Dear Nietzsche

Dear Nietzsche,

Lately, I have been overwhelmed by my youth, and I feel depressed. I try to see through the day with the power of will, as you once taught that it should motivate and strengthen me. But, dear sir, my will keeps telling me to rot in bed, to waste my day away doing nothing and being nothing. It overwhelms me that you and Sartre emphasized how we must take control of our lives that it is our responsibility, our burden, our freedom. But what does it mean to take control when the mind, the very thing that is supposed to lead, begins to collapse? What happens when your brain starts to shut down, and tells you you’re worthless even when you're trying so hard to live?

The Übermensch in me is straddled and muffled, suffocated by numbness and emptiness. I cannot stop it, even though I try, God knows I try. But tell me, sir, what is “trying” when you just sit in the same space, simply existing? What does it mean to do something or be someone when you can’t, even when you try so damn hard? Therefore, dear Nietzsche, I confess that I have been overwhelmed. I am filled with dread and anguish at the responsibility of being myself especially when my brain whispers all the horrid, crude things I’ve worked so hard to unlearn.

The mind controls the body, doesn’t it, Sir Descartes? Then why does this mind keep dragging me down, whispering failure, worthlessness, uselessness even as my body aches for movement, for action, for breath? What is the point of having a powerful mind if that very mind becomes the cage?

And what can you say, dear Husserl, about the emptiness, dread, and overwhelm that floods me until I go numb? You were right, even in your primitive ways: intentionality cannot be escaped. Even lying in bed, feeling nothing, doing nothing, being nothing—there’s still a directedness of consciousness. It must mean something, right?

And beloved Madame de Beauvoir—my womanhood exhausts me. Why must I be a woman even as I suffer? In this world, being a woman often means pushing through the pain in silence, just as men do, but with shame layered atop. I feel guilt in my suffering, guilt in my exhaustion. I ache in my bones not only from existence, but from the weight of what I am expected to be. I just want to be that little girl again, the one who didn’t go through what she never should have had to endure. But you were right: it’s complicated. Woman is not born but becomes and that becoming hurts.

Dear Kierkegaard, my fellow companion in despair, I hope your suffering at least found its meaning in God. I hope I find mine, too, in my own way. But tell me how does despair heal, even when you seek help, take your medications, receive love from everyone who surrounds you—and still, still the emptiness persists? The dread, the anxiety, the guilt… they linger. Why must I always feel the need to be forgiven—for simply existing the way I do?

And finally, to myself.

I am sorry for what you are, and what you have been through. You have been both victim and villain—to yourself and to others. You have been hurt, and you have hurt. You have been persecuted, and you have persecuted. For all that I have made you become, I am sorry.

There are many people in my life from whom I must seek forgiveness but to you, I owe the most.