A few weeks after my 16th birthday, I made a new friend at my new school, Steve. Within months we’d become best friends and basically inseparable. Just platonic friends but we did everything together, went to music festivals, had our first foreign holiday together, took drugs together, shared our favourite books, had discussions long into the night, shared our secrets and problems that we’d never tell anyone else. Went through all kinds of difficulties and hardships and loss side by side. He was my best friend for nearly a decade, and at age 25 we finally lost touch. He moved to another city and my health took a turn for the worse. One day it was just the last time we saw each other and now it’s been 17 years.
Those 17 years haven’t been good for me, with my worsening health, having to give up work and socialising, and just losing all hope of ever having anything worthwhile. But I often thought of Steve and everything we’d shared.
Today i was googling people I’d known and I found a social media page for Steve. He’s now married with two kids. It seems crazy to me that this whole time I’ve been sitting here rotting alone he’s been living his best life. He and his wife and kids all look so happy in their pictures. All the photos are of them happily goofing around together with all their friends and family, going on holidays and living life. And I am happy for him, he was always a great friend and decent person who deserves to be happy but it just highlighted to me how empty and pointless my life is. 17 years have passed and what has changed for me? Just everything getting worse.
It’s also crazy to me that after such a long and close friendship i didn’t even know he was married, much less being invited to the wedding. So strange how you can be such close friends with someone for so long and not even be at their wedding. I was not well enough to go anyway but the not even being invited does hurt.
I don’t really know what I hope to achieve with this rant other than I have literally no-one else to talk to, and it’s hard and embarrassing living such a pathetic life when everyone I’ve ever known turned out to be “normal” while I’m now a weird loner shut in who can’t even eat without begging for handouts, who never goes anywhere other than hospital appointments and hasn’t spoken to anyone face to face other than hospital staff and shop assistants for 17 years.
EDIT: I’m still creepily stalking Steve’s social media and I can’t believe this. He now works as a work coach for the DWP - one of those people who makes benefits claimants lives a misery by slave-driving them into unsuitable employment and sanctioning them (stopping their benefits) as punishment. I never thought he’d do a job like this, he used to be a real man of the people, now he’s on the opposing side. He always used to want to be an engineer. I wonder what happened.
I have no friends anymore, my physical reality is very mundane like yours. I am isolated, alone, bored, burnt out and trying my best to overcome depression for good. I would love to work in a job I had passion for and have this nice little social life but our system makes that very hard for anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of normalness. On top of that I have some conditions myself that make life more difficult, not as serious as yours but they do affect me in ways I can’t really control.
You do not live a pathetic life, you live a life in which the system has beyond failed you, a life which proves how flawed western capitalism has always been and how much necessity there is for socialism. And above all else you live a life of resistance, it may not be a life of the ideal kind of armed, organised, glorious resistance we dream of but you are resisting in the ways which you can.
Resist capitalism, fascism, imperialism. Also resist hopelessness, depression, self-hatred.
What is the point though? Literally the only reason I’m not unaliving myself right now is the difficulty of doing so while disabled plus the fear of going to hell. I just feel eternally trapped, like my life is terrible and then when I die it will turn out Christianity is true and now I’m going to hell for the rest of eternity as punishment for not being a Christian.
I have been suicidal too, I am so fucking sorry that you’re in the position you are in. I can’t tell you what is the point because I still don’t know for sure myself. Neoliberal government therapy is very poor quality therapy but it at least it is free & still talking to someone who is qualified to help, I am not really.
To me, life is suffering but there is pleasure and purpose too, and sometimes we can be in a period of our life where we don’t see a reason too but the only way you can exist in a position where you have purpose is by keeping on living. There is no purpose to be found in death, only death. I can also recommend, as much as it is super fucking corny to, to play Disco Elysium if you haven’t already. The lead writer is, even though he doesn’t openly admit, in my opinion, undoubtedly a socialist who has dealt with suicidal thoughts and existential depression, like you and me. It personally helped me find some meaning in this world and appreciate the beauty amongst the, well, shit.
Below are some existential writings from my own journal that helped me pull through that deep depression and still do. If you want to read them, they might help you, I’m sharing them because if you are going to ask me specifically, ‘what is the point?’, I may aswell share specifically what helped me find a point to live rather than some vague gesturing. If they don’t help, then that doesn’t mean give up looking for answers, it just means my answers weren’t the right answers for you. Plenty of smarter, more creative minds than my own have written on the uncomfortable topic of, ‘why live?’
Something I can work on is: What can I do today to make tomorrow better for myself and others?
The more I try to force myself to change. the more I don’t change - I need to let myself be me, the good me, and let him bloom, naturally one step at a time.
I am inconcievably small compared to the universe yet also inconvievably complex & large compared to bacteria. Somehow alive in between two extremes, finitely. I will never quite grasp it and that is ok.
I do not know what I am or even if I am, but ‘I’ know that ‘my’ body and mind will eventually cease. ‘I’ know that injustice exists, and that it is correct to aim to fix that. So, ‘I’ operate within the unknown for now, having hope for my own peace and a better world. A path once walked, continually walking on it for now and then, never again (?) - Surviving, changing, clinging, hoping, trying, helping, hurting. Living. Dying.
Samaritans helpline phone number: 116 123