I’m sorry

I hate myself. I don’t think it’s to a normal amount. I’ve been around plenty of people with low self-esteem, who think they’re unattractive or that nobody wants to hang out with them. But I feel nothing but contempt and vitriol toward myself. I have a constant stream of intrusive thoughts all day, every day, overlapping and echoing in a hostile cacophony - “Useless fuckup”, “fucking pathetic” “stupid” “waste of fucking space”, “embarrassment”, “failure”, “selfish egotistical fuck”, “you deserve this”, “you deserve me”, “I want you to b l e e d”, “stupid fuck”, “stupid fuck” - over and over, my own voice spat at me with venom and disdain. It’s not even rage. I don’t feel violent, I’m not going to hurt myself physically, I don’t want to break anything. I can’t even bring myself to scream in private. The hate I feel is not a hot and flashing rage. It is of cold, muted acceptance. ‘The sun is bright. Ice is cold. You are a failure and a worthless idiot and the most kind thing you can do for others is to keep. your mouth. Shut.’ I can not remember the last time I genuinely believed a kind word towards myself. I forgot something at the store today and.. I’ve had this fantasy I escape to when I feel I’ve fucked up. I am standing above myself. The room is cold and white and silent. I don’t believe I can go into detail here as it would involve gore, but I use my hands. I start with my face. Then the rest. Until I and the white tile beneath are stained red and the other me is but a pile of fragmented meat and bone. It feels so vivid. I will lose track of time and my wife will snap me back to reality and ask what I was thinking about that was making me smile. I have no intent of actually hurting myself, so my eyes feel heavy with shame and I do not tell her the truth.

I know this is likely some result of trauma, but I don’t HAVE any. I have a career in social work. I’ve seen real trauma and will not make a mockery of it by acting as though I’ve suffered. My parents were strict and suffocating but they loved me. My wife loves me. My pets love me. I have no valid reason to be like this. I don’t know why I am so angry with myself that my eye and lip twitch and my head jerks repeatedly to the side. I went to therapy as a teenager for similar thoughts. I would scream at the mirror and slam my head into the wall and seize up as my muscles spasmed and I struggled to breathe as my thoughts dissected me. I got better. They grew quieter. It’s been over a decade and now they are back. As though a hand is gripping me by the throat and a soundless voice snarls poison into my ear. It is my hand and my voice, and I feel righteous in my condemnation. He deserves it. He has not earned grace. My life is only as valuable as the amount to which I help others. And I have not done nearly enough. I am lazy and arrogant and foolish. I know logically I am no better nor worse than any other, but what I know and what I feel are in conflict, and knowledge is losing. Badly. This entire post is a pathetic display of masturbatory self-pity, and I should be disgusted with having written it. Fucking useless tool grasping desperately for attention. I am sorry. I really don’t like myself, and it’s affecting my job, my intimacy with my wife, I think it’s affecting my health. I’m tired. I am so very tired all the time. And my thoughts won’t leave me alone. I can’t turn them off. I can’t turn them off I’m so sorry