🚧 This is mostly a description of my current mental state, and some of it may feel heavy or depressive. If reading it makes you uncomfortable in any way, please feel free to close the page at any time. And if you can, reach out to someone you trust or consider speaking with a mental health professional.

This year marks my twentieth year in the world.

For some reason, twenty feels like one of those ages people treat as a major threshold. I’m not even sure what it is supposed to mean exactly, but when parents say things like, “You’re almost twenty, why are you still like this,” it becomes hard not to believe that the number is supposed to represent some kind of maturity.

The problem is that I don’t feel ready for it at all. At least, not from where I’m standing. The closest comparison I can think of is being called home for dinner right in the middle of playing with your friends. That interruption, that sense of not being done yet, feels a lot like where I am now.

More than once, I’ve imagined becoming a better version of myself—learning useful skills, exercising, making real progress in different areas. But I never really got there. I’ve always seemed to lack the drive, and I don’t fully understand why. Over the past year, that problem has felt even worse. There was a year-end summary I never finished, and even this piece is being written with something close to self-forcing. I don’t even know when people will end up seeing it.

It’s not just the lack of progress. My mindset itself seems to have shifted in ways I didn’t notice at first. The version of me that used to feel optimistic, the one who could look ahead and genuinely long for the future, seems to have disappeared. Now when I think about what’s ahead, most of the time it turns into anxiety. Or I use the future as a way to soothe myself with vague lines like “things will get better.”

Lately I also keep wishing I could go back. The present looks so bad from here that the past starts to feel comforting, even if only in imagination. But thinking about going back changes nothing, and I don’t seem to have much strength left for changing things in the present either.

I saw this line before bed under a post from @Energy Refill Station and wanted to save it here. I wasn’t sure which Minecraft animation it came from, so I asked around, and apparently it was from the Annoying Villagers series that I’ve never gotten around to watching. I’m repeating the note here just in case publishing causes any issues—I still don’t know how well elog handles image captions.

I don’t know enough about other people’s lives to say whether people my age feel like this too. I also feel awkward asking. Everyone else seems busy with their own lives.

Another thing that happens often is that old embarrassing or painful memories suddenly crash into my mind. It doesn’t feel like I consciously bring them up. They just barge in and add another layer of discomfort to the day. Maybe that’s exactly why I can’t stop them. Once, when I was trying to fall asleep and my thoughts were already wandering, I suddenly remembered something deeply embarrassing I had done before, and of course that made it even harder to sleep. Sometimes it happens because of something I see. I might be scrolling through videos and come across software used on classroom whiteboards—the kind shown on integrated teaching screens—and then immediately remember getting scolded in high school after messing around with one and causing a problem. It’s almost funny, except it isn’t, because even writing this line makes me think of it again and start turning it over in my head.

Looking back, I’m sure there have been happy moments over the years. But strangely, I can’t really think of any memory so bright that recalling it could make my whole day better. Most of the time I’m just relying on tiny bits of happiness to regulate my mood.

I once argued with my parents and said that I often feel uneasy and unhappy. Their response was basically: you spend all day buried in your phone, smiling at it like an idiot, and you don’t look unhappy at all. Sometimes I wonder whether I would be better off without phones and computers. I still don’t have a clear answer. But from where I am now, even with all the side effects, having something like that to occupy my mind is probably better than letting my thoughts spiral unchecked.

Compared with before, I’ve become more forgetful, especially since being at home less, and I deal with insomnia more often too. Honestly, I worry about what happens if this keeps going. Sometimes I think about the possibility of dying, but the truth is I’m still afraid of my own death. Maybe only after some strange imagined resolution finally comes true would I be able to face it calmly.

A new day started, and today I watched Optimistic Nihilism, which I’m pretty sure I had already watched once before. But my memory is bad enough now that I had forgotten most of it—when I searched for it, I even misspelled the title. There were some ideas in it that I do genuinely agree with, at least in part. But agreement is about as far as it goes.

If I come back to myself, what I find is mostly confusion. I have almost no long-term plan for my own development. The person who once loved imagining the future has somehow become someone who fears change and clings to routine. It’s been a long time since I read novels that seriously imagine the future. I bought a stack of Science Fiction World magazines before, and quite a few of them are still sitting untouched in a corner collecting dust. In fact, aside from textbooks, I haven’t calmly finished a book in a very long time. Not even an ebook. That feels a little sad to admit.

I suppose some part of me must still want change. Otherwise all those good imagined versions of life would never have existed in my head at all. But wanting and acting are different things, and motivation still feels absent. In the environment I’m in, expecting encouragement from outside doesn’t feel realistic. And I don’t really have the courage either.

At some point I developed the habit of constantly breaking my concentration to check something else. I’ll barely have written anything before clicking the top right corner to see how many words I’ve managed so far. For the record, I wrote this in Notion.

I actually do like writing long pieces. Most of them are probably full of nonsense, but I like them anyway. Since starting university, though, my mental state hasn’t been good, and I haven’t had much motivation to write.

I also keep thinking that I’ve rarely made decisions with myself in mind. Maybe I absorbed that pattern from the messages I grew up with. But it doesn’t feel like all that self-denial brought much care back to me in return. Or maybe I still wasn’t good enough, and all I did was leave more scars on myself.

At one point I asked the face peeking around in the bottom right corner—meaning Notion AI—something like, “If things keep going like this, do you think I can survive in the long term?” It replied:

I was also thinking just now that maybe I really should try counseling. Getting an answer, any answer, feels better than staying suspended in uncertainty. And if all of this really does end up costing me friends, school, or whatever else, that too would at least be a result. I’ve imagined endings like that countless times already.

I’m oddly grateful that I haven’t done the kinds of irrational things some people do in moments like this. Mostly because cutting my arm with a blade sounds unbearably painful, and there’s the possibility of permanent injury too. To be honest, a lot of those behaviors sound painful. Maybe reason is still barely winning.

This is probably where I should stop. There’s only so much venting a person can do in one sitting. I had considered writing some kind of life advice, the usual “don’t do this, don’t do that” type of thing, but it doesn’t seem necessary. People’s situations are different. The limits they face are different, and so are the choices available to them.

If there’s any advice I can give, it’s only four words:

I hope you’re happy.

Though I should add one more thing: happiness should still rest on something decent. Building your happiness on harm to other people, or on damage to shared public spaces, still doesn’t seem right to me.

I’m sorry I can’t write the kind of long, hopeful essay I once saw a friend write at almost the exact same age. Maybe I could have written something like that in the past. Even now, if I really forced it, I could probably fake that tone. But I think saying things plainly is better. Maybe it helps a little.

That’s all, then. Even without rereading this, I already know the logic is messy and scattered. That probably suits my mental state well enough. Every day feels busy, but half the time I don’t even know what I’m doing. Short-term dopamine can only carry a person so far. If I can feel okay for a while, then I’ll take that while.

By the time this is published, it should be my birthday.

So I’ll just say it simply: happy birthday to me.

I hope this next year lets me keep going. For now, just keep going.

Good night.

2025.02.10