More than just boredom

I'm perpetually alternating between feeling that I'm wasting my life, and feeling that there's nothing truly constructive I could be doing anyway.

I'm capable of succeeding--no, excelling--at anything I put my mind to doing. I'm good at everything. Concepts I don't already have a firm grasp of are second-nature to learn. I can't remember the last time I was challenged by anything except my patience.

You'd think this would make the world my oyster. I'm supposed to be the special prodigy whose options are unlimited, who has infinite potential and who only wants for something until he decides he actually wants it. People who know me tell me I'm "destined" to be a pillar for something greater in life, and that seems to make sense.

My brain is constantly occupied with those great thoughts of what needs to be done versus what's actually going on, on a social and often global scale. I understand the reasons governing why any given event occurs, and I see what's coming next. Everything is so simple to me that I honestly wonder how it's even possible that our world can often be such a terrible place to be a human being.

I refuse to believe that nobody else truly understands. Everybody else just lives in denial - and the responsibility for their INactions falls on the shoulders of people like myself--are there others like me?--who not only know better but realize that the balance must be maintained no matter how much sacrifice it requires. So I give and I give and I give EVERYTHING, expecting nothing back - but knowing that I don't really have a choice in that regard, anyway. Why? Are all the people I help in the course of my life going to suddenly have an epiphany someday and realize how much of a drain they are on society, on the people who love them, the people they pretend to love back? How exactly am I changing the world, here? I see everything, sure - but I don't see it.

Every day I wake up feeling absolutely flattened by the weight of this responsibility; I feel like if I were in "charge" of everything, I could fix it all. I know I could... it's really not just a feeling. But I don't want to be in charge! Just being in charge of MYSELF is difficult enough that the majority of other people in the same situation just pretend that no such maintenance is necessary! And the fraction of my energy that I have left for myself just keeps shrinking as time goes on; it's long past the point where I feel like the most significant aspects of who I am remain woven into the lives of people I've cared about in the past. I don't feel like I have anything left. I don't know why I get up in the morning. I don't know what to do with myself and even if I did, I wouldn't know HOW to do so.

I've never just been "me" before. I've always been "me the boyfriend/brother/son/friend/whatever" - and I don't resent any of that; I wouldn't give up any of that for anything, because I know that those efforts DO matter in the lives of certain individuals. But I can't shake the constant feeling that there's just not enough left of "just me" to constitute anything tangible anymore. I feel like a vast nexus of broken links to people and places and feelings and memories, and I have no idea how to escape that identity or function outside of it. I'm really not confident that there IS anything beyond it anymore.

I want the world and my friends and my family and everything else to fix themselves, just like I have always fixed myself. I'm tired of being the go-to guy for everyone else's answers time and time again, even though I tell myself I'm making some kind of positive difference by making myself available for that purpose. I just don't feel it. For as long as I can remember, I've always felt like I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders out of sheer necessity - picking up the slack for everyone else because I know nobody else will. And somebody HAS to do it! As proud as I am of the good things I know I've done, I feel like I have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I can't relate to anybody anymore, if I ever even could. I'm not sure I have any concept of true "self" left. Whenever I manage to come up with something I could do to occupy myself other than picking up somebody else's pieces, it takes me the space of a minute or two to follow that something's train of thought to completion; I see myself doing it, the possible immediate results, each result's progressively more distant repercussions, and I see that none of it means a damn thing.

Is there supposed to be a point to life? Does *ANY* of it mean a damn thing? What the hell am I doing here...