#originalpostbycopingdragon

I'm not really changing my mind about any of the stuff that made me feel that way, but I'm...expanding my views on it. Is existence still a hauntingly brief and horrifyingly temporary thing? Yes. Will the universe still end the same way no matter what, in billions and billions of years, probably as either black holes swallow everything or as entropy spreads, inevitably reducing everything that ever was to the same utterly dead state, and everything I ever was or will be is reduced to the same? Probably yes. Is life technically without meaning at all? Yeah.

But! But. It isn't...*technically* meaningless. It isn't meaningful, either. Both of these are human constructions that have no applications towards the uninterpreted universe.

And! The fact that my awareness of physics (and my own mortal limitations within it) fills me with suicidal thoughts and crushing dread and also bland empty numbness (akin to boredom, *easily* mistaken for a detached, neutral, honest interpretation of the universe) is a product of the fact that I am alive right now. That is to say, I am descended from organisms who developed a negative emotional response towards 3 relevant things: death, discomfort, and uncontrollable drains on resources.

These 3 are relevant because my obsession with mortality causes an unbearable fear of death. My uncertainty about life and existence is deeply unsettling. And both are using large amounts of time and energy to try to process. My brain is like my poor laptop when it tries to run a modern game--it will try until it dies, if I do not notice it is risking melting itself. And my brain knows this to a degree, and is trying to helpfully bring about whatever change is necessary to give me rest. Unfortunately, my brain was not made to handle topics like this. In the way that classic physics equations can handle most day-to-day physics but not account for equations that require calculus, my little beast brain is pretty good with problems like "I Want That Fruit" and "I am Cold. I Should Go Somewhere Warm." And "It is Dark and Scary and There Might Be Things Hunting Me So I Should Hide," but it does not have the equations to solve things like "Why Am I Alive" and "How Can I Cope With The Inevitable Destruction Of Everything I Hold Dear" and "Why Bother Building A Life If Everything Ends The Same Either Way." It can try to figure them out, but it tries to use the "Beasts Chasing Me" and the "Want Happiness" and they lead my brain towards suicidal feelings.

I have to accept that I am not built to find answers to the questions I am asking. I think it may be possible to find the answers, but it would be the same as other attempts to get the body to go beyond its limits. Flight required thousands and thousands of years and advanced technology. Some physical movements are only doable after decades of training, and some only if it's begun in very early childhood when the body is more malleable. I do not think I am a good candidate for whatever rigorous training would be required to comprehend such terrifying questions. If it was easy, it would be widespread already. There may not even be an answer. And that is okay. I don't need to answer philosophy questions. I am allowed to exist without forcing myself to do that.

And...suddenly, everything looks the way it did before, almost. I am aware that I am mortal and without meaning, but I choose to make happiness and meaning myself. I know my loved ones will all die, and no one will know any of our names in a mere 200 years, but...I am here, now, and I want to make happiness and meaning, so I will. And I'm no longer filled with a deep, horrible pit of dread and hopelessness when I experience meaning or happiness, which is nice.

I think I'm going to be okay. I kept telling myself, "This is really rough, but I think I'll look back on it and find it was a catalyst for growth. Not one I would ever recommend anyone, on account of almost killing myself several times, but I think this will be a part of my past that I am okay with. I don't think I'll hate myself for feeling this way, and I don't think I'll be angry at myself for wasting 4 months being so deeply suicidal. I think I'll tend to it, like a wound that revealed a chronic weakness that finally got the attention it needed, the way I only admit I need physical therapy when there is unbearable pain and total loss of function, not when it just hurts a little and is a bit stiff for years. I think the pressure will make me stronger, even if this was probably the stupidest way to gain strength that could have been built in much healthier ways." And so far, that is correct.

I want to craft an existence that is fulfilling. I want to have fun laughing with my friends. I want to hold the ones I love. I want to swoon over mundane things like dappled sunlight and fuzzy mold. I want to be a moment of happiness and love.

It's scary to think it might all be pointless but...I want that fear to come from a desire to exist, not a dread that it's pointless.

But the *apathy*... This mindset of "nothing lasts, why bother existing for a brief moment at all?" I just haven't ever felt so strongly before. I've spent so much of my time drowning in agonizing PTSD and anxiety and depression, but I've never really had to cope with the numb depression before.

I can tell it's linked to the OCD, because I keep forgetting about it. OCD is good at hiding from me. But the obsession with my perception of existence is novel. It's not that horrible. I'd rather feel this endless vast dread than relive some of the bad pain days I've been through, or relive traumatic things I've experienced. But...it's the mindset it brings that is holding me back from feeling joy. It's not an overwhelming weight crushing me to death, it's a slender calculating needle put right into the core part of my brain. I have learned to survive crushing pain, but not a precise wound to such a small but critical part of me.

I can learn. I will learn. There has to be something. If there isn't anything, I'll make it myself. If I cannot make it myself, I'll make up a lie that I already found it. I don't know. I have to find something to shield me from this idiotic suicidal logic that is growing into my brain. I don't want it to win.

But...when it gets strong...I don't feel that way anymore. I just feel...empty. And the slightest annoyance is enough to make me think, "Well, nothing matters anyways so I can just die and be done with this mess."

I don't want to feel that way. I have felt this way before, but the memory is so fuzzy, and the pain convincing me to die was so much greater, back when I was about 20 years old, emotionally confronting my childhood for the first time while also struggling with Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, AKA, periods make you want to kill yourself. I remember I almost gave up a few times, only to reflect in horror later, thinking, "How could I have almost done that, knowing how much suffering my death would cause? I have to survive this for my loved ones. For my grandma and grandpa. My mom. My partner. My friends. I have to."

And when I think of my grandparents, I feel guilty. They put so much work into me, how could I throw that away? And I feel guilty because the apathy is strong, and it tells me, "They didn't matter, and neither do you, and neither does anything."

And...it's not exactly wrong. They mattered to *me,* but I don't matter. They didn't matter to most people, who never knew them. Nothing of theirs will be remembered with love in 300 years. Their love is...it's not gone yet, is it?

Oh...it's not... They're gone, but... Love is not just a feeling, it's actions, it's tangible things like time and energy and gifts. The things they gave me out of love--gifts, food, nutrients that built the bones I have--do still exist.

...Hm... I suppose that's true for many organisms. They do influence things, and death doesn't negate that influence. And for a species like humans, who have technology, who do not limit their Self to their Body, they do...linger. If a list is externalized memory, that memory is still there. Is it them? Or is it a part of the world they borrowed, returned?

Interesting. Maybe this will bring me some new comfort, something different to fight from a different angle. Maybe if I find enough things, I'll survive.

My grandpa and grandma, who wanted me to be happy and alive

My mom, who wants me happy and alive

My polycule, who wants me happy and alive

Maybe one day I'll get to skydive or hang glide and be brave enough to not worry about those X-rays I saw of a hang gliding accident

I'll probably get to hold a baby animal again eventually

Learning more about other people I haven't met yet, and the strange ways they exist (wasn't it fun to learn about flesh eating beetle basement woman?)

I'll probably go back to Colorado again at some point

I'll probably be in the mountains again sometime

It's fun to have geese angry at me for the crime of eating lunch near their walking path

One day I think I'll look back on how suicidal and horrible I've been feeling for the past 3 months, and I'll think about how special it was to start from this absolute-baseline mental state and cultivate my own happiness on top of the tar pit I'm currently drowning in

It's nice to know that even though time passes, it's immortal in its history. The happiness I've felt previously is locked away from me, but nothing is ever truly destroyed in the universe. Someone from only a few light years away would even see me happy if they tried to view me now. Even if everything is destined for entropy, it cannot unchange the life I'm living now, and all its beauty and all its horror.

Black tea sugar cookies

Cappuccino

Big fat snowflakes that look like cartoons

Trips to the zoo

Learning about life forms I didn't previously know of

Planetarium shows

Four o clock seeds

Painting

Rereading favorite books and reading new ones

Maybe one day I can sit in a tree again

Camp fires

Microscopy, being able to see common things up close and realize grass seeds have as much details as planets and they're gently swaddled for the most efficient chance of survival

Seeing cool bugs

The way the sunlight dances on the concrete through a shade tree as a cool breeze blows

Has free time: "I wish I didn't have all this free time to feel existential dread about how I'm wasting my time doing nothing right now because I don't have anything good to do"

Something that bothers me about the "Your mental illness can harm people around you and you need to do better, to recognize that and take responsibility, and try to improve" thing is that I personally have so much anxiety around the ways that I could potentially harm others, and like 90% of my mental illness is just "I can't let anyone get to close to me or know me or see anything likable in me because I will damn them to hell somehow" which is absolutely a personal issue based on my history of being raised in a very homophobic region which led me to believe that my core identity was damned and that anyone who loved me anyways was damned and that I could actually infect other people with this damnation if I let myself be genuine

So like ZERO percent of the message of "You need to take responsibility for the ways you can harm others even if that harm is a trauma response or a mental illness" is directed at my own anxieties about harming others BUT it just makes me uncomfortable to see messages like that 😅 thankfully I have reached a stage with my moral OCD (using that term with a diagnosis, not as a colloquial term) that I can engage with statements like that and *only* feel discomfort instead of intolerable distress, and it is in fact helpful for me to digest such messages as it prompts me to periodically go "okay, remember, this message isn't a homophobic message about my queerness being an infectious mental illness, this message is for things that actually cause harm like passive aggressive stuff and lashing out at people and pushing people away and being rude to people for protecting their boundaries and etc etc etc, its not about me unless I do actually harmful things, and it's definitely not about my innately neutral traits of gender and sexuality"

And like, I try to take an "internal factor" approach to handling my own mental health because--let's be honest--I much prefer the illusion of power to the illusion of blamelessness, but... As someone who's struggled for my entire life with trusting my own perception of reality... I even often quote the very people that caused these trust issues. "Maybe I dreamed it." I still say that to others when my memory differs from theirs. Once again I am realizing just how much childhood affects adulthood. Of course being trained to distrust myself, my perception of reality, and my memory would cause lifelong issues with those exact things.

It makes me wonder how much it's connected to my other issues. Does my anxiety arise (at least in part) from my inability to trust myself that a situation is safe? My distractability has (at least in part) roots in my inability to trust myself to remember anything properly, thus giving rise to my need to pay attention to everything that's happening at the cost of not prioritizing certain things and at the cost of forgetting things in my working memory in order to pay attention to new stimuli.

I think my autism and chronic pain also causes me to distrust my own perception of reality, because I grew up being told "that doesn't hurt" about things that did hurt me, like painful sensory that bothered me autism, or painful pressure or cold that bothered my fibromyalgia. Being told "you can't still be sleepy" over and over while I had TWO illnesses that did often make painfully sleepy didn't help. I think my caretakers at least had good intentions with these dismissals. Maybe they saw an overly sensitive child and were trying to teach me to be stronger for my own good.

But a person dismissing actual abuse that they themself did to me, and seeming to pick random other things to dismiss and deny to add to my confusion... That was deliberately bad. And y'know, I can give them the benefit of the doubt here, too. Maybe they genuinely forgot--to preserve their ego--the things they did to me. I'd understand if that's the case. They'd have to forget, if they wanted to continue to believe they hadn't done anything wrong.

But here I am, nearly 30 years old, still untangling everything. I suppose it's a lifelong thing. I'll probably die of old age before I manage to untangle it all.