a 26 year teenage existential dilemma…
it started as a reply…
I feel the need to apologize in advance for what tone this blog may or may not take (I never really know going in how a message will end), but I want to make sure that to everyone who has expressed their support, please understand that I’m grateful for your friendship, and your thoughts.
To everyone who’s suggested I seek counseling, since this has come from so many of my family and close friends, clearly most people see me as having a problem, and I understand and accept that. However, I’ve had counseling, fairly recently too, 10 weeks of it, both one-on-one and weekly group Cognitive Behavior Therapy while waiting to be discharged from the navy.
It was exactly the fact that I needed counseling which caused me to get separated from the navy early, and regardless of whether that was right or wrong for me, I do know that the counseling itself was of little benefit. Accordingly, I think for the time being, its not for me, especially since its no longer available to me at no cost, and I’d rather not spend my last dollar (or anyone else’s money) on a few hours of somebody telling me that which I already know, that I’m depressed, and that I should take medication, and go fall in with the rest of the world.
I’m not even saying that a psychologist’s diagnosis or prescription would be wrong, to the contrary, its highly likely that its right, as my psychologist in the navy recommended I see a psychiatrist and go on medication a couple of different times.
Its just not “ME.”
As usual, I’ll resort to somebody else’s intellect to try and adequately summarize my view on life:
“…I’ve never had the propensity to work, breed and die…”
I’m not sure I ever want to fit into day-to-day modern life, and the more I search for a place to escape to (even if only temporarily), the more I realize there is no physical place capable of adequately sustaining life that hasn’t been brought under some form of government/social control.
Everyone alive today was born a prisoner to social-contract civil-society, and I can’t yet reconcile myself with that, and I’m not sure I want to live in a perpetually decaying world that I’ll never be able to truly change.
It might be best to add that I don’t believe in the judeo-christian God, and I likely never will, so any argument you use from a religious stance, to try and tell me that any/every life is worth living, is a waste of time/breath, and I’d rather not get into a debate to try and argue the existence of said God, because I believe that everyone has a right to believe whatever they want about God, and that it alone shouldn’t preclude people from being friends.
I also don’t think anyone on this planet is “special” or any more important than anyone else, for any reason, and in fact, the very fact that we’re all “different” or “unique” or whatever adjective you want to use to describe it, makes us all inherently the same; we all WANT to FEEL special/unique, in the face of the otherwise crippling reality that none of us really are important to the universe, and we are all going to die while the whole of the universe won’t even register that any of us ever lived.
Again, I acknowledge that this is all likely an expression of the truth that its ME that is “defective” in some sense of the word. I’m just not sure if I’d rather be “normal” at the sacrifice of who I truly am, just to go be a part of day-to-day modern society that I don’t care for in the first place.
Honestly, thank you, everyone, for your messages, your friendship, and your offers of support/hospitality/etc, but right now, I just don’t think there’s anything that anyone else can do.
I have decisions I need to make before anything that anybody else offers in support will be able to have any useful effect.
Right now, counseling and medication won’t do anything to help me be the “ME” that I want to be, but instead will only make me the “ME” that the DSM and American Psychiatric Association think I should be.
And I’m not sure that I want to be that version of “ME” yet.
“Son, look at all the people in this restaurant
What do you think they weigh?
Out the window to the parking lot
At their SUV’s, taking all of the space
They give no fuck
They talk as loud as they want
They give no fuck
Just as long as there’s enough, for them
Gonna get on the microphone down at Wal-Mart
Talk about some shit that’s been on my mind
Talk about the state of this great nation of ours
People look to your left, yeah, look to your right
They give no fuck
They buy as much as they want
They give no fuck
Just as long as there’s enough, for them
Son, look at the people lining up for plastic
Wouldn’t you like to see them in the National Geographic
Squatting bare ass in the dirt eating rice from a bowl
With a towel on their head and maybe a bone in their nose
See that asshole with a peace sign on his license plate?
Giving me the finger and running me out of his lane
God made us number one ’cause he loves us the best
Well he should go bless someone else for a while and give us a rest
(They give no)
Yeah, and everyone can see
(They give no)
We’ve eaten all that we can eat”
– Ben Folds, “All That You Can Eat”
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about 10 months ago
OK. Let us know when you need us. We’ll be here. (unless I’m in the hospital having a baby, then you have to wait
love,c
about 10 months ago
Cath’s right, we’ll be here all along!
Love you, Susan
about 10 months ago
btw, I’m not surprised that you didn’t get much from CBT — its very popular right now because it works well (ish) in a short term setting (10 sessions is considered very short term, and about what the typical HMO allows), and its easy for therapists to do because its pretty formulaic. I’d love to chat with you sometime about different theoretical approaches to therapy, either to help you find a better fit, or just because it happens to be interesting.
about 10 months ago
A good psychopharmacology offers medications that improve function, not just anesthetize. SSRIs enable the brain to process information better, so that the person functions better. Opiates were all that 19th century druggists had in their pharmacopeia for pain, hence Marx’s dictum about religion.
I don’t think that the net effect of what I have been advising is for you to conform to the APA’s definition of the self. I am more in favor of Charles Taylor’s or Victor Frankl’s or Soren Kierkegaard’s.