Cycles

I accidentally opened this blog post via delayed response time on the website while navigating to my own blog. I don't think I have any useful input or novel ideas to "help" you

I can actually relate 100% to every word you wrote. I have the exact same thoughts. I'm 43 now though and I still wake up most days wishing I didn't exist. My only goal in life now is to minimize the physical pain I'll bee in when I'm old and decrepit and alone because I'm way too chicken to do suicide and too poor to move to Belgium. I wonder what is going on in my brain that I just always feel so foreign and gloomy in all temperatures of situations. It's actually exhausting too. I can definitely recognize and even appreciate the bright things around me (like the people and situations that I have good interactions with) but there's no real or lasting motivation or interest in anything or anyone. I've always known I'd grow old alone and I like it mostly but I feel alone in a way that I never imagined. Even knowing that you exist and feel similarly, doesn't make me feel any less alone. I wouldn't say I'm lonely cuz I very much like solitude but there's this other kind of aloneness that I feel in my veins and the pit of my stomach. For me, maybe it's tied to seeing people and situations from so many different angles and perspective that everyone and everything seems 2 dimensional and ultimately pointless. I am by no means enlightened our even well educated but I find the concept of the "enlightenment trap" extremely relatable.

I don't know, maybe you can related to some of my extrapolations. I'm still trying to find a therapist that won't label me as suicidal at the first mention of the desire to not exist. When I was a teenager, I would try to dissipate my molecules and will them to separate and float off into the atmosphere.

ugh I did the thing where I forgot to finish my first paragraph because the thoughts just bum rushed me at the door. Yada yada yada

Lot of what's in your blog is very familiar, even if circumstances may be different.
All those thoughts, yeah, all the time (expect when it isn't!).
I'm just past 60, and currently struggling quite seriously, with visions of my future, my lack of motivation ever worse all the time, the pointlessness of it ultimately, the constant depressions (as a separate thing to the pointlessness), too much to put here frankly, and to be honest, some of what's maybe stopped it all finishing already, is things like substance misuse (not recommended though) to suppress the worst of it, and on finally dealing with that, as much as I ever will, ending up in a state where I'd pushed myself into this space, to protect from the pain of 'failure'. Not social failure, but failure to find what I feel I most need, or want maybe, to alleviate that which hurts the most, and of which I know is possible, but highly improbable?
If I can maintain an attitude of 'acceptance' that I'll never find what's most important, then the mind can shut down those thoughts having 'resolved' the conflict - smooths the pain out to dull constant that's easier to ignore.
Just an aspect of how my mind works.

But what's contentious is our attempt to place these things in context, whereby our (I'm reaching with 'our' and making some assumptions of others based on myself, I think?) minds, not being able to lock on to non-verbal comms and the rest, we invent what we imagine these much desired things must be to others who seem to be abnle to suceed in romantic attachments. Quite convinced this is a major fallacy, and some major irrational crap going on, to produce what our minds will jump at, straining at the bit. "Cor, that looks good, I could do with some of that!".

Basically, we create a fake paradise to long for, as part of our being convinced others (non-atypicals) have it so much better most the time. We are weak willed and irrational creatures in general, with so many flaws in how our minds operate, but our minds are convinced otherwise mostly (lots of empirical proof of this to find out there if that's doubted).
We often make a rod for our own backs, and proceed to beat ourselves up with it (well, I am so awful a person, I must deserve that really! No?). I just describe it as my mind see's it, but I hope you get the gist?
But in the end to some degree the above is mental masturbation, no way forward on just that!

But what to go for in the hope of making life less intolerable (good would be a little over ambitious for me! and besides, it's all relative)?
Well, maybe in part, adjusting those fallacious beliefs about what these things really are and what you really looking for, beyond vague fantasy, coloured by our experiences. Is it love, intimacy, support, companionship, connection, sex, physical (and/or mental) closeness and understanding? The list is endless and person specific of course. But in the end, I suspect most people of all types do this irrational thing of dreaming what they think others relationships are like, usually including all the things we want, and if the chance comes, it's almost certainly going to be let down in one area or the other, as life and fantasy aren't the same. Fantasy is fine, even important, but confusing it with the real thing tends toward disappointment - what partner could live up to that? Advice is great, especially from those like you, but isn't a roadmap, just a list of possible things to consider. In the end, I think one of the best things to do is really try to workl out what it is that you think would make you less unhappy, without introducing something that would negate that.

And when you find that, is there any chance you could give me some pointers?