The Pit

Do any of you feel that? It's more than being down, more than being depressed, it's more than anything and yet...it's absolute nothing. I'm talking about that internal emptiness. It starts simply enough. Seeing nice girls or guys, wanting to meet them, know them, fall in love with them but knowing you're way off their radar screens. You crave intimacy but back down because you can't handle it. It shakes your bones and rips through your skin.

You find people but you've already played out the relationship before it starts so it's done before they even know you. So you're alone, all the time with your fantasy intimacy, your fantasy denying of intimacy because you want to be in control and your fantasy break ups.

You find yourself unable to accept love, complements or any positive sentiments, even though you crave them all. And then over a set of weeks or months...things cool and then one day the cravings seemingly are gone. You no longer notice the cute girls or guys, you don't notice much of anything unless it's aimed at you. You're left with a void.

You start feeling empty. It's not depression because this is something even depression pities. It's emptiness, it's not happy, not sad, not angry, not glad. It's just you...walking and there's nowhere you're going and nowhere you've been.

The cravings have been sucked into this emptiness that has developed inside. It's not a blessing, because the cravings are still there, echoing in the void, but you're not enough of anything to act on them or care. That emptiness eats everything in you and eventually you're nothing and you know you're nothing, but it's too late and it's not worth it to make nothing into something. It's worse than dying, because you're alive on the outside but just a shell, a husk, simply going through the motions: home, work, home, work, home, but inside there's nothing. It's the pit. It's hell on earth. You want to die, but can't, because you have this inane desire to walk forward into the nothingness, this all consuming need to endure. But these needs and desires have no ends, they just are for no reason. So you just whither, with your life of work and home going on ad nauseum with no change, no advance, no retreat, no hope, no desires, no dreams, just...life.

No one can understand that feeling unless they are in the darkness, and those that try...acting like they know...they don't. Until someone has stayed up listening to the hate, which seems to be the only thing that's immune to the emptiness, they can't understand that feeling of dying while alive, the feeling of the shadows swarming around you like the waves rising up during high tide. They just can't. So if you're new...to this feeling, maybe thinking you are on the edge...run the other way...run to a therapist, run to a councilor, run to your doctor, just run to some help. Once you're in the pit...it's a very, very, very, very, very, very long climb out. There's no promises of ever getting out.

Hey,

I have had that empty feeling for a number of months now. I got through the shock and despair of being depressed - A time when all good in my life began vanishing - And now I have that empty feeling. I now live an extremely simple life. It is as if I have shed some layers off of my life's large shell to arrive at the base-shell which is effectively like being "alive on the outside but just a shell, a husk, simply going through the motions".


Everything you wrote in that post I can relate to, quint. It's refreshing to know that another person go through and feel the same way as me.


Kevster

i feel completely empty...
The most annoying thing about it is that even though i feel like i have nothing to lose anymore (no real friends, prospects) i still manage to pin my anxieties on something completely unimportant even though im completely aware that nothing even matters and nothing will change. Its completely irrational but im probs more afraid of actually having something to lose.

What do you mean that nothing even matters?

I interpret that as meaning that all of this suffering is pointless because in the end the human race will not survive forever anyway. It's then that I can actually feel happy.

i've been doing a lot of thinking today, (which is probably a bad thing, but it's too late to forget it all now)....and i've just....come to realise that my whole life is made up of denial and killing time......there's nothing else at all.....i need to stop fooling myself into thinking that things will get better and that i will ever be happy.....because i know if i am honest about it that it really doesn't matter what happens to me, i will never be happy, because i could never actually do anything with my life and be able to cope with the consequences.......things that would make most people happy only cause me added sadness/anxiety.....i mean, sure, i am lonely and have no friends, so i tell myself one day i will and it will be better then.....but the reason i don't have friends is because i am not capable of trusting/relating to/spending time with other people. on any level. at all. i know this may seem like it's a little unrelated to this thread, but it's just that.....thinking about all this has made me feel like my life is.......completely aimless and empty....there's just.....no light at the end of the tunnel, and i need to stop pretending to myself that there is, and just accept that this is all my life is going to be, because i am obviously not capable of more....

I understand what you are saying Nina - I feel that way too sometimes but I also realise that there are certain things in life that I enjoy. However, It is very difficult to find time to do these things, and enjoyment is not even guaranteed from them, but I need them. Isn't there something that you like doing?


Kevster

I can relate to everything said in this thread. What does it mean to give up? I don't really know. Maybe I've already given up all hope? How do you tell?

For me, giving-up is like accepting that you are depressed and might never be happy. Ironically, I also think that this is a great step to take on the road to a recovery... ...and sometime in the future maybe happiness will flourish.

Giving up is a dangerous thing. I know it's hard to not to sometimes, but I try to remember that things MAY be better someday. There's no guarantee that they ever will, but as long as we keep hoping it will get us to the next day. I am not at the point where all seems lost, although in the past I have. Just when I was about to give up I realized that things could be better someday. I didn't believe it then, but things did get better. They got worse after that. but not as bad as before. Life is ups and downs.

Chucky wrote: Isn't there something that you like doing?

there are a few things that i like doing, but none of them i like enough to make it worth enduring the torture of the rest of my life....
yes, i understand that things could get better....but what i am saying is that i have realised now that if they do, it still won't help.....because i don't enjoy any of the things that happen in people's lives that make them happy (eg. job promotion = i feel unworthy and too stressed out and like i have to be even more fake......making a friend = spending all my energy trying to be something i'm not because if they find out what i am really like they will hate me......boyfriend = bringing someone else down with my sinking ship, trying to pretend i am comfortable trusting someone else when i am not at all........etcetcetc.....