The title essentially summarises how I'm feeling at the moment. I'm a young man who can be described as one of those people with bipolar self-esteem (using that term colloquially, not necessarily medically), who always seems to be alternating between depression and elation. It's the same cycle over and over again. I get depressed due to my life circumstances, I wallow in self-pity and consider killing myself, but then I never go through with it because of some narcissistic delusion that greatness is around the corner and if I just keep pushing forward, something will give way and my life will be brilliant. Only for barely any progress to be made, throwing me back into the depression stage of things. It's all so tiresome.
It's a strange thing. I have these suicidal ideations, but I know good and well that I'm never going to actually kill myself. I always delude myself into high spirits and build hope for the future only for things to get worse every single fucking time. I wish I wasn't so afraid of pain or death. It's sounds ridiculous but I wish there was just a button I could press to instantly kill myself so I don't have to keep going through this pointless cycle of emotional pain that I call living.
I suppose before I continue whining, I ought to at least explain why I'm even depressed in the first place. I'd say there's quite a few contributing factors. I'll try and list them all in chronological order:
Even though I love them, I've never felt truly understood by my family or my closest friends. I feel as if my only worth to most people are my achievements, which are starting to dry up the more life goes on. As time goes on and my depression worsens I'm becoming more of a loser.
Sexual trauma. That's the best way I can put it comfortably. Certain things happened to me both when I was a kid and a couple of years ago in university that basically fcked with my brain. Things that made me both hypersexually promiscuous yet struggle with sexual impotency depending on the day. Things that have also lead to development of dark sexual fetishes I have that I'm deeply ashamed of and can't seem to get rid off no matter how hard I try.
Racial bullying and feeling neglected as a kid. I'm a POC who grew up in mostly white small town and I think this is where a lot of my disregulated self-esteem issues originated from. Me and my younger siblings were bullied for our race growing up. I used to have to get into a lot of fights to defend us from this. I think this is also where my "Me vs World" victim complex originated.
Chronic illness. I was diagnosed with a chronic illness a few years ago which has caused me a lot of physical fatigue due to the symptoms and mental pain due to the shame of how weak my body is, since I'm a person who prides myself on looks and attractiveness. Managing the illness can be hard sometimes. There are days on end where I intentionally don't take my medication and eat foods I know will worsen it just to punish myself.
Feeling as if I'm failing to live up to my potential. This is the one that's on my mind the most recently so I have a lot to say.
I mentioned earlier in this post that I have narcissistic tendencies and worry about people only appreciating me for my achievements, this point will explain why. Basically, I've always been a creative, talented, and clever person. I've always been a good artist, a good student, and a hard worker. But the longer my life goes on, the longer, the less these alleged qualities of mine are pulling me through. I thought that by this point in my life (my mid-20s), I'd have a decent job and I'd be making good progress on legitimising my art career, but that hasn't worked out at all.
I graduated university years ago with a good finance degree, yet I'm currently unemployed, have only had two shitty menial labour jobs, and not a single one of the hundreds of job applications I've filled out in the past year have landed me an interview, never mind a job. And the sad part is, I know good and well that even if I do get a new job, I'll just be as bored, mind-numbed, and depressed as I've been at my other job, it's like that Morrissey lyrical in that one song where he talks about being miserable now.
As for my art career, that's what I'm passionate about and its truly the only thing I want to do, it's my main hyperfixation. Years ago, I won worldwide awards for some of mg work and I currently have a social media page with a modest amount of followers who support my work. But I'm not seeing any growth in these areas anymore. I have narcissistic dreams about being rich and famous off of my art and never having to work any of the normal jobs that have depressed and numbed my mind in the past. But the more time goes on, the more I realise how pathetic and futile these delusions were. I'm starting to see that I'm not as talented as I think I am, and that I won't ever get to achieve my dream of doing art even part-time, never mind full time, unless I want to starve. No matter how many tactics, plans, or different avenues of opportunity I go down, I can never seem to properly progress towards this dream, everything always either falls apart and stagnates. And even if it wasn't, with the way AI is progressing, I feel as if my dreams in the art world are fucked anyway, to put it lightly.
Since I'm in my mid-20s, people say I have plenty of time to figure things out in both these fields of getting a good job and pursuing art full-time. But I'm not very hopeful. Life is moving fast and despite my gruelling efforts, I'm moving slow. I'm so far behind all of my peers in terms of wealth, relationships, and occupational aspirations. I can feel time rapidly slipping through my fingers and I all I can see ahead of me is a future where I'm an even bigger failure than I already am right now.
To summarise, my main issues are: 1. Feeling unloved and unappreciated in general. 2. Dealing with sexual trauma and the shame that the fetishes it gave me have brought on. 3. My chronic illness. And 4. My professional and artistic failures.
Idek what the point of this post is, man. I suppose I'm looking for advice because I know that no matter how much I fantasise about it, I'll never actually kill myself, so I need help on fixing my brain/life so that I won't stew in perpetual pain for the rest of my life. That's why I'm posting this here even though I'm afraid that people who know me off of social media might somehow find this throwaway account. Because I quite literally have no one else to talk about this with. Everyone in my life who I'm close to either wouldn't understand or would think lesser of me, and it wouldn't solve anything it'd just make the pain worse. I've tried therapy a few times since I was a teenager, but it's never helped. I've also tried calling suicide hotlines, but talking to the people there hasn't done me any good either. Posting here is my last resort because I'm apparently incapable of sorting these things out by myself no matter how hard I try.
So, if you have any advice on any of what I've rambled about here, please let me know, I could really use the help. Thank you.