The Desire to Simply Not Exist
I think that a rarely discussed but commonly felt desire is to simply not exist. This should, of course, be distinguished from its far more violent and permanent cousin, an act that admittedly still holds tightly to this longing for nothingness. However, the former sensation is far more vague, to not have to experience this anymore, to never have been born, to go to sleep forever.
I feel it when I’m embarrassed, ashamed, or at parties with strangers/semi-friends, social rejection, isolation. Sometimes at its heaviest, it springs forth from the paranoid pondering of solitary thought: Would I want to live on a dying earth? Am I a burden to others? Am I enough?
And sometimes I simply find myself condemned within a mind of misery, within me emerges a deep longing to not be there and sometimes to not be anywhere. In these moments, the hypothetical comfort of losing all awareness and sensation can be a little too inviting, which is quite strange in a sense.
In the presence of immense suffering and discomfort, we find this capacity to fetishize oblivion. Fetish is, I think, an appropriate word here as it denotes the obsessive and frantic pursuit of a fantasy that will likely fail to live up to its hype. However, the pursuit itself, fetishization is already of such an immense degree that this promise of dissatisfaction is soon forgotten, and so the struggle continues. But with this unique pursuit towards nothingness, we reach a radical attempt at this fantasy of non-being.
If we succeed, we will never experience it fully and that's kind of the point.
We won't be satisfied.
We simply won't be anything.
But the escape hatch is always there. All that's needed are a few carefully drawn out plans and more often than not some substance of pacification. The idea that one could step out, the fetishized alternative, to finally exit, lingers at every corner of self-hatred and boredom and despair, and fatigue.
I suppose it's this feeling that we have some autonomy despite it all. We have a say in the matter. But I'm always several steps behind from the practical planning process, and the moment of longing rarely lasts.
It makes little sense, one moment of freedom for an eternity of nothing of permanent silence. Is this a worthy sacrifice?