i always struggle with the start of my entries. i have so much to say, yet i never know where to begin. it sucks, i hate that. usually, i just let my thoughts run wild in the most brutal and raw way i can until reading them feels like pressing on a bruise. that’s how i know i’ve written something honest.

i hate life. i genuinely do. i hate our constant, collective attempts to make it better. we’re all running toward something, chasing what seems good to us, trying to make the world a little less cruel, as if that will make us feel like we’ve lived a “good life” in the end. i hate that endless run. i want it to stop. not just for me, but for everyone. it feels like a waste, meaningless, and in the end it only leaves pain.

from childhood, i was conditioned to believe love wasn’t easy to get. that you had to earn it, that it came with a price. being neglected early on made me believe people, even my own parents, wouldn’t give me their love without proof i deserved it. that belief stuck with me. even now, in my relationship, i don’t exactly fear losing someone. it’s more like i feel a constant need to check if i’m still loved. i feel responsible for keeping it alive, for fighting for it, because i don’t want it to end.

nothing in this world feels truly free. not love, not friendship, not anything i can name. and when it seems freely given, it feels weird, like i’ve somehow wandered into the wrong place, like my presence itself is a mistake.

part of me thinks i’m foolish for this. i know unconditional love can exist. i’ve felt it myself. i know you can love someone more than you’ll ever love yourself, no matter what they say or do. that love doesn’t die. but my trust in it does. so i keep questioning it. i keep doubting. maybe i’m afraid i’ll never truly believe in something that doesn’t demand proof.

despite all the pessimism, the negativity, the self-hatred, love is the one thing that can cut through it. i think love gives life meaning. i think it’s something divine. that’s why the message of christ resonates with me so much, even though i’ve never called myself a christian. i believe he was right. love can redeem us. humans are inherently flawed, evil even. we all carry hatred inside us, and we can always find a reason to justify it. hatred only breeds more hatred. the only way to break the cycle is with love and forgiveness. and yet, i’d rather go to hell than do it. i fucking hate people too much.

we are born with love, and we die with it. love is what keeps us moving. and maybe that’s what terrifies me, the same constant motion i hate so much is fueled by the very thing i depend on. i’m afraid i’ll never get enough of it. i’m afraid i’ll never give it the way it needs to grow.

i want to sit still. stop thinking. my thoughts are really exhausting me, they’re fucking killing me. i want them to stop. and yet, even in all this, there’s a stubborn hope. the only thing i know for certain is that i want to be happy. i don’t know when i’ll get there, but i believe i will. someday i’ll be truly content. but i also know happiness doesn’t fall into your lap. it has to be fought for.

i know i’m full of contradictions. i hate life, and yet i keep hoping. i distrust love, and yet i crave it endlessly. i long for stillness, but i keep chasing happiness. i despise people, and yet i believe in forgiveness. i don’t honestly care how this entry will look, today i’m feeling shitty so i’m just gonna post shit. and maybe that’s just what it means to be human, to hold opposing truths at once, to stumble through the tension between what we feel and what we know. and maybe that’s okay. maybe it’s even necessary. because even in all my doubt, my fear, my hatred, i’m still moving forward. imperfectly, messily, but forward nonetheless.

why does everything around us feel both connected and separate at the same time?

why does the world seem so full of life, yet feel like it’s dying at the same time?

why does it feel like we’re all pieces of something bigger, but that “something” is gone?

why is everything extinguishing? from creatures, to plants, to planets, to stars… everything is slowly collapsing. fading. disappearing.

is existence a mistake?

philipp mainländer spoke about this. he’s often seen as the most pessimistic philosopher that has ever existed. his work is profoundly shocking and disturbing, yet somehow, very seducing.

at the beginning of the universe, there was nothing. not even the void. only pure, untouched nothingness. only god. god alone. god everywhere. god always. not a god seated in heaven, not a king on a throne, but an absolute and total presence. a unity without division. an existence without boundary or end. he was all there was. and in being everything, he was confined. he was imprisoned in himself. god was the original substance, the root of all that could ever be. and within this infinite being was a loneliness no human mind could comprehend. a silence so deep that even the word ‘alone’ becomes meaningless.

god existed as a singular, infinite being, perfect, pure, undivided. yet the nature of god and the nature of finite things are fundamentally incompatible. if god is truly infinite, then nothing else can exist beside him. he fills all of reality. there is no room for ‘other.’

so how, then, does the world we experience exist?
 

mainländer proposes an extraordinary answer:
 

“the universe… is the disintegration into multiplicity, that is, into egoistic individualities arrayed against each other.”

the world appears both fragmented into countless individual parts, and at the same time as a unified whole, governed by a single dominant force, which he calls "the will" (a term he adopts from schopenhauer). mainländer arrives at this view by observing how everything in the universe feels interdependent and connected, and yet, as individuals, especially conscious ones, everything also feels isolated and distinct. we are each confined to our own body and mind, yet we emerge from the totality of nature. for him, existence is a constant interplay between unity and individuality, always moving from unity toward fragmentation.
 

“non-being must simply have earned preference over supra-being, or else god in his perfect wisdom would not have chosen it.”

in such a world, anything that exists is destined to experience disproportionate and unending suffering. for mainländer, as for many pessimistic philosophers, non-being is fundamentally preferable to being. yet he believes our existence has one purpose, which is to reach its end.
 

“every vivid feeling of pleasure must therefore be purchased with a vivid feeling of unpleasure, and with every purchase of this kind the will ultimately gains nothing.”

through life, we are propelled by an endless motion that keeps us clinging to existence, but always with dissatisfaction. we desire life, yet we desire it in particular ways, and to desire is already to lack, to suffer in striving for what we do not have. even when we attain what we seek, the fleeting pleasure quickly fades into emptiness.
 

“life in general is a 'wretchedly miserable thing': it has always been wretched and miserable and will be wretched and miserable, and it is better not to be than to be.”

life is composed mostly of suffering, where any fleeting happiness inevitably gives way to pain.

god, being the absolute all-knowing being that he is, realizes the absurdity of life. how preferable non-being is to being. existence (even perfect, infinite existence) is suffering by its very nature, and the highest “good” is to return to nothingness.

and in that knowledge, god made the ultimate decision:

he chose death.

mainländer believed the universe began not with creation, but with divine suicide. god, being infinite and omnipresent, could not simply cease to exist, there was no outside into which he could disappear, no external void to retreat into. he was trapped within himself, unable to die in the way we understand death. and so, he chose the only possible path toward non-being: he shattered his own being into countless fragments: stars, atoms, bodies, minds… all finite, all dying.

we are the remains of god’s corpse, and the world is the process of his slow decomposition.

in mainländer’s philosophy, a truly infinite and omnipresent god left no room for finite things to exist, because if god remained everything and everywhere, there could be no space for multiplicity or individuality. to make room for finite creatures like us, god had to negate himself, to contract, shatter, and die, creating the space for the world. the world is not a creation from nothing, but a creation from god, at the cost of his own being. finite existence arises only because of this divine self-destruction. but in becoming fragments of that destroyed unity, finite beings inherit the nothingness at the core of reality. existence itself is steeped in death and decay from the beginning, because we are the debris of a dead god. life is therefore a process of disintegration and release, the slow decay of god’s corpse, and our task is to embrace the return to nothing. death is not a tragedy but a redemption, because it reunites us with the state of nothingness that ends suffering and struggle. the purpose of existence is to move toward non-being again, to complete the return to nothingness that god himself initiated.

philipp mainländer didn’t just write this philosophy.

he lived it.

he believed that god's act of creation was a suicide, a divine disintegration into matter, pain, and death. and that every being born into this broken world carries a piece of that divine collapse. we are, each of us, part of god’s corpse, and to live is to rot slowly with him. to die is to return to the only peace that ever was: nothingness.

and so, on the very day his book "the philosophy of redemption" was published,

he hanged himself.

not out of despair. not in fear. but in conviction. because for mainländer, death wasn’t defeat.

it was the final truth. the last release. the only honest answer to a world built on the ruins of god’s last breath.

his death wasn’t a tragedy.

it was the conclusion of his work.

it hits like it always does, fast, loud, merciless. thoughts tearing through your skull, dragging you under. you’re nothing. a fucking failure dressed up in skin. a hollow imitation of what you wanted to become. you won’t make it. you never were going to. life will never shape itself around your needs. the ache won’t go away. the emptiness is permanent.

you look around and everything you have feels fake. shallow. not enough. so far from enough it makes you sick. the tiniest cracks in your life split you open. the silence gets too loud. the stillness burns. you can’t breathe unless someone’s watching. unless someone’s feeding you the illusion that you matter.

you’re selfish. rotten to the core. you take. you use. you hurt people not by mistake, but because it’s necessary for your survival. you’d bleed someone dry just to feel whole for five fucking minutes. you call it love. you call it connection. but it’s a lie. it’s just need. hunger. desperation. you’re a parasite. you wrap yourself around someone, pretend to care, and once you’ve drained the warmth from them, you sink your teeth in. you destroy what tried to save you.

and the worst part? you know it. you’ve seen this cycle. lived it. replayed it like a curse. you know you can’t fight it, not really. you say you want self-love, that you want to heal, but you don’t even believe yourself anymore. you dont believe in healing. you believe in surviving. and surviving, for you, means lying. means taking. means hurting.

you want to be content, sure. you want to be strong alone. but deep down, you know the truth: you’re too broken for that. you’ve tried. and every time, you’ve lost.

some part of you thinks you were born like this. diseased. you don’t just hate yourself, you fucking loathe the thing you are. the only time you can stand to look in the mirror is when you’re reflected in someone else’s eyes. when you’re charming, wanted, needed. it’s not love. it’s not desire. it’s survival. you latch onto women like they’re lifelines, like if they stop looking at you, you’ll disappear. and maybe you would.

it’s not obsession. it’s not lust. it’s a black hole in your chest, and every smile, every kiss, every lie you tell is just another offering to keep the void from swallowing you whole. but it never works. it never will. because no matter how much they give, it’ll never be enough to fix what’s wrong with you.