[emptycannon]

Okay so here’s the deal. I’m 27 years old, I’m from the Midwest but I currently live in Miami Beach, Florida, I just moved into a nice place right above the beach with a beautiful view from my window, I have a family that loves me, I work as a professor at a private college. And I am more miserable, lonely, and depressed than I have ever been in my entire life. I believe I am recovering from a recent mental breakdown that caused me to make the single biggest mistake of my life, one that’s irreversible. And I don’t think I can go on much longer. I don’t know that I can survive this.

I know I have a good life. I know that there are many people in the world that would kill to be in my position. This only serves to make me sadder, because I WOULD give up the life I have to someone more deserving in a heartbeat. I certainly don’t deserve it. I don’t appreciate it as much as I should. I feel empty inside. I feel hopeless and don’t think that I will ever be happy. I feel sad because there are people struggling and have it much worse, and I wish I could help them somehow, but I can’t. Donating what little money I have to various charities doesn’t make me feel better, and I don’t have enough time to volunteer. I’ve tried to find religion, but I just moved here without transportation so I can’t make it to the temple without sitting on a ****ing bus for 3 hours. Instead, I pray to God every day for peace, for contentment, for an end to my restlessness, for an end to my sadness. I don’t believe he has answered my prayers. If anything, I believe he ignores me. I have thanked him for my blessings, but told him they don’t make me happy. He can strip them away and give me back what I had that made me happy, and I’d be satisfied. He hasn’t done that. I still feel empty inside. He continues to give me more undeserved blessings. Every night before I go to bed, I look out my 7th story window and I fantasize about how blissful it would be to jump and end it all. Then, when I climb off the ledge, I cry myself to sleep. Every night. And then, when I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, I lie in bed waiting for hours until my alarm clock buzzes. Every night.

I haven’t always been like this. Sure, I’ve had tumultuous times in my life, and I’ve been sad before. But never have I been so depressed that I haven’t been able to appreciate the smallest blessings, that I haven’t been able to breathe without hurting or sit for 5 minutes without thinking about ways to escape. I never had it easy. I grew up poor, I struggled in school, I was shunned by a lot of society for being a minority, I never had many friends, and I only recently was in my first serious relationship (more on that later). Yep, I’m 27 years old and only recently was involved in my first serious relationship. So pathetic. I’m not ugly, but I know I’m not attractive. I’ve had relationships in the past, with gorgeous members of the opposite sex, but never long-term, or anything more than a casual fling. Things haven’t been easy for me, but I never was so ready to end it all like I am now. I never felt so hopeless about my future or preoccupied with thoughts of suicide and feelings of despair before now.

Now, I can’t even stand the fact that I have a good job where I’ll be making twice as much as my last job. In fact, before my breakdown, I lived the best few months of my life. I woke up every morning feeling great to be alive. I used the phrase “life is good” every single day, and meant it. I had a good home, I was in great health, I had great friends, and most of all, I had the love of my life. My perfect companion. My perfect mate. I traveled through 3 continents, a dozen countries, the whole wide world looking for her, and when I finally found her, I promised never to let her go. And she promised the same. Then she left me, and without telling me, she expected me to wait. I got angry, and decided to leave the life I had grown to love. I thought she left because I did something wrong, because I was a horrible person, because she realized she didn’t want to spend her life with me, because she met someone else and couldn’t tell me. Months later, I found out she was just scared, wanted me to wait while she took care of herself, and only wants me to be happy, like how I always made her happy. I left my soulmate, the one person on this entire ****ing planet that I have or ever will love, over a ****ing misunderstanding. I left friends, a job, a home, a love, because I got impatient. I finally found some meaning and joy to my pathetic existence and I start thinking about my future (for the first time ever, instead of taking things day-by-day), and I throw it all away, because the woman I should have known loved me more than anything was scared that I was going to leave her and stopped talking to me for a couple weeks. I made the biggest mistake of my life. And I can’t live with the regret any longer.

I miss the place I called home. I miss the woman I love. I miss the life I had. I miss the future I was going to have. I don’t want this life. I want the life I worked so hard to find and attain. Everyday I go on in this new life, I think about what could’ve been. And it’s tearing me apart. A life without joy or hope, with nothing but emptiness, regret, and despair just isn’t worth living.

[Rohag]

Hello & Welcome, Emptycannon! [Feel free to ignore the following nosy questions.]

What was at the heart of that misunderstanding? You mentioned your impatience, but impatience doesn't exist in a vacuum. Did something in your histories, in your ethnic or cultural backgrounds play a part in the miscommunication?

Why can't you go back? Why can't she come forward?