What's the point?

So this is going to be my first post on here, a friend recommend it to me because of alot of personal reasons. I know some of the community but this is a whole new thing to me, so I guess I’ll just explain my situation…

I’m a younger guy, in high school, and I have alot of things wrong with me from my point of view. I dont try hard enough, I dont do enough, I’m fat, im idiotic, I have multi-personality disorder, I have a while host of mental illnesses and so much more. Recently, I found someone that I truly care about and for, she made me rethink the idea that I could be loved and appreciated when everyone else had left me. She gave me the idea that there are decent people in this world and that I’m not alone. She has some similar problems to me and we try and help eachother out with them.
Recently I’ve been feeling more and more like a burden and failure to her. I’ve broken down so many times to her and admitted so many things about my life, and everytime I do I feel just shit. It’s not that she gets mad or annoyed or anything, but just the mere idea that I’m asking someone for help hurts me.
Along with this, I’ve been falling behind in school, I’m currently failing all of my advance placement classes and have lower grades in all of my other ones. I wake up everyday for school dreading the very idea of it because I dont feel a purpose anymore in it. A bit of background, I’ve always been in advanced class and passed easily through them and just skated all the way until high school, then everything went downhill. My freshmen year my friend group fell apart because of interpersonal issues. Being as they got me through alot of my life, it broke me. I took up drinking, hard. I managed to keep my grades straight but almost every night I would blackout by myself crying. My sophomore year wasnt much better, I got a couple new people to try and help me, but they all ran whenever I opened up to them and typically wouldnt come back, save for two special girls and one special guy that still support me through anything. But them staying didnt matter, I still felt useless and horrible everyday and would drink until I passed out. I kept my grades decent until the last 2 months, and then they fell.I started my junior year about 4 months ago, and it was just like the rest of the years, I hated going and would get totaled every night to try and feel anything. My grades hovered at the C range for a while until just recently, when they’ve all started to fall further. I stopped drinking myself stupid every night because of my girlfriend begging me not to, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can sleep at night without drinking, save for nightmares.
And now I come to the big idea, what’s the point of any of it? I cant help people whenever they’re feeling depressed or suicidal. I nearly drove my girlfriend to suicide over something completely asinine. I cant fix my grades. I cant fix my broken family. I cant do anything right. Every time I take my depression meds the idea of putting them all in my mouth and just going down forever is present. Any time I’m cooking I get the urge to just take a few swipes at myself. I self harm by burning myself with strong chemicals so that it’s hard for people to tell, because I dont want to explain to them I dont feel a need to exist. I just dont see a real point anymore. The only real reasons that I’m holding on are for my girlfriend and three friends, because I dont want them to suffer because of me, so I suffer for them.
This is a really ranting thing and I hate doing such, but I told someone close that I would make a post here, so I’m honoring my promise. I dont know what else there is to say, so I’ll just leave it here for now. Thanks for reading, I’ll maybe make a post focused on some issues that I feel are the most important at some later date.
-Rev
P.S. sorry if the format is bad, this was typed up on my phone

1 Like

Dude, this is so relatable, Rev.

So you had this really solid community and foundation, and things were going well, but then it was literally like the floor dropped out from under you, and you’ve been free falling for the past two and a half years…you’ve had a couple friends and this girlfriend that have slowed your fall and have parachuted in to try to rescue you, but you keep pushing them away, and the thought of just finally hitting the ground seems more appealing than trying to stabilize and survive.

You’re at this place where you’ve been medicating through drinking for so long that you don’t know how to live or sleep any other way. Your girlfriend convinced you otherwise, but again, FEELING your life is something you’ve been avoiding for so long, that you get overwhelmed by the pain and look to hurt yourself to take off the edge…to feel something different besides the numbness and self-loathing that you’ve been sweeping under the rug for so long.

Your grades are finally starting to slip, which is a miracle that you’ve lasted this long without it happening before, but it just goes to show that the way you’ve been coping and masking your emotions is finally catching up with you and your ability to pretend is finally failing.

And to be honest, bro, while it might feel like death, this could really be your first shot at truly living. There’s this quote from a movie called Jerry Maguire:

I have lost the ability to bullshit. It was the me I’d always wanted to be.

I think the first thing I’d recommend for you is to start to understand your story. Part of the reason you feel like such a burden to your girlfriend when you share your emotions with her is because you can’t predict how much longer you’re going to be complaining about the same stuff…you feel stagnant…you feel like you have no answers and no hope of things getting better…if you were just venting for a predictable length of time, you could feel more comfortable opening up because you would be able to wrap your mind around what kind of a burden you’re asking of her…but because you have no hope of things getting better – or at least no idea how they’re going to – it’s like asking a blank check from her, always needing more, never knowing if it’ll ever get better, and you can’t stand that thought…

But what if you were to be on an upward trajectory? If you could see your life getting closer to being better? And she was helping you get there, and you knew that one day you’d be stronger and less dependent? Not that you stop talking about your emotions or what’s really going on in your life, but that you had hope that things were going to turn out? It would cut out a lot of the stress.

So one of the things that’s important about talking about your pain is: don’t waste it.

Part of the struggle right now is that you don’t actually know WHY you’re hurting. You know losing your friends was part of the catalyst, but why was it so devastating? Why is it still affecting you two and a half years later today? Why is it still affecting you when you have three close friends and a girlfriend who all love and support you? That’s more than most people have their whole life – why’s this still haunting you?

If you were able to say, “I feel like I want to drink because I feel (exactly this way) because of (exactly this situation in your life) and so I’m believing (exactly this thought about yourself).” – it would change the game because you stop feeling crazy or stupid or irrational and you start making sense of your own feelings…when you start to be empowered by that knowledge, you can find a way / create a specific plan to work towards a healthier path in your life.

So here’s the kicker: every time you’re hurting, you have the opportunity to learn about yourself. You might not be a journaling guy, but writing these things down would be a game changer. Especially if you do it for a month or two, you’ll be able to look back on those entries and start to find the patterns. The patterns will be like clues that work you backwards towards the key moments in your story. And once you find those, you can begin to understand what’s really going on under the hood.

Let me make this a little more practical by sharing my story…“alcohol/self harm” for you is like porn and video games for me. I couldn’t stop watching porn or playing games, and I didn’t know why. I just felt empty all the time and any time I didn’t do those things I felt ridiculously terrible.

I got into the 12 steps for recovery from my addictions, and it forced me to journal and start to examine my life and took me on a journey to understand myself better. I realized that I felt terrible when I felt like I was a failure…when I felt like I had done something less than I expected of myself…I started to realize that that pattern traced back through my life all the way to when I was growing up and my dad was my soccer coach and he would never just say “good game”, he would always point out the things I did wrong…and as I started to zone in on those moments and just let my heart speak, I realized that I felt like I could never do anything to make my dad proud…and if I could never make my dad proud, then I wasn’t worthy of love.

Realizing that it boiled down to feeling like I was unworthy of love was one of the biggest revelations in my life…because I started to realize that I felt the need to achieve…in order to be loved! And when I didn’t, I felt worthless. So any time I’d take a test and someone got a better grade than me, anytime I heard about a peer doing better than me, anytime I looked up a video and someone was better than me at something, it felt like a reminder, like proof of my worthlessness, and I’d rather escape my world and my worthlessness by diving into porn or video games.

When I started realizing that, I was able to better speak into it in my life…I was able to identify – oh, I’m wanting to dive back into these negative coping mechanisms, because I feel like I failed on that project – and I was able to do something different…talk to someone and have them help me get to a place of self-acceptance and self-love, go play drums because it was a better escape than my addiction, take a moment to remember that I am loved, etc. It was more effective than just general coping strategies, because I knew the pain I needed to ACTUALLY help, instead of just knowing I was hurting and using whatever I could to numb it up.

All of this self-understanding starts with you getting to know yourself and your story.
Journaling about your pain is a great way to start that journey AND is a great way to feel like you’re not wasting your pain…because if you can use it to know yourself better, pain becomes valuable and a teacher to you instead of an inconvenience and an enemy to your happiness…it becomes the pathway to your healing.

Hope this helps, man. Thanks so much for entrusting us with your story.

You’re not crazy, you’re not alone. You’re hurting, like the rest of us, and I don’t blame you for that. You seem like a smart man, and I’m proud of you for facing your pain and pursuing help. That kind of courage is what’s going to bring you the distance to find the healing you seek. I’m proud of you.
-Nate

Hi Rev, thanks for reaching out.

This is so hard to read through - although relatable.

Nate already covered the whole post so greatly that I would only say the same things again. I just wanted to add that you’re not alone in this: there is us at HeartSupport, and even if you feel like you failed everyone (including yourself), your family and girlfriend just want you to be happy. Reach out to them, even if you’re scared to do so.

We believe in you, you’re worth and loved

Pioggia :sunflower:

@Rev you keep saying you have no purpose. I think you already have a purpose or you’d not be sharing. It is clear that you’re trying hard. Believe me all it takes is to try to not be useless. You aren’t useless.

I think maybe you should for go the advance classes for now. I understand you have always been in them & have done well at first. It just seems like a burden that you can’t handle atm.

It is good you have a GF & a trio of friends that support you. I think though you should get a therapist. (Most people don’t like this advice because they get paid. They see it as a con, but people that enter the human services field don’t usually do it to get paid but they desire to help others. To me getting paid just insures them getting their job done which is to listen and be there for you.)

Make something of your life if you really think you’re useless. I mean if you think your life has no purpose than what is keeping you from creating your own purpose. (This is the path that I took.)

I am rooting for you & hope you find at least some relief to your suffering. Blessed Be.