I’m going to start this off by saying that I am very young still. I’m 23 years old and as oh so many people have told me I have my whole life ahead of me. I understand that it’s still too early for me to be feeling how I feel, but try as I might I can’t stop myself from sinking deeper and deeper into this state.
I used to have dreams of one day being a full time musician. Playing huge arenas and drawing massive crowds to see me and my band perform our latest album. At that time I was probably 12 or 13. That dream kept going strong and hard for many years, as I played in my first band it was strong and long after I left my 10th. When I was 19 I started studying to become a sound engineer with а new dream atop of my existing one. To have my own studio and record new and aspiring artists! It took me about 1 year into that education to realise neither of my two dreams would ever get to where I wanted them. They were now reduced to dreaming of having a band with a reasonably sized following, doing some small tours and working in a well established studio somewhere. By the time my final year of school ended I had now shifted to hoping that maybe I can play in a band and play a gig or two a year in a dingy bar locally, but things were looking up I had a job in a studio to look forward to, starting in no less than 3 weeks! After roughly a year working in a studio where I got treated like shit, had my education mocked as being “A needless waste of money” and not a single positive experience I decided to put that dream to rest.
I have a girlfriend, a beautiful woman that I adore more than anything on this planet. We live apart though, which I thought would be a bigger issue than it turned out to be. We’ve been together for a few years at this point and we’ve had our ups and downs like every other relationship. But even this feels like it’s slowing but surely falling apart. Where there was once smiles and laughs there’s now a lot of silence and sour moods. Less conversations about our lives and what we want to do, where we wanna go and more endless barrages of silence. I’ve been cheated on in every single relationship I’ve been in since the very first when I was 17, so far, and as far as I’m aware she’s the only one who hasn’t. But lately even that hope has been put to the test. For the past few years since I met her, she’s been my only companion. I have little to no friends, I don’t know how to make friends anymore. I lost contact with the few I had as I slowly started to isolate myself more and more until it’s now reached a point where I MIGHT say hello to someone on Facebook if they message me, but nothing more. New people scare me. People don’t like me. I’m quiet, I’m moody, I don’t like to go out and drink (I’ve had more than enough alcohol and drugs thanks to a horribly toxic relationship and an upbringing that never taught me to be careful with who I trust.) and I don’t like socializing. But I want to like it. I want to be normal.
I’ve tried for the past 5 years to get a job, some form of steady income. I had a job in a supermarket for a year and a bit more, and I’ve never been closer to cutting the cord on life than then. Something that monotonous, redundant and lifeless is something I genuinely would rather not be alive than have to do. And obviously since here that’s what you’re expected to do, my unemployment counselor is urging me to give it another go, telling me that “You can’t have everything in life, it’s a place to start at least”. I’ve had nothing in life. My entire life I’ve been poor to the point where food wasn’t always a guarantee, I was never able to get the things I wanted, I could never go anywhere exciting or do anything fun. My entire life has been spent in my bedroom, playing guitar with nothing to show for it.
23 years down the line and I’m ready to call it quits. All I have ever hoped and dreamed for has been torn from me, the illusion I had that life would pan out how I had hoped has disappeared. All I have is an intense hatred to my own very being, a seething rage towards myself that’s seeping out towards the world and everything in it. I blame myself for everything. Who else can I blame if not me. I was stupid enough to think life would be good to me. And after 5 failed attempts at taking control over my own life for once and trying to say goodbye to it all, I’m at a point where I don’t know if I have the courage or strength to hope for anything again.
I’m 23. I’m pathetic.
Thank you for taking the time to read this probably unecessarily long rant. I hoped that getting this off my chest would maybe help but, sadly I feel no different from before I started writing. I hope you have a wonderful day whoever you are.