SEVERING THE URGE TO BE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE

 November 7th, 2025

I haven't been happy lately. 

Today at work, I thought I'd have a nervous breakdown - probably my 3rd or 4th in the past two weeks.

It all just became too much and next thing I knew I was at or past my capacity. 

Life has been both overwhelming and underwhelming. Not a good combination. 

I'm overwhelmed when I think of all of the effort it has required, continues to require, and will continue to require to pull myself out of this dark place I have found myself in, and keep finding myself in. 

And yet, when I take stock of all the results from that constant output of effort, I am underwhelmed by the results. It seems so tiny, so insignificant in comparison to what it took. 

I feel like I sold my life's savings for a children's game, and now that I'm sitting with it, trying to make it all add up, I can hardly stop the tears from forming at the back of my eyes. 

I hate feeling sorry for myself. I hate sitting and wallowing about what's gone wrong. I think that's why I am always so eager to do something about this purgatory I keep returning to. I'm exhausted but the work just keeps piling up and I don't know how to finish - or at the very least make headway to discharge some of the load. I keep feeling like I am failing. I keep feeling like how I've always felt:

Alone.

Overlooked.

Misunderstood.

Like a burden.

The girl that no one wants.

Something no one cares enough about to take a second look.

An anomaly.

Unwanted.

I am fighting the urge to (continue to be) self-destructive just for the sake of feeling in control. 

I'm struggling to break ties with that girl, no matter how dysfunctional it is to be with her.

And for a while (rather, every once in a while) - it felt (feels) like the output is not amounting to anything and my brain is computing that as failure and telling me to change the strategy. I'd say that's sound advice, but I don't know where else to give. It felt hopeless, because it was hitting me in more than one angle. 

Attempts at committing to my current career path seemed to be failing me. I was on the verge of failing my course, despite giving it my all (all that I can give given what I am balancing). Memories of my professor telling me to drop out, because I simply wasn't cut out for it were surfacing and I was asking myself why I even try, why I am constantly being ejected from everywhere I wanted to be in. 

I mustered up enough courage to be close to someone I very much admired and wanted to be near, and it seemed like I repelled him. That resulted in the loss of a potential connection, and a network, partially. That hurt like a ripple - on so many levels. Again, why bother? Another miscalculation. 

Work? Just miscalculations all around. 

Suddenly I was fifteen again and I had to leave my everyday life and retreat into my imagination to find peace, and friendship, and love, because none of that was available in my real life. 

Except now, I am not fifteen, I am twenty four. And at twenty four, you have the resources to pull yourself back into the world, but my world is not like that of other people's (so I am finding out). 

I used to wonder why it was that people seemed to genuinely be enjoying life - why it was a joyous experience live and why I felt so the opposite. I am finding out that my inner world has somehow gone awry - or was forged that way, I'm not sure which is which. 

I'm finding out that the average person doesn't wake up and feel a steel rod piercing at their insides at all times and wondering (praying) if each day is the day where that pressure subsides or eases up in any kind of way, but I do. And each day I make the effort to free myself and it doesn't feel any better I swear a piece of me shatters. 

I keep trying to make peace with the fact that the results will not match the output, but then I look up sometimes and I see that what I've toiled at for some people isn't a beat missed from their everyday life. I wonder sometimes if it ever gets easy let alone enjoyable? Because life hasn't been enjoyable for me at all so far. I feel it so sharply now, because I am not retreating to avoid coping with that fact. I'm not forging a world in my mind and in my heart where people like me, and I am good at the things I want to be good at, and people treat me kindly, and it's safe. 

I keep thinking back to how it was when I finally got my driver's license - it took me 5 tries, and I was twenty one when I finally got it, despite trying since age eighteen. I got it eventually, and I ask myself from time to time if it mattered at all that it took me 5 tries or if I was just relieved to have it now. I am relieved to have it now, but I resent that it took me 5 tries and there's nothing to show for that level of effort. It's like it did not even happen, but I remember the in-between.

Despite the fact that I have been trying to escape for the past several years, it doesn't seem like I am any closer to making it by any stretch. I guess when I reach whatever I am seeking, it won't matter how long it took, but then what was all of the suffering for? Did it really even matter? And why do I seem to be the only one tasked with that burden? Why is it always such a feat for me?

Are my hopes and expectations too high? Is that why I constantly feel underwhelmed by life?

Is there a point to trying to be better? 

It doesn't seem to yield anything, but it sure does make life harder. 

Why is this my lot in life? What's wrong with me?

I can't pick myself up this time, I can't even help myself. 

- vetiveroil