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"Why are we living on this world?" "Why am I alive?" "Everything that I feel is a brain process and people only try to 'survive' as a part of an evolutionary mechanism to reproduce."
From age 12 to 14, these were ideas that were played in my mind on repeat. For some reason, ever since an extremely young age, I had considered suicide. Almost as if the choice was not a permanent decision, and I would often joke to myself that I could make my parents feel guilty by swallowing a few extra pills. Of course, these abstract thoughts were never serious because I knew it was an awfully counterproductive thing to do.
It started as an innocent thought. When puberty began, my questions on life also did. They were harmless at first, and I would laugh at how depressing my thoughts were, hesitatant to dwell on them for too long. During this time, a series of event occured in my life that convinced me I was worthless and a burden on my family. Many goals they had set for me were not reached, and because of my incompetence they suffered. It was around this period when the questions that had slowly begun to fester blossomed into thought-consuming ideas. I constantly wished for death. Strangely enough, the idea of suicide actually became more abstract, and while the situation seemed more relevant everyday, I was usually not eager to kill myself. Rather, I hoped that I could just disappear from life without a trace. The sheer amount of people in the world compared to my small life was overwhelming, and it became clearer everyday that even if I did not exist, the Earth would keep spinning just fine. Eventually I reached the point that I was so apathetic about life that I no longer felt any love for my family or friends. While this was happening, I felt so completely alone.
My family held a history of clinical depression, but they did not take the idea seriously. When I confided some more vague details of my problems to my sibling, it was brushed off as an exaggeration. At a younger age, I believed I could not trust anybody outside of my family, so I never even considered sharing my issue with my friends. I did not believe in a superior being nor a universal purpose in life. Most of all, I was afraid of finding therapy because I was concerned that I would be added to 'suicide watch', which I could not afford while being on a scholarship. I lived in a household that was not economically stable, so finding outside sources for help was out of the question. After considering all these elements, the only thing I could express this huge part of my life to was a journal and a well-hidden recorder. No matter where I looked, it seemed there were no solutions. I researched how to recover from depression, a mid life crisis, and I even asked anonymously online. Their recommendations to see a therapist, find religion, or just be more positive fell on deaf ears. I felt more isolated to more I tried to find help because it felt like I was the only one going insane.
Some days or weeks, it was extremely severe, and I felt several symptoms of clinical depression crop up during the time. Weight loss/gain. Hopelessness. Lack of energy. But I also knew there was something off. It was as if I was pretending to depressed because there were some descriptors that I did not match. I questioned if I really had depression or if I was over dramatizing my situation. There were even times when I exaggerated my symptoms to resemble depression so I could find an explaination for my thoughts. Yet, I never considered myself depressed because I had not been officially diagnosed. I could not bring myself to make a claim to something so serious when I did not feel my own struggles did not match up to the pain of major clinical depression. In fact there were some days when I was glad I'd held to the idea that life lacked meaning. To me, I was disillusioned by baser instincts, and more realistic than those going about daily lives without reason. Day by day flew by this way, and for the majority of the time, I was functioning normally. Nobody approached me with suspicions.
I entered high school as a boarding student, and I was thousands of miles away from home. I'd grown used to my thoughts by this time, and they were pushed aside as I busied myself with adjusting to a new environment. I met a friend who I accidentally discovered shared similar thoughts as mine, and it was the first time I'd ever told somebody my whole story. The euphoria, or more accurately, release of that moment was like I could see the first rays of light at the end of the tunnel. While my friend did not fully agree with my viewpoint, they still empathized with me and helped me during some of my anxiety spikes.
Everything changed in an instant. Two years of suffering were all cleared within twenty minutes one extraordinary evening. I was counseling a classmate that showed many symptoms of depression by faking my own mental health. While trying to convince my classmate there was meaning to life, I somehow convinced my self of two years.
What I realized in those twenty minutes was: there really was no meaning to life. It was pointless to keep looking for one. Yet what I discovered was, I existed. Even if it was a complete accident, I existed. My emotions existed, and my experiences existed. They were real and very current. So I began to think, why waste this chance I'd been given to live? The world was full of amazing things. Even today, there are so many horrible things in our world, and there are times when it seems it would be better to just end everything early. But there are also the little things. My favorite tv show, the birthday presents from my friends, my sibling's first kiss and report card with straight A's. Every single thing was also something I would not have experienced if I had killed myself just a single day earlier. I grew to believe it was worth it to keep living, if only to not miss out on the little moments of happiness, however meaningless they were.
Today, I am happy. I have been for a long time now. By following this philosophy, which has sometimes been hard to keep up, it has never once brought be back to the stage I was at during puberty. I've been chasing every second in my life to the fullest because there is only one life I've been given.
Strangely enough, it was only months after I recovered from my existential depression that I discovered what it actually was. I'd accidentally stumbled upon nihilism and existentialism again during some homework assignment. What I'd read previously suddenly made sense, and I was glad I'd achieved what had seemed so impossible. However I also found research on what I had not seen before, and it was on existential depression in gifted individuals. Since a young age, I'd been considered a 'gifted mind', and I had made the connection that it would have played a part in my crisis. I never realized that there was a name for what I went through, and as I read, every word perfectly described what I'd been suffering just months earlier. I was so glad I was not alone, and there was a reason behind my existentialism, which was apparently common among teens with high intelligence.
The reason I'm posting this today is because I still do not have the ability to post something like this with my name, so I would like to anonymously. I hope that it can help somebody that might be going through something similar. I want to tell them: You are not alone. It might feel like everything is so empty right now, but please just hold on a little longer. This time will not last forever, even though it seems like that at the moment. Your situation may not be full of happy moments like mine was, but happiness is not unachievable. Even if it is meaningless, it is still wonderful to experience, and if it hurts too much, living life until the end is only a few decades anyways. Why not seize this crazy chance you have now to have a wonderful life? I felt like nobody could help me, so now I hope that I can be of help for somebody else.
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