If I could go back in time...

This is my first post. I'll try to keep it brief and to the point. I don't think any of the stuff I might write here will harm anyone who might read it but if you're feeling bad or don't want to read a sad story then don't read this post. Most likely I am being overly cautious by writing such a warning but better safe than sorry.

If I could go back in time the first thing I would do is stop my parents from meeting. That way, I would cease to exist. Why do I want my existence to cease? Because I've been running from things for a long time now. Things that happened in the past both recent and far. I could have spent my twenty two years on this Earth tackling my problems and learning how to deal with my issues but instead I ran. I put on a mask with a smile and went through life as though nothing ever happened and its finally caught up to me. To be honest, I feel it caught up with me well over four years ago but I was either too stupid/not ready to even realize it.

With that being said, I feel remorse. I feel as though I took a person with a potential future who had the potential ability to give and receive love and I squashed that person by running away. Needless to say, that person I'm describing is myself. I feel as though I've always known something was wrong but I never wanted to tackle it directly and now its too late to do anything about it.

Now, I know I'm just 22. I realize that by many standards that is a young age and that there is still time to change. Its just that when I think about all that wasted time I get really down on myself and I think that it may be better to cease to exist then to try to fix myself. Why do I feel that way? I don't really know. Perhaps that is why I'm here.

Anyway now for a bit about me: Over the course of my twenty two years I've seen about three therapists. I don't really remember if I've ever been officially diagnosed with anything but I have been prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. I was never consistent about taking them. The professional help I received speculated that I was depressed, hypomanic or Bipolar but I am skeptical of what they thought because, at the time, I was not taking their help seriously. My family situation is not all that good either: Divorced parents. Physical abuse (arguably). Mental abuse (for sure). Bullied in school.

So, now I find myself at twenty two years old and I feel that my only two options are to either fix my problems or cease to exist because living like this isn't even existing anyway. When one lives like this they become a non entity to themselves and to others. My question to you folks is where does someone like me begin? I've been told a lot about myself from therapists, friends, family and I don't know what's accurate and what's inaccurate. Compounding this problem is the fact that I don't have a support system of friends or family. That's not to say, that I don't' have friends and family but who I have is hardly a support system at the moment.

So, if anyone has any advice on how to to look at yourself in an objective way please let me know because that's the only way I'm going to even begin to unravel all these problems that I (possibly) have.

Note: Re-reading my post just now I realize how vague it sounds. It's vague because if I even opened a door on all the problems I have then they would all come tumbling out in a heap and I would never be able to handle it so my strategy here is to get a new vantage point on myself so that I might better tackle my issues. Hope everyone is well. Thanks for taking the time to read.

Dear cablebird,
I guess you probably heard it at least once, but i know where you are coming from.
I remember that when i was 22 or maybe a bit younger i was having these exact thought, and i am really not saying that in a presumptuous way. life is hard, or so we choose to believe.
Actually life is fairly simple, we all search for the same things, and we all like to lament about how hard it is obtaining these things, i guess it makes for a more interesting life.

With that said, if you want an advice, the only one i can give you is that you start by doing.
It really doesn't matter what, occupy yourself, study, write, paint, work... the only important thing that it will be something you WANT to do, or maybe something you always wanted to do.
Why is that? for many reasons really, but the first (and maybe the most important one) being that YOU CAN'T RESOLVE THIS BY THINKING ABOUT IT, i can't stress this enough. It's a positive feedback mechanism, meaning you feel bad, you think about that you are feeling bad, and then you feel bad about thinking about it and so on...

Now, i don't mean that you should dismiss your feeling, but one important thing is even-though you are contemplating about your existence, you do exist! Finding the right outlet for your day-to-day life is fundamental, after all we try to better ourselves ONE step at a time.
With doing that we accept that there is a part of this life that WE CONTROL, and we live this part for ourselves. Then, slowly slowly we try to diffuse that approach into other areas but ALWAYS DOING WHAT WE WANT TO DO, which is correlated with what we want to achieve.

These are some of the things that have helped me, and I also went to therapy for a long time, didn't really help, and also from a broken house, and I too wished never to have been born. And it was when I was around your age that i changed my life completely and tried to resolve all these problems that i carried with me for years... It was hard, it was long, and it is still not over.

I'll tell you the truth, it keeps getting better, but it does not go away. And even though i should be happy with my life, these moments of profound depression keep haunting me. But i keep telling myself, and i am telling you that as well, we are stronger than this! and if we were condemned to live this wretched life, we might as well try to enjoy it, understand it, study it.

And we should consider ourselves lucky to be the kind of people who question their existence because only like this you can really appreciate life.

Hopefully it helped, at least a little...

Thanks for the reply. What resonates most with me are your comments on how we have to live despite problems we have in our lives. Sometimes I forget that I won't be able to fix everything I want to, but the act of trying is just as good.