I just want to be happy while I exist

I just turned 18 a few months ago. I didn’t even think I’d make it that far. I deal with a debilitating mental illness and I was denied any treatment for it my entire childhood.I now have access to medication, but I can’t afford it. I was supposed to go completely blind a few years ago,I haven’t, but I just lost vision in one of my eyes. There was a chance for me to have some recovery, but I couldn’t afford that treatment either, and now it’s too late. I already rely on ASL to communicate. If I go blind I will be completely alone and helpless. Already I have faced so much constant tragedy, loss, and hardship within the last few months alone and am barely coming to terms with traumas from things long before. I had a normal childhood and teenage years robbed from me in place of a hollow semblance of one as empty as I feel now. After the summer is everything I’ve ever wanted. Full ride to the school of my dreams. Im double majoring in two med fields. It is an opportunity I couldn’t have dreamed of. I always wanted to change the world with an invention that could save lives. I would have a meaningful impact on the world Because with my conditions and illnesses, people like me, on average I may only have 20 years left if I am lucky. It’s like everything has a ticking clock of how much I have left. I may have lived the majority of my life already, and what has it been? I do not remember a time when I was happy, even when I was a child. I have never had meaningful relationships of any nature. I will die as meaninglessly as I lived because of some stupid thing I was born with. I am living in a constant paranoia of if I will even make it through the week and I am trying so hard to hold on to any hope but it’s getting really hard to do and I don’t know if I can anymore. Just a few more months I will say, but what if my other eye goes. It can happen at any time. I woke up and my first no longer functioned as quickly as that. Any time and it will all be over. I already can’t drive because of it with that I will never be able to accomplish my dreams. I can’t be a doctor if I cannot see or talk or hear words correctly. I am so young this is not supposed to happen until you are old and have lived a happy and full life. It will be a fate like death or worse trapped in a body that cannot do anything anymore. There is nothing I can do. I doubt I will ever get to accomplish my goals and anything I get to do before I am gone in one way or another. I have tried to find hope in religion (left hand path luciferianism, massive trauma w/ mainstream ESPECIALLY Christianity) and I really like and feel comfortable with the one I was drawn to, but occultism is so complicated and overwhelming for a constantly mentally exhausted person and requires time that I may simply not have. TLDR I may not have much time left due to medical issues with nothing science can do to help. and I am so consumed by hopelessness and despair. What is there to do in my life other than empty frivolity masquerading as any life at all? It’s 1 am. Chances are I will wake up tomorrow, think this is stupid and I was just in a mood and delete it. I will sit at my computer trying to escape reality because what else can I do. And that’s the problem. What is there to do. I am doomed by forces outside of my control and nothing and nobody can help me. There is nothing to heal what will one day take my life with our current systems in place. Even if I ranted my miserable life to a gofundme no amount of money will extend my body that rots around me since the day I was born. Maybe I could afford to ease my mental problems, or once my second eye goes I could have some recovery with that one, but what is it going to do except only slight betterments that don’t matter in the end. And the question to pose to strangers to me as much as I am to you simply going about your days on the Internet, what would one suggest for anything as a bandaid on the wound of my existence? I don’t care how stupid I just. Anything at this point if everything else I want from life is unattainable I want to be somewhat happy while I can. Every moment that I have left is important and I’m just wasting them in self pity and hopelessness I wish I could just fight god

So sorry for the long wait - be with you tomorrow (unless someone else beats me to it)!

Hey Canarybones (-haha!) - sorry again for the wait... (Am not reading ahead, just reacting and responding as I go) "I just turned 18 a few months ago." Happy Buffday! "I didn’t even think I’d make it that far." Woah! "I deal with a debilitating mental illness and I was denied any treatment for it my entire childhood." Which is? (Remember you're totally anonymous on here.) "I now have access to medication, but I can’t afford it." Which country are you from? "I was supposed to go completely blind a few years ago,I haven’t, but I just lost vision in one of my eyes. There was a chance for me to have some recovery, but I couldn’t afford that treatment either, and now it’s too late. I already rely on ASL to communicate. If I go blind I will be completely alone and helpless." Pardon? Where were/are your parents and relatives? "Already I have faced so much constant tragedy, loss, and hardship within the last few months alone and am barely coming to terms with traumas from things long before. I had a normal childhood and teenage years robbed from me in place of a hollow semblance of one as empty as I feel now." Can you expand on this and go into detail where relevant? "After the summer is everything I’ve ever wanted. Full ride to the school of my dreams. Im double majoring in two med fields." I say! Which are they? "It is an opportunity I couldn’t have dreamed of. I always wanted to change the world with an invention that could save lives. I would have a meaningful impact on the world" What about an invention that can save sight? "Because with my conditions and illnesses, people like me, on average I may only have 20 years left if I am lucky. It’s like everything has a ticking clock of how much I have left." Again, I need to know what they are. "I may have lived the majority of my life already, and what has it been?" Leading up to this point, probably. In anything, preparation is everything. "I do not remember a time when I was happy, even when I was a child." What - REALLY? Not even one? Not even moments? "I have never had meaningful relationships of any nature." Why not? Too busy getting on with studying to make a change to the world? "I will die as meaninglessly as I lived because of some stupid thing I was born with. I am living in a constant paranoia of if I will even make it through the week and I am trying so hard to hold on to any hope but it’s getting really hard to do and I don’t know if I can anymore. " REALLY intrigued to now your illness/condition now! When did you first get the idea you wanted to be a doctor - and a groundbreaking one (if the two didn't occur together, in-order)? IOW, was it: I want to be a groundbreaking doctor - or - I want to be a doctor....and a groundbreaking one? You really need to have a damn good, rant and vent. Feel free to do so here (just remember to keep it to within-reason and asterisk all expletives, l*ke th*s). Make it as lengthy and stream-of-consciousness as you like (then insert asterisks before Sending). "Just a few more months I will say, but what if my other eye goes. It can happen at any time. I woke up and my first no longer functioned as quickly as that. Any time and it will all be over. I already can’t drive because of it with that I will never be able to accomplish my dreams. I can’t be a doctor if I cannot see or talk or hear words correctly." Not true, that last sentance. Plus, what's your speech and hearing got to do with it? "I am so young this is not supposed to happen until you are old and have lived a happy and full life." Sometimes it is. We can't ALL be regular cogs in the great machine or it'd grind to a screeching halt. "It will be a fate like death or worse trapped in a body that cannot do anything anymore." I think it'd do you good to visit some sight-impairment forums so that you can hear loads 'veterans' beg to differ (now that they're well over the shock and transition). "There is nothing I can do." Not just yet, no. You're still getting your head around it. "I doubt I will ever get to accomplish my goals and anything I get to do before I am gone in one way or another. I have tried to find hope in religion (left hand path luciferianism, massive trauma w/ mainstream ESPECIALLY Christianity) and I really like and feel comfortable with the one I was drawn to, but occultism is so complicated and overwhelming for a constantly mentally exhausted person and requires time that I may simply not have." Don't punish religion for the sins committed against it by selfish, large-scale manipulators. Abusers abuse everything, especially religion. They're the 'few that spoil it for the rest'. Try Fate instead. That's the 'hand' that brings in totally unexpected game-changers. Whom/what it belongs to is above our human intellect, anyway (no doubt for a vital reason). "TLDR" Why have you put Too Long, Don't Read? "I may not have much time left due to medical issues with nothing science can do to help. and I am so consumed by hopelessness and despair. What is there to do in my life other than empty frivolity masquerading as any life at all?" Well, you definitely need a project. So why not start researching REALLY deeply into your own condition? What that famous Chinese saying? "For every person who says it can't be done, there's another already doing it'...something like that. And 'where there's a Will, there's a way' (which in mine and too many others' experience, is true.) "It’s 1 am. Chances are I will wake up tomorrow, think this is stupid and I was just in a mood and delete it." ...Not. "I will sit at my computer trying to escape reality because what else can I do." As above - research. Get your name in the medical history books. After all - you have the motivation as well as your own, personal, free-of-charge guinnea-pig: you. (*wiggles eyebrows challengingly*) "And that’s the problem. What is there to do. I am doomed by forces outside of my control and nothing and nobody can help me. There is nothing to heal what will one day take my life with our current systems in place." Nothing so far. "Even if I ranted my miserable life to a gofundme no amount of money will extend my body that rots around me since the day I was born. Maybe I could afford to ease my mental problems, or once my second eye goes I could have some recovery with that one, but what is it going to do except only slight betterments that don’t matter in the end." GoFundMe for the research costs and your 'job income' meanwhile - I would? And include in your research prep., reading up on world groundbreakers and innovators, many, previously, just normal, everyday people, whom did things that 'just couldn't be done!'. That'll inspire you - oh, BOY will it! Ever watched the true-story film starring Susan Sarandon, called, "Lorenzo's Oil"? DO. "And the question to pose to strangers to me as much as I am to you simply going about your days on the Internet, what would one suggest for anything as a bandaid on the wound of my existence? I don’t care how stupid I just. Anything at this point if everything else I want from life is unattainable I want to be somewhat happy while I can. Every moment that I have left is important and I’m just wasting them in self pity and hopelessness" Well... you do need to pity yourself, first, in actual fact. Once those 'toxins' are out of the way, you'll feel much better and likely raring to go. "I wish I could just fight god" What - for picking you?

PS: FOR *AFTER* YOU'VE VENTED: You might find this helpful. I'd rather you vent FIRST to clear your mental decks of any needless clutter, and THEN read, please. The only reason I'm pasting it in preemtively is in-case I get waylaid without-warning in RL again, when you've already had to wait: "Nature and evolution Humans are not designed to be happy, or even content. Instead, we are designed primarily to survive and reproduce, like every other creature in the natural world. A state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival. The fact that evolution has prioritised the development of a big frontal lobe in our brain (which gives us excellent executive and analytical abilities) over a natural ability to be happy, tells us a lot about nature’s priorities. Different geographical locations and circuits in the brain are each associated with certain neurological and intellectual functions, but happiness, being a mere construct with no neurological basis, cannot be found in the brain tissue. In fact, experts in this field argue that nature’s failure to weed out depression in the evolutionary process (despite the obvious disadvantages in terms of survival and reproduction) is due precisely to the fact that depression as an adaptation plays a useful role in times of adversity, by helping the depressed individual disengage from risky and hopeless situations in which he or she cannot win. Depressive ruminations can also have a problem solving function during difficult times. Morality The current global happiness industry has some of its roots in Christian morality codes, many of which will tell us that there is a moral reason for any unhappiness we may experience. This, they will often say, is due to our own moral shortcomings, selfishness and materialism. They preach a state of virtuous psychological balance through renunciation, detachment and holding back desire. In fact, these strategies merely try to find a remedy for our innate inability to enjoy life consistently, so we should take comfort in the knowledge that unhappiness is not really our fault. It is the fault of our natural design. It is in our blueprint. Advocates of a morally correct path to happiness also disapprove of taking shortcuts to pleasure with the help of psychotropic drugs. George Bernard Shaw said: “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” Well-being apparently needs to be earned, which proves that it is not a natural state. The inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World live perfectly happy lives with the help of “soma”, the drug that keeps them docile but content. In his novel, Huxley implies that a free human being must inevitably be tormented by difficult emotions. Given the choice between emotional torment and content placidity, I suspect many would prefer the latter. But “soma” doesn’t exist, so the problem isn’t that accessing reliable and consistent satisfaction by chemical means is illicit; rather that it’s impossible. Chemicals alter the mind (which can be a good thing sometimes), but since happiness is not related to a particular functional brain pattern, we cannot replicate it chemically. Happy and unhappy Our emotions are mixed and impure, messy, tangled and at times contradictory, like everything else in our lives. Research has shown that positive and negative emotions and affects can coexist in the brain relatively independently of each other. This model shows that the right hemisphere processes negative emotions preferentially, whereas positive emotions are dealt with by the left-sided brain. It’s worth remembering, then, that we are not designed to be consistently happy. Instead, we are designed to survive and reproduce. These are difficult tasks, so we are meant to struggle and strive, seek gratification and safety, fight off threats and avoid pain. The model of competing emotions offered by coexisting pleasure and pain fits our reality much better than the unachievable bliss that the happiness industry is trying to sell us. In fact, pretending that any degree of pain is abnormal or pathological will only foster feelings of inadequacy and frustration. Postulating that there is no such thing as happiness may appear to be a purely negative message, but the silver lining, the consolation, is the knowledge that dissatisfaction is not a personal failure. If you are unhappy at times, this is not a shortcoming that demands urgent repair, as the happiness gurus would have it. Far from it. This fluctuation is, in fact, what makes you human." _______________________ PPS: I've NEVER expected to be happy, and I'm the most contented and positive person I know. Go figure! I already have and it's this: Your mind needs intellectual challenges, especially that suit its capacity but stretches it bigger each time. Using your brain (being engrossed and fascinated) is what creates the most mental satisfaction - HENCE WHY, lab rats would always rather die of starvation through pressing the button that makes the pretty lights flash, etc., than the one that delivers food. Me, I'm into everything! You're where you're supposed to be - trust me on that. Where YOU are supposed to be. And You are the only You that has ever or will ever exist...think about that. The frustrating bit is that only later down the line can you see - using good ol- Hindsight - WHY...what it was all for. ALL the things I felt cursed or doomed by, are now the things I raise a very relieved and joyous glass to. The key to an engaging, satisfying, human life is...(drum-roll)... nosiness. Haha, but seriously.

Oops - forgot the link! Naughty Chair pour moi. https://theconversation.com/humans-arent-designed-to-be-happy-so-stop-trying-119262