Waking up every day is like, fuck, another damn day? Another 24 hours of anxiety, overwhelm, or despondency, under the cloud of The Way Things Are, suffocated by a sense that this can’t be all there is to life?

Things are too hard. There is too much to cope with.

And you just can’t seem to make things work, mentally, emotionally, logistically!, no matter how hard you try.

Life is too fucking hard.

And let’s not forget about the dread-inducing sense that all of this is for nothing — that you’re going to spend your whole life coping and coping and never actually get to have a life. Not the one that other people seem to have — a life where you’re actually fucking happy some of the time, where things feel easier, where you don’t resent the fact that you’re alive because it’s so much fucking work and you’re tired of all this fucking labor just to survive, just to exist.

You are, quite simply, over it.

But you’re not ready to check out completely.

So intead of ending it all, you turn to things like drugs, alcohol, other people, eating everything in your fridge even when you’re not hungry, looking for something, anything, to ease this sense of I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore.

Something that feels like a hug, like your mother tucking you into bed at night and telling you everything will be alright (if you liked hugs, and if your mother actually cared).

Something that feels like you can just fucking relax for a minute and forget about the fact that we’re all going to die eventually so what even is this all for? Something to help you forget about your suffering and the suffering of everyone you love.

But nothing works for long. And painfully and paradoxically the things that make you feel better in the moment only end up making you feel worse when the pacification of your fears — that life is not worth it, that nothing lies ahead but struggle and more struggle — wears off and you’re left with the ill effects of too much drinking, too much consuming, too much ____________.

You feel stuck between not wanting to die and not wanting to live, and you are teetering on the edge of madness not knowing what the fuck other choice you have.

Trust me when I tell you I know what this is like. Because this was my life — some days it still is, to some extent — the dread, the despair, the Completely Valid Existential Angst of It All.

But I no longer feel stuck between being alive and being dead, and if you are here I want you to know that there is another way through, even if life is still meaningless in the end, even if all of this is absurd and the pain is neverending.

It is possible to stay alive and actually feel like you are living — even if life is still full of so many things that would make anyone not want to be here at all.

There is a world where you can make it through the days without drowning in despair, even when there are plenty of reasons to, when life is not fair, when life hurts, when the world is figuratively and literally on fire.

It does not require you to sit in an uncomfortable therapist’s office where you feel like the poor kid at your rich friend’s house; it does not require you to check out every self-help book from the library only to open it to a disclaimer that someone as fucked up as YOU should return this book and get professional help (that you can’t afford even if you wanted to).

It does not require you to sacrifice your time and energy to listen to someone talk about holding space who tells you to take a big juicy breath, drop your shoulders, and hug your inner child.

It does not require anything of you, other than to show up, connect, make some art, read some poetry, watch some TV, learn some things that will blow your mind, and leave with tools and skills that will actually fucking help.

Because life is fucking hard, but it doesn’t have to kill you — and you don’t have resign yourself to existing in the liminal space between living and dying in order to survive it. And, thank fucking god, you don’t have to jail yourself in the prison of Always Working on Your Mental Health just to get some fucking relief.

I can teach you how, if you’ll trust me even just a little, and take the first step with me.