Confessions of a Guilty Buddhist

The Depression Self Help E-Book

By Tully Walker 😉

Introduction:

This document is written for everybody really, but especially those who have experienced what it’s like to go through depression, or any type of mood disorder. I am now recovering from a crippling depression that has taken up the last year of my life. The depression managed to completely absorb, stifle, and paralyze me to the point where I was seriously considering whether I would ever have a life again.

Well times have changed and I am recovering myself and am learning to trust that life can be fulfilling and fun again. The most powerful part of recovery for me has been investigating and debunking those stories and thoughts patterns that have kept me in a powerful funk for the past year.

Beliefs you hold and stories you tell yourself about your self and the world are particularly powerful and can form a tangling net that can leave your life paralyzed.

The good news is that these stories are relatively easy to diffuse if you take the initiative to investigate them. Especially if you are depressed, it can be easy to hold the belief that spiritual change will be this long, grueling thing, and of course when you picture it like that, it becomes very hard to take that first step.

While change certainly isn’t overnight and at times it can be challenging, it can also be satisfying and even fun. In this article I am encouraging a person to work smarter, not harder. A task that can seem incredibly daunting to one mindset can seem workable to another.

I write this article knowing from personal experience how a depressed mind likes to

find every last reason why change will be so hard for him or for her. We could read a thousand self help books and write them all off thinking why they won’t work for us or why they seem impossible for us.

What I espouse is that our problems are really solved when we change our thinking. And the good news is that our thinking is probably the easiest to change, much easier than say our weight or physical appearance. With our thinking we create these massive limitations for ourselves. Then with our will we try to go beyond these limitations. But in this paradigm, we are bound to fail. So why not change your thinking, and not create the limitations in the first place?

A depressed person might read this and say “it’s the same old bullshit, it’s never worked for me and it never will”. Well I would encourage this person to keep reading, because if we want to change our thinking, we really need to find the process fun and interesting. There’s no magic pill you can take to help yourself out of a depression. You need to do it yourself. But there is massive hope in the idea that you do not have to be super human to apply these techniques. As above average as you are, there are many humans much less above average than you are that have found these techniques useful.

The hardest part of this whole process I think, for the depressed person, is a willingness to give this kind of inquiry a try. But if you have made it this far then you already have all the willingness you are going to need. If you are in the least bit open to having fun and finding something as interesting, then you have created a huge wedge into your depression already!

So here are some key words and phrases that have helped me along my recovery:

Self Affirmations and reminders:

There is no doing it wrong.

Don’t try to figure it out.

Let it be.

Let go and let God.

Surrender.

Trust.

Have faith, have hope.

Stay out of trouble, and you’ll be fine.

Don’t worry about it.

Be kind to yourself. Problems are not solved from the same paradigm that created them.

It’s easier to let go than to hold on. Remember that.

Trust yourself.

Who I really am is already enlightened, already strong.

My mind is perfect as it is.

Even though I am depressed or _________, I love and accept myself.

There is nothing I can do to fight my pain and uncomfortability. I can, however, ask God to take it away, and in that I can find peace within my pain without resisting it or hating it.

Old time wisdom:

Give up! If you feel broken, if your mind feels ill, trust that there’s nothing you can do to fight it. Accept your pain completely. In accepting pain, you aren’t saying you want it to be around forever. But you are allowing it in that moment, and only then it can begin to change.

If you have thoughts you don’t like, scary or depressing thoughts, accept that they are going to be there and that you have to do your best with them intact. Invite them in, even. There’s nothing you can do to stop them, or block them, or make them go away. I understand that you are scared and your thoughts are scary. I understand that you don’t want to live like this. If they are taking over your mind and you begin to get scared, remind yourself that there is nothing you can do against them. You have to accept that this is going to be your mind right now and that there’s nothing you can do about it. If the thoughts seem like they are going to drive you insane, then you have to accept your fate. Remind yourself that these thoughts are part of your disorder, and at the moment it is out of your control, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Try your best to stay where you are with what you are doing.

Eventually you will find out that while things may seem like absolute shit right now, accepting what is going on at that moment is the only way to allow it to change. If you do not accept what is going on, you will continue to battle and only make it worse.

Eventually you will realize that all your worst thoughts and fears are not a problem, because they are not you. Let them run, spin, and do their thing. It may be scary at first to allow these thoughts within your mind, but you have no choice, they are already in your mind. You must discover for yourself that they will change.

I know you would prefer to be happy, healthy, with a clear mind. But you are hopelessly addicted to your thoughts, and that addiction is out of your control. Accept that you are helpless and that your life has become out of your own control. Accept that you are going to think thoughts you don’t want to think, accept that your mind is getting in the way of your life right now and you won’t always be able to perform to your previous standards. Feeling bad sometimes is inevitable. Realize that you aren’t operating at your full capacity, but don’t worry, when you work on changing your thoughts, you will soon be at full capacity again.

Despite this, I know that you are wanting a solution. But again I remind you:

Don’t try to change yourself, don’t try to fix yourself, stop your striving to conquer your problems. Give up, stop trying, because there is nothing you can do to fix your problems.

You may feel impatient, you may feel messed up, you may feel worthless. Realize there is nothing you can do to change these thoughts about yourself. You could go make a million dollars, you could climb the tallest mountain in the world, but if you don’t trust that it’s OK to have these thoughts and feelings and that these thoughts and feelings say nothing about how perfect you really are, then all your efforts will be in vain.

You are afraid of your mind. It has tormented you. You feel as though you can barely make a move without being afraid it is going to bite you. You are afraid that you are broken and inadequate, and that you are fatally imperfect and will mess up again and again. Since you are fatally imperfect, you have set unrealistic standards of perfection for yourself in order to compensate. Understand that you need some time to rest and recover, don’t try to push yourself to do things you could normally do. Ask yourself what is more important: to have peace and joy for yourself, or to be completely perfect. Peace and joy are easily available to you, right here, and right now if you allow yourself to be imperfect.

No matter how imperfect you are, no matter how much fear you have, no matter how much you don’t trust yourself or think you are incapable of being a good person, or no matter how much you think you are a downright evil person, peace and joy are easily available to you, right now. You think that since you have some fear and have some sadness, that you are incomplete. You think that as long as you have these emotions in your body, that you cannot be whole, that you cannot be in the moment. So you are waiting to be perfect before you can finally accept yourself and accept the moment. This of course is never going to happen, because you are continually sabotaging yourself for not being perfect. Stop trying to work on your fear and sadness, let them be, and accept that you are already perfect, in the moment. It is only then that the fear and sadness will disapate.

You have been thinking that you have fear. You have concluded that since sometimes your mind says you don’t want to do certain things or is afraid of doing certain things, that means that you really don’t want to do them or afraid of them. You know you would like to go on a hike or do something you enjoy. But so many times in the past your mind has stopped you with a thought. You have gotten so used to this happening that you feel like it would take some impossible feat to stop your mind from getting in the way of your life. So you continue to think the thoughts, feeling you are hopeless. You have convinced that you have fear and that your mind and your fear is getting in the way of your life. You are afraid of doing things because you are afraid that this fear will come up, and you are afraid it will take some huge effort to conquer the fear before you can begin to enjoy your life.

Fear is not something to be pushed past, conquered, or proven wrong.

The fact is, you are already perfect, and you are more than capable of being in the present moment, all day. What keeps you from doing this, however, is your belief that being in the present moment is something apart from what you already are. Stop waiting for that moment when you finally have figured it out, when you have finally mustered the courage and therefore can be perfectly in the present moment!

You are searching for a way to end your problems and you believe the present moment might be a way of solving them, but if you believe the present moment is not what you already are, then even if you attained it, a person like you would always fear losing it, so what fun would that be?

But the present moment is not something to attain, it already is, here, available to you right now, perfectly. The worst thoughts in the world can’t keep you from resting and relaxing into the present moment. They do not tarnish your moment. You could be deathly fearful of a robber coming into your home and murdering you, but that fear doesn’t keep you from being in the present moment. So why do you continue to make to a big deal out of just being yourself, something that is actually so easy and natural for you to do?

Your mind is perfect as it is, it is perfectly God, there is nothing about it that needs to be changed, no matter whether you have saintly thoughts running through it, or thoughts that you want to kill your mother. They are all just thoughts, they can do no lasting harm to you. .

Your mind may seem out of your control, and scary. “Why won’t it stop?” You will never stop your thoughts. Eventually, I will teach you how to not give them any power to harm you. They can only harm you when you think that the fact that you have this thought running through your head is of any importance and says anything about who you are. If a stranger called you stupid, would you believe him? If not then why give any more credibility to what your mind calls you?

I know you though– you think you are an ESPECIALLY evil person. You think that no matter how much good there is in you, you are that special case that can still fuck your goodness up.

You could really try to convince yourself how hard it is to be in the present moment by saying “haha, well no matter what, I hate God, and I am still a despicable and worthless person and there’s nothing that can stop me from believing it”. Part of you is deathly afraid of this voice and believing it and wishes there were some freedom from it, but part of you feels like a perfect person wouldn’t have this voice in their head, so if you’re thinking it, it must be true. After all, you have built it up to be such an enemy for so long that you can barely believe that it is actually relatively benign.

After all, it seems like your mind has caused you so much trouble in the past, and you’ve made so many mistakes. So you’ve built up so much evidence that you are in fact a worthless worm, that why could now be any different?

You think that since your mind is producing angry or disparaging thoughts against you and others, that there is something wrong with you, that you have a problem you need to fix. You think that “normal” people don’t have these thoughts? Since you think these thoughts, you are convinced that there is something bad inside of you that actually has some power over you. Well there will never be a deciding moment when you finally climb to the top of the mountain and attain that state of perfect thoughtlessness. There will never be a time when you get rid of these thoughts. Accept that they may be here for the rest of your life, make friends with them. If a thought is telling you are worthless, you could still calmly disagree.

Therefore, I know that no matter how much I tell you that there’s nothing you can do to fuck up, that you are ALREADY FORGIVEN, I know your type. You think, “Well, since I’ve been miserable and I’m trying to be happy, there must be some work I have to do. And since I am such a miserable and lazy person, there is no way I could accomplish this. Therefore, I can never be forgiven.”

Well, you are a miserable and lazy person. But if you actually slowed down enough to think about it, being miserable and lazy isn’t as bad as you think it is. Allow yourself to be miserable and lazy for awhile. You’ll eventually get bored of it and when you find that it’s not THAT bad to be miserable and lazy, it be even more fun to go on a walk or talk with a friend!

And if you are feeling like an enraged, angry person, be with that angry enraged feeling. Don’t go killing anybody, but just know that “right now I am angry and enraged”. If you are feeling impatient, just be with that impatient feeling. Just know “hmm, right now I am feeling impatient”. Maybe that impatient feeling is taking you away from your conversation. It might a little bit, but so what, don’t worry about it. Just continue feeling “impatience”.

Because what I’m telling you that your connection to truth is a fact that is actually out of your control, not in your hands. It’s already been established. God already loves you, your inner self already loves you. You can think the dirtiest thought in the world, but God has already seen that thought and forgives you for it. In fact, there is nothing you can do to fuck up your relationship with God! So stop making yourself to be bad. There’s nothing you have to do, no one you have to be, no where you have to go.

But I know you. This is hardly believable to you because you still think that you are a person who is doomed to make him self miserable. Again, you think: Jeez, giving my life to God will take so much work, and a miserable and lazy person like me is not cut out for it. “There is always some way I can make myself miserable,” you will tell yourself, “and it seems like I’m always able to find a way”.

Well, let me tell you. Because so many times you have eaten junk food instead of health food, you convince yourself that obviously you don’t want the best for yourself, and that no one will want to hang around you. But I’m telling you, even when you ate that junk food, you were still a striving idealist. The motivation behind your worst moments and your worst habits is still the motivation to get to what the truth is for you, to get to what freedom is for you, in some way. Even the most evil person in the world is trying to fulfill a truth in someway. He may be the most spiteful person in the world and kill someone as a way to say “fuck you” to everything that is good.

Think of those kids at Columbine High School in Colorado who killed 12 of their peers and then themselves. They would have not done this if there wasn’t something about it that didn’t appeal to them in someway. They would not have done this if they didn’t feel that it would provide them some relief in some way from the suffering and humiliation they felt while being in school. Yes, it was planned in advance and was not just an impulsive thing. This shows that there was indeed a strong buildup of hatred and rage. Certainly there was probably something in these boys’ conscience that felt that this was not the proper way to get happiness.

Those boys did an amazing, though terrible thing. But just remember, if you are entirely good at making yourself miserable, remember that you are at least good at something. Even if you decide to lie in bed all day to make the statement that there is no truth whatsoever, you are still putting out energy towards some truth statement.

“So what,” you say, “I now understand that I am such an evil and insane person that perhaps I willingly cause myself pain! I am such a worm that I know that it’s somewhere in me! I’m that special case who WANTS to be unhappy! I want to be unhappy, I want to kill myself! So I guess I’m just doomed to be unhappy.”

If you believe yourself to be “evil”, then you might do “evil” things, because after all, that’s what an “evil” person does. If you believe yourself to be “good”, then you might do “good” things, because that’s what “good” people do.

But why not shed belief that you are “good” and must do “good” things, and get rid of the belief that you are “evil” and must do “evil” things. Why not instead take the belief that you are free? You might find then that you naturally find yourself doing things that are satisfying, without a big effort or moral judgment.

In sum, since everything you do in this world, positive or negative, is an attempt towards freedom, there is no need to worry about your capability towards achieving joy and peace. You have put all your energy and willpower already towards making yourself miserable, because you believe that is the easiest option towards freedom and truth. And Achieving happiness seems like something only a saint could do, and if there’s one thing you know, it’s that you aren’t a saint.

Well, what if I told you that being happy is actually EASIER and takes LESS effort than being miserable? What if I told you that it’s actually HARDER to be miserable, that it takes MORE effort and MORE discipline and more SKILL to make yourself miserable?

What if I told you that it won’t take doing ANYTHING to be happy? I know you have read a thousand spiritual books that have said you must to practice mindfulness, and “be in the moment”. What about the fact that merely just by existing you are already IN the moment? Your existence is already in the moment, and there’s nothing you can do to screw that up.

So even though you have been depressed, it is really because you are such an overachiever. Well what if I gave you the permission to stop trying to achieve so much? What if you gave yourself permission to just be happy?

I know you are afraid that if you stop trying to be happy, then who you really are as a miserable person will come out and you will just be miserable.

But what is actually making you miserable is the guilt and pressure you have been putting on yourself to try to be happy when there’s really nothing to do.

But I know you. When you read “nothing to do” you interpret that as relaxing and you know how hard it is for you to relax. What I’m saying is that you don’t need to relax, if you are a paranoid person, keep being paranoid. If you are addicted to your thoughts and can’t stop thinking, then don’t stop thinking.

So if it took no effort, no trying to be happy, would you finally be ready to let go of the idea that you are a miserable person incapable of being happy? Would you finally believe that you are actually fully capable of being a happy, healthy person?

Because really, if you believe that you can be happy, if you even CONSIDER for a MOMENT the possibility that you can be happy, then that’s all it takes, nothing more.

If you even CONSIDER for a MOMENT that you could actually live a rich fulfilling life, then that’s all it will take, nothing more. Because in this mere moment of consideration lies all the power you will ever need to live a full, fulfilling life.

Because the moment you have that simple image of your happiness in your head, God and the universe and everything will be set in to motion to realize that for you, because God and the universe and everything wants you to be happy.

Now, I am not saying that it will happen all at once. After all, you are such a brave, courageous truth-seeker who has been programmed to always work HARDER, not SMARTER. So it might take some time for you to realize how EASY it is to be happy.

Deep down your soul aches for freedom, joy, comfort, and security. But your recent past has been taken up by the memory of this veil of depression that never seems to lift. You have bought into this idea that you are depressed and created it to be this huge, plaguing thing that seems like it would be so hard to shed. For so long, it has seemed like your moments of happiness and freedom have been so fleeting.

Your happiness has felt so fragile that you have learned to distrust it almost. Happiness seems nice when it comes around, but you feel betrayed by it and your depression seems more solid. So depression has been your bedrock instead, it has always felt like a reliable fallback to you, even if the truth is depression is not reliable at all, but just as fleeting as anything else.

It might take some time to discover that happiness and joy can be counted on more readily than your depression. You have always felt like you must search for your happiness, that happiness is SUCH an effort to MAINTAIN, while depression has always seemed so readily accessible.

What if I told you it was the other way around? What if I told you that you are spending so much time searching for and maintaining your depression, and that happiness is so easy, right here, so readily accessible. What if I told you that there’s nothing you can possibly do to push happiness away? You can try your best to get depressed, and it might work for awhile, but happiness will still always be right here. So what if I told you that there’s nothing you can do that will make freedom turn its back towards you and abandon you? What if I told you that freedom has already gotten ahold of you, and there’s no turning back?

So relax, you have plenty of time to mess up, to go off and search for happiness when in fact it’s already here, waiting for you. Depression is not the monster you have thought it to be. It does not want to stick around, it is more than happy to leave if you just give it a moment’s notice. It is tired because it has had to play the role of this huge scary beast that you have chosen to keep fighting. You have been running from it, trying to lock it in the corner, to not look at it and in that you have given it lots of power.

But Happiness does not need you to run after it, it asks you for no rush, it does not put any pressure on you to find it, there is no moment when you finally “get it”. You can’t get it wrong, and even if you do feel pain again in the future, and you might, just remember that achieving happiness requires you to stop searching.

Don’t worry about the pain, you really have to go out of your way to find it. And if you do find yourself going out of your way, and you can’t quite remember what it feels like to stop searching, just know that it’s the easiest thing in the world you can do, that everything you need is already in you, and you would kick yourself for not remembering that.

Happiness

Oh joy!

The happiness of the world! Happiness and joy, how GAY is the world!

Random acts of kindness, moments of beauty and human compassion, sweet like sugar-coated fun!

To dance and to laugh, what a great game it all is! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Love… ahhhh yes, love…

When I hold your hands and look into your eyes, I feel a deep upwelling sensation coming from my stomach and out my mouth. Yes! A great big smile, that’s it!

Ahh yes, life is so GOOD. Look at all these people playing together, working together, how absolutely SILLY it all is! because even those who LOSE, well they are still winners right? Right?

Rest

I have been so fucking troubled in this world for the past year.

So weary and unrested, all the time. Tortured and haggled constantly. A man of constant sorrow. A hungry ghost. A constant battle has waged within me. A war, Good vs Evil. I have tried every argument against God as to why human life is miserable, loveless, and worthless. Every spiritual book tells that love is the force in the universe, but I had to find out myself. My worst fear was that my argument would win, that I would be proven right, but I had to pose the question anyway. I have tested every limb of goodness, I have tried to break every limb of goodness, hoping to validate and justify my despair, hoping to prove that in some way prove that I WASN’T a fool for existing in despair afterall. In this way, there is some vain satisfaction in causing yourself pain.

I have not let myself have peace. There has been something in myself that has damned me to hell, that has laid a sentence over myself and has given me no pardon. I have been my own judge, jury, and executioner.

Who is to blame for what has happened to me? I have looked for someone to blame.. I have blamed myself, I have blamed God, but none of this blame has given me any relief. I have no idea why what happened to me happened in the way it did. It’s just my karma. Who is to fault for my ignorance?

I have been on the stand and cried and cried, begged for mercy before my self… but I could not grant myself pardon, could not forgive myself for what I had done. Could not accept… could not settle down… there has been a splinter in me that has nagged me constantly.

Am I worthy? Can I forgive myself for my failures?

It is the worst burden.

I have been Satan. I have been the angel fallen from god because he tried to be God. Shamed and guilty I could not forgive myself and ask mysef or the other angels for forgiveness.

God is always there, always loving. It wasn’t God who doomed me to my hell, it was myself. He was never far away if I was willing to surrender my self hatred to him.

But I clung to my self hatred out of a sense of vengeance, that perhaps I could gain that power back that I have longed for, the power that I once had. That somehow by damning myself, by destroying myself I could make God feel as guilty as I have felt.

God is not a damning God. He never damns his creatures. But we can damn ourselves so much that we can separate ourselves from him forever. I could never make God love me by pretending to not care.

Don’t pretend you don’t care, Tully. That’s what the ego does, these stories you make up to pretend you don’t want God. Be careful what you pretend. Pretend to lie long enough and you will start to believe the lie, that you are really separate from God. And the fiction might grab you, like it did me.

I want God. When I pretend I don’t want Him, it is only out of shame, out of a feeling that I am not worthy to be his subject. I go off and try to play by myself, but what a lonely, lonely place that is. It is a place I cannot stand to be in for long.

God does not judge us. We condemn ourselves to unworthiness. In the eyes of God I am worthy as I am right now. God didn’t cast us out of eden, the creator gave us the free will to choose whether we want to stay in Eden or not.

I have nothing to prove, to myself or to God. I am worthy as I am, deeply humbled and fucking humiliated in my journey away from Him.

I never chose to leave him, consciously at least. I never made a choice against Him, but still I found myself away from him. You can imagine my surprise at having strayed so far. You can imagine my surprise when I started to end up with those who had actively forsook God. For a time I became one of those who actively had forsaken God…

Because if I had never actively forsaken Him, then why did I find myself so astray from him? If I had tried my best, how could he had failed me?

Well, my faith has now been redeemed and I am one of the lucky ones who hung in there long enough to feel his forgiveness to kick in. My own forgivenss.

I do not need to prove myself to him anymore, I do not need to beg for mercy anymore, I am not a sinner begging for mercy because I know his love for me.

Amen

Reconciliation

I need to sit down and have a conversation with Life.

The first question I would ask is:

Why me, why everybody? What is the need for all the suffering in the world?

I’m totally angry with you Life, and I fucking hate you for all that you’ve made me feel! But I know I can be angry as I want with you and you will still forgive me because I am your child, and I really know that deep down too and I forgive you too.

Life fucked me, life brought me back. I guess I can’t be too mad, huh?

I don’t need anything from life..because I AM life!

Change- it’s just the way things are

The biggest fucking release is to realize that you can let go without some huge release. The most culminating moment is realizing there is no culminating moment.

Because enlightenment would be way too fucking stressful if it all came in one moment. There would be the huge fear of fucking it up at the last minute. Or the fear of losing it.

My spirit has been chained by my ego and it has known it. It has been lost and it has known it. How do I know this? Because I talk to it.When I cry, it isn’t my ego that pities myself. When my spirit cries, it mourns its imprisonment. But this sad song cannot be contained by prison walls… and in this way, I know why the caged bird sings.

I think I will always have some sadness towards my life. I think I will mature into an acceptance of this.

I’m such a fucking idealist!

I got fucked hard because I was so single minded towards my goal of perfect love. Fuck idealism!

I was on a quest for perfect love… I got it and then I lost it. When I lost that perfect love, I could not settle for anything less, so I cast myself into doom and rejected all the simple happiness of life.

Since then I have tortured myself with the thoughts of failure and inadequacy. I have not wanted to settle with starting back at the beginning, and being one of the “unenlightened folk”. But I have been reduced to such a wither that I would be an absolute fool not to take the scraps of food given to me. Now I am on a quest to surrender to life’s simpler pleasures and joys and once again am preparing to climb the mountain of true love, this time armed with a new humility that should protect me from any large falls from grace.

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This past year I have lived my life as a failed idealist. It has come as quite a rude awakening for me to realize that there is nothing worse than hanging around a failed idealist and that’s why all my friends have been avoiding me for the past year.

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Idealism has by far been my worst addiction. It manifests in despair which really is the vain hope that somehow by causing myself pain and separation I will die like Jesus on the Cross and ascend to God-like power, which is really a huge ego fantasy more than anything else. I think I’ll really stop being in pain when I get rid of the possibility of this fantasy.

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I am a failed philosopher and contemplative who has been knocked off his pedestal like a corrupt spiritual guru. If only all my friends could experience me as brilliantly as I experience myself! Too bad it’s a fucking impossible goal because of my underlying belief that they can NEVER UNDERSTAND ME !! hahah

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Actually though the strongest archetype I’ve identified myself with is that of the fool. Only fools fall in love right? No wonder the second strongest archetype i’ve identified myself with is that of the lover. I’ve definitely played the wise fool many times. I’ve also been the fool who didn’t want to follow along with anyone else and therefore didn’t look both ways getting across the street and got himself hit by a mack truck.

Well there you get to the root of my despair and the anger. FUCK YOU WORLD! I don’t WANT TO look both ways across the street, you dickless assholes!. And i fucking want to get hit by a truck and DIE, And I hope you will all come to my funeral and realize how much better I am than all of you worthless pieces of shit. I HOPE YOU DIE, FUCKERS!