Hello everyone.
I’d like to preface this by mentioning that this is the first post I’ll have made here. I stumbled into this site going down the Youtube rabbit hole and it seemed like the place to share how my train of thought has evolved through the past year and a half or so. My hopes in doing so are that maybe someone who is at a similar point in their thought process as I was can see that it doesn’t end there, or maybe to talk to someone who used to be where I’m currently at right now and be on the other end of that perspective.
I guess I’ll get right into it then.
So, when I was 5, i watched my dad die. He was stabbed in the heart on our front lawn in an altercation trying to keep some people from hurting us. There’s no need to go into my life story, but that was about when I figured out that I’m not going to live forever. Now, I can’t rationally justify any form of afterlife as much as i want to, so my father is just gone, as i will be eventually. Everything he experienced, his consciousness, his soul if you will, no longer exists as if he was never here. This has always been a nagging thought in my mind but denial and refusing to think about the implications of death does wonders for one’s mental health i guess.
About 2 years ago, i started fixating on the concept of no longer existing, trying to imagine if it would be like before i was born, and what it would be like be gone, to not even experience nothing because there would be no “me” to experience even that. These thoughts crept in slowly until it was a constant fixation, eventually trying to not think about any of it because i was getting sick of having panic attacks over it while driving or while laying in bed or whenever my mind had enough free time to chime in that this is all temporary and ultimately pointless.
I started thinking about how all of my memories that i have of every moment I’ve ever lived all feel so… condensed. How the present is this minuscule point in time that is so fickle and finite that the “me” that wrote that previous sentence no longer even exists and my perception of time is the only thing that separates me from eternal oblivion. Where this became a serious problem is when i came to the conclusion that there is literally no difference between me eating a bullet now or dying when I’m in my 70’s except for my perception of time between both events, which is ultimately pointless after I’m gone anyways. Why not just get life over with and get on with eternity now rather than later? My girlfriend and i had a surprise birth control pregnancy around this time and the choice was weighed to terminate or not. We decided not to, so I had a financial situation to figure out now. The stress hunting for a better job and feeling inadequate and incapable to properly provide was adding weight to the option to opt out of this whole life thing so I started heavily considering it. All these people were telling me that having a kid changes your life, that you live for them and whatnot so I got to thinking that maybe I’ll find meaning in him when he gets here. Maybe my love for him will overpower everything else. He was born 6 weeks prematurely in January by emergency cesarean when my girlfriend and him both coded in the hospital. Scariest 20 minutes of my life. When i found out they were both okay i was so relieved. I got to hold him long before she woke up, apparently they can rip a baby out in like, 7 minutes nowadays. He weighed 4 pounds 5 ounces and was still kind of trying to figure out how to breathe when i held him and this feeling of absolute love just wasn’t there. He was just some baby. This concept of living for my child that i pinned my hopes on was gone, and I really didn’t see why I shouldn’t just get on with it. So after i was sure my girlfriend was alright I made my plan that weekend. I was going to shoot myself in the bathtub. It seemed the respectful thing to do in terms of the mess. I decided on heart instead of head because I didn’t want to deprive my soon to be gone existence of the last 7 or so minutes of brain death. On my way home, Depths III by Silent planet came on my spotify autoplay after Architects album was finished. I’d never heard them before, but something in that song clicked in my head but i didn’t know what. I listened to it again when i got home. I had to listen 4 times to digest what was being said, and at the risk of sounding cliche, it’s a very significant reason i put that gun down. I talked to my girlfriend about all of this and a lot of my reckless behaviors as of late, and we took the bullets out of my gun, and i just kind of cried for awhile. Life might be ultimately pointless and my experiences might ultimately mean less than nothing, but I’ve made the decision to live it and to have them nonetheless. Some days it sucks worse than others if i focus on this too much, but time isn’t real so there’s no difference between me living my life and ending it. It still doesn’t matter if I’m here or not, my living or dying means nothing. I’m just some tool wielding monkey on a rock hurling through an incomprehensibly endless space. But where the meaninglessness of my living or dying used to be justification for taking my life early in my mind, it’s pretty much the same justification i’m using to convince myself to stick around. it doesn’t matter either way, so fuck it, right?
my son is 2 months old. He’s asleep on my chest right now as i write this, still cranky from his surgery yesterday. I guess it just took awhile for my brain to form a bond with him, but I do love him. He hasn’t given my life meaning, but he has given it purpose, and for right now, that’s good enough.
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Hey @Loganz,
First off, I want to welcome you to HeartSupport! I hope that you find a sense of safety and refuge within this amazing community. 
Thank you for sharing your story with us. It’s very brave of you to be so vulnerable with a bunch of strangers. A few parts stuck out to me that I’d like to share my thoughts with.
You’re right in the sense that we’re all mortal. One day we’ll eventually die; it might be tomorrow or it might be in 100 years. However, I would argue that there is significance in what we do in-between now and our ultimate demise. I’m under the impression that every life has value and a purpose, even if you don’t know what the exact purpose is (yet). Studies show that the odds of being born are roughly 1 in 400 trillion, and because the odds are so incredibly low, I, personally, want to do as much “good” as I can with the limited time I have here on the planet, because I won’t get another chance. At the end of the day, even if I’m lost and confused, as long as I can answer “Yes” to the question of, “Did I do something good today?” - this gives me a sense of value and purpose.
Your baby boy needs a dad. Keep pushing. We believe in you!
Hold fast.
-Eric
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