I'm often accused of being too negative, but I sincerely believe that what others are seeing is optimism met with constant disappointment. I think I convinced myself year after year that things would turn the corner and get better, that my life would stop feeling like it was headed toward nothing. But it's been well over a decade and it's still unbearable. As a matter of fact, it seems to be getting worse.

2009: "Once I finish high school, the new opportunities at college will turn my life around".

2011: Mother dies abruptly. "I just need to get off this damn campus and start my true adult life and I'll be able to pursue what I want in life"

2014: Rejected from every medical school I applied to. Taught high school. "If I can just make it through this next application process, I can start working on my career and that'll make me happy"

2017: Almost failing out of medical school. "I've just got to make it through this and once I can start my career, it will fill the void I'm feeling"

2020: "Just gotta make it through 3 more years and then I'll have big boy paychecks and the money/financial security will take the anxiety away and I will be able to feel something"

2022: Turn 30. Am still miserable, unfulfilled, and alone. I spend every spare minute working so I don't have to think about my life. I avoid my family because I feel like they deserve better. I feel like I have missed all of the major adult milestones. Hell, I'm barely functional outside of the office. I dread finishing residency because I won't have anything to work toward anymore.

I feel like I'm done trying. I promised myself that I would stick around until 8/20/32, an arbitrary date I decided on a couple years ago because it gave me some comfort to know that there was going to be an end. But over the last few years, I've been finding it harder and harder to wait. I don't know that I can tolerate another decade.

I'm a massive hypocrite. As a physician, I talk to people on a daily basis about suicide and that there are alternatives and things that we can try to help them out. But I also can't shake the feeling that I'm less important than literally every other person on the planet. I don't matter and while my loss would make a slight rattle, people will forget. People will forget and I will never cross their minds again. I cease to exist. Maybe I belong in the ether. I am a waste of space and resources.

I'm ranting, I guess. But I don't think I want to be here anymore.