Since I left my childhood home, I haven't struggled much with suicidality. Feelings some, no attempts. It sounds painful to live in a state where you feel like you'd rather not be alive. I would be naive to suggest that if your life doesn't have joy, then you need to change your life. Or something trite like maybe a desire to feel differently would lead to one feeling differently. I do have some belief, though it's not as simple as snapping fingers or deciding to feel differently, that we actually are in charge of our own feelings. As the mom of an adolescent, I see the way feelings rule his world and I suggest that feelings aren't always "right" or "real" and that an always "trust your gut" may not be the way to organize your life. Sometimes feelings are just B.S. and they lock us into a prison where we reinforce them and have no motivation for it to be different. So I guess maybe I do feelings different than a lot of people do, and my experience has been that both the negative and the positive and the neutral and the undefinable come and go.

I've figured out what brings me joy and purpose and meaning and even some relatively sustained happiness, and I focus on the right now. Sometimes I feel gratitude that I have the life I want, minus some things I can't really control like world peace and unlimited wealth and a loving partner. But I dig the doing of my life and pretty much every day experience a range of things I feel, which are less important to me than what I do and what that means to me. I wake up engaged with my life and the world around me and I go to sleep satisfied that I've done something or more than something that made me feel like I matter to myself.