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Two things:

* There are countless examples of people who felt there was nothing more (to live for), but luckily lived on to see they were wrong. I've seen examples even here at HN.

* Visiting a doctor for mental illnesses should be equally obvious as visiting a doctor for other illnesses. Mental illnesses can be equally, possibly even more painful than other ilnessses, but I guess one of the problems is that they somehow feel right.

As with all my advice, if it helps, use it. If not, leave it. It might not be the best tought out piece of advice you'll get, but I once lost a good friend once because I didn't react in time, and now I think it's better to do what I cant rather than waiting for an inspired answer.

"By now you probably are guessing that the way I'd like the world to be (simple, happy and loving, etc.) isn't the way the world is, and that's very much the reason I don't want to be here."

Maybe the reason the world isn't more like the one you want it to be is that not enough people like you are sticking around to try to make it better.

Another thing you might want to consider is dedicating your life to helping others. If you feel you have no use for your own life, at least you could use it to help others.

And this may help your own particular dilemma in another way. I've heard and read over and over again about how many people who were suicidal felt their lives had turned around once they switched to being self-focused to being other-focused.

Thank you for sharing that.

I wonder if moving to another country would help? There are other cultures that don't put so much emphasis on extroversion and are just plain different that you might find that you fit better there.

You can always use the excuse that you don't speak the language to avoid interacting with people.

There is always the online world? Do you feel more comfortable there? Aside from work (and even there you can work remotely), there is online bill pay and other services where you can limit the number of interactions to the maximum.

In other words, why not try to mold your own world around you where you can feel better?

If you do make the choice to leave, there would be no way to undo it...

Don't worry too much about being labeled with a mental illness, as others mentioned, it is just a label. I think it is still beneficial to try ( and I know this is exactly part of the difficulty) to talk to a psychologist about stuff like this. You can just get a different perspective from them about things and you can tell them stuff you won't tell your friends or family.

> Do I have a mental illness?

Yes, if you want to kill yourself you are "mentally ill". But as you are aware, mental illness is not defined by right and wrong, by rationality and irrationality, but rather by normality and abnormality. If you are unable to conform to societal norms without suicidal ideation, then with respect to society you are unquestionably "mentally ill". Michel Foucault's "Madness and Civilization" isn't exactly on point, but might be encouraging reading if you fear the label.

So "mental illness" isn't really the point. But are you right? About the world, probably. It is not the way you want it to be. It certainly doesn't seem simple, happy and loving to me. Is suicide the answer? It depends on the question. If the question is "Would killing yourself make the world more like you want it to be?", I'd have to think the answer is 'No.'. Beyond that, I confess to being stuck at about the same point you are.

Earnest Becker's "The Denial of Death" is an attempt to answer such questions honestly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

Why do you care if you have mental illness or not? Either way, you have a bit different perspective on the world from everyone else, drugs could make you feel better, etc. Mental illness is just a label.

Try talking to your close friends about how the world is and how you'd like it to be (no need to get into details about leaving it). Maybe you'll find you can do something about it, albeit small.

> As I said I just don't feel like I belong here and I don't want to be here

"It gets better."

I asked if that means I also and I also had a mental illness that was causing me to think like this and I was told that yes I do. But noone can tell me how or why that answer is a 'yes'.

Not that you have a mental illness which causes you to think like this, but you habitually thinking like that and the thoughts which support it are the mental illness.

It's possibly hard for you and most people to understand but when you feel out of place often you just want to leave.

It possibly is hard for me to understand, but possibly not. I've dreamed of suicide for a good half my life and got close to it on occasion, never talked about it to anyone (and hence never been diagnosed with anything) and put a front over it. I would describe myself as depressed, but not out loud. I'm also a bit stubborn.

I've seen enough basics about zen and similar that I when I am angry I can notice a part of my head which isn't angry, which is just observing. I've recently stumbled on self help techniques which sound ridiculous and found that just by sitting and thinking in a particular way and counting backwards, fear carried for years since childhood faded like gas from a deflating balloon. A memory which was charged with negative emotion where the mere act of remembering it triggered physical feelings is now just a memory.

Nothing fun I've ever done changed that memory. I never even realised (until recently) that said memory of a trivial event was at all significant or relevant to anything at all, it was just a part of me which occasionally popped up and I tried to not think about it.

It's these things which keep me interested and hopeful. It's these experiences which make me think normal people have completely massively wrong beliefs about many things to do with habits and behaviour. (such as "other people's behaviour can make me feel bad", which is just completely endemic and so basically wrong it's been written about for thousands of years).

Such that when you say:

By now you probably are guessing that the way I'd like the world to be (simple, happy and loving, etc.) isn't the way the world is, and that's very much the reason I don't want to be here.

I say "I doubt it", and suspect you might not even be aware of the reason(s) you don't want to be here - what pattern is it that you learned, that you have stored in your head, that is driving the link between "not simple, happy, loving" and "don't belong, can't wait to leave"? Because not everyone has that link. So why do you have it? (and I also suspect that if you are "most people", you wont know what kind of answer to give to that question or that there could be more than one kind of answer and your brain might give you the less useful one by default).

If this sounds like I'm saying you should just "get over it", I am and I'm not. "get over it" implies you should steamroller through your problems and that is lame advice. I'm saying you should(?) try debugging yourself, and there's a fair chance it would be possible if you learned and practised ways to do it (and I likely don't know what).

Your want to escape and commit suicide is only "right" if you want to be running a program in your head which desires to leave and commit suicide. If you don't want that, it's a bug and should be debugged, not marked as a "feature" and left there. And you don't debug your head by earning lots, driving sports cars and chasing hedonic pursuits. You debug your head by looking at what your head does and trying as many things as you can think of (in your head) until you find something that changes its(your) behaviour.

With the facts given above, is it not possible that I'm just one of those people that see life differently from the norm.

JustIsADangerousWord. Do you want to be someone who sees life differently from the norm?

(Postscript for the detractors: Not a doctor, not your doctor, all IMO, yes I accept that not all things work for all people, yes I accept that some people have chemical imbalances. I don't accept that chemical imbalances are the cause of most people's day to day problems like fear of public speaking, social anxiety, fear of asking for a raise, feelings of insecurity, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of wanting to escape, feelings of loneliness, etc).