April 10th, 2022

I wrote a letter the other day and I’ll put it here to make it official for myself.

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3:20 am

Hi xx,

It feels like I just had a big realisation, so I’ll see if I can put it into words.

I constantly have thoughts saying that I do not want to live anymore.

To study, clean and keep myself together would indicate that I want to live, so to do these things, I would have to decide to want to live. If not, why the fuck would I do them?

If I were to decide that I want to live, I would have to put in the work. I would have to set up goals and make plans to accomplish them. I would have to study languages. I would have to look for jobs or internships to get where I wanted to go. I would have to decide where I wanted to go. I would have to maintain my apartment actively, so I wouldn’t get stressed out and could focus on what’s important. I would have to make new friends and maintain those relationships. I would have to educate myself and get my own opinion on things.

I would have to decide that I am worth spending my whole life with.

So instead of deciding to live, I’m in this never-ending circle of self-loathing and too complicated a backstory to kill myself.

The apparent paradox is that the solution is backwards to this.

I can decide that I want to live when I see the fruit of my self-discipline. I can decide that I want to live when I have set goals and plans on how to achieve them. Life is worth living because I have something that makes life worth living.

When I’m writing this, I realise that the solution is maybe to do all these things, even though I don’t want to live. Perhaps it’s not so big a decision as just doing it, and trust that it will eventually spiral upwards from there as I orient myself properly in life.

Maybe that’s just it.

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