Is That All There Is?

Pretty much, yeah. Sorry OP. It gets worse. Find stuff that makes you happy, for when you’re NOT surrounded by shit up to your ears and imbeciles.

"Every day I watch the news"

STOP THAT RIGHT AWAY. Give yourself a break for a while.

I feel it word for word, OP.

Lowered expectations have helped me. Along these lines:

"We always ask too much of life, you know. We begin by wanting a whole lifetime of happiness, then we learn that to have even a few stolen years is wonderful luck ... Later we reconcile ourselves to reality and could be satisfied with a single evening ... Then suddenly we've only one evening left, and we discover that even that is a boundless oasis in the desert ... Five minutes' happiness!" - Jean Anouilh

OP if you're a news freak like me, try looking at other sources: BBC.com. CNA.com. Al Jazeera.com. ABC.com.au.

Sorry, OP, but this is it. So break out the booze and have a ball.

OP here. Not trying to bring others down, but I literally feel like I’m drowning. I even gave in and took a Xanax because I was going to lose it. It doesn’t help that my parents are huge Trumpers so I feel completely alone. I’ve tried therapy but I feel like even I’m in better shape than they are, I can’t imagine how many morose patients they must have to reassure daily.

I take care of my 89 yr old mom with dementia and she can’t walk. No other family - except the cat. Money is beyond tight. She is getting “extra kooky.” If I could make a Trump voo doo doll I would. I have gotten into a bad habit _ “is this the last ….?” I just filled out the ballot for the special election - is this the last time I’m going to vote? My mom and cat are old and sick. Is this the last Thanksgiving? Is this the last Christmas? ….. I hear you totally OP. Things are getting dark. Even JB Pritzker can’t reassure me anymore . …… is that all there is? Then let’s keep dancing ……

It doesn’t get better for anybody. Just worse and worse. You’ll continue aging, your body breaks down, your waistline keeps expanding, it’s harder if not impossible to date and maintain relationships and get laid, your friends and loved ones keep dying, you’re more lonely and isolated with every year that passes. And what’s the endgame? Cancer? Nursing home? Dementia? Being tortured in a memory care unit? The future is so bleak OP that someday you’ll look back fondly at 2025, because it’s just further downhill from here. Work. Bills. Pain. Death. That’s life.

This is me too

See the magic mushrooms thread, OP. There's no changing the outside at this point. All we have control of is the inside.

And on top of it all, we've now got this AI thing, where we can even tell fake from reality. AI that knows more than we do.

It used to be, with politics and world events, you could say "this too shall pass" or "been there, done that"....but not now....we are in uncharted territory. We can't look to the past for answers.

Unfortunately R9 is right.

Ask my 103 year old mother.

Complaining about inevitable life realities and being depressed about living in an unending dystopian nightmare are two different things.

Dogs or cats, gardening, cooking, hobbies, yoga, friends.

Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.

OP, it sounds like you are battling some level of depression. My advice - two things

1) Get out into nature, whatever is easily accessible to you, be it a local park or a beach, ideally bush or forest if you can. Being out in nature like this is known to be healing and is a good way to get out of your head

2) Some sort of exercise - and not necessarily the gym either. When I was in a similar funk to what you are in a few years back I took up swimming, best thing I ever done, it definitely helped, both because exercise itself releases stuff that makes you feel better (endorphins?) and because it got me out of the situation I was in at least for a couple of hours. You dont have to be good, you just have to do it. I still swim every day if I can, and I'm still not great. The best exercise is the one you keep doing every day

You could even combine the two and go walking/ hiking in nature, and it doesnt need to be a an epic hike, even 20-30 minutes walk will have benefits - like preventing the expanding waistline R9 refers to - that doesnt have to be an inevitable thing when you get older.

And like R2 says STOP WATCHING THE NEWS. (and especially Al-Jazeera, its a Qatari asset) Go walk in the park instead. Only worry about shit that is directly under your personal control. If you cant fix it dont waste energy worrying about it

I have days like this. It’s happening more often and I really have to battle it. My golden years.