Some days I feel like I'm losing my mind, like in some unidentifiable way I am slipping into the abyss of insanity and that I have no way to gauge reality from fantasy or delusion. But really, isn't this the human condition? To filter truth from fictions, and to understand what we perceive and how we perceive it?

I guess what I'm struggling with the most is a daily existential dilemma, things that my old religion used to answer with such arrogant certainty. And you know, such struggles wouldn't be so bad if they weren't coupled with that oh so pervasive and ever ready depression. I really try to treat it as a separate condition - because really it is - but it makes searching for answers that much more difficult.

As a functional nihilist it's hard to find even a single reason to get up every day if that day is just a dull repeat of the empty yesterday. Really, it boils down to finding simple pleasaures in life, but hedonism is a whole other ball game in the field of lethargy and anhedonia. And it doesn't help that I have so much pressure from myself and other things: pressure to do something with my life contrasted with an inability to function at even the most basic level, pressure to deal with my education and finances contrasted with needing to slow down on school and facing being cut off of student loans as a result.

And what does the latter pressure result in? Further withdrawal and depression, more pointless escape/survival mechanisms, all with a sense of doom in the nearing future. I want to see my doctor about things, but he's practically impossible to get in to see, especially now that my days and nights are mixed up. And I loathe trying to find another doctor. The forms I need to have filled out require at least a year-long relationship, and my personal needs require a very compassionate and understanding doctor, and far too many of them judge or are cold. On top of that, not many doctors in Victoria are taking new patients. It's rather rough to be non-functional at this time.

But, for some reason or another I've inherited this stubborn quality. I refuse to give in and hang on out of sheer tenacity. Sometimes I have no idea why I hang on. It really makes no sense: if pain outweighs pleasure, then there's a strong argument for the end of a life - and I for one am a proponent of euthanasia if the right conditions are met. It is a philosophical position that I have that the most basic liberal freedom is the right to choose whether one lives or not. All other freedoms should spring from this single one. But in spite of this, I hang on. Perhaps the delusion of hope has evolved in us because it is essential for our survival. I suppose, though, that one can be disappointed only so many times before all hope is lost. I'm not there yet, but the outlook isn't too great.