It feels like every few months or so, I'll finally come clean with myself and realise I haven't got a clue what's wrong with me, instead of telling a million stories on what makes me sad in the world, and the people on it.
If true happiness comes from within oneself, as is often said by people who tell you fame and money won't make you happy, is it possible to say that you can be sad on the inside, and that things from the outside won't make me happy?
I am miserable on the inside. And I don't know why. I don't know what will fix this. I'm sure all my friends and family are sick of me saying I'm sad and sucking at explaining why. I'm not writing in hopes of getting advice this time. I just want to write without the responsibility of explaining myself, a prerequisite to what ought to make "good" writing. I just want to explore freely. Just let me indulge and wallow in my sadness for a bit. In short, just let me bitch a little, okay?
I feel so empty. So small and insignificant. So powerless to do, change, or affect anything. From young we're taught that we "should", and we "need" to study hard and get into a good school to get a good job. And thus it's a whole life of dictation, where even the slightest deviation for breathing room are met with scorns or even punishment. The peak of this was slavery, and being a grown ass adult I had hoped fervently that the real, adult, working world would be so, so much better.
It wasn't. If anything it was worse, since people's livelihoods are actually on the line in comparison to slavery.
Being told what I had to achieve and how exactly to do it with zero regard for what I personally wanted or believed in, I feel very shackled and suffocated. I'm in a lot of pain I don't know how to break free of. I see everything and everyone around me going through the same thing and I feel sad, for them. I feel that this, everything, is so ass backwards and fucked up, so painful, so meaningless, so dry, so stupid. I look at the people behind the cashiers of McDonald's and I feel sad for them, and how bored they must be but slog away anyway in the name of survival. I see and wear clothes and I feel sad, thinking about all the poor souls in China that had to be exploited, overworked and underpaid to get me clothing I can even bitch about, and I feel sad. I live in this country and take our safety for granted and feel sad, because I know the sacrifices and horrors half our population have to go through to make this happen, and that everybody believes that this is the best way to achieve peace. I walk into a company and because of where I was born and what I've been forced to do, I am expected to be a better person, of more use, than those born elsewhere not as educated as me, even if they do work harder than mine and earn way less. I feel sad for such a discriminatory system in place, and sad also to be bound by its expectations.
I feel sad, because I feel lost. I want the world to be happy. I want everyone to be happy. But with unhappiness at the root of reality and society as we know it, it's almost a requirement for society to function; that is, for people to be happy others must suffer. And that makes me sad. Why must things be this way? Why can't we all be happy? And if sadness and misery is a requirement for society to function, then do I dare be happy? Do I deserve to be happy? Do I need to fight others for the right to be happy? What value is there in my personal happiness? Is it possible to be "happy on the inside", with a stronger resistance to feeling down due to outside events? This fear of happiness makes me sad. These questions I know have no easy nor happy answers make me sad.
"The world won't change for you", lots of people, from friends, family, and my counsellor tell me this. Well then if the world is fucked up and we can't change it, what's the point in anything that we do? Why would we put up with a life we all know is hard and painful? We live, and then we die, all alone. No one will truly understand us. Hardly anyone would share even a small fraction of our burden. Our life, our death, changes nothing. There will always be people sad, and there will always be people ignorantly, or undeservingly happy. "The world will not change for you", even if you died. It'd just keep on keeping on.
But what am I saying? That I want the whole world to change to my exacting vision? I don't even have the faintest idea how an ideal world should be, let alone how feasible such a vision might be. Nor do I think people would be happy to have my idea and my own brand of happiness regimented down their throats. It's like, I know what's sad. It's so easy for things to go wrong. Murphy's Law applies everywhere. But what's happiness? Why do I have memories of being happy, when I can't even define happiness in my head, or put it down into words? What makes me happy? And even if I knew what makes me happy, how many people will it negatively impact? Do I even deserve to be happy, in that sense, wanting what I want? It's easy to destroy a knot, but I never had a clue how to tie a knot back I untied, cut or burnt off. There are so, so many ways for things to go awry, but only one specific way to do something correctly. It's so, so hard to find that needle in the haystack at every turn in life, and watching everything fall through my fingers and go to shit, I get scared. So scared. Of never ever being able to take my own life back under control and know what I'm doing with it, and answer all the moral questions that come attached with having to make such choices. Yet at the same time I feel suffocated following the template that others have set out for me.
After a while of helplessly fumbling around cluelessly and getting shot down and berated at every turn, trying to hold it all together, you almost start to see and treat your own life like a movie. You start to accept that sadness is inevitable, and that some things are just beyond your control. Then it's most things. Then it's almost seemingly everything. Everything you do is wrong and offensive, and everything you want is so unrealistic. The world wouldn't change for you. The world would never be what you might've expected or assumed it to be, and you start to feel stupid for having hope in the first place, and laugh at your happier past self for being so naïve and optimistic. Just looking at your dreams, thinking about happiness, just feels so tiring. Thinking about a possible journey back to happiness that is just wrought with so many hardships, your brain scrambles, tosses and turns to fathom how the current, bedridden, unwanted, lifeless, awkward, talentless you would overcome. And that's only what your brain can expect; who knows what the hell else life will throw your way.
So daunting. So hopeless. And the longer you sit and watch everything fall through your hands because you don't care anymore, the more you hate yourself for being useless and powerless. The less life and its assorted struggles make sense to you. The sadder you'd feel for others who have to go through this, never asking why. The more afraid you'd feel, with everyone around you egging you, supporting you, to get back on that track of senseless pain. You start to lose all sense of right and wrong when you start questioning who you should listen to and why. You start to ask yourself how right you are in your thinking and beliefs, how much you matter, only until the realisation sets in that everybody is as clueless about life as you are, and yet somehow they feel confident enough to live it and give you suggestions/ tell you how to live it.
It all just feels so stupid to me, because everything is so wrong. People are unhappy. Life is hard. There is no meaning. I can't convince myself I want to live. I can't get excited about my life. Will meds help with this? Will counselling? Maybe I'm just too stupid to live. Maybe I'm just too stupid to be happy. Maybe I'm just a super bad actor in an examination like script of a play that is life. Maybe there are no preferences, strengths and weaknesses in this play. It's act or get out. Could I possibly belong anywhere? I'd just push everyone away, like I tried so many times with the friends most concerned about me because I'm stupid and fucked up. Could anyone really understand what I'm going through, when I don't even understand it myself? Do I really want the answers to these questions? Is ignorance really bliss in this scenario? Do I want to dump this onto others?
I ask so much of others. I take more than I could ever repay, and give nothing but trouble and burdens in return. I ask my retiring parents to still keep me fed, I ask my friends to enjoy my company, I ask anyone who'd tolerate me be patient with me, I consume so much media at home nowadays and don't pay a cent for any of it, hoping to find that one something, that one spark, that'd answer all these stupid and impossible questions, that'd make me feel ready to embrace life again.
Do I even fucking deserve to be happy?
In a world so fucked up, I don't know how I'm supposed to be happy. Maybe I'd be happier if I were to be able to turn a blind eye to all this, but that wouldn't really be "me", would it?
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