u/NYCWartortle

I wish I could just disappear. Not necessarily end my life, because I don’t want to put my family through that or have them feel embarrassed. I genuinely don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.

I feel so guilty for being unhappy when there are people around me who are genuinely struggling.
I make over $150K a year. I own my apartment (with a mortgage), leased the luxury car I always wanted, and finally finished the renovation I’d been planning for 10 years. And somehow, I feel more empty, sad, and alone than ever.

I grew up relatively poor. My entire life, I’ve always had something I was working toward. There was always that next thing I thought would finally make me feel OK about myself. Once I got the job, made enough money, bought the apartment, got the car, finished the renovation, THEN I’d finally be happy. Then I’d finally feel like I was enough. When I was a kid and was being abused I would take every dollar I got as a gift and save it until I had $100 or more and I told myself that I could one day buy something that will make me OK. Make me not be worthless.

But it never happened. Nothing has ever been enough.

And now I don’t even have another thing to look forward to. There’s nothing left on that list. I’ve accomplished everything I thought I needed to accomplish, and I still feel like shit.
I went through some traumatic shit during my childhood, and apparently, I’m still not over it. I’ve been in therapy for 25 years. I take two antidepressants. I’ve done the work, or at least I’ve tried to, and I still have days when I just want to die.

One of the hardest realizations I’ve had in therapy is that I may never actually feel OK about myself. My therapist tells me that the constant self-deprecating voices in my head will eventually become easier to ignore. But that’s such a depressing thought to me. That after all these years of therapy, the best I can hope for is learning to ignore the voices telling me I’m worthless, rather than actually believing that I’m not.
Sometimes, just waking up in the morning and going to work feels exhausting.
And I can’t even talk about it because I feel like people will tell me I should be grateful. That I have a good job, a home, financial security, and nothing to complain about. And they’re right about those things. I know how fortunate I am. That’s part of what makes me feel so fucking guilty.

But knowing how fortunate I am doesn’t make the sadness go away. I see people struggling and I just makes me feel worse, like what is wrong with me.

I feel so alone. I feel worthless and disgusting. I feel like such a piece of shit for having everything I thought I wanted and still being this unhappy.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for by posting this. Maybe I just needed to say it somewhere because I’m so tired of pretending I’m OK. Everyday at work I take care of people and pretend like everything is OK with me and I’m friendly and smile. It’s not OK. I want to die.