The Backup Plan

There’s a feeling I’ve had for most of my life that’s hard to explain, but I’ll try anyway. It’s like being invited to a party by one person, and when you get there, that person isn’t there anymore. Everyone else either doesn’t know you or doesn’t particularly want you there, and you’re left standing in a space you technically have access to but don’t actually feel a part of. You can stay. You can even participate. You can act the way you’re supposed to act and say the things you’re supposed to say. But underneath all of that, there’s this quiet, persistent sense that you don’t really belong in the room. Or maybe more simply, that you don’t really belong here at all.

I’ve felt that way in most places I’ve been, around most people I’ve known, even in situations that were objectively fine. I can do the social part. I know how to play the role. I can be engaged, responsive, even likable when I need to be. But most of the time it feels like I’m going through the motions, like I’m performing something rather than actually experiencing it. And layered on top of that is something I’ve never quite been able to turn off—this constant awareness of how strange and inconsistent everything is. The rules people follow, the things we decide matter, the contradictions we all quietly accept. It’s not something I go looking for, and it’s not something I enjoy noticing. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time wishing my brain would stop doing it. But it doesn’t. It just runs in the background, whether I want it to or not.

That combination—feeling like you don’t belong and not being able to unsee what feels off—can do something to you over time. It did something to me. For a long time, being alive didn’t feel like a gift, but it didn’t feel like a tragedy either. It mostly felt like something I hadn’t decided about yet. If nothing was actively pulling me in one direction or another, my default state was somewhere between ambivalence and disinterest. I wasn’t desperate to leave, but I wasn’t exactly invested in staying either. I was just… here.

And when you live like that long enough, your mind starts to look for exits. Not always in a dramatic or impulsive way, but as a quiet, ever-present option sitting just off to the side. A kind of mental note that says, “If this gets too bad, you don’t have to keep doing this.” And at first, that might even feel like a comfort. A sense of control. A way to reassure yourself that you’re not trapped. But what I didn’t understand for a long time is that the moment you have that option available, you are no longer fully in your life. You’re negotiating your participation in it. You’re hedging your bets.

That’s how I lived for a long time. One foot in my life, one foot out. Not committed to leaving, but not committed to staying either. Just waiting to see how things played out, as if my life were something happening to me rather than something I was actively choosing. And the problem with that is that you can’t build anything meaningful from that position. You can’t fully invest, you can’t take real risks, and you can’t engage deeply with anything because some part of you is always holding back. There’s always that quiet awareness that you don’t actually have to follow through. That you can leave if it gets hard enough.

At one point, I got close enough to the edge that I had to confront something I had been avoiding for years. If I didn’t change the way I was approaching this, I wasn’t going to make it. Not necessarily because I wanted to die, but because I had never really decided to live. I had never made a real commitment either way. And that’s when something shifted, not all at once, and not in some dramatic, life-altering moment, but in a very specific and deliberate decision. I gave myself five years. Five years where I was going to go all in on being alive. Not halfway, not cautiously, not in a “we’ll see how this goes” kind of way. I was going to commit fully, whether I felt like it or not.

But there was a condition attached to that decision. If I was going to actually give life a real chance, I couldn’t keep my backup plan. I couldn’t keep the exit sitting there in the background as an option. Because as long as it was there, I knew I wouldn’t fully engage with anything else. There’s an old idea—whether it’s historical fact or just a story, I’m not entirely sure—about armies landing on enemy shores and then burning their own ships so there was no way to retreat. No going back, no second-guessing, no reconsidering. The only direction left was forward. That’s what I decided to do, not physically, obviously, but mentally. I removed the option of leaving. Not because I suddenly felt hopeful or optimistic or convinced that things would get better, but because I realized that I would never actually experience my life if I kept negotiating my escape from it.

That decision didn’t stop the thoughts. They didn’t disappear, and I don’t want to give the impression that they do. That’s not how this works. But there’s a difference between having a thought and engaging with it, between something passing through your mind and something you sit down and entertain. Your brain will generate all kinds of things throughout the day, most of which you don’t choose to follow. I started treating those thoughts the same way. Every time they showed up, the answer was already decided. No. Not today. Not during this five-year period. I had already made that decision, and I wasn’t going to revisit it every time my brain suggested it.

And once that option was off the table, something unexpected happened. Most of the ambivalence went with it. Because now the question wasn’t whether I wanted to be here. That had already been answered. The question became what I was going to do with the fact that I was here. And strangely enough, that made a lot of smaller decisions easier. Should I get out of bed? Yes. Should I go to work? Yes. Should I try, even when I don’t feel like it? Yes. Not because I suddenly felt motivated or excited about life, but because I had removed the alternative. There was no longer a “why bother” argument that held any weight, because there was nowhere else to go.

It wasn’t a magical fix. It didn’t solve all my problems, and it didn’t suddenly make life feel good. But it did something more important than that. It put me in a position where things could actually improve. Because you can’t build a life you don’t hate while you’re still halfway committed to leaving it. That kind of half-in, half-out existence keeps everything stuck. It keeps you from fully engaging with anything long enough for it to matter.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t belong here, like you’re in a place that doesn’t quite fit and never has, you’re not the only one. I still don’t have a perfect explanation for that feeling, and I’m not sure I ever will. But I do know this: if you’re going to stay, even for now, it might be worth removing the backup plan. Not forever. Just long enough to see what happens when you’re actually all in. Not because you’re certain it will work, but because for the first time, you’re not giving yourself another option.

If this felt familiar, you’re not the only one sitting in that chair.

There’s a strange kind of grief that comes with feeling stuck like this—like life is happening somewhere else, and you’re just watching it through the window.

I’ve been there.

And there are ways forward that don’t rely on pretending things are fine or forcing yourself to feel something you don’t.

If you want practical, real-world strategies for navigating depression—the kind no one seems to talk about—I share them here

- Scott

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