection plan, because the last time I was suckered into one it turned out I’d have to send my laptop away for two weeks for repairs; how am I supposed to go without a computer for two weeks!? That just doesn’t work for me. Today I just bought a new one of the same model (an Acer Nitro) for about $900 total. This will be my third one total, which weirdly seems to have been in abundant stock throughout the lockdown era despite all the talk of computer-parts shortages during that time. 🤷♀️
$3000 for my road trip, much worse than I expected, plus almost $1000 for a computer…my poor little home-equity line of credit will all be gone before I know it. And I won’t have even gotten anything other than the barest necessities and the littlest of luxuries. Life is so expensive, and my means are so limited. No amount of platitudes about how much more fortunate I am than some wretch in darkest Africa or whatever will change that. I’m in anguish at the pathetic existence I lead. At a visceral, even spiritual level, I need to have done better in life; I need to do better in life. I just can’t really figure out how. And that suffuses a certain melancholy even onto days like today, when I don’t feel like I’ve failed in life, that I’ve missed out on so much it’s pointless to go on or even try, when I don’t feel like I have no future that’s worth a damn. I need to do better…