“what an ugly thing, a restless mind!”

on wanting to vanish within the shifts and turns of your own thoughts.

White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)

What is it about the urge to escape one's own existence? When granted a life, you'd prefer to return it to the giver and send it back from where it came. I'm certain it's not just me who sometimes thinks to God, “I'd prefer not to live, thanks.” and yet I don't really want to die. I used to wish that I would get struck by lightning and I'd often walk slightly slower across the busy road walking into school, although these days I find that I don't wish as often for such terrible things to happen to me, most days I just wish I didn't exist. I’m aware there’s a term for this feeling, but for now, I don’t want to name it. Some of us just think too much and would like to get away from it all, to “trade” in our own brains for a better one, as younger me would put it.

I started writing this piece a few days ago on a random afternoon, but I’m not sure where I’m going with it now, I wasn’t sure then either. I looked at my drafts and notes and everything about them felt unsatisfactory, so instead—even if I’m just being redundant in writing another “sad” piece—I decided to ramble about something that has bothered me for a very long time, in the hopes that someone dealing with a similar something might find comfort in knowing they’re not alone in it.

I am always overthinking, almost as if my brain has been working in overdrive my whole life. I think I came out of the womb more panicked and confused than all the other babies in the ward. Growing up, I was good at silencing my thoughts, or maybe I just made the more pleasant ones louder—I don't know. My way of doing this was always to imagine I wasn't me, and that I was instead a tree, bird, or some other non-human thing. Even then, I didn't want to exist as I was, it was a surplus of things all at once all the time, and sometimes it still is. To stop the everyday rush hour in my head, I eventually started wanting to disappear completely—into the wall, into an imaginary hole in the ground, into my own bed—once again, not to die but just to no longer be here, to no longer be at all. I wonder if there’s any point in writing this, in writing at all? In creating anything to be found as proof of my existence. If only one day I should vanish entirely, why leave anything behind?

“To write, you have to want something to survive you. I don't even have the desire to live…If I could eliminate myself now…I'd be more than happy.”

— The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante

One day, I will vanish, as everyone will eventually. Yet, tomorrow, cars will still speed too loudly past my house at 1 am. Kids in the neighborhood will still go to school. Whoever lives in the house will have to suffer the groaning bathroom pipes when they pump hot water that cools too quickly. Still, the seasons will change. My things will sit packed away in a box somewhere and, because they are merely objects, they will scarcely reveal anything about me, so no one will keep them. People will still reluctantly go to work, and the Earth will continue to turn on its axis. It won't matter that I was once on it and that I no longer am. It's a comforting thought, really, and I tell myself this and share these thoughts with you as a way of grounding myself and getting out of my own head.

The world is big,

yet I am small and insignificant.

The world hasn't ended yet,

but one day I will.

The world has its own problems,

mine are simply lesser ones.

And maybe that's all right.

There’s a part of me that wants to wrap up these words neatly with a sense of optimism, I want to say; go on your way and live, nonetheless, you deserve to exist, you shouldn't want to disappear, you have so much to live for—but that wouldn't be realistic, nor would it be sincere. Just as I haven't found the answer to how one should stop wanting to disappear, I shouldn't write something dishonest to appease you or myself. I'm not saying it's okay to not want to live, or maybe I am. I’ll never know. But I do know that you cannot force your mind to never think that way again, maybe those thoughts will do their own disappearing act someday.

For now, you can only do for yourself what animals do all the time: hibernate, rest, leave the world for just a little while and cease to exist—then come back and try to keep coming back, even if only for a little while.

Maybe you'll leave something of yourself behind. No matter if no one finds it, leave it anyway so you know that it's there.