A Hard Place, or, The Future Scares Me -- Ninety Sixth Post

I'm going to assume that anyone who's found my blog is internet-savvy enough to have stumbled across the brilliant work of Allie Brosh at hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com and has also read her pieces on depression. I'm not going to lie, they hit me right in the feels. My family has had struggles with depression and anxiety and panic attacks and all the things that a lot of people seem to think aren't "real" illnesses, and an odd phenomenon I've run across is the coolness of suicidal thoughts and self-harm and all that horrible, painful stuff that so often tags along with mental illnesses.

I will admit right here and now to having been a dumb emo teenager with poetic aspirations who wrote really stupid poetry romanticizing people who kill themselves. And I'm sorry.

As a former emo, I can quantitatively say that this is true.

However, my idiotic poetry (which trailed off around age 18 when I got a part-time job and didn't spend 8 hours of every day around other high schoolers), while stupid and indicative of a dangerous trend among youth (darn kids *shakes fist*), doesn't invalidate the fact that I have experienced some horrible feelings and been in hard places. 

I don't have a documented mental illness. I did see a therapist when I was 13 or 14 for some suicidal feelings, but it's been pretty smooth sailing on the mental health front since my therapist taught me coping mechanisms. For people without mental illnesses, overcoming a depressed emotional state can really be as easy as talking through our feelings and learning how to cope with an excess of sad emotions. Sometimes, talk therapy works for people with mental illnesses as well, but sometimes it doesn't. Brains are weird things, and it can take a lot of persuasion to get them to work with you again once they've decided to work against you. 

I've seen my dad, who had always been the strong person in my life, curled up in bed because of panic attacks. You can't just "have a positive outlook" when the dark corners of your brain have you in their grip and getting out of bed is literally impossible. I know a person who would get home from class, turn on all the lights, and hide under a blanket in the middle of the room until her roommates got home because the chemical imbalance in her brain made being alone in the dark the worst possible thing. There was nothing that a "positive thinking" website could have told her that would make it better, no hopeful thoughts that could penetrate the horrors that her mind cooked up to hold her captive. Mental illnesses are a bitch, to put it mildly, and it seems like a lot of "society at large" views them as simply a lack of willpower. That makes me angry, on behalf of everyone who's ever been afraid to share that they're scared of their own mind and everyone who's ever been told to just try harder and think positive and just get out of bed. 

I've cried myself to sleep because the future is long and scary. I'm 23 now, and if I live to be 80, as all my grandparents have done, I'll have almost 60 more years of living. What the hell am I going to do with 57 more years? I ask you. I've got a pretty good idea about the next 5 or 6 (be in grad school), but that's about as far ahead as I can really look without getting a headache. It's a long time to live, and it scares me. 

I view death as a kind of sleep, where you finally get to rest after all the shit life puts you through. I'm not saying people should hurry along to death, because there's wonderful things in life that you don't want to miss out on, but it's like going to sleep after a very long week. Good things and bad things happen, and life has a way of wearing you out. 

If this is how I feel when I'm at the beginning of my adult life, how bad is it going to get when I actually have a daily grind that will extend on for another thirty years or so? Oh my god thirty years is a long time.
How do other people deal with the yawning abyss that is our futures? If we're shooting for the moon and landing among the stars, I feel like I'm passing dangerously close to a black hole.

That whole analogy is ridiculous, of course, since missing the moon doesn't really get you any closer to the stars. Those are very far away. 

This was a terrible post to edit right before bed.
Anyway, to end this on a less distressingly negative note, the future isn't hopeless. I know this. I spend most of my time relatively content and occasionally even excited about whatever's coming next, it's just that the midnight existential crises are more memorable and terrifying. If you're scared of the future, reach out to someone. If you think you might have a mental illness of some kind, find yourself a licensed professional to talk to. Don't count on friends and family for talk therapy, because they'll probably be shocked and fall back on the "just try to be happy" line (unless you happen to have a licensed therapist in your friends and family, but talking to people you don't know is still often better). If you're in a good place with your friends and family you should definitely reach out the them, but know that sometimes paying a stranger to help you in your struggle with your brain is the best option.
I don't have a very lively comment community like some of the cooler blogs, but you can always contact me through the comments if you're scared and alone. I'll read your message and feel some of your pain because I'm stupidly empathetic and try to write you something thoughtful and helpful and non-judgemental. It'll probably take me a couple of days to get back to you because I'll spend a lot of my time agonizing over what I'm writing. My point is, there are a lot of people who've felt feelings like the ones that make you feel alone and scared, and you're not really alone in all this. Maybe it's cold comfort, having someone who sees her future like a black hole tell you that she'll be there for you, but it's always helped me to learn that I'm not alone.

You are not alone.