I’m turning thirty in a few weeks and I can’t stop thinking about the inherent cruelty of being in this situation. I went to a funeral a few months ago and I was just sick the whole afternoon with the guilt and horror of being alive when this young dad with two teenage sons who had so many people come out to his service was gone. I’ve seen people taken by cancer or in horrible accidents or random acts of violence and I can’t comprehend how anybody could ever believe in God if those people are gone and I’m still here.

I’m morbidly obese, and before you go “just lose weight”— have you ever met a good fat person? It is inherently narcissistic and cruel to be a fat person and that level of greed and filth can’t be undone with a bit of calisthenics. The fact that I’m fat is proof that there’s something inherently evil about me. 

I can’t drive. I have a deadend job that I’ve been stuck in for six years. I’m over a hundred thousand dollars in debt because I’m a greedy, narcissistic monster. I’m trying to get a second degree but I’m the oldest person in the room and I feel like a huge failure sitting in a room with these fucking 19yos whose parents are paying for their college and arguing about cancel culture. I have to run back and forth between campus and work multiple times a day and I’m just exhausted and sore all the time but I try to remind myself that I deserve this, that this is my punishment for being a lazy piece of shit in my first degree but it’s not helping.

The loneliness is what hurts the worst though. I’ve never been a part of my family and I’m held to impossibly high standards. My siblings have literally both been coke addicts, one is dating a sex offender and the other has never had a job and they get so much grace and leeway that I will never get. My parents taught them how to drive and made sure they have always had cars, I have to figure it out on my own. I took driver’s ed a few years ago and spent all twelve hours in the car with the instructor interrogating me about why I didn’t have my license yet and why I didn’t have anybody to drive with me outside of class and I obviously couldn’t be like because I don’t fucking have people who care about me. 

I have a small handful of friends but I know they have an expiration date. My so-called best friend has spent years telling me that being unlovable and ugly and single is okay because friends are more important anyway but now she tells me, every single time we hang out, that there is nothing for her in our city so she has to move to another country to be with her girlfriend of a few months. 

I can’t see a reason to stay alive. I know I’m unhirable and can’t get a better job; my city only cares about whether or not a person has a car and when I look at the recent hires at my job, I realize that I’m only here because the bar is impossibly low. My coworkers can’t turn on their own computers, and they look down on me. 

I don’t know what to do. The thought of spending the rest of my life like this gives me literal panic attacks but I can’t see any other possibility. Do I have any chance?