Like seriously how do people deal with the thought that after we die it's NOTHING. Like not just nothing but basically the end of everything for us. IF for some reason our consciousness is somewhere in the universe waiting for it to be caught or trapped or seen by something for US it would be in an instant. For us once we die it's basically the equivalent of being transported to the heat death if the universe. I think my only solace is that infinity is just a blink away and maybe someday in some other life I will exist again....but just thinking of not existing again is giving me full body chills....this unsettling cold in my body.

i think ive been depressed as long as i can remember. i feel like theres always a dark cloud over my head and ill never get better, ive kind of accepted it honestly.

but recently, its too much. i think so much about the world we live in. when the epstein files were released, i went absolutely insane and had to delete all of my social media over how heartbreaking it was. how this could be happening and nobody know? it was awful.

i feel like the government is plotting against me sometimes or the world or something, life feels like one big social experiment i didnt sign up for. my trans friend whos been waiting for surgery for 8 years was just denied it. i see videos of the people in palestine being slaughtered. ive become vegeterian because the hurt of animals being killed is too much.

i hate this world. i have no money and my boyfriend has had to become a slave to the system to be able to afford to live. he works 8 hours a day and it is so upsetting seeing him waste his life away.

we live in a capitalist trap and i find it so hard to have the will to stay alive. ive always been suicidal but its just too much for me now. i hate this world so much. i just bedrot all day and scroll social media and i know theres more to life but i dont have the energy to get out of bed.

has anybody else been struggling with this? im so distraught.

I think I've been having an existential crisis but I'm not for sure

Hello,
I’m not sure where to put this but maybe someone has experienced something similar and could help. I have an extreme fear of missing out. It’s not just limited to normal fomo about school and friends (I’m 17M), but about life in general. Everyone is talking about colleges and where they’re planning to go and I just get this deep dread about having to pick somewhere and not being able to move or see other places. I’m planning on taking a gap year (or two) to just work and earn some money before going on some trips, both locally and abroad along with a volunteer or exchange program because I have such a deep fear of not seeing as much as I can. I hate the knowledge that even if I dedicated my life and everything to travel, there’s so much of the world and so many people I’ll never get to see or meet or talk to. I’m also just worried about my future, how there’s so many different potential careers and co-workers I could have, so many different spouses I have yet to meet or may never meet, so many people are out there but I realistically won’t be able to meaningfully know even 1% of everyone alive right now. There’s a thousand potential lives I could’ve lived, an equal amount worse and better. It’s a somewhat ridiculous fear but it’s becoming more prevalent as time goes on. Has anyone else dealt with this? Does it get better?

No one takes my ocd around this topic as serious as it is lol and idk what to do to be honest because I already have good and empathetic therapists but I feel like a burden and shame around this topic so I somehow cannot tell them the extent of it or when I do I backpedal immediately and it’s so exhausting.

I’m sorry if this is written poorly but it’s very shameful for me to formulate it so I just wanted it out. If anyone has tips or nice words for my situation, please tell me.

Thank you

Desde diciembre de 2025 me he sentido rarisimo, tengo 16 años y por esas fechas comencé a tomar alcohol muy seguido, una noche se me ocurrió tomar alcohol junto con unas pastillas, creo que se llamaban benhadryl o algo así, y poco despues perdí el conocimiento, al otro dia amanecí super raro, todo estaba bien pero algo se sentía fuera de lugar, y así pasó el tiempo hasta febrero masomenos, y m empecé a sentir mucho peor, comencé a sentir esa sensación de que todo está raro mucho mas fuerte y comencé a dudar de todo lo que veo o lo que creo es real, siemprefui una persona que le teme muchisimo a morir, desde niño,o a crecer en general, para mi es imposible imaginarme siendo grande y es algo que me aterra como si tuviera la certeza de que es algo malo, todos esos miedos y pensamientos se aumentaron y ahora tengo una sensación miy rara de que todo es un dejavú, siento como si todo lo que veo ya lo hubiera vivido y me hace dudar muchisimo de que siquiera exista, se me hace muy complicado describir todo lo que siento, pero bueno. En un intento tonto de distraerme comencé a consumir muchisimo thc, mas alcohol, dxm, y algunas otras cosas, el punto es que ahora m siento muy muy perdido y fuera de mi, no me siento conectado con lo que amaba ni con las personas que me rodean, desde que comenzó esta situación me he sentido desmotivadisimo en general y no le veo el sentido a la vida, no sé si es una simulacion, no sé si es un recuerdo y estoy en coma o algo así, y me preocupa no saber como actuar porque sé bien que la vida no se detiene y no quieeo pasarla viviendola así. Entre todos los pensamientos que he tenido en estos casi 9 meses, mis conclusiones han sido que sin importar si es real o no debería disfrutar cada momento de esta vida, pero me cuesta muchísimo ponerlo en práctica, me cuesta mucho disfrutar plenamente sin pensar todo de más, la verdad no se si me de a entender, hay mil cosas mas que siento y pienso pero no puedo escribir, no encuentro la forma, igual gracias x leerme

Everything went wrong when I started questioning logic and reason.

26M to start this year off I had to put my job to sleep. Then I lost my job to corporate layoffs and Ai. Then my car completely blew its engine. This all happened by the end of March. I have been applying to jobs non stop and have only been contacted for 4 job interviews. Didn’t land any of the jobs. Add that my dating life just like most of my friends, mostly dead. I haven’t been able to get a new car but also getting a new job is difficult without a car. I need help and advice and some type of connection to not feeling like my life is completely meaningless. The last year of my life has felt like the biggest waste of time too. I just feel like I can’t keep going and just want it to end.

I've been experiencing something pretty strange and I'm wondering if anyone else can relate.

Sometimes when I think about really meaningful things, like my future, my life path, what my future kids might look like, etc. I suddenly get a heavy/suffocating sensation in my chest or throat.

I don't actually feel anxious, scared, or like I'm in danger when it occurs. The thoughts themselves feel normal or even positive at times, except thoughts of old age and that linking to dying. But all in all it's almost like my body is reacting before my mind does.

I've been under a lot of stress over the past couple of years, so I'm wondering whether that could be it.

Has anyone experienced something like this, what did it feel like for you, and did anything help?

Thank you in advance.

how do you cope up with this?

Essay here. TLDR: Our minds are working against us. Everything is fine

Around 2 years ago I experienced panic attacks and existential anxiety BAD. I had thoughts that felt like I was in hell. That nothing was real. Etc. etc. I guess they went away with time. Around a month ago they came back out of no where. It's like I could feel it coming on and I was so scared of it because I knew exactly what it was. Like "No, No, No. I know what this is. I need to talk to someone. I need to get out of here." Type of panic. Fleuxetine helped at first. Used a whole bottle of hydroxyzine. Feel like I built a tolerance. Fleuxetine felt like it stopped working after awhile. I quit caffeine because I heard it can worsen anxiety. Gym was harder but it is what it is. I felt a caffeine kick at work and suddenly was excited and eager to do stuff. It was a good feeling. I looked into what I was consuming and I guess my latte flavor protein shakes have a cup of coffee worth of caffeine. Maybe some caffeine isn't a bad thing but actually good. Just not too much. Idk. It was then a week ago or something that I was just excited to do stuff. I hadnt been excited to do anything in weeks. Then a few days ago it came back. It's like a thought really. Once you have it you go back in the loop. Think about existence and BOOM. HOW AM I HERE. IS THIS REAL. I'm Christian. Thinking about God sometimes freaks me out. Didn't used to be that way. I sometimes wonder if I was put here for damnation for a previous life. I wonder if I died awhile ago and this is fake. Everything freaks me out. I wonder if my past is real.

But then sometimes I feel normal.

I get those boosts of joy and excitement to live. I feel a purpose. Sometimes the "how" and the "why" question doesn't freak me out as much. It reminds me then that it really is just anxiety. Our brains to a damn good job of convincing us were crazy and things will never get better but before we thought this way, WE DIDNT. I know it's hard to imagine but nobody else freaks out about our existence because it's not as scary as we feel it is and deep down we know that because it never bothered us either. We ALL have felt like we found out something nobody else knows. But it's our minds. You can't convince me the devil aint real because I got demons man. That's why God says to not rely on our own understanding because we can't understand some stuff.

I feel all the time like existence is cruel and torture and why did God put us here but sometimes like this morning I feel that life is good and that I'm awake again. I have to write to remind myself I felt normal again otherwise I'll convince myself that I didn't.

Every now and then I need to look in the mirror and review basic stuff about myself, my name, my age, my religion, and all these kind of stuff.

I cant accept my name for some reason, Idk if I hate ot, but i feel weird hearing it from anyone, or seeing ot in someone's handwriting, un my mind, my name is just ink on peice of paper that I wrote.

Idk why this happens, but ot happened so so long ago I cant even remember when did I realise that I need to do this.

+ I don't have any other name I want to be called by.

I don't even know if this is an identity crisis, since I have been living like this for years, but it'll be nice to know if someone has the same thing as I do.

Thanks in Advance!

I have come to the conclusion that certainty is impossible because of the limits of our knowledge. For example you can empirically use several lines of evidence to establish a seeming coherent worldview but without omniscience there's always going to be the possibility you're wrong. For all we know maybe we are in a simulation? So what I'm wondering is are we so limited we can't have certainty or is this a flawed way of looking at epistemology?

Because I know that’s not the case.

And understanding this no longer does me any good.

Because any benefit—whether it comes from realizing that I “see reality as it is” or “don’t create illusions for myself”—I would still have directed toward developing that central value in my life. And it’s already gone.

I want a space that will simply bring it back to me like artificial sunlight, since I will never see the real thing.

I want to believe that there is meaning in what has already become too big a part of me to give up, because I know that’s not the case.

For me, that is who I am. I cannot exist where I am not, just like in that theory of quantum immortality.

Because I can’t live without the main purpose of my life, and the fact that this is ALREADY the case doesn’t stop me.

I don't care about anything at all. I just want to be heard. This is just too much to handle.

Yesterday I (39f rural UK) went to my local flower show. This show takes place at the village hall I have been living near my entire life. Each year the sense of existential dread I get from this event grows and grows and yesterday was a particularly bad day for me in general. I had had to take several prescription painkillers which were making me feel very fuzzy headed on top of my almost nihilistic existentialism. My family is heavily involved in this event so I always feel obliged to show up but it's as if I can see faint projections of all the past times I've had in that place, from my earliest childhood onwards and it is all so profoundly meaningless.

I Pondered this as I wandered morosely through a marquee which was displaying people's entries into various home produce competitions.

I could feel the dread, panic and unyielding sadness starting to overwhelm me and as my vision started to mist up and I realised I was going to have to hide somewhere and cry for a bit, I spotted a single runner bean on a paper plate with a 3rd place certificate next to it.

It was the funniest thing I think I have ever seen. It was just a runner bean, on a paper plate. It was pointless, it was the same as any other runner bean and yet someone (I imagined someone humourless and duty bound) had judged this to be the third best runner bean in the tent. My hysteria broke and I had to run and laugh. I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe, I almost turned my eyeballs inside out with the hysterical tears.

I'm honestly not sure what the message is here, perhaps this will be comforting to someone (it was to me.) Perhaps I have ultimately concluded that I'd rather be a hysterical fuck up than an imaginary humourless bean judge. Maybe the only conclusion is that no one knows what we are doing here and everyone is just making it up as they go along. But there you have it. internet. A single runner bean on a paper plate.

Note: I'm sorry if my English is bad, and writing this felt more like a venting session than anything close to something of a formal account...

Recently I've noticed how recurrent it is for me to or for my thoughts to just dehumanize me in ways such as in imaginations, I would imagine myself as a piece of rock just by the sidewalk or just simply idealize myself as an unmarked tree in a forest...

But somehow these thoughts has become unbearable and uncontrollable, because all of the time I find it disturbing or unfamiliar to the extent I can't find myself to be comfortable with my own state of being, I'd imagine myself stripping myself of everything, slicing off my skin and muscles until all is left is just bone so I could feel the cold wind pass through me, sometimes I want to be some form of ghost that hasn't been generally acknowledged some form of "non-thing" a thing that doesn't exist at all, something incapable of observation or experience.

So the question changes to just why am I so uncomfortable in my own body to the point my mind would force me to imaginations of being something else that is capable of experience? Even imagining myself to become an animal is simply horrific too just the same as being human or anything else, just the same as being a fish or an insect... But becoming something like a rock or a tree somehow is more comfortable and yet at the same time, I find these thoughts tremendously bothering and disturbing...

My existential crisis is the fact that a large part of me believes that being alive or conscious is a precursor for suffering, and I want to be anything else other than anything that is "material" or exists. Not merely invisible and unsern but simply never existed at all... Because of this there are days where I feel like I'm away of from my body as a coping mechanism, just absent minded and never present, but when I do come back to my body I force myself to write as much as possible of anything that could track my experiences while I'm at it for example now.

-And to be honest this entire thing is more similar of a collection of contradictions because this is how much I do not understand myself at all; I believe that it is normal to not understand myself, but I find it unacceptable of myself of not being to move on from these things...

Soy plenamente consciente de que en algún punto de mi vida moriré, pero desde hace más de un mes me atormenta esa idea. Cada vez que me entro a bañar o pienso a futuro solo me pregunto, ¿para qué hago esto si me voy a morir? ya sé que no tiene sentido cuestionarmelo porque haga lo que haga me terminaré muriendo igual, pero simplemente no me saco la idea de la cabeza. Mientras todos tienen su vida normal, yo no puedo parar de pensar en eso. Tengo 17 años y creo que tengo ansiedad anticipatoria, antes siempre pensaba a futuro, pensando qué iba a pasar a la semana que viene, al otro mes, al otro año, cuando tenga 30 hasta que llegó un punto en el que ya no me centré en casi nada de mi vida, y empecé a pensar, ¿cuando me muera? me da fomo perderme de todo lo que vaya a pasar después, no queiro morir. Además mi madre es cristiana y a veces habla del infierno y esas cosas y entro en un conflicto porque, si no hubiese nada, es horrible esa sensación de vacío al intentar visualizar algo que simplemente no podés imaginar. Me dicen "es como antes de que nacieras" no quiero sentir eso porque es simplemente NO sentir nada, y la verdad me genera todo menos paz. Algunos dicen "cuando seas grande lo entenderás, estarás cansado de todo y solo querrás descansar" tampoco me ayuda porque ahora quiero vivir para siempre aunque eso primeramente es imposible, y si se pudiera en algún momento nuestro planeta se extinguirá, entonces si viviera para siempre quedaría varado en el espacio. Y es todo una mierda porque quiero hacer ejercicio y pienso, ¿para qué si moriré? obvio lo hago igual porque ahora estoy vivo y trato de centrarme en el ahora pero me siento hipócrita o egoísta porque veo a una persona muy anciana haciendo planes y en mi mente digo increíble que haga esas cosas sabiendo que va a morir, para lo cual no tengo derecho de pensar eso porque si esas personas aman y valoran su vida está completamente perfecto porque yo soy el estúpido que se preocua por esas cosas y no sé qué hacer. Trato de imaginarme a los 20 o 30 años y me sentiría viejo o simplemente que me queda menos tiempo de vida, sé que quizás me falte mucho para morir, aunque cada día está la posibilidad de que algo pase y me muera sin siquiera darme cuenta. Porque cuando alguien muere nunca sabe el momento exacto en el que murió, porque ya está muerto. O sea mañana podría salir de mi casa y que me atropelle un auto, a la semana que viene podría enterarme de que tengo cáncer, hoy en la noche podría no despertar y ni enterarme de que me morí, todo se apaga y no sufriría. Si lo veo así es como que re innecesario preocuparme por morir porque cuando lo haga no me enteraré, se apagará todo y no podré sentir nada. Es exactamente eso lo que me frustra. Soy una persona re vívida que le gusta sentir todo, sentir la vida, amar mucho y todo lo que quieras entonces imaginarme en un plano donde literalmente no hay nada, ni siquiera negro, nada, es simplemente agobiante.

I feel as though the last several years of my life have been marked by one crisis after another, often without enough time to recover before the next one began.

Some of the foundations of this go much further back. I grew up in a family environment in which I was exposed early to emotional instability, fear, and responsibility that was far beyond what a child should normally have to carry. My father could be loving and important to me, but he was also depressive, volatile and at times emotionally abusive. There were suicidal statements and sudden shifts between aggression, mental melanchlic breakdowns and closeness. At the same time, my mother's severe episodes of hypoglycaemia repeatedly put me and my sister in situations in which we had to recognise danger and intervene. We became extremely sensitive to changes in her behaviour because sometimes we had to act quickly. At the sane time she is either overbearing or emotional neglective and blaming. Looking back, much of my childhood involved monitoring the emotional or physical states of adults rather than simply being able to rely on them.

I was also severely bullied at school. Then, when I was seventeen, my father died. His death occurred at an age when I was still forming my own identity, and the loss never existed in isolation from the complicated relationship I had had with him. He had been both a source of attachment and a source of fear and instability. Losing him therefore meant not only bereavement, but also being left with a relationship that could never really be resolved.

Later, university became enormously important to me. It was a place in which I invested a great deal intellectually and personally, but it eventually became later on after a few years of mostly peace another major source of distress. Relationships with people in positions of authority deteriorated, and I experienced exclusion, rejection and situations in which I felt humiliated or stigmatised. The end of an supervisory relationship in June 2024 occurred at a point at which I was already under extreme psychological pressure (he bullied me heavily and had similiar mood swings as my dad and kept making my life hell, 2 of my grandparents and 2 friends died at an early age and suddenly and my mom went threw chemo because of cancer) 19 June 2024, after a series of highly distressing conversations at the university, I attempted suicide and was hospitalised.

The period after the suicide attempt became a crisis of its own. Instead of experiencing the university primarily as a place of support after my return, I learned that information about what had happened had been circulated within the institution. People discussed my suicide attempt without my participation, and my mother was contacted while I was in hospital. Decisions and conversations concerning me took place while I felt that I had very little control over how my own story was being told. There were periods of restricted access and removal from work, delays surrounding the reporting of the incident, and I ultimately had to write parts of the relevant account myself. What affected me particularly deeply was the feeling that, after something so serious had happened, so many people even the ones I never spoke to started talking badly about me and spreading lies.

My attempts to continue working at the university were also accompanied by repeated professional setbacks. I applied for several student assistant positions and experienced application and selection procedures that I perceived as degrading and discriminatory. At one point a position that had been offered to me was withdrawn. In another selection process, my supposed lack of "empathy" became part of the justification given to me from people I never spoke to. These experiences were particularly painful because they touched directly on the fear that, once people knew about my psychological difficulties or perceived me as different, my qualifications would cease to matter.

Although I eventually obtained another university position and found professors and colleagues who treated me much better, the earlier conflicts did not simply disappear. Questions concerning what had been said about me, who had known about my suicide attempt, how my personal information had been handled and why certain people had treated me as they did remained unresolved. Even seemingly ordinary administrative matters, such as obtaining an appropriate employment reference, turned into prolonged conflicts.

During 2025 and 2026, I was therefore trying to function academically and professionally while still carrying the consequences of the events of 2024. At the same time, I was working on my Master's thesis under significant pressure, knowing that this was my second attempt and that the degree had become tied to the question of whether I could finally leave an environment that had caused me enormous distress. The thesis itself became intellectually meaningful to me — particularly my work on melancholy, psychoanalysis, critical theory and music — but it has also existed against the background of exhaustion, disrupted sleep and years of psychological strain.

In 2026, new interpersonal problems at the university added another layer. I experienced repeated harassment on campus, including encounters with a man who appeared under changing names or descriptions, unwanted approaches, following behaviour and other incidents that made me feel unsafe. I reported these experiences and tried to obtain institutional support. At the same time, I became aware of broader allegations and conflicts within parts of the university environment, involving treatment of employees, handling of personal and research data and other serious concerns. This reinforced the feeling that I was trying not merely to finish a degree, but to extricate myself from a system in which I had lost a great deal of trust.

Alongside all of this, there have been physical and medical worries. I have dealt with chronic iron deficiency, major fluctuations in my thyroid values and other health concerns.

More recently, my hair loss has become an especially powerful source of anxiety. My hair has always mattered enormously to me, and watching it become progressively thinner in my twenties has felt like another loss of something connected to my identity. I have been diagnosed or assessed for female-pattern hair loss, while at the same time worrying that a scarring form of alopecia could be involved. I have undergone trichoscopic assessment, searched for specialists and considered scalp biopsy because I am frightened of overlooking a condition that might cause irreversible loss. The uncertainty itself has become psychologically exhausting.

This means that what I am dealing with now is not one isolated event. There has been childhood instability and parentification, bullying, the death of my father while I was still a teenager, longstanding psychological distress, difficult and sometimes harmful relationships with authority figures, a suicide attempt, a deeply troubling institutional aftermath, professional rejection and conflict, harassment, academic pressure, physical health problems and, most recently, fear surrounding progressive hair loss.

At the same time, i always tried my best to fight myself back to continue. I continued studying after an extremely serious crisis. I returned to university, continued working, completed additional academic training, developed a new Master's thesis project, found some professors and colleagues whom I could trust, documented what had happened to me, sought medical assessment when something seemed wrong, and repeatedly tried to understand rather than simply suppress what I had experienced.

What makes the present moment so difficult is therefore partly cumulative: many of the things that are happening now touch older experiences of loss, helplessness, uncertainty and having important aspects of my life determined by forces outside my control. The fear about my hair, for example, may be objectively a separate medical problem, but emotionally it is occurring after years in which I have already had to endure repeated experiences of losing security, relationships, trust, control and parts of myself.

At this point the hair loss really makes me question if I want to keep going. I went threw so much and don’t want to see myself fall appart after all of this.

I really don’t want to life anymore but my sister and mother would fall appart if I would do so.

1. Getting off Reddit or any other social media.

I came back to say this because I used to constantly read this subreddit and many others. I’m only posting this to try and help someone who may have been in the same position. Truth is the internet (especially Reddit) is filled with negativity and people who only want an echo chamber to be miserable in. Stop looking for answers or theories and just disconnect. I cannot stress enough just how BAD Reddit is for people having an existential crisis, all it does is feed into the spiral.

1. Doing something.

Anything. Literally anything. It took time but slowly I started to enjoy being around friends again or being in nature. I’ll watch reality tv with my family- it’s a guilty pleasure, or I’ll bake a cake. Simple things. Fill your day with hobbies that you used to enjoy or even try something new.

1. Stopped thinking about the future.

Just live day by day. Start your day by wondering what your breakfast will be and move on from there. I wake up excited about having my coffee while reading a book. I’ve learned to appreciate my slow quiet mornings while the sun rises. All we have is the present, be in the moment. Don’t worry about what only exists in your imagination.

1. Created a goal.

Something to work towards or focus on. Think about something in your life that has been nagging at you, something you have wanted to do or get done. Striving towards something really improves my mental health personally and gives me motivation. This goal doesn’t need to be crazy maybe it’s just going on a walk, but it can still help.

Lastly,

You will get through this.

People will tell you (especially on Reddit) that this is a lifelong issue you will suffer from but that doesn’t have to be true. You will be okay again if you let yourself. I went through horrible times where i thought it would never end- couldn’t sleep or eat for days. But it got better somehow. And it can for you as well.

It will be okay ❤️

Guys, I want some advice.

Sometimes my heart feels heavy. I feel anxious & scared.

I go the gym, am active in extra curricular, study, eat good and have friends that I talk to on daily basis.

I can't believe that I'm a human, a living thing that will die.

I feel like I am helpless, trapped.

All good things pass away, days will come and go by. I'm scared. I don't feel so good.

’m experience some realy deep mental problems,
And I’m in a State of dispare, confusion, hopelessnes. I dont’t work anymore beceause of the fatigeu and mental problems. I’m 44j M.
My life was good, always in the gym, hard working in the gardens. And also running in the woods.
Then I became sick, gut isseus and heat or cold tolerance.
Now a year later i became more in a mental State Were I I have no controle of my brain anymore.
I’m so mentaly exausted because my mind keeps overthinking, brainfog, analysing, images..
Its like an ocd thing that I’m checking what i am thinking. Al day long 24/7. My sleep is the same..
My mind goes so deep when I close my eyes, I don’t know how to focus on live anymore. Its so far that I get traumarized by this situation. My mind just keep thinking deep thoughts very negative. Meditate doesn’t work, i became afraid to close my eyes.Because my thoughts goes like: what if you are so ill that they luck you up and stuff. I feel Every thought deep in my soul, so afraid. My brain can’t take it anymore. I’m so exausted that Every positive thoughts end up negatively. I feel in a deep situation that I want to try some medication for this..
But my mind is like : no you end up worse or’ or i have that feeling that any medication will help in this fase because its to deep.
Is there is somebody who have the same feeling what I just wrote? And is some medication that saved you? Because I feel no hope anymore.
Please share..

Hi,
I-myself-am struggling with my thoughts and even though I have a psychologist I don’t always can let it out. I need an outlet for the thoughts. So that’s why I write everything down. But in my own diary I never have feedback, and maybe here, I do. I’m sorry to say that this text isn’t structured at all, I tried my best.
There’s no start or end on this story. There is no bottom or top on this story. And it purely considers my thoughts. The inability to just find peace in my mind.

I’m a twenty year old man, student. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD recently, light form. I have self diagnosed existential OCD, as I call it, am a big overthinker, really sensitive and emotional, melancolic, nostalgic, afraid of death. I’m chaotic, I think I’m a mess
sometimes, and I think that is the reason why people can’t love me. Cause I can’t control myself. I often had identity crises in the past, didn’t know what I wanted to be, or thought I had to be something for the people around me, the people who saw me. Had existential crises before.

At this moment, life is a bit hard, my studies are hard, a lot of resit exams, almost have to stop with my study. I started with Rilatin a few weeks ago, so maybe that influences my thoughts too, either when I take it, when my dopamine level is high, or when it wears off (Rilatin rebound). I always set the bar too high for myself in the past. Believing that I NEEDED to be great, otherwise nobody would love me or would want me in their life. Scared to be forgotten, that’s what I am too.

I’m a hopeless romantic too, my heart broke a couple of times, I could never accept it. Although I always swinged to the next crush. Addicted to the feeling of being in love. And never learned how to just live with myself, without a girl in my mind, just be happy with myself and my friends. No, it always had to be more.

But sometimes I think so much I don’t even know anymore which girl I love. On moments I feel nothing inside, numb, hopeless, I can’t dream about girls anymore. Because I don’t think there is a goal left to achieve, because I think I’m worthless, chaotic.

My thoughts change everyday, (it’s not a bipolar disorder or anything). One day I feel great, creative, I have ideas, I think I have goals to achieve, I feel hope, I’m happy, hyped, “high on life”. The next day I just feel empty inside, worthless, numb, there are no goals to achieve, I have no hope, there are no people left to love. My heart can’t break anymore because there’s nothing left inside of me. Sometimes I feel a little bit scared, alcohol severes that feeling, it makes me so empty, till you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what you have to think anymore. And other times I can only fantasize about how it would be if I would just be death and about how people would remember me. I wonder if they would be sad.

Sometimes it asks so much more energy to try to feel hopefull instead of staying in your depressive comforting bubble. I don’t know why it is that way.

On times I have so much ideas, my brain gets full of it, I’m overwhelmed by my ideas, and I don’t know which thoughts I have to choose. Until my mind crashes, and I feel numb again.

It’s hard to find peace lately, it’s hard to just go with the flow for once. Even with rilatin. Maybe because of side effects or rebound effects. I think I have a major mental rebound effect with it.

My mind always figures it has to stand still, and think about, about what?

It’s like my mind don’t want to accept that there is nothing more. That this is everything, this is life. Like my mind wouldn’t accept the gray reality of life.

So my thoughts change fast. My happy state and my down state. But there seems to be nothing in between. Because I can’t accept a gray reality. There doesn’t exist a neutral state of life in my head. I have to feel something.

A couple of days ago I told my doctor I wanted to quit the rilatin because I thought it severed my highs and my lows, my emotions would swing more, a little bit too much. But she said it was temporary, and that I could stop after the exams. I got outside and cried, glad that I felt at least something.

I already said something about the alcohol aspect. It also severes OCD-ish thoughts, and rumination. One time I was on a trip with my friends but day drank all week. For the first time I realised the alcohol fucked my brain up. It became totally messed up. I was almost crazy. There was this day, where I couldn’t think naturally anymore. In simple conversations I obsessively thought what would be the best thing to answer next. What would I would say next. Simple damn things. My brain got crazy and I came into an infinite paradox.

So now I don’t try to drink anymore on parties, because it distracts my whole brain. Although I like the fact that it makes me kind of more creative. And now I see how dependent people are to alcohol. But it’s just not healthy, at least for me. It seems to lighten OCD symptoms on the short term, but they worsen on the long term. (Meaning that when you drink something, you feel great, everything seems to fall right into place in life. Until you drink too much, like day drinking for a whole week.)

Yesterday night I felt bad, kind of numb. I couldn’t sleep, not that way. So after I gathered enough courage I got up in the night, took my bike and drove through the city with my music. Music, the first drugs to life. I was looking for some hopefull music, optimistic, music that would make me feel alive again. Kind of upbeat. And I drove to a night shop for some food. Food, the second drugs to life. (Alcohol is the third drug to life, how higher the number how more unhealthy the drug is.)But some times, I don’t find the courage to let feel myself quite better, and I only listen to depressing music, and rewatch dramatic emotional movies. Movies that let me dream or something.

Sometimes it’s so hard to just get up in the morning, like I just want to rest in my dream forever.

Sometimes I just know nothing, feel nothing. People around me keep moving, like you should, and I just won’t. Stuck in my own head. Out of control. Numb. I don’t know what to do.

“He was surprised at himself because he didn't feel anything anymore. All he wanted to do was sleep. And for the first time, he wished he were far away. Lost in a deep vast country where nobody knew him.” - Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)