Ever since I was a child I was afraid of getting older and dying. It has been in the back of my mind for most of my life.
I had phases were this fear was not really around and then phases where it is the only thing I can think of. Ever since Corona it has gotten worse and worse. It just struck me one day while playing video games with my friends. Suddenly I was like “I WILL die one day. I will not be anymore … forever. I won’t even know that I am not anymore.” and I broke down pretty much immediately.
What followed was a phase of everlasting fear and anxiety. It was so bad that I just couldn’t fall asleep unless I watched comedy until was physically not able to stay awake. Back then I thought it was a result of the isolation of Corona. Since then I moved back in with my mother (due to different reasons). Everything was fine for a while but now it is back.
I should be happy. I handed in my bachelor’s thesis a while back, will soon move out again and have gotten a job in my dream career. I finished my therapy and while I am still not completely over my social anxiety but it is getting better and better. And yet the fear was never as bad. Last night I cowered into a ball under my desk and started crying.
It has gotten to a point were I thought about killing myself to end it. It is the same result either way. I won’t remember anything anyway. Even the pain and grief friends and family would feel is only temporary. They too will be gone with everything that made them up one day.
I have no intentions of going through with it but it frightens me that I even think like this.
I don’t know were this is coming from. Maybe from the feeling that I am wasting my life, that I am a failure and too far behind peers, that I am too old to have so little but I also know that it’s not like I could have done a lot better. Due to circumstances outside of my own control I am were I am right now but I am doing my best to get better. It’s just that it takes a lot of time and I fear that it takes too much time. I also lost a good friend recently so this probably plays into it as well.
Is there anyway of changing my way of thinking about death? I know I can’t change the fact that I will die but how can I accept it without falling into existential nihilism like I currently am?
Edit: I also already called my therapist but since it’s the weekend they won’t answer before Monday.
I doubt society will be rid of depression. As Breht said on Revleft a while back, it is impossible to seek a world without contradiction. We seek to end unnecessary material suffering through socialism and ending the class contradiction, but new contradictions will arise and life will probably be more rich and complex. When economic and physical barriers are no longer there to produce inequality many may feel bad in a different way because their own faults are truly the cause of their problems.
Depression is not caused by contradiction. Depression is not simple adversity. It’s a sickness that makes people stop wanting to live.
People will still feel bad when we cure depression, but they won’t want to lay down and never get up again. It’s very different.
As long as we are mortals we will feel nihilistic at times. I think society will be able to greatly reduce alienation with socialism, but that doesn’t mean people won’t be in awe of existential mystery and apparent darkness. Capitalism crushes people more than is natural, but there is also inherent feeling of not being enough and wanting more in humans.
Depression isn’t just feeling nihilistic at times. It’s literally the desire for nothing. Nihilists can at least be hedonists and pleasure seekers, but depression robs even that from us. We become almost unfeeling, except for a low droning of despair that’s never quite enough to make you do anything but always enough to drown out everything else you might feel.
When depressed, you don’t want more. You want nothing.
Depression is a sickness. It’s not being sad. It’s not feeling bad. It’s another abomination that must be destroyed.
I don’t disagree, I just don’t know whether it’s possible.
I don’t know, but I’m optimistic about depression. My meds help, and they were made when very little was known about the brain.
Someday, somehow, depression can be cured. I’m sure of it. Just like every disease and just like death.
It doesn’t matter if you think immortality is possible in the future. Your argument that it would be a good thing is unfalsifiable. However, it’s a material reality that you will die and thus it’s best to come to terms with it.
It’s a material reality that I must sell my labor for a wage. Should I also come to terms with it?
I don’t think so - I think I use material forces to abolish wage labor and change material reality.
Material reality isn’t inevitable. That’s cynicism.
Fair point, assuming immortality is possible. It is best to try to survive as best you can under capitalism while working for its overthrow. If we are assuming this is an accurate parallel then you should try to extend your life as long as possible and maybe research things you think will bring immortality closer, while finding ways to make death less scary, as you will die.
What has that got to do with seeking a world without contradiction? We eradicated smallpox just fine without ending up in dialectical limbo, why can’t we do it with depression?
I’m saying there will be new and different reasons to feel bad even under socialism.