Hi Dad, this is hard for me to say, & I know it might be hard for you to hear, but I hate myself. I don’t like the person I’ve grown into, & it’s not because of anything you did wrong in fact, it’s the opposite. You gave me a good childhood. You were present, supportive, & loving. You helped me through school, college, my relationship, & advice for getting a good job. On paper I am doing well but I don’t feel that way. I tried to do everything right but I still can’t shake the hate I have for myself. That hatred that used to motivate me now just a heavy weight. I’m so quick to give up. I feel tired all the time, like I’m running on empty, even when I’m doing nothing. And the worst part is I can’t seem to push through it, even when I know something might make me feel better, I don’t have the energy or will. I just feel stuck doing things I don’t really enjoy since they don’t require any energy to do. I hate that part of me. For me, when things get hard, I now stall & I hate that about myself. I guess I’m reaching out because I want to understand how you’ve kept going. How have you always gotten up when you’ve felt miserable. I feel like you gave me so much potential & I’ve squandered it.
You are a good kid but you never learned to take it easy on yourself.
You need to let go of being perfect or playing the role that is not yours.
You need to stop trying to be someone that you are not (it gets tiring fast and it sounds like you did it to the point of burnout) and just let yourself be yourself (ideally with a bunch of rest and time to recover).
When I hit a similar problem when I was your age, I embraced minimalism (literally everything I had could fit in the back seat of my car) and lived off rice, beans, and spices in an apartment I shared rent with 5 friends for about a year. After which, I moved in with your mom prior to getting married to her. That simplicity gave me time to process my emotions and that restrictive budget gave me a huge runway to tell my boss to go fuck himself and not have to have the stress of worrying about money for a couple months while I found a much healthier work environment.