On this tiny speck of a planet in a giant universe of existence, you are someone.
I have struggled with an existential crisis of sorts for a long time. Since a young age, I’ve experienced random sudden moments of realisation when I remember that I do exist. I’m sure this is something plenty of people have but that realisation always hits me hard.
Much of my life is spent in a vague blur. I know I exist and that I have a life and that I am someone but, simultaneously, feel like I’m looking in on a television series or skimming through the pages of a book. Often I forget events, lose track of time and entire conversations are thrown out of my head like last week’s bins. Sometimes, I can feel the little beings in my head picking through the conversations and stealing out bits to dispose of, sometimes I try to stop them. Most of the time I let it happen. I feel like I’m distant and disconnected from this life, so those things are unimportant. But then I have a moment of realisation. I remember that I am a real person. I am a twenty-year-old being with a life ahead of me. A life where I need to find a job, a life where I might get married, I’ll move into my own house or share one with someone else, I might have a child (let’s hope not), I might end up in debt or become a millionaire (let’s hope so) and a life where, one day, I will die. Those moments shock me into existing. It’s in the moments of realising my existence that I finally feel myself existing, I feel that I am someone.
Those moments have varied in frequency over the years. When I was young, they came often, they came with a vague sense of resignation and intimidation. As I got older, it was a nauseating anxiety they brought. Now, as an adult with this life imminent and already lapping at my toes, they carry more dread than anything else. I think about the future and what I will become, who I will keep with me, who I will not, where I will go and I can’t find any answers. I struggle with decisions at the best of times, but with a future spread out in front of me of existing, of being someone, of maybe being someone’s and being something that matters, I find no answers. I’m standing, not at a crossroads, but a meeting of many paths and none seem appealing. None call to me or even hint at a light.
Less than three years ago, my only option in my head was the path to the end, an immediate end. Now, that path is the darkest and most difficult one I can see. To be frank, I wish to be at the end of the path already, but I can’t find it in myself to go down it. I want to be dead, but I don’t want to die.
This is why the realisation carries so much dread now, three years ago my easy answer to the realisation was to simply kill myself. Now, as I’ve got older this has become less and less easy. With my new list of responsibilities, deadlines and understanding of the repercussions of such an action, it’s no longer the “easy way out”. Instead, it is the only option I know I can no longer consider.
So what, I ask myself, can I look for instead. In those moments of terrifying understanding of my own mortality and realisation of my existence, how can I answer the demands that my head makes? How can I ask it to keep those things it believes are unnecessary in this novel it believes it’s in? How can I ask it to function like an existing organ?
While I doubt I am the only person who feels this way, I know that each of us will feel it differently. I think that I’m hoping that, by sharing my own feelings, fears and beliefs, I can perhaps find people of a similar mind who may be able to weigh in on the topic. I know others experience their own forms of “existential crisis” and I need to know that I’m not the only one who can find it debilitating. I need to ask if anyone else finds themselves crying over the fact that they are simultaneously alive and soon to be dead. I stare at my ceiling, cry into my pillowcase and search for answers under my blankets. I keep hoping the universe is going to throw solutions and suggestions at me if I look hard enough or if I beg loudly enough or if I cry heart-wrenchingly enough and try to rip the answers out of my very body.
I feel lost on this search for something ethereal and unclear, I can feel myself losing to the beings in my head who refuse to acknowledge life. The beings that seem to have accepted suicide and still see it as the answer, already see me as a dying (essentially dead) creature. Those beings battle with me and dig through my memories and remove those conversations and thoughts and reminders to turn me against my own self and I worry that I won’t know how to stop them when they come close to succeeding. I fear that they will one day succeed and turn me against myself entirely.
I fear my existence and my death, I wish for both and dread experiencing either. I don’t quite know if this is going to mean anything to anyone, but I felt there must be someone in the world who may sort of understand this. Someone else in the world who fights with their own mind, who feels themselves losing things and wishing for another life, another death, another something that makes sense. I fear that this whole post made no sense and that you are sitting here finishing this paragraph and chalking this up to another psycho blogger. So, ignoring the fear, I’m throwing some thoughts out to the void of existence and hoping that something will get thrown back.
I’m ready to catch (fair warning, I have terrible hand-eye coordination).
Lovely days to the lovely people, good luck with your existences.
R x
