No Value

My life apparently has value to other people. I am valued as an employee at work - my boss has given me good performance reviews and has stated more than once that things go more smoothly when I'm around. Some of my family members love me and enjoy my company. My friends like to have me around. When I spoke to one friend about how much worse my depression is these days, he said he would enjoy the world much more with me in it, than with me not in it. I can name many people who feel much the same way.

Oddly, though, my life has no value to me. It struck me as funny, in a sad way, that others enjoy my company, but I do not. I dislike myself, with ever-increasing intensity. I used to hide behind excuses for my miserable situation. After all, it's easier to deal with a world that's out to hurt me than it is to deal with the more painful truth that I'm the problem. An old Russian proverb says "It would be convenient for most people if God were a rascal". But if I'm honest with myself, and I strip away the illusions of Cruel Fate and an uncaring, or even malicious God, I see that the problem is me. I am the heart of my problems, the very black hole I seek to escape in vain. I am not lost in darkness, I am the darkness, and in the end, it is I who turned out the lights. That's why I hate myself, and that's why my life has no value to me. Other people may want me to live, but I don't, because I cannot stand the thought of thirty or forty more years of this self-inflicted misery.

My life has value to a lot of people, but sadly, I am not one of them.