Introduction: The Pursuit of Happiness and the Meaning of Life by celticcracker on Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:09 pm
Rightio, guys! Welcome to my world! It's great in here, albeit the landscapes may appear a little cerebral and neurotic sometimes. I lead the fine young life of an Irish student. Yes, student life is... well, chaotic. Effective organisation is always precluded by the necessities of student life (i.e. sleeping erratic hours, inconsistently meeting inconsistent deadlines, and an all-round simultaneous lack of planning and spontaneity). I am doing what I love (that's binge-reading on metaphysics and critical theory and writing highfalutin essays on it all), and even if it doesn't make me happy, that's okay, because I'm doing the right thing with my life right now. Clarity helps.
Happiness (whatever it is) is a thoroughly overused term these days. Why on earth should I be happy just because I have everything and my life is pretty darn good?! 'Erm... perhaps because you have everything and your life is pretty darn good...?' This is called circular reasoning, a logical fallacy. In fact, the entire pursuit of happiness in itself is both illogical and pointless. For a fact, nothing makes me happy. Ought I be stricken now by an avalanche of guilt? Not really. It's okay to feel whatever you feel and it is absolutely ridiculous to feel what someone else (or society, in fact) tells you to feel, because that's even more absurd that not feeling good, when life's good. In fact, the pursuit of happiness makes people depressed, because it's cheating logic and breaking down the faculties we rely on to make clear distinctions between things!
I like my life. I don't like my depression. I live life with depression. I do not live a depressed life. When I am really depressed I am not living my life, but this has nothing to do with my life and everything to do with my depression. It is important when I am very depressed to never wish my depression to end, because this would mean ending my life. And I like my life. It is much more likable than my depression. It only makes sense to say, then, that I like my life more than I can ever dislike my depression, because depression requires life in order to exist and wishing my life to end because it will end my depression is completely absurd, because it denies the origin of depression, which is not life, but absurdity. Yes, depression is absurd, but life is not and in order to affirm what is true and meaningful (i.e. the fact that depression is absurd) we must affirm life.
Of course, it may appear to be problematic when philosophers say that life is absurd and melancholia is a natural reaction to the absurdity of life. This may be true (and if it is it becomes difficult to distinguish depression from life), but even these philosophers find a way of affirming life, even if only in spite. For Camus, absurdity must be affirmed because our lucidity is the basis of all that we have. According to him, we must continue to push the boulder up the hill knowing it will fall back down, because acknowledging the pointlessness of this task liberates us to accept it. For Kierkegaard, it is defiance: rejection of help or escape which gives us strength to be our own and endure. For Nietzsche, life, suffering and all the tragedy in the world must be relished in order to rise above the adversity of slavery and become masters of ourselves through strength and creativity.
I unfriended my depressed friend. by owlcityislove on Sat Sep 03, 2016 12:37 pm
I unfriended my depressed friend. She was very demanding and refused to accept criticisms, but she tried to be a friend, and that's what makes me feel guilty. She has depression and anxiety, but I'm not the kind of person who's patient and understanding enough to deal with someone who gets angry at constructive criticisms and isn't willing to help herself. She asked me if I only befriended her out of pity, and I said "yeah a little" because I'm a very straightforward person and I'm not a very "empathetic" person per say, and yes that's a horrible thing to say, but I wanted out of the friendship that made me so anxious and unhappy all the time. Our friendship lasted for about 2 years, which was rather long considering that I only befriended her out of pity. It ended unhappily, with her telling me that I was selfish, but I know I couldn't put up a fake front anymore and I feel more liberated than sorry. Can someone tell me if what I did was right? Ending the friendship? I wanted to be a more understanding friend as well and attempted to make it last, but she really made me lose my head, any advice on that?
I don't know what to do anymore. by plsdontjudgeme on Fri Nov 08, 2013 2:13 pm
So for my first post, Im just going to do this as a journal I guess. I don't know.
So basically, Im a teen. Please don't even ATTEMPT to judge me because I've been through so much already and I am going to lose it.
I feel so sad, hopeless, and SO angry all the time and I don't get why certain things happen to me. I mean, I was never a bad person. I don't know why I deserve all this at such a young age and I'm so depressed and It's so UNFAIR.
I hate me, I hate everyone, I hate the world. I hate everything. I never wanted to feel this way. I never EVER did. And now I do, and everything freaking sucks.
My family thinks I'm emo and my friends think I'm outgoing and happy and I'm going to lose it. I can't be who I really am because I'm so afraid of being judged and I hate it so much.
I spend most of the time in the bathroom breaking down to the point where I have to cover my mouth to make myself quiet.
I'm a TEEN.
I never wanted to be like this AT ALL. I wanted to worry about my looks, my studies, and pop stars such as One Direction or Justin Bieber or something but NO. Life will not permit it and IT'S UNFAIR.
I want to be normal and so many bad experiences happened to me at such a young age and I'm trying my best to BE happy but I can't and I don't know why.
Instead of being HAPPY I'm depressed, hopeless, angry and I HATE IT SO MUCH.
I don't know what to do. I don't see any future of mine. I want to die but I don't and I really don't know what to do anymore and I'm sick of it!
I want to have dreams and I want to have crushes but I don't and as I said so many times,
IT'S SO FREAKING UNFAIR.
I'm too young and all these experiences and troubles in family, friends, school, and life is just piling and piling.
I thought that maybe, this was a phase or something but I've always been this way ever since I was young and I've only realized it this year.
I've always been quiet and emo. Even in school, but I changed myself because there were people who teased me so, in a snap, after one summer, wow, I was happy on the outside. People used to say that I was really quiet and I always looked like I was mad and I just realized that I was just really sad. And now that developed into depression. I know you think I'm lying since I'm too young but we're all different here and we go through different things and I just had to go through many things at a young age.
I'm really tired. I really am. I tried everything. I even self harm. I have scars from razors and my parents think it's something I got from my dad called Keloid wherein you just get tiny scratches and they turn to look like scars and I agreed so they won't be suspicious. But after awhile, they did of course, so I started to cut elsewhere other than my wrist.
Anyways, other than that rather disturbing paragraph, I just want help.
I don't want to be some depressed teenager with anxiety. I hate always being jumpy, nervous and I want to be NORMAL.
So. If anyone reads this. Please help me before this gets worse. I'm really tired of feeling this way and I don't think I can hold my sadness and anger in any longer. I just want to scream at the world that I'm upset and lost and to help me but I can't. I have no one to talk to. No one I trust.
But I know there are people out there who will understand and that's why I am here now. I don't like thinking of suicide or anything. I really don't. And I want it to stop. So if anyone can PLEASE help me, just... HELP ME.
Please, I'm begging you. I'm so desperate and I just really need someone to be there for me right now.
Was it really rape? by lotsofquestions on Mon May 22, 2017 5:14 am
Recently I was at a party where many people were intoxicated, myself included. There was a lot of dancing and girls grinding on guys and groping and whatever else happens on a dance floor probably happened here. While at this party I talked to a lot of people and remember every detail I just didn't have the proper control of myself as I was heavily intoxicated. Nearing the end of the night I was approached by a boy who somehow knew me although I wasn't sure who he was. I walked away but he was insistent to talk. He pulled me closer to him and kissed me. We made out and everything was fine. Now, at this party people were staying in tents or their cars on the property and I had a tent with my friend. This guy that I was with asked me if I had a tent and I said yes, he took that as an invite and said "that beats sleeping on the floor". I wasn't 100% comfortable with him coming back with me but, I am the type that has a hard time saying no when someone says they'll be sleeping outside or whatever else. So he followed me back to my tent and I warned my friend before he came in. I was quite tired as it was very late and I was ready to go to bed but this guy was grabbing me and kissing my neck and wouldn't stop. I would push his hands away and he would tell me to "stop" or "just let it happen". Although, I continued to ask him to stop he continued until i sat up and said he needed to stop. At that point he got angry and told me that I was being a tease and i needed to "get him off" before he could go to bed. I said I just wanted to sleep and was feeling quite emotional, he was about to leave when i started to cry, as I was just yelled at when I didn't want to have sex with him. He told me it was fine and we would just cuddle and sleep. When we were back under my blanket he started at it again and i continued to tell him to stop as i still wasn't wanting to have sex with him and he started getting angry again. He was kissing me and had his hand wrapped around my neck. I was afraid of his anger as i didn't know him nor what he was capable of and i didn't want him to wake people so i complied and told him that we could have sex. About half way through i started crying and he told me if i was loud he would choke me harder so i sat there and let him do what he wanted.
I complied and told him it was okay for him to do what he did although the multiple times i said no and i felt pressured into this situation. It continues to haunt my dreams and I don't feel like myself anymore. But, was it rape...
My screwed mind - GID and DID by omeganashik on Thu Sep 19, 2013 9:25 pm
At the age of eleven, five years ago, I recall calling a voice in my head the narrator, because he would refer to my life in third person, always negatively, constantly talking, and arguing with me, To this day. As far back as I can remember I have had a want to become female, purely for physical reasons, however, this need was intermittent, usually I had the standardly accepted gender identity, I even imagine being a father- not a parent or mother, a father- and now at sixteen my gender identity feels as if it has split into two, transgendered and 'normal,' while I am now 'turned on' by material of transgendered nature at times, but usually am not. The narrator has also evolved, triggering bouts of sudden uncharacteristic anger, while I am usually calm and cheerful. I sometimes find that my face is curling into a look of anger or contempt, or that I have sudden images of badly hurting people who do something I dislike, that may have been an acceptable thing to do, but for whatever reason I just feel foreign satisfaction in imagining pain.
I began looking through myself, basically just trying to figure out what the hell is wrong, and the following are the results:
At the age of six I had a crush on a girl in my primary school class, she left that year, for other reasons. This is the most definite starting point I can place for my tgism. then, at eleven, I had my second crush, on another classmate, and she walked up to me and told me to stay away from her shortly after the two friends I told this secret to went and told everyone. My theory is that my subconscious took these rejections, and the stereotypical views on geeks and indians, and sculpted from them the idea that I was so repulsive that the only way I could ever have a girl in my life was to be a girl, and so that shard of my gender identity broke away, and from this information I called that shard Lust. Lust doesn't seem to be as conscious as the narrator (who is now named Anger), though she has on two occasions exclaimed on how 'hot' a guy was, though this may be because of nightly masturbation to the idea of being a girl, leading to lust already being expressed. Anger, however, is kept under lock and key, and so usually has a voice. There are other signs as well. I used to use electronic devices excessively, even when supposed to be sleeping, but I voluntarily stopped, and recently I've started feeling tired after 11am, as if I hadn't gotten the sleep that I obviously did. Occasionally, when writing, my hand forms a squiggle instead of a letter, and my handwriting has deteriorated, and today when trying to write while holding the pen loosely, I could only make squiggles.
There may be other voices, occasionally when playing a sport I become giddy, speaking without thinking, and really jumpy, and sometimes I hear a crowd, but that may be Anger messing with me. There's a chance I am only imagining all of this, but I don't want to take that risk. Help me please.
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