One way to answer your question would be to gently dissuade you from the painful beliefs you have expressed, by demonstrating, through careful logic, that these sad, depressing statements are not even remotely true or predictive of the future but are in fact little linguistic machines of death that may result in depression and suicide if left unchecked.
But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to ask you to trust me on that and see a cognitive therapist. A few sessions of brief cognitive therapy could give you lasting freedom from these habits of thought that are causing you so much misery.
That's my responsible and heartfelt suggestion. I have firsthand experience with the effectiveness of cognitive therapy and highly recommend it.
But what I really want to say to you, as a person, is much simpler:
Stop doing all these things you are doing and sleep.
Sleep. Don't figure out anything or complain about anything or lust for anything or long for anything or create anything or call anyone on the phone and tell them what you've figured out about your fate in the universe. Don't take any stimulants to help you stay up late and figure this out because your main problem is you are tired and all those things will only tire you out more and the last thing you need to do is tire yourself out more because you are already exhausted and need more than anything to just sleep.
Meditate. Don't go to your meditation class in its meditation building with all the meditators going around meditating their asses off in search of God knows what. Just meditate right where you are. When you're bored with meditating, drink some water. Then go to bed. Sleep a long time. Don't argue with anyone. Take a shower. Dry yourself off. Get dressed. Tweeze your brow. Do what you have to do but nothing else. Rest.
Stop wanting things. If you can't stop wanting things then just don't get them. Let yourself want things but don't get them. Discover the great freedom of not having to have the things your mind wants. Discover what you can live without. You can live without just about every stupid thing there is. That's what the big-time meditators figured out.
Don't pay your mind any mind. If your mind won't rest, just rest your body. If your mind can't make your body run around, maybe it will give up and rest. Maybe your mind will lie down alongside your body and the two of them can rest together like a man and his dog.
If you can only rest by going somewhere far away then go somewhere far away. If you can only rest by taking some vacation then take some vacation.
Take some vacation take some vacation take some vacation.
Take some vacation.
It isn't complicated. It could be complicated. But it's not. You're exhausted and you need rest. Save the complicated thoughts for your cognitive therapy sessions.
All you have to do now is rest.
Rest and recuperate.
It might take a few months.
Also, you might have to change your life. I forgot about that part.
But you don't have to change your life right away. Right away all you need to do is rest.
Also: Know that you are loved. That's the other part. You might not be loved by every skinny man under 30 with a tattoo and a Mets cap but that's not what I mean. You are loved. You are part of a great and compassionate universe and you are loved. No matter whom you sleep with, you sleep every night under a canopy of infinite heavens, and by the grace of unseen forces you can often see the stars in these heavens, and are held to the earth and oxygenated by the air and fed by the world of plants and animals and all these miracles -- the miracle of gravity, of quantum physics, of photosynthesis and respiration and cell division, all these laws and processes, all these mysteries only faintly described by math, all these things are forms of love. We are held together by all this -- all of us, dogs and cats and zebras and you and me. We crazy, arrogant creatures full of illusion and rage and self-pity are held by this stuff in an unshakable embrace; we are in it and of it; we belong to it; its substance is our substance; there is no difference between us and a star.
If I were the sun and I did not love humans, I would burn them out so fast. Wouldn't you? So it must be love. There can be no other explanation.
So relax. Everything is fine. Get some rest.
After a while, things will change. [ALL EMPHASES MINE]
I'm amazed by the humility and gratitude that he invokes (#106), and I wished I had rest this when I went through this summer's acutely difficult period. It is, in many ways, the theme of the last 6 months for me: resting, taking life one day at a time, not wanting.
I hope you enjoy it.
-Me