What to do when you just don’t feel like going on? I feel like all that’s keeping me day in and day out in this world are responsibilities to other people, but I’m not enjoying being here at all. I’m not finding pleasure or peace in my life, in the people around me or in the things I do. Many days, living is actually painful and I often find myself wishing I could just break free from those very people and responsibilities in my life that I’m supposed to care the most about and derive joy and meaning from. I guess I must be a really selfish person?
My husband lost his job a few years ago and I became our only source of income. It took me several years of very hard work, dealing with difficult sexist jerks, and tons of stress and tears to go from a minimum wage intern coder position to this great paying developer job I have now. I guess you could say we’re doing great now. This company I work for is awesome, I make good money, and we recently moved out of the cramped apartment where we were for years to a nice house. But… life doesn’t feel better, and I feel like it’s never going to get better at all, no matter what I do, where I live or how much money I make.
In the back of my mind there’s always the fear that there will be the day when I’m not good enough, when I just can’t deliver what they expect from me, and I’ll lose my job. There’s a lot of anxiety over not knowing what I’m supposed to know, whatever it may be. But there’s also tremendous stress at home. My family is a big source of stress for me, specially my younger son.
My son is a teen and is very rebellious. He’s constantly acting out, refusing to go to school, getting on our face and is even violent. He’s hit me, his brother, my husband and has trashed personal property of other family members. He is always trying to control the whole family and has no respect for me or my work. I feel like I’m constantly walking on eggshells around him. I’m tired of living like this but I know there’s nothing I can do. I just wish I didn’t have to continue living another day, because I know tomorrow won’t be better than today. It will probably be worse or more of the same crap. I know I can’t take pleasure in what I do. I can’t even talk about what I do or vent if I had a hard day, because it is usually cause of an argument with him, since he thinks what I do for a living is stupid and I’m stupid.
We had a big argument today that got physical. I fear tomorrow he’ll refuse to go to school again and I got the principal and counselor calling about truancies and such. I’m dreading tomorrow. I’m so tired of this. I just don’t want to be here tomorrow at all.
How do you go on when you don’t want to go on anymore? I’m beginning to have trouble remaining focused at work and that increases my fear of losing my job, which only makes things worse. What can I do? I’ve thought about what it would be to just not be alive anymore, to just end it. It feels so scary and at the same time it feels like the only way I would be finally free of all the stress, the anxiety, the burden, the fear, the pain… It’s never going to end any other way. I just know it.
Oh, forgot to mention… a few years ago, I tried to end my life and failed. I spent several days in a mental hospital until I was allowed to go back home. If I ever cry or complain of the stress I’m feeling, if I ever look for help over my suicidal thoughts, that same son throws it in my face that I’m crazy, that I’m sick of my mind and that’s all I am. If I ever tried again, I better not fail…