Not to be cliché, but the struggle is real. For most of my life, I'm 34, I've dealt with what I like to refer to as existential depression, since I don't think it relies too heavily on a chemical imbalance within me. To me, as my life has gone on & on, no matter how hard I dance upon the razor's edge that lies between experience & hoping to die, it all seems pointless. I have spent most of my effort on distractions. I have tried to fill this pit with lust, "love," power, & pretty much any other addiction you can think of, all of which soon become a bore. Take note of my use of 'bore,' as it has two meanings, since anything I fill this hole with never lasts or retains my interest, which only seems to bring about the hole's expansion.

On a possible happy note, after dealing with a two week stint where I "couldn't" get out of bed, I think I might have figured something out. I'm going to copy & paste something I wrote to my best friend, as I was trying to explain what it's like to have an IQ over 150. Ugh, I hate that this world has forced me to feel awkward & even bad for stating that, even though it's merely a fact, which, sadly, has led me to starving my intellect for years, hoping to be a bit more normal, which I also hate, haha. Anyway, on with the copying & yadda, yadda, yadda:

"This is why I have spent most of my life padding my interior with the numbing haze of distractions & drugs. The worst of it is how I have to oversimplify everything, so I know I'm rarely understood, so much so, that it feels like I'm some monstrous incarnation of this lie I've been forced to become. All the while, the real me has been eaten up, just like all those words I can never say. I tell people that I don't feel emotions all that much, when in truth, my emotions are these vast, debilitating beasts, ready to shred every aspect of my psyche. If I don't completely suppress most of myself, I find myself unable to move, except for a steady flow of tears, for I know that I am my own murderer."

As I wrote that, I realized from then on, I must always attempt to be the best me, according to me, & not according to society. Ironically, a year long jaunt into heroin addiction is what made all of this possible. For all of my life, I've had the kind of mental resilience that allowed me to overcome anything at a superhuman pace. Even when I was a young child, my stepdad used to say that everything that happened to me was akin to water washing over a duck's back. 33 years of being bulletproof had exhausted me, so after snorting some heroin—which I had previously only used for occasional fun—I realized that I could allow small doses to take over my defenses, all without becoming a nodding fool. After a year of being comfortably numb, existing outside of all desires, I began to hate how hollow my reality had become. This led me to quitting. After not needing my walls for a year, my brain forgot to automatically bring them back up, & I was in no state to figure them out, leading to an emotional tide that nearly killed me. It was in those dark days that I decided to rely less heavily on walls, instead risking pain to allow the real me out into the world.

Here's to hoping my story will help someone.