I’m relatively young, only just 20. The past 20 years of my life have been the craziest adventure you could ask for. I’ve lived in a bad neighborhood and gotten friends off of dope, abused hallucinogens to the point of developing and overcoming severe delusions, dated the same girl for four years, and watched the best of friends come and go throughout my life. I’ve seen good and bad. However, after I finally grew up and moved away from those places, I hit a wall- I looked back on my life, and all of the inspiration that I’d had from overcoming the odds, the abusive parents, the drug abuse, the breakup, friends dying either by getting mixed up with the wrong dealer or by committing suicide, completely disappeared as if it were never there. Now that I didn’t have that conflict to face all I could do was look back at my life and realize that it sucked. I’ve spent so much time fighting for my life and my sanity, both against my own bad decisions and the people I as a child couldn’t escape, that I never had the time or the hope that I could use to improve my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done a lot for myself since then, but nothing has gotten any better. It seems like no matter what I do, all of my friends are gone or dead and I’ll never meet anybody that I could connect to in the way that I did my ex. The problem is easily identified- I’m lonely, and I wish I hadn’t lived such a hard life, and it’s destroying me from the inside out. My own mind is going out of control. Sometimes I lay back in my bed and just sink into the most uncomfortable, fidgety, depressed place possible. Like sitting in an old rotting drughouse, watching a T.V. show of my life, and watching how I’ve either destroyed it or been at the mercy of harsh circumstance for twenty seasons.

What don’t I have, though? People tell me I’m good looking. I’ve earned every little bit of education I have through hours of study. I have a steady if not well-paying job. I just have no friends, and my life isn’t progressing. Every time I get involved with a girl, they choose somebody else. And it seems like all of these things are totally out of my control. I’m just watching them on a T.V. screen sitting on the most uncomfortable couch ever. It’s really, really depressing.

In the last six months things have gotten exponentially worse. I nearly lost my job due the elimination of the night shift schedule and only got 12 hours last week, so my paycheck totals up to around 79$. Most of the money I had before that went to bills, and my rent is due this week. If it had been the full 40 hours I’d have been able to pay my rent and finish up with the last of my expenses for the month so I could start a savings account (my last one got wiped out because my first job only paid 7.25$ an hour, and when I quit because my boss came in drunk and wiped out the displays I had spent eight hours setting up, I had a lot of difficulty finding a new job).

On top of that, the girl I’ve been talking to, as usual, has chosen another guy over me. I’ve never been able to connect with people on an emotional level very well. I had a tightly-knit group of friends, and we were only so close because the area we lived in put us through some horrible shit for being poor and white in a predominantly drug-ruled neighborhood. It took me a few years from middle school to nearly the end of high-school to warm up to people that stuck around me. We relied on each other for support when one friends’ crazy welfare-mammy mother decided she wanted the SS check for a new truck, and kicked a friend out, or when somebody finally decided to quit dope, I’d be there with my gabapentin and my 5-HTP supplements to sit by their bed and hold their hand. As you can imagine, it’s not often that I meet somebody that I even want to pay enough attention to in order to ask them out. So when I have an on-and-off fling with this girl for about a month and a half and she suddenly tells me she’d rather be with this Panera Bread baker with scraggly hair, I took a huge hit to my self esteem.

I’ve lost my inspiration after realizing that my life has sucked, after being abused by the company I work for, and being rejected by the last of a dwindling group of close friends (and I still don’t know why she did it). It’s hard to study anymore…it’s hard to get up in the morning. It’s hard to work out. Walking home from work has gone from the pleasant night-time hike to a drag, and I can’t afford to drive a car due to insurance being really expensive for young white males. I don’t have any distractions because a strange, heavy tiredness weighs me down most days and sometimes it feels like my lungs won’t relax enough to breathe. My dreams become increasingly more centered around escape from life. I sometimes want to go back to drug abuse because it used to help me bring that fiery, driven inspiration to the surface.

Music hasn’t helped- I can’t hear the beautiful depth of detail in it like I used to. The philosophy and the religious quotes I used to pour over at night looking for their wisdom just doesn’t present any solutions for me (check out Leaves of Gold. It’s great. Also Epicurus or anything by William Earnest Henley- amazing people for those of you who are depressed as I am and can still be moved by words). I just recite Invictus every morning and spend the day acting as happy as I can so people don’t pity me.

What do I do? Where do I go? I don’t have anybody in my life that I can talk to about these problems. Aside from not being able to connect, most everybody is out for themselves. Even my family is so centered around making sure that I don’t put them at a disadvantage or make them feel bad that they’re willing to get irate over stupid crap. I even tried to join the military at one point hoping it would add a sense of purpose to my life, and they pitched a fit when I had to meet physical standards that I wasn’t at yet, and couldn’t drop eighty pounds in a month (even though Sgt. Williams stuck with me every day for three months and put me through P.T. twice a week to help me- thanks bro, I’ll be back when I can).

I’m lost, and I’m alone. That inspiration that helped me survive is giving in to the crushing depression and emptiness, and the loneliness is driving me slowly insane. If I don’t take myself back soon, I fear I may lose everything that I worked so hard to achieve. Life is either testing me by taking away that which I leaned on or it’s just a cruel and evil force, ripping at my life like a buzzard picking at somebody who isn’t quite dead.

Any words of wisdom would be much appreciated. I need all the help I can get.

• This topic was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Jacob.
• This topic was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Jacob.
• This topic was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Jacob.