My parents have had a terrible marriage for basically as long as I can remember. I have been anticipating their divorce on some level since I was about 11 (I’m now in my late 20s), and I don’t know why they don’t just pull the plug. In fact, I don’t even know why they got married in the first place; they don’t enjoy each other’s company, they don’t have congruent ideas or tastes on basically anything, they’re basically incompatible in every way.
I think they both would have been better off if they had split up early, never gotten married and never had children together. They should have married different people, or just not gotten married at all.
The obvious implication of this, of course, is that I shouldn’t have been born. This does cause me some existential discomfort. Thoughts occur to me like, “Why do I care so much about the future? Why do I pay so much attention to politics? What’s the point of advocating for socialism or trying to work towards a better future? I don’t have kids, I can’t have kids*, I don’t think I should have kids, and I don’t even think my parents should have had me. In a better timeline, I wouldn’t even be here anyway.”
*(I had a vasectomy a few years ago)
I would like to feel a bit more assured about all of this. What do you think?
Good things can come from bad decisions, and bad things can come from good decisions.
The existential questions come up regardless. Either way you ask yourself why, what’s the point, if you matter, if anything matters. And the answer is always no reason and something extremely important, there is no point and the point is because someone cares, you and everything matters but also not at all and certainly not to the universe.
And that’s ok.
No. That’s not an uncommon thought. They probably shouldn’t have. My parents shouldn’t have, either. But they did, and we’re here now, and wringing our hands over it accomplishes nothing.
You exist now, in the present. That’s an immutable truth that you cannot change, so your only choice is to live now, and look forward to making a better future.
my parents divorced, violently, when i was 5. my dad died a couple decades later. i often wonder what the fucking point of them having me was, but there wasn’t a point. my dad came in my mom and she wanted to keep it and shit spiraled and pressed their relationship into goo. but regardless of my feelings on it i still have to be here and live, and a lot of cool shit has happened to me even if i think my existence is a ‘mistake’ or whatever. even if my parents didn’t really give a shit, or couldn’t care for me and each other properly, i still have people in my life that depend on me and who i love dearly, and that sorta makes up for it.
fwiw therapy has helped a lot
It’s fine to think about such things, but leftists have a tendency to fall into patterns of thinking that are governed by self-righteousness and victimisation which can be paralysing and counter-productive. The Ancient Greeks used to say that the best thing for a man would be to have never been born at all. It’s an old problem. But we’re here now and we have to do what we can.
