Forever Living- a cache of thoughts
I wrote this late at night. I wrote this sad and lonely. I wrote this as and when I thought it. These are my raw, authentic thoughts. This was written a year ago within 2 hours. I still read it to this day to feel less alone in my thoughts. I hope it can do the same for you.
Forever Living:
We don't choose to be born. That’s the simple, brutal fact of it. Some of us spend a lifetime waiting for that burden to feel like a gift, for purpose to finally announce itself. But it doesn't always arrive on time. Some never have the patience to see if it will come at all.
But what happens when it never arrives? Do you keep waiting? Do you seek it out? Or do you give up entirely?
This isn't just a mood. It's a haunting substance, an emptiness so potent it materialises, a curse sealed within the high walls of your own mind. They lead you to believe you have full control over those walls, so when they start to crumble, it must be your fault. Why would I choose this? The pieces of myself have been dismantled and distorted too many times. Even when I force them back together, the new shape never looks the same, never acts the same. It never makes sense.
You can try to fill the void with other things, substances of a similar evil: anger, drugs, heartbreak. But true emptiness remains. It's not something you feel, but something you recognise. You see its face in the mirror as it whispers to you. You resent it, and so you resent yourself. It's a self-destructing line of code buried so deep you can't separate it from your soul. It devours you from the inside until the person you show the world is just a solemn, hollowed-out reflection.
Wind blows. Trees fall. I don't know. I try to take a photo every day of something I admire. Nature always seems to withstand the test of time, an unformidable force. Then again, nature also plays a part in its own destruction. Nature, like me, did not decide to live. But somehow, it survives. And I did too. I think.
The emptiness manipulates, deceives, and distorts reality itself, until you wholeheartedly believe that drowning in nothingness is easier than living. And I don’t know what living is supposed to feel like, but man, I know it is fucking difficult. I never seem to want it. No matter how hard I try, I’m lost. It all seems so pointless, and that’s exactly what the emptiness wants me to think. Maybe I’m just easy prey. Maybe I was never supposed to be here at all.
And yet, the world outside keeps making noise.
I hear (name)'s voice, a ghost from a past conversation, saying she wanted to kill herself, that she couldn't take it anymore. And I remember how I just listened. I hear my sister struggling with school. I hear my dad drowning in his unnerving need to keep moving. I hear my mum behind me, her voice thick with tears, pleading. I hear my brother, seemingly cruising through life without a scratch. I hear (name)'s heartbreak. I hear (name)'s joyful jokes. I hear my own laugh, and I cringe. I hear (name) asking if I’m okay, but I don't hear myself asking her the same question back. I hear (name) misses home. I hear (name), and I honestly can't tell with him; he seems fine, and I never ask any further. It's easier to accept that everything is fine.
I hear my dog, Luna, as she whimpers or walks like a Prada model across the floor. I hear Barney’s smell—it really is that bad—and his low growl, and I see the gunk in his eyes, and for a moment, I forget I’m alone. I hear (name) updating me on his sex life, and in the middle of it all, I wonder: do they know? Do they know that I hate myself? Do they know how hard it is every single morning? If I told them, would they really understand?
Every day, I grapple with the decision I made the day before to keep going. I question it, I doubt it, I grieve it. And for each day this thought brutally ravages my mind, I lose another part of myself, as if I had already died yesterday and my present is just a projection of what could have been. Disconnected. Disheartened. Distrustful. How can I rebuild a mind of positivity when it seems so set on destroying itself? It's completely illogical. Without reason. It makes it impossible to grasp. Why. Why. Why. It’s a question that can never be answered, and so: why, why, why…
I laugh a lot. I think I always did, but I’m not sure anymore. Maybe I convinced myself I was happy, and maybe, for a little while, it worked. Everything is so uncertain. So unexplainable. I suppose I do it to myself, so desperate for love that I would sincerely hate myself to get it. I’m not doing so well. I think I should call my mum. I know I should, and yet something stops me. A part of me wants to let go. And as I cry just writing this, I know a part of me thinks I am capable of removing myself—my thoughts, my feelings, my uncertainty. The only certainty in this life is death. But I can’t face it. I'm too scared. It’s even more unknown than tomorrow.
I should call someone. It hurts to even think it—that I have to be reminded that someone else is there, waiting next to the darkness, maybe even consuming some of it. But I'm still here.
"I wish I was brave enough to end it."
No. I hate that. I hate that I just wrote it, thought it, believed it. And there it is again, the familiar voice: you hate yourself.
My mind is a paradox. I’m overly self-aware until I am fully consumed by myself and only myself. I had to relearn how to walk because I was so conscious of my own existence it became a physical burden. My head stayed down, my legs went numb, and my movement felt alien, all because I was lost in the thought that everyone was watching me. Not even judging me. Just seeing me was enough to make my own skin feel like a cage.
If they really saw me, if they saw my struggle, the ignorant way in which they see the world would be shattered. I don’t blame them. I would do anything to protect that view. It’s not that I think my perspective is the right one—I'd give anything to have theirs. Or maybe just to not have one at all. To be quiet inside for once. It seems like everyone else can just... focus. They can point their thoughts in a direction and make them go. Mine refuse. They poke and prod at my brain whenever they want. I have no control.
I should call someone. What would I even say? I'm not good at pretending with my mum. I try to tell her absolutely everything. It makes it easier when the thoughts get more clouded. I give words to the shadows and pass them along. What a horrible thing to do.
I have an order for my diagnoses, for how I reveal the fractured parts of myself. When we first become friends, I have ADHD. When I get to know you, when I feel comfortable, I have anxiety. I get stressed. I struggle in certain situations. Only a very few people have I ever told the final truth: I have depression. I don't like telling people that one. It sounds hopeless and needy. Because everyone struggles to concentrate, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes. But not everyone feels eternally hopeless. With anxiety, I can rationalise the stressor. You can't rationalise depression. There’s nothing anyone could have said to change my mind back then. I just… didn’t. A subconscious decision to survive.
Don’t get me wrong, a panic attack is terrifying. But it’s the despair after the storm has passed that is the true horror. The world turns to black and white. Everything stops moving as I stare into nothing, completely enveloped by a stillness that feels like an out-of-body experience.
My mind is constantly talking, bickering, stuttering. My thoughts are so close to my reality it feels like everyone should be able to hear them, as muddled and yet as clear as I can. They touch my tongue and embody my heart. They search my soul and grow like roots into my veins. I am constantly fighting them, standing between two opposing armies in my own head, battling my way to the better thought. But I don't always make it. I fall.
But you do get up.
I'm going to call someone now.