I feel the same way because I generally regard my high school years as the best time of my life; where I was friends with academically like-minded and I would pass days carefree hanging out with friends and studying together.

The real world wasn't so simple because I lacked many soft skills. Now as a NEET of two years in mostly solitude, I am finding it an uphill battle to find my place in society.

Thank you for sharing, I hope you find your way to live if that is what you want.

>>12263

I know it's kind of an internet cliche to say this, but... are you me? I seriously could have written those exact words myself (and accompanied by a still from one of my favorite movies, no less).

I've spent the better part of the last 4 years sabotaging my own life. Deep down, I don't want to grow or change or live. I'm terrified of the future and growing old. I'm strongly drawn to the "ill girl" archetype that's so popular in Japanese media; that perfect embodiment of unchanging purity, unrealized potential, stories that end before they ever really began.

So I started to behave as if I never had a future. Stopped eating, dropped out of school, forgot about pursuing a career or a home or a family. I used to be a pretty competent pianist; I haven't bothered practicing in a long time. I used to be a voracious reader; now I just stare at my computer screen all day, blankly, maybe glancing at YouTube now and then or watching some anime. I've actively ruined my own life, and all because I've lost track of what was beautiful to me.

There's a German word, Sehnsucht; roughly, it means something like "longing," but with the connotation that the desired object is something mysterious and uncannily familiar and beautiful. It's unmistakably bittersweet, a warm sadness or tearful gladness that one has caught a glimpse of what is indescribably precious- your original Home, or the voice of a childhood friend, or a snowy landscape that you know you've gazed on before but just can't put your finger on it. And the rest of the world becomes so dull and lifeless, and you can't move forward and you can barely function, because nothing "out there" will satisfy your need for what seems irretrievably lost.

So I'm still alive, and I'm still looking for answers, and I'm doing my best to not end my life before I figure this thing out. I might have to work full-time soon; the thought makes me sick to my stomach. My deepest, darkest, most selfish wish is to become deathly ill and waste away in a drug-induced haze. As it stands, I'm going to have to cope with the fact that I'm a healthy young man with a lot of time ahead of me.

Sorry for the novel. Your post resonated with me a lot. Thank you.

>>12268
Almost just like you accept I never had any desires for a future. I never wanted to change deep down either in the last 4 years of life so I made that happen indirectly over a long winding course of conflict with everyone around me and self destruction. There's nothing for me in the future in any way besides a little new entertainment and that alone won't keep you happy. I feel a bittersweet comfort in my self inflicted pain I've done over the years, it's like pain to keep away other pain. I will tell you though that almost all the answers you seek in life are inside you. But I will also tell you that while truly unlocking and understanding yourself my set you free to an extent, it still won't save you from the terrible fate you set yourself up for. This is just the way our lives were meant to be though. Deep down this battle for your youth you can't win and this pain is what you wanted. It's a good fight but you can't win. There's no turning back now so don't try, continue till you die. Working is the least of your worries, you won't get beyond a bottom level job anyways so at least it may be easy. The pain that is coming to us in the future is more ugly and all around terrible than anything we experienced yet.

>>12268
Thanks to you.

I know it's bleak, but sometimes it's the only thing that seems able to keep me on my own feet: to remember that this endless melancholy and shame and longing for either sense or death (just to end the nonsense already), are actually life as well; that this is a way of moving as well.

I naturally drifted to NEETdom. I have an affinity for it; it is what I am for. High school wasn't particularly nice and I already displayed NEET tendencies back then.

Additionally, my housing and expenses are secured for the foreseeable future, so life's okay.

>>12263

My sentiments exactly. It's amazing that you were able to so clearly articulate what I feel.

Tonight I was at my house's yard, feeling the cold winter wind as I watched at a yellowish moon. I thought that, actual problems, tragedies and all, I've lived a really wonderful life because I've always had the chance to pursue the things I wanted (including becoming a sut-in otaku), even if it always somehow leaded me into deceive and faillure. And this is why I now just normally long for my life to end soon enough, before unbereable misery of any sort comes to finally get me, and as I can't find seemingly nothing else to pursue anymore.

But, of course, that something like apathy, powerlessness or emotional drain lasts for long does NOT logically imply that it'll always be that way. So you could say that it is optimism and hope what keeps me alive, althought not as some belief that things must get better sometime, but as following the sole possible conviction in life that we simply never know what may happen next; that, just like none of the fathers of science fiction could predict the emergence of such material as plastic, we cannot really predict what groundbreaking changes lay ahead of a curve that we can neither watch yet.

The future (or my future) might look pitch dark, yes. But it is the future and, for good or bad, it resists to bend to our expectations.

So much passion in these posts for something that so saddening.....think what would be done if that passion went a different way. I'm not young & I still don't know what to do with my life......joined the military to get 'started'....found a few choices which led me in one direction....started to see places that made me want to see more.....didn't finish school as I left to help with money as my parents were getting divorced.....that didn't happen so I kept working. Went to Nepal, India, Japan, UK, US, Anatrctica, South Pacific...saw & did some shit, & I can honestly say that I got EVERYTHING I wanted but it wasn't waht I needed. But I got to do the things I felt were real just then & I 'scratched that itch'. Now I'm living on the other side of the world from where I started, & working on the other side from where I live. Life is out there & it was a pain in the butt, but I still don't know what to do with the rest of it & that scares me. Best thing is to give it to my family, make them smile as much as I can I think would be a reasonable goal. Be Happy......

(By the way, I loved Japan!!)

When I was a kid, my parents, my friends, and my teachers all asked: what would you like to do when you grow up? And I proudly answered: nothing!

My dream came true!

>>15281
But you do something: you watch the world. And you became something: a ghost...
Or that's how I cope with it myself. Pathetic indeed by somehow valid still.

>>15279
I've taken my chances out there and lived with burning passion too. I even could say that I as well sometime got exactly what I wanted and thought I have finally become happy. But something always felt off; like: "is this it? is this really all that was up to it?..."

I have no clear answers to anything anymore. I'm just alone with my endless doubts. Yet, I prefer a thousand times to be like this than the way I was before. I knew nothing; I sucked but lies and Haruhi know what lies I'm still sucking from right now. But now, I'm not afraid of knowing it, if only because now I expect absolutely nothing positive to come from anything. I'm currently mistaken, I know, as I always will; knowledge has its foundation on error and that is my sole meta-certainty... until my time comes to be proven wrong, of course, once again.

>>15281

My dream as a kid was to get cancer and die young so that everyone would love me and I'd never have to face the horrors of growing up.

I'm 26 now and healthy as a horse and it sucks so much shit.

>>15300
>I'm 26 now and healthy as a horse
Break a leg, then (*badum-tss!*)