KODOKU - 孤独

I'm going to start by talking candidly about something I glossed over early on and a history of my experiences with jobs and education. I have consistently had issues with both. I faked sick a lot since I was a kid to avoid going to school for a day or two at a time, all the way from grade school to high school. I got fired from my first two jobs in highschool in 2009 and 2011. When I went to college that year I ended up dropping out at the end of the year 2012. I misheard when my first exam was starting so when I went to the class it had already started. Instead of just showing up late I decided I didn't care for the whole year so why care now, and I skipped every final of the year. I then didn't work full time for two years or do school, and went to therapy for 5-6 months. During that time I got a part time job at a church my parents went to but got fired after 2 months for wasting time on the clock and not properly locking outer-facing doors, both due to daydreaming a lot. I then got a job at Kroger and after one day I stopped going, but pretended to go for a few more nights before telling my parents I got fired. I drove 27 minutes to a McDonalds interview but didn't actually walk into the building before leaving. I eventually went back to a night school in 2015 that ended up with me getting a couple temp jobs. Both of which I walked out on without saying anything, ghosting both the employer and the temp service. After that I finally managed to get a full time job I held for a year, I quit with a two week notice before moving to the job I was at for 7 years that I quit last December 2024. I didn't say much about it, but it was after a series of events. First I had a 2 week vacation, my first ever since working. When I came back in the first two weeks there was an issue between a new hire and the team I worked on which got HR involved. It was handled very messily and I'm still unsure what it was all about. Within a few days I started having multiple small panic attacks at work daily for 4 days in a row. I would have trouble with irregular breathing and hyperventilation, my mind would go blank or focus on some miserable thought and I would start sweating and shaking. The 4th day was a Tuesday and when lunch came I had had enough. I drove home, turned my phone off, and never went back. They ended up calling the police to welfare check me 4 days in. I told the police I was fine and would go back to work soon, but I didn't. I just wanted to get this out of the way as an ice breaker for myself before going into the rest.

After having some trouble with therapy and taking some feedback from my therapist I decided to give some true thought to myself again. What really got me wanting to think was when she brought up depression. In a roundabout way I insisted I was not depressed, but she said that maybe I was just so used to it that it's become part of me. I thought maybe there is some truth to that, which means I needed to think about what parts of me are depression and which parts are me. It's hard to do that because I feel like there is very little inside me so losing anything means losing a lot. I want to face myself properly though. Thinking deeply about my past and who I am ended up being very insightful and went a lot deeper than I thought it would, going beyond just the depression question. I feel like the reason I've not felt proper at therapy is because I said I was being honest when in reality I was unintenionally still doing what I do with everyone else.

If I had to describe how I view myself in a physical form, it would be a black hole, some mirrors, and a bunch of masks vaguely in the shape of a person. The black hole is the core, the true 'who I am.' I say there isn't much to me or 'there isnt much there,' and that is what I am referring to. I'll get back to this later though. The mirrors and masks are exactly what you'd think. Everyone mirrors others to conform and wears masks to varying degrees, but the mask usually has holes that reveal the true person beneath. It's not a full act, just a partial coverup for social reasons. I am not like that at all, in most instances I have a full mask that doesn't represent me at all. Because the core of me is not something people understand, it's easiest for me to come off as generic but kind of like whoever I'm talking too. I listen a lot more than I speak. I nod and agree with everyone. When I'm asked about myself I share as little as possible and have a kind of 'preset' of who I give to them, tailored a bit based on who I'm talking to. I'm more than willing to make white lies and I do it a lot. I do this because my goal when interacting with others is to be left alone and br forgotten soon after we part ways.

When I was speaking to my therapist I was thinking to myself I want to be honest, but I couldn't even do that. I didn't even realize it really. It's very hard to peel away the many layers of fake masks that I've built into what I call myself and what I tell others I am. I was doing a lesser version of what I said earlier while at therapy without even thinking about it or realizing. To go back to the black hole, the reason I describe myself as that is because no matter what I do I feel practically nothing strongly. Any time I do feel something strong enough to move me in some way, it goes away very quickly. I consume entertainment to pass time in the most efficient way. I consume large amounts of information because learning passes time and it's easy to keep up forced conversation when I have random facts I learned throughout the week. I generally don't do things because I enjoy them, but because it passes time. There are only two things that I think I can say I have a slight preference for. One is daydreaming, which I do constantly and passively all the time no matter what I am doing. It's something I've done since I was a kid and it's only become a larger part of my life over time. The other is looking at videos and images of seals. I just like them. I don't enjoy eating or drinking and often don't do enough of either. Headaches and the shakes are my signal to eat when I'm left on my own. This is why I don't use any of my real self when talking to people and why I say there isn't much there. I have no meaningful preferences or wants. Very few desires. No interest in much of anything. I've never felt romantic feelings or sexual desire toward anyone.

Yet after thinking and writing all this out, I still don't know what can be done about it, if anything. The question that brought me here was about depression being a part of me, but I came to the conclusion that I don't really know if I am depressed or if this is just how I grew up to be. So I decided to refocus my thoughts on things I do know. I am not interested in people. I am not interested in hobbies. I am not truly interested in anything. I've been playing pretend at being normal for almost half my life, close to 15 years. What I've shown and told other people I am has just been a layer of masks and lies covering up the empty core inside that exists to exist. When I put all this in perspective a lot became clear to me. Ican't say I've been living so much as existing while watching life go by. That said, I don't have any interest in life and don't care about existing at this point. I don't mean that in a suicidal way. I mean I don't want to be a part of living. I don't want to be a part of anyone else's life. I don't care about anything that people are supposed to care about. I don't care about money. I don't care about my house. I don't care about any possessions beyond some minimal comforts. I don't care about friends and the only reason I keep in touch with my family is because I feel a sense of obligation toward my parents for raising me. All I want is to exist on my own in the simplest way.

Having come to that conclusion, I still don't know what to do now. Therapy is meant to relieve or heal someone when something is wrong, and there may be many things wrong with me when compared to the average person, but I don't view myself as needing to be fixed in any way. I've told people many times, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. I think I'm under that umbrella now and it makes me feel unsure of what to do going forward.
I wanted to finish up with four very quick memories that gave me insight into myself and what I think they mean to me.

Something I used to do as a kid was tell the exact time. When my mom got up and saw me at the computer she would ask what time I woke up. I would tell her something like 3:58, 4:27 or 5:02. One day when I did this she laughed and said it's funny that I bring up the exact time because usually people round the time. I don't remember how I felt, but I started rounding my times after that. Nowadays I've been in the habit of using exact times again, including seconds if they are shown.
This story is one from 5th grade. I was talking to a friend and he said something I was supposed to laugh at, but I didn't find funny. So I fake laughed and smiled briefly, but right after went back to my neutral expression. He started laughing and pointed it out, so I played into it as if it was a joke I did intentionally. I hadn't realized it until then but I had a habit of immediately going back to neutral after I faked a laugh or a smile. Since then I've always kept my smile longer and let it fade slowly.
When I was 13 in 7th grade I did an ice breaker school project where I had to choose a flying machine of some kind then build it, using decoration to describe myself. I told my mom I wanted to do a hot air balloon because it goes where the wind blows and that's how I am. She told me that that doesn't describe me and I should choose a blimp, which is like a hot air balloon but it controls where it goes and that's more like me. By caving to her I ironically proved that I should have been the hot air balloon. This story is how I've lived my life as a whole though which is why I bring it up.
Another shorter story I remembered was when I was 24 or 25. I brought up to my dad that I didn't enjoy work. He said something along the lines of 'but you feel good when you do a good job though right?' and despite having never felt that 'warm fuzzy feeling of a job well done' that people like him talk about I just told him sometimes. It would have been a hassle to say no and I didn't want to talk about pointless stuff.

These stories are just excerpts from all the stuff I was looking at in my life that made me realize how I got here and how I was always not a good fit with the world. As a kid I didn't pick up how to act naturally, I had to be told something was weird or get a negative reaction from other people around me to know what I was doing or saying wasn't normal. As a young teen I already had signs of being how I am now and while I was always seen as a quiet weird kid I had learned to got along well enough. In my late teens I started being a lot more like I am now and I'd taken an interest in psychology because I read a book on body language that helped me fit in better with people. I think this was when I really started noticing that others didn't face the same issues I did and that my faking and casual white lying about so many things wasn't normal. It was in my early 20s that I feel like my personality solidified into what it is today. As I said earlier, I've just been existing to exist, but I never thought about it until more recently. I've spent so many years knowingly pretending to be some amorphous person that doesn't exist that I became unable to tell the truth when I explicitly went out of my way to go to therapy and said to myself I would be honest. After 2 weeks of thoughts, notes, and a few hours of late night writing I can now say I've been totally honest to both myself and anyone reading.

I read over this once after finishing and feel like it could be better, but I'm tired from so much writing and being up all night so I'm going to publish it as is.