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Veteran Member
Member Since Oct 2012
Location: midwest
Posts: 656
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Nov 25, 2012 at 02:53 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by MyOwnEnemy
This is something I've needed to share for a long time, and to see if I could get any kind of feedback, any advice or support possible. For quite a while now, I've felt so out of place and riddled with anxiety leading to terribly down moods. I find that one of the greatest factors that seems to be fueling all the interpersonal negativity within me, is the external world itself.
To be blunt about it, I feel like the world is going to Hell in a hand basket, so to speak. The expression is old yes, but I truly feel like it's very much a reality now. My world view has become dauntingly pessimistic, and outright nihilistic in nature. I see the negative aspects behind the motivation of everyone and everything. I feel like I'm living in "the last era", so to speak, like society is approaching the very same decay that befell the era of Rome. Everywhere that I look I see so much greed, narcissism, gluttony, hatred, lust, apathy, etc. Pretty much everything on the list of deadly sins. Perhaps the most ironic twist being, I'm not a religious person. Yet within me, I can sense how horrible those things are, as they continue to consume people and drive their every move. I won't bother really delving into all of the specifics, but I feel as though we are all living on borrowed time, my generation will be the one to bring this world to it's extinction, and almost dare I say deservingly so.
People, a lot of them, they don't seem like they have a heart or a soul anymore. They've sold it in exchange for some form of gratification or another. They just don't value anything, anymore. I cannot relate to them, and quite frankly they scare me. Likewise, everyone I've known has changed with similar effect. Everyone is so mean-spirited, cut throat, nasty and disrespectful, it is ridiculous. And the nastiness hits very close, as the change in attitude is reflected even within my own family, and sometimes even rubs off on me. It's hard to not bite back when everyone is trying to rip into you. But things never used to be that way! And I never used to see so much of this negative behavior in people.
Being only 23 yeas of age, I feel like I've seen enough change in my life to have been 70, I feel like everything about the world I used to know is gone. People, places, things, even reality itself, all vastly changed. Like the world is being recreated before my very eyes, and I don't think it's ever reverting back. Like it's is not the world that I wanted to be a part of, but it's the world that I've got. I'm left to cope. It's like I've been time warped into some dystopian future time period.
I think that I feel my best when I am able to block all of this out, and just not be reminded of it. When I'm able to zero in on what little resembles what I can still believe in. It's so hard for me to go out, or really interact with others, because I am so quickly reminded of the negative change. I believe these external woes have played a significant role in the anxiety attacks that used to have, and my constant mood swinging and bouts of feeling depressed, perhaps even the depersonalization I suffered. It's so difficult feeling like that problem is so much larger than yourself, and you can't do anything about it but try to ignore it.
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Alot of what you have noticed in the world in general is true. We have become a very self serving, uninvolved species. However, people who are three generations in front of you, said the same thing about the direction the world went between their childhood and the ways things were when they were older. Some of this is a trade off. We wanted to be able to travel, see new things, be independant. In trade for that, we have few extended families living in the same area. Same thing for instant communication. We like that fact that we can get on a computer and e-mail someone, or get to a forum like this, but in return, we had to give up a lot of our privacy.
Depression is a strange thing. When you don't feel good emotionally, things that ordinarily wouldn't bother you, or things you wouldn't dwell on, do bother you. When you already feel dark inside, everything outside seems dark as well. If what was bothering you was merely the state of the world today, you could pick up a cause that you cared about and work on making it better. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to minimize what you are feeling. Rather I'm trying to show you the difference between feeling bad about something that is happening and projecting your pain onto something that you see wrong, but is not the primary cause of your pain.
Only you know how you feel inside. If you could pick something in your corner of the world to act on and try to improve, would you have the energy to do it, or would your emtional pain deprive you of the energy you needed to act?
I imagine you have seen a lot in your 23 years, and in another 23, you will see even more. You are not at an easy age. You are too old to hang around with kids who don't have any particular power to change things, but too young to know enough older people on an equal basis to understand why they are doing what they do. Sometimes taking people on a one to one basis is a better place to start. We are what, five minutes away from midnight on the doomsday clock now? As groups, I would agree, we can be pretty pathetic at times. One on one, most of us want very similar things.
There is an old story from WWII about a group of allies and a group of Germans who were bitterly fighting and had been for weeks. On Christmas eve, they dropped their differences and drank together. I don't know if that is true or not, I like to think it is, because it shows hope that we can get along.
i'm sure you will get many more answers to your post. Mine is sort of rambling and may not make sense. You shouldn't have to feel sad all the time. Sometimes talking to a counsellor that sees things objectively, can help you figure out whether your feelings are primary depression, or secondary. If they are secondary, you might be able to find something you feel strongly about and become involved with the cause.
Sam2
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