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. But 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 or ashamed. House-parties with strangers. 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 and anguish, with no apparent point of origin to these insufferable feelings. 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 an appropriate word here as it denotes the obsessive and frantic pursuit of a…