I try so hard everyday to understand it. Why do I live? What do I live for? Why do I feel so empty, so sad, so unhappy? I feel my heart twisting into knots gorging deeper and deeper into a infinite pit I cannot seem to get rid of or take my mind off of. 

 I have felt like this for so long and I am so tired and worn out. To understand why please listen and understand what I did and what I think, not feel, I am too lost to do. 

As a child I was diagnosed with ADHD which is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A lot of people have it around the world and I share it’s affecting aspects with many people around the world as the struggling it creates can be very hard to deal with. However It also can have gifts and the aspects of the disorder can have wonderful effects on peoples lives (mine included). Since I was 10 years old my parents treated me differently. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that made me feel unwanted and wrong as a child. 

The biggest difference was when I moved to Singapore in South-East Asia. People started to make fun of me and I soon realised that I felt horrible everyday of my early life. I tried to make friends in ways that annoyed and distanced everyone further. Eventually I was an outcast. People hated me. There were at least 3 schools I attended before my parents decided to do something about me. 

I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and lonely, very very lonely. I had no friends, no relationship with anyone, and I felt utterly alone in the world full of people who weren’t alone. Every time a new person came into one of the schools I was desperate and that made it so much worse. I broke every chance given because I simply couldn’t socialise and participate like everyone else. It was hopeless. 

Along the way I got addicted to computers. I felt like I could hide my identity and talk to people without messing it up. It got really bad. I would skip any class I could at school. I would steal money and credit cards from my parents to play and buy games, keeping in mind I was only 13 years old. 

My parents had enough. They were frightened by my unstoppable craving for technology and online gaming and I was aggressive and horrible to them when they banned it from the house. I felt alone again and again and without my fix of feeling better online I started to lose it psychologically. I had become numb to emotion and I couldn’t see what the big deal was. This was the start of something I regret my whole life so far. Something I hate more than feeling alone and addicted everyday. 

My parents sent me off to Utah. I began a wilderness therapy program which was harsh and real for a child, like me, who had been living in a sheltered home, spoiled and privileged beyond belief. I had rations. Only enough for a week and I hiked. I hiked miles and miles with kids and teens just like me, who had no idea what the world was when they were inside of their little protective ‘bubble’ that we had taken for granted. 

I was shattered everyday, then glued back together. Over and over again I was broken and repaired to fit a world that I had never truly existed in. I collapsed in exhaustion some days but knowing there could be no going back and stopping for breaks. Eventually, after 6 months of hiking with our hugely-heavy packs I finished the first stage of understanding. 

I realised my mistakes. I found myself dying, not because of the 6 month trip of suffering, but because I didn’t give a crap about my own life. I realised I was destroying my own life and it shook me. This came later however. First came the start of the second stage beyond realisation. 

Change. It’s so damn hard to do properly. I was a person of pure habit and instinct. I hated change as a animal hated being hunted and shot down slowly bleeding out. My heart wasn’t in the right place though. Only my mind was. I thought I could change but I was wrong, so incredibly, stupidly, unforgivably wrong. This cost me everything. 

I went to live in a boys home next in a small town in Idaho, United States. I stayed there for a year and a half but my heart just wasn’t in it. One night I was left out in the cold in winter with a coat and no dinner. It showed me the harsh truth of life and I felt utterly alone again with nothing but muffled laughter inside the house and complete sadness that weighed down on my chest. I gave myself something that night I hadn’t had since the very beginning of this journey… tears. 

I realised I hadn’t really experience any emotion in all of 5 years in my life. I never laughed truly. I never let myself cry. For all my faults and terrible actions if I could go back to that moment in time now I would. 4 years later, now in the present, I still haven’t shed tears once since that day when I was 14. I feel almost nothing on a daily basis but sadness. 

I feel that the sadness is my life’s primary feeling and there are highs that last mere hours before the sad feeling comes back. I feel sadness in shallow depths and it neither goes away or rises. I cannot cry. No matter how long I feel horrible, terrible, and utterly alone and hopeless I cannot shed tears. I have actually tried to force myself just to feel a emotion clearly as a person but I cannot feel any more than I did during that night in Idaho where I cried with sorrow the last time in my life. 

I have become so desolate with emotions that even now when I try to socialise I am no longer as awkward but I feel nothing. I feel connectionless to all people as people start to like me and socialise I feel nothing but a lack of feeling feelings themselves. I would give everything I have to change this. I try to feel but I realise I can only think. I have thoughts, beautiful wondrous thoughts of change but I feel nothing. I want you to, dear reader, to understand why I have written this. 

I will continue to gain help from anyone I can to fix my numb feelings but I want to tell you to savour all emotions. No matter how small, big, happy, or horribly sad, be thankful for a world you can feel and live in. 

This is why we live. I have recently begun a process to help me with this. I feel more each day and I am thankful for everything I have. I am a person who was a imbecile, a fool, a complete brat, and a lonely addict but I will try to change because my greatest wish is to live truly and fully again with a full heart in a reality that is true for me and everyone in this world.