No matter what I do, I always feel lonely.

This persistent thought-emotion really bothers me. It bothers me so much, that I try to justify my death. However, let’s think about it. Let’s take it apart and see what exactly it is.

“No matter what I do…”  –  here I postulate that external events are not the cause of trouble. I am a highly functioning individual; there are no physical signs of depression/disturbance. I get out of bed, I go to classes and work, I help organize fundraisers, I interact with classmates and help them study. I eat fairly well, and sleep as much as possible, being a student studying for exams. There is nothing I can change in my life (objectively looking) to change the way I feel. Everything is normal. Everything is fine but…

“always” – that is a classical example of black and white thinking. I cannot possibly always feel something, I have to sometime feel other things, such as hunger and need to go to the bathroom. It is an exaggeration, I admit.  I use it to show that this feeling is so pervasive, so overwhelming that when it overtakes me, it does, in fact, feel like it is constantly there gnawing at me.

“feel” – now here’s the key word. Feeling relates to perception rather than pure reasoning. In many cases it is irrational and not grounded in reality. It is subjective.  A person might give me a look, and I will think that they dislike me. There would be no objective reason to draw such conclusion. They might be having a bad day, and it would have nothing to do with me, but I would still feel uncomfortable and sad (or angry).  Similarly in my case, I may not be objectively lonely – there are people around me – but I still feel it.

“lonely” – the connotation of this word in my case is very negative. It’s important to differentiate between alone-ness and lonely-ness. Even then, sometimes it’s ok to feel lonely. However, to me it conveys the feeling of utter misunderstanding, isolation and abandonment. It is an overwhelmingly painful, violent feeling. In conjunction with “no matter what I do…”, it leads hopelessness, lack of faith in my abilities. If I can’t help myself, no one can. In addition, if I can’t help myself, I can’t help others – here adds feeling of worthlessness and shame.

The key words for suicide awareness are “hopelessness” and “helplessness”. Here they are with this kind of thought/emotion. 

As to my previous post, I want to clarify that my premises are not universal. They only apply to me and my life (note the use of “I shall” and not objective “one shall”). I don’t want to use people’s opinions on what constitutes a “bad person” or how one should live or die. I live by my own set of ideas about virtues.  Others may not agree with them… and they don’t. However, since I do not impose my morals on people, they should not do it onto me.

The logic of my argument, however, works quite well, I think.

Given: !Control (“!” – logical negation of Control)

!Control ⇒ Null
Null ⇒ !Life
!Life ⇒ Death
∴ !Control ⇒ Death

I already explained what “!Control” means to me above by doing a case study of a thought-emotion. Next I should explain is why lack of control of emotions makes me a “bad”-null person. Maybe I’ll do it later, after my final exams next week.

I hope all the people I became acquainted here are doing ok. Please, take care of yourselves. I am thinking of you, even if I am not online often or don’t reply to messages.