I have had depressive episodes before. This is the longest, given that my marriage was quite toxic and I did not yet fully recover. I am studying and at times feel proud of what I achieve but nevertheless, I lost all belief that emotionally things will ever get better. And of course, that makes me doubt whether getting a degree can fundamentally change my life.

On top of that, I fell in love and it seems to be going nowhere (again). It is the confrontation with my unattrativeness and lack of perspectives on that front and my loneliness that make me lose all hope for a better future, regardless of what I might achieve otherwise.

For me, it has always been about having a perspective for life. I lost that when I was 19. I always reacted well to therapy because of the perspective it offered but this always resulted in therapists thinking that everything was solved and my reports about anxiety etc. were ignored. I did something called psychosocial revalidation and there this approach was very extreme. They took every hope for betterment away from me. Although I must admit that I now have a very good psychologist I still consistently come to the conclusion that all the hampering I had to put up with up to now have turned something that was probably not all too complex into a situation that can no longer be solved.

I continue because I have to. I survive but I don't live. And honestly, I want neither.