unnamed mental health post

Dear friends,

Pride Month and Men's Mental Health Month are coming up in 11 days from the time writing this. And so far, this year has been an incredibly turbulent time for me. Here, I just want to talk about that. I've never really done one of these before - but it's already seemingly filler-riddled, nevertheless, I'll give this a shot. This is messy, poorly worded, and pretty raw, so... uhh, hold on to something.

Both those months are quite relevant to me. In a nutshell, I'm a homosexual and a male, so...

To put it simply, I don't think I've had a half-week where I was happy since I was about 8 years old. I'm sure many can relate to that, I started to really grasp how monumental reality actually is, how ephemeral humans are, and just how truly fleeting time is. Notwithstanding, it wasn't until I was about 10 where I really started being unhappy. When I was 10, I lost one of my superheroes, as you'd call it: Tim Bergling. Avicii. I first heard his music very young and when I turned 10 I had basically just learnt what death is, properly. My childhood superstar being my entry point into understanding death and loss was incredibly devastating, and I don't really think I've been the same since. Avicii and Martin Garrix, and maybe even deadmau5, were my first exposures to EDM as a child, and probably why I still ride-or-die it.

2019 was a pretty good year. I remember so much from 2019, but so little. The intro summer was pretty meh, autumn was, well frankly, looking back was an indescribably warm but vague fuzzy memory, winter was good, and the outro summer was probably the best time I can look back on. 

Pause. What is this about? I actually have no idea what I'm talking about, but... I'm getting there.

Alright, 2020. 2020 was quite a seminal year for me, but at the same time, the one that destroyed me. It mattered enormously and it broke something in me. I have always been a very shy and introverted person - but I was able to walk up to someone and ask them a basic question if I wanted to. Post 2020, I couldn't really anymore.

Nobody cares about 2021. But 2022, 2022 was honestly a terrible year to go through, but I sometimes look back on it with nostalgia. Forthrightly, I think my brain just burned all the bad memories and left a very small jar of good memories. While the number of them is slim, there are quite some notable ones. I remember as the news of Elon Musk acquiring Twitter broke, I was at school, at lunch, sitting there, waffling "did you guys hear Elon BAUT twitta?". And nobody answered, because I seem to be the only person in a 300 km radius that uses Twitter. And thank god for that, honestly...

2023. Moved house. Got my laptop. Not much else. 2023 was genuinely uneventful. For good, I suppose.

Let's skip 2024 and 2025, because 99% of people who clicked this are probably falling asleep. 

I kicked off 2026 with these 3 goals in mind: switch to Linux, get a job, and get a boyfriend. The first so far has been successful, the other two, not so much. And May is almost over. 

But, what does any of this have to do with mental health?

Okay, let's actually begin. No more beating around the bush. Bluntly, I kinda wish I didn't exist most of the time. I am not suicidal, at least not mostly, I don't want to kill myself, I just wish I never existed to begin with. Last Saturday night even, I had a pretty severe and prolonged mental breakdown. It was weeks of pressure building up mixed with late night caffeine delirium in the worst way possible. I honestly thought I was gonna die that night - either by caffeine poisoning, or I would... "do" something. 

I'm sorry.

I don't know why I'm filtering myself on my own website.

Maybe I lied.

Actually, I was one microstep away from killing myself, right there in front of my computer. The very computer I'm typing this on. I had a sharp knife nearby, I was even clutching it for a few seconds. My mind is usually always racing, and if I were to give it a standard rate number, it would be, like, 20 random things a minute. That night, I would say 100 bad things a minute. I was genuinely terrified. 

I don't know what happened that night. I don't remember much. I do remember I was invited to scambait with some friends, to which I bluntly declined, quote: "I can't right now I'm trying not to kill myself". But I truly thought it was the end of the road. Yeah... I've had countless breakdowns and episodes, but this one probably tops them all combined.

You might be wondering what that "pressure" is. Well, I can list a few things. Most notably, insomnia. Honorable mention, loneliness. I only have about 2 friends IRL. Yeah, go ahead, point and laugh and call me a loser, but... remember how I said I'm really shy? Well, a few things contributed to that. I was pretty heavily bullied in school, by almost all of my "peers", for indescribable things. Yeah, I don't remember half, and the other half are nonsense. The bullying was so arbitrary it barely makes sense in retrospect.

Oh, and remember how I said 2020 "destroyed me"? I was 13 in 2020, and I had been assigned some, I suppose a youth mental health "expert". I saw them thrice, and they went quiet on me for how overwhelmingly shy and cagey I was. I didn't trust them. But I guess they failed to gain it. I haven't since retried a professional. I don't know why. 

I really feel like I've fucked everything up. If you look at my GitHub contributions chart, I've made over 1000 commits this year. And basically none of that are contributing to other peoples/groups work - just mine. Voxity. Voxity feels rewarding to work on, and it is, no doubt, but I think it's really draining me when I'm already empty. But, I have seemingly recovered from my "breakdown" on Saturday quite fast, as I've made 125 more commits since. You can be self-aware and still drowning at the same time.

Something I've never been able to shake is existential dread. This constant, looping feeling that none of this means anything in the end. We're born, we exist for a short while, and then we're gone forever. Every memory, achievement, embarrassing moment, beautiful moment, piece of art, laugh, heartbreak --- all of it eventually gets swallowed by time. Moreover, in a hundred years or fewer, almost all of us will be completely forgotten. Life is so unpredictable and blossoming, but also, utterly celestially inconsequential. That contradiction is haunting.

Humans can live for a very long time, 50 to 80 years is no chump change, but to the earth, the universe, and everything around it, 50 years is 2 seconds to it. I have myself made an impact on various things, and the severity of them really depends on who you ask, but I don't think this impact will withstand 5 years. 

I'm sorry. I'm sidetracking again. Talking about these things really isn't my forte. 

I don't think life has some grand underlying purpose waiting to be uncovered. I think it's mostly just hard. Repetitive and painful and unfair and exhausting and full of disappointment. But somewhere inside all of that mess there are the moments that somehow make it survivable anyway. They sound like nothing when you say them aloud. But when you're actually inside one of those moments it feels like the whole world. I don't think I'm ever going to stop hurting - no human really ever will. I think I'm just slowly figuring out how to hurt without it taking everything else down with it. 

So yeah, that's my mental health post. Awkward as hell, doesn't really go anywhere, but it's what I could come up with. I'm saying that like it's a challenge - but no, I have genuinely been a sad kid since I can recall being a kid, instead of a milk guzzling toddler. I am not sure how many people know any of this - so, here you go. 

Anyway, that's about it, see ya.