Content Warning: suicide, substance use, self-harm
Past Days
I initially went to college because I thought that was just what I was supposed to do. That was the message I got during high school.
A few years before I graduated high school, I would think about life and question existence, but the existential depression didn’t begin to overtake me until my second year of college.
The psychiatrist I started to see told me that I was successful—I was in college and had a paying internship—but I didn’t like that version of success. I felt stressed about school, I disliked the internship work environment, I had an eating disorder, and I would often think about suicide. I questioned the point of life and I questioned that standard brand of “success”—go to school, get a job, be independent and/or have a family or whatever.
I felt I was on autopilot. When I would drive to my job (the internship), I would think about passing the turn and continuing to drive to find some woods to kill myself in.
One night I did set out to find some woods, but after a few hours of driving, I ended up in the hospital instead. In the hospital, I asked my psychiatrist, “Why work when you can be dead?” I assured her I wasn’t seeking disability when she asked, and she said something about my possibly having to be transferred to the state mental hospital.
If she were to consider my questions, that would mean she’d have to step outside of her worldview, and it didn’t seem she ever did that. After all, as she told me, “If there is no God, what the hell are we here for?”
I went through years of depressive nihilism and wanting to die, but I felt held back by thoughts of my parents (hence why I forewent the plan about the woods) especially after the suicide attempt that nearly killed me and landed me in the hospital.
I dropped out of college after that attempt because I felt overwhelmed. I had been pretty hard on myself with all-or-nothing thinking—either I get all A’s or I’m a failure, either I stay in school or I kill myself (as you can surmise, I tried to choose the latter).
During the time I dropped out, I probably thought I would never go back. The self-harm got pretty bad. Everything seemed stupid and meaningless. Life seemed stupid and pointless.
Eventually I didn’t know what to do with myself so I went back to school. I finished my degree but not without struggles. I developed a drug problem (alcohol, over-the-counter stuff, the medication I was prescribed) and went through alcohol dependence.
After I’d drunk all the alcohol I could find in the house, I would buy alcohol after classes or sneak out at night and buy it.
Sometimes I’d show up at school high, my parents having dropped me off due to circumstances at the time, but hey, at least I felt good.
I didn’t go to the graduation. I thought my degree useless and that I would never use it. A job? Pff, why would I want that? Why would I want to be a wage slave!? The internship experience I had with the subpar work environment and my undiagnosed social anxiety certainly didn’t help my attitude toward jobs.
About a year later, I got off my medications. It was an accident at first. Due to my overdoses in the past, my parents handled my medications and gave them to me. However, they began to stop giving me one, mistakenly replacing it with another.
They took me to the emergency room (ER) one day because they thought the symptoms I was having meant I was on too high of a dose, when it turns out, as I realized some time later, I was going through withdrawals. The ER didn’t realize that and ended up sending me away with a prescription for a lower dose of the missing medication.
I decided I wouldn’t take any of the medications anymore. Maybe I’d finally do myself in. While I felt that my therapist at the time was perhaps one of if not the only one who could step outside of her worldview to understand me (and I’m grateful for that), I stopped going to therapy because I felt that my problems weren’t that significant compared to others’ and couldn’t be solved anyway with anything short of death.
Woo Woo Days
I had a turn around period a year after that when my mood inexplicably lifted. This was my time of turning to the woo side. After some time of sobriety, I had been trying to attain the feelings of passion and purpose that I would have when I would use a particular substance, but without the substance. I ended up finding something I’d written when I was high, and it inspired me to go back to school for another degree. I chickened out because of my chaotic undergrad experience, but I did go through with it (when, again, I didn’t know what else to do with myself) a year and a half later.
I don’t necessarily put that much stock in the mind of my high self (the one who thought they could make their computer think and thought they were a reincarnated version of long dead geniuses (and one living musical genius)) anymore. Returning to school turned out to be a good decision nonetheless, and I got lucky with the timing.
Present Day
Maybe I’m a little less edgy now (but just a little). Maybe I still generally agree with what I’ve thought in the past. So what’s different?
For one thing, I’m not as horribly depressed and I don’t cope with drugs or self-harm anymore. I suppose I’m better able to handle this… whatever you want to call it—realization? point of view?
I also think I’m better able to point out what exactly I see as wrong and am better able to explain my ideas about life. It helps to realize that I don’t necessarily have a “flawed” viewpoint as at least one other person had put it.
I don’t blame myself as much as I used to for the depression and not wanting to do certain things. I no longer see myself as the problem as much as I used to.
I’ve felt resistant to both jobs and school, yet for some reason during my days of woo (and even before then when I ended up taking some classes at a community college), I wanted to go to school again.
Recently, school has merely been the lesser of two evils. I go back and forth between feeling that I don’t really want to do even more higher education to feeling excited about the possibility. I dunno. I mean, I would like to do something with my life since so far I’m remaining alive. It’s like school has been my I-don’t-know-what-else-to-do-so-I’m-going-to-do-this option.
Now excuse me while I go explore some more woo.
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