The paradoxes of depression

My greatest fear in life is to be forgotten, which is hugely ironic because if you're dead you won't have to worry about that anyway. Even if there is an afterlife, the attention we will receive after we have left this world will be inconsequential. I love to isolate. I love to be alone. When you're alone, there is no one there to remind you about how fucking great their life is going and how you barely have anything to show for it. We spend too much of our lives measuring our successes by how much attention we get and I think by how much we will truly be missed when we die. In other words, just how important are we in other people's lives. The logical and rational side of my, cold as it may be, tells me that everyone is missed and that it shouldn't matter what we have or have not accomplished so much as the fact that someone will regret our being dead. On the other hand, I feel that if I were to die, it wouldn't matter half as much as someone who's married, has an important job, makes differences in people's lives, maybe has children. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I were to commit suicide it would affect my family deeply and likely change them forever, but at the same time they would be perpetually saying things like "well at least he doesn't have a wife and family." Yes, so to speak, there's less of a burden for the poor people who would have been immediately affected by my loss, which could be a good thing I guess, but it makes me depressed nonetheless. Even if people don't say things like that, it's certainly plausible and logical to think that they would. It's so hard to go on with life when you feel certain every day that you're terminal. That it will never get better. That the very hands that you use to make a living or make a name for yourself will one day turn on you. Everyday you look at the weapons of your certain doom, like looking at the business end of a gun or a growing tumor on a medical screen. It's like I don't want to ever have a family of my own because eventually I'll get so depressed that I'll off myself and leave them with a burden. I love being alone too much. When my parents and older siblings die, and all my friends have children and responsibilities of their own, I'll be left alone, sipping wine on cold Christmas eves with only the bottle to console me and the ever present ideas of running down to the local gun shop to pick out a 357 or 45 that will turn my face into putty. I'm not honestly at a point at this second where I feel like I'm going to end it all, but it always feels soon. Next week, or next month, or by the end of the year, as though it's something that needs to get done that I've never quite had the courage to getting around and taking care of. I realize I'm getting kind of rambly right now, but I'm just feeling so depressed and honestly crippled by the great contradiction that I've become. Just had to get some things off my chest for the evening.

 

Hi Nick...I do understand what you have said...I have often felt like I do not exist and am forgotten in my real life...clearly, I have placed myself in that position, and fabricated something to be safer...but none the less, I feel estranged and not 'in the world' as I would like to be...I also think/feel that I do not have to 'act as if' I am OK if I am alone...and yet, being alone makes me less OK...yes, there are so many paradoxes to depression...not an easy path at all...thanks for sharing this...and hope you do feel better having expressed this...big hugs, J

 

Very similar feelings for around 5 years now. Especially this part:

 

You have sung notes which I have hit for seemingly ever. Thanks for letting me know that I am not the only one who feels this way. Almost every body outside of family has said good bye to me. I don't think that I have accomplished one prominent thing in my existence. I very much enjoyed hearing your perspective. And I agree with a lot of the things you have to say. Good luck.