"I'm nearly constantly in a fully blank and apathetic state. I have gone years like this, interspersed with days or individual weeks of fleeting, exuberant joy, and consecutive weeks if not months or more of a crushing demotivation and depression. All the while I am quiet. All the while I observe and I learn and it is from this observation that I draw my semblance. "

((((TheSilentEmpath))))))

I can't help but think, and this person is only coming 18? I checked your profile and with what I read in that profile, I can't blame your anger as well as your apathy. I think to myself, as I have done before, this is the mind of someone who has been abused and did not recieve the right nurturing, how awful is that?

Then, as I read your writing it is obvious that you are far from stupid. I can't help but wonder what would have happened with all that intelligence had you not had that past? You have the capacity to empathize, well ofcourse, that does come from being abused because there is a personal knowledge and experience with that kind of pain but there is also a great deal of anger and resentment storred there as well.
When I slice through all the ways you have mastered the use of words, I cut down to the personal pain you experience and I cannot blame you for your sense of darkness, even that you do defend it. I can say that I can relate to some of your sentiments and that I have entertained these thoughts myself. Yes, I too have gazed upon the crop of humanity and saw much selfishness and ignorance and I too have been very disgusted and troubled by what I see. Yes, I too have had those thoughts of "What could I do that has not already been done before?

What could you do with that intelligence that at only 18 you seem to feel there is no point, nothing to accomplish on a personal scale, you're only but a speck, what could you do? At only 18, smart as you are, as much as you have learned, are you truely certain you could not really do anything?

When I was trying to learn about what was wrong with me, what is this PTSD, what the hell do these flashbacks mean too? I started a journey to learn about this thing that my brain was presenting to me and I came across the research of Robert C Scaer MD. When I read his article it was as though he was studying ME and I could not believe how well he identified ME. He is one man, in a world FULL of human beings and he KNEW ME. And he is still researching ME and many others like me. And because he is doing that I have a better chance of being understood and in that alone as I struggle to understand this troubling thing going on my own brain, there will be others that will help me, support me and even validate me. And as I get validated and learn, I will want to reach out to others as I know how difficult it is to understand and deal with what I have. In my own unique struggle I am learning to look at human beings in a very different way. Yes, there is a lot of awful things that happen to human beings, there are many human beings that ARE selfish and destructive and outright mean. BUT, not ALL human beings are like that.

TheSilentEmpath, go to your own about me page and read it. What you will see there is what it took to present you with what you are saying in your own thread. Your not stupid, but you are painted with a black cloak that is blinding you and that is not your fault, just is is not my fault that I too have this strange dark cloak that I am trying to somehow push aside myself. Yes, I wanted to end too, and yes I thought about how that would hurt others so I have to TRY to find myself out of this awful cloak that no one around me understands, no one can feel it, no one can see it and yet I am covered in it. All I can say is THANK GOD that some people decided to see it somehow, study it, talk about it, learn about it and try help those that are covered in this awful cloak that is not their fault. And it wasn't that long ago that so many suffered alone and misunderstood with what I have, I don't know how they managed, must have been awful must have been HELL.

My daughter loved the artist Monet and she had a big poster in her room of one of his pieces. We were sitting on her bed one night and I looked at that picture and it was blurry but soft and had nice colors to it. I turned to my daughter and said, "I wonder if that is how he really saw the world?" After all, back in his day we didn't really have glasses like we do now. My daughter's eyes opened wide and she starred at the picture and replied, "Gee mom, I never even thought of that".

What may you not be truely seeing, I wonder.

" While I enjoy and would never want to give up the level of inspiration I can achieve while in pain, I do wish that one did not need to be in pain to create such. "

I agree with you there, but it is part of our evolution to learn from some kind of pain. The pain of hunger forces us to seek ways of nourishment, the cold pushes us to find ways to stay warm, and most living things have some kind of preditor that can be as big as an elephant and as small as a simple germ. Much of what we all learn now is often from the pain that others have suffered before us.

But what really keeps us going? Well, we are very optimistic, maybe not all humans are, but enough to bring progress as well as learn that if we can imagine it, we can very often find a way to create it. We have proven that so many times now. Is GOD our imagination? We really have not proven that yet, so we do not really know. But we can still make a choice, at least privately to believe or not.

Every idea that lights up in your mind has already been thought of? Well maybe so far, but give your brain time to stash more information, then you may discover something new, as intelligent as you are, you have yet to learn and find out what other contributions you may be able to make. I hope that you will use that intelligence to find some light and make efforts to creep out of the darkness, because if we search for the bad, well, it will always be easy to find, but there are positives.
Open Eyes