Does This Life Still Make Sense?
First, I chose this funny title and then immediately realized how hard it is currently hitting me. I cannot clearly answer such a question, and I am tempted to just say, “Definitely not.” In fact, no, I am not only tempted. I actually believe it, and I have believed it very strongly and for a very long time. No, this is not my nihilistic inner voice speaking currently. It is in fact me, which I’ve always remembered:
I am a pathologically mentally ill person who believes he is inferior to everyone, who has zero confidence, who has lost trust in himself, and who isn’t winning the battle against his inner demons.
I am a pathologically mentally ill person who believes he is inferior to everyone, who has zero confidence, who has lost trust in himself, and who isn’t winning the battle against his inner demons.
For years, I’ve been trying to find out what causes my intuitive behavioral patterns to always follow self-destructive trends, because it doesn’t make sense and goes against the laws of nature. And out of nowhere, one day in the past few months, I got a flashback to the deepest past of my childhood. I got a feeling that was well-known to me. However, this time I was able to name it with the help of my childhood pictures. It was FOMO1. Then I got more flashbacks to bullying in kindergarten, and FOMO naming started to make more sense. Apparently, I have had PTSD2 since the beginnings of my memory, which is just a fully developed FOMO. Simply something that can explain and be behind a lot of my mental health symptoms.
My overall health is one of the few topics where all of my inner voices sound in unison, as you can see above. I know my demons are only in my head, but my head is my brain, and my brain doesn’t like me. I believe it is taking its revenge for me keeping it drowned in opioids for over 2 years, and I accept it. My brain serves me hard-hitting emotions in precise situations to cause the biggest damage possible. I do realize that writing through it won’t help anything or anyone at all and can only make things worse, but I can’t help myself, as it feels so natural to me. You might be asking: What was it then? What broke you so badly? I will tell you, it is this little number of life decisions I have to take, but I keep refusing. I imagine myself standing at a crossroads.
The crossroads are pretty simple, and from them I can only go either left or right. Both directions offer very pleasant life benefits, but they also require a commitment, which feels too heavy. Once a path is chosen, I can’t change my mind and go back anymore. If I don’t choose, my inner demons won’t stop chasing me. And my problem is that I am too dysfunctional to execute the choice. It’s just impossible. Can’t. Period. I’ve voluntarily chosen the path of the greatest suffering.
Or Is Everything Just Simply Wrong?
One of my last memories from April was the business trip to Switzerland to see my coworkers and to onboard our new team manager. I don’t even have to mention to you that this memory has a taint as well, something that was missing from it. But then we began entering the dangerous waters. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember either May or June, the vast majority of it for sure. I can definitely remember overcoming my fear of dentists and signing up for one. I can also remember playing the piano and watching YouTube a lot, and I’d comfortably guesstimate that I’ve spent over 200 hours on those hobbies. But since the breakdown, something has died in me. The drive, the motivation, and the joy were all fading away, and the darkness has started enshrouding me again. I was drowning in deadly still water, and I only had music left as my life ring to grab… See some highlights below if you want to hear some piano music ^^
I barely know the answer to why something has died in me, or maybe I do know it, but I can’t say it out loud for whatever reason. Because you are protecting someone. The depression has come back, no matter that I’ve been taking antidepressant drugs for half a year, and without alcohol and kratom, they were pretty tough to tolerate. I know what I want in my life, but I also know I can’t have it, so my brain has created an alternative reality where everything is possible. I’ve caught myself daydreaming in it many, many times. My ADHD hasn’t gone anywhere. Actually, the opposite, as it has nicely settled down in my head. And my doctor specialist is only interested in whether I relapsed back to alcohol. No, I did not, you dumb fucker! Stop giving me stupid questionnaires! *throws table* I know I need help from experts, but it feels like the Czech healthcare system has disappointed me. Or you are a fucking imposter! Suddenly, I’ve started to sense some understanding for people who have eventually committed suicide after years of visiting doctors and undergoing various treatments without any success.
Everything has started to feel so wrong anyway, and then the end of June and the summer holiday period had to both happen. My nervous system was overreacting to memories of past summer vacations and has created a neat PTSD precondition for this year’s vacation as well. And my fears were fulfilled perfectly. For the moment, I tried to trust my thoughts and senses and chased my dreams, but then got hit by a Sledgehammer of Reality into my skull and fell to the ground dead. That was it, the last nail in my coffin. My stress levels exploded, and the shockwave was tearing my sanity apart. I only have a bare idea of what was happening for two months straight thanks to the photos on my phone, because there simply aren’t any. Losing my memory has always horrified me so much, and nowadays I am observing so many scary mental symptoms and no one knows what is happening to me. I am seriously worried about losing my mind entirely >.<
When the Reality Shatters Into Million Pieces
Do you do reality checks? Do you know what these are? No? Okay, I know this phrase from guides about how to reach lucid dreaming, but when I initially happened to experience a dissociation condition, I wasn’t sure what was or was not real. If you don’t know what it is like to experience dissociation, then don’t go to bed tonight. The weird feeling, which you would start to experience tomorrow morning after the huge inrush of sleepiness fades away, is exactly it. You would feel dizzy, but not quite dizzy. You would feel the world is different, but you just don’t know how exactly. It would bug you. And my dissociation has become persistent and resilient, and together with the maxed-out stress from not being able to accept reality, my body has started to struggle with the sleep schedule too. I have never experienced so many sleepless nights like I did in June and July. And no, I have never learned to do reality checks.
My body eventually got stuck in the fight or flight response mode, and since the doctor refused to prescribe me any sleeping pills, I couldn’t have done much with it. This period took over two weeks, and those were the longest two weeks I’ve ever experienced. I had so much time and physical energy to spare, but not the mental energy, and my brain was almost completely offline. I’ve found a bug in my own coding, but I don’t have any debugging tools I could use. I didn’t eat anything for the whole time, I think, and I barely remember a few moments.
You were seriously high too, do you remember? And also without food and sleep, great job! This is the shortest path to getting hospitalized again. But you want that anyway, and we both know that. Right, sweetie?
One of those scary ones was when an unknown number called me, presenting themselves as an investment company. The guy on the phone had a clear eastern accent, and he was trying to convince me to invest money with him. What he didn’t know was the fact that I had managed to google out his phone number early and that I was just reading the company’s legal information in front of me. Suddenly, my judgment has darkened. I saw red everywhere, and I wanted to spill the blood. The demon within me has broken through my defenses and taken control. I started yelling rude words at him, screaming every single syllable. My voice was so loud that my ears were hurting me even through an active noise canceling from my headphones. I’ve unleashed so much evil on this poor guy. It took approximately 20 seconds before he hung up, but… you would not expect this. In a few seconds, he called me again from an entirely different number, even feeding my ongoing seizure, so I flooded him with even more rude words about his origin, possible countries, war, and other sensitive things. Then he hung up… and called for the third time, from a different number again! I don’t believe this was intentional, rather than bad luck, but in that moment of self-destructive rage, I started believing that this was the moment when I finally went irreversibly mad. But still, I was seriously scared of myself.
I also remember that I spent a lot of time pouring all my mixed emotions onto my friends on Telegram. I am sorry for the tough challenge I threw at you, and I hope I was not too annoying, because clearly I was too hyperactive and had issues articulating words. I’ve heard people gossiping about me being constantly drunk and high on various drugs. Assuming that they might have gotten such an impression because of my behavioral changes due to the medical treatment I was undergoing or my recent sleeping issues, don’t be afraid. I haven’t tasted any alcohol since January. Fun fact: I actually touched the foam with my fingers when I was serving beers to people, but then I washed the wet fingers instead of licking them.
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