Flower,
After reading your last post I think I have a much better understanding of what you were trying to say. My first response to you was on the lighter side and without the level of understanding of what you were actually trying to say. I apologize for that. I see now how serious you are.
First of all, you are someone. What you fail to understand is who that someone is from the perspective of being inside of your body and mind. Others see you from out sided of your own perspective as someone and from their perspective that someone is beneficial and purposeful. From others reality you are a good person, from your own you seem to see your self as a non entity. Understanding what you have just gone through that is very understandable.
You say you do not know if what you are feeling inside is real or not, again, that is all based on perspective. What you seem to be trying to deal with is the verification of self and the separation of past and present thoughts. Right now you feel you have changed your beliefs on what life is about but you do not have a complete understanding of what that change should be. It is extremely difficult for a person to spend their entire life with one complete outlook on what life is all about and then in a few short months abandon those thoughts and try to quickly replace them with others.
First of all saying you simply do not believe in what you once thought was the meaning of life does not mean you have changed who you are and what you do based on a reversal of theory. Your past theory about life will always stay with you whether you choose to recognize it as the thought that guides your life or not. You have not had enough time to completely reverse your theory on life in that the thoughts that you wish to replace your old ones with are not completely formulated in your mind.
A person is made up with as much of what they don't know as what they do know. It is the inability to completely replace that of which you know and no longer want to accept, with that of which you do not know and hope to accept, in a short period of time. The unsettling thought about all of this is both sides are still based on theory. Religion and science seem to have a way of balancing themselves out. Religion wants to assure the future beyond death, and science wants to assure it until death as well as postpone it.
This is the essence of life and what we as humans who have the ability to think deeper thoughts than the animals torture ourselves with on a daily basis. Or lust for knowledge drives us insane and causes us to do many stupid things because of not being able to know all and then neatly package it as absolute fact. Animals do not ponder on life after death or what others may think or if they have a purpose in life. The eat when they are hungry, sleep when they are tired and have sex when the timing is right. Except for the mystery of why lemmings jump over a cliff and a few beached whales animals do not contemplate nor attempt suicide. It is their ability to simply live and enjoy the simple pleasures in life that ensures their existence.
We as humans cannot seem to simply enjoy life but rather spend a lot of our time trying to understand and explain it. Some spend so much time on this they end up having their minds filled with so much knowledge about life they have very little time to experience or enjoy it. If you try to accelerate what you want to replace your old thinking with and become frustrated because it is not happening fast enough you will simply burn out.
You say you do not have time to do this at your age. Sweetheart, you are so wrong. You lie to yourself and think that your sons life would be better without your influence, again, you are so wrong. You are as much a part of your sons life and are as important to him as his legs, arms, heart, brain or anything else that keeps him alive. If he had a heart that had problems would you choose to cut it out so as not to theoretically cause him problems later? Of course not.
You are an intelligent person with the ability to make mistakes as well as not make them. If you could reverse your thoughts and see "what you 'do not' make mistakes in" as oppose to concentrating on the mistake you have made you would see how valuable you are. You care for, and you love your son, those are the two most basic and important things a human can do for their children or any other human for that fact. What you think and why you think it is not important to him now, you being there and hugging him and loving him is. You seem to not give that thought the level of importance it deserves.
Your love for your son is not a mistake but probably one of the greatest things you will ever think about or do in your life. Since your son is a part of you why do you not love yourself as you do him? Why do you ignore loving yourself and robbing him of that love? Because you are confused? Because you have made mistakes? That is no reason at all and you are bright enough to understand that. Whether you want to accept it is the main problem you seem to have, not your past or future mistakes.
Who you are and how you feel about yourself and life will continue to change. Change is the one absolute in life. Religion, science, philosophy and theory will for ever be changing. Trying to wrestle it down and find an absolute answer to any of it is futile and unimportant to the basic needs of happiness in life.
Look at your son, touch his face, then think, is your touch more important than your thought of touching to him? Is the reason you love him more important that the fact that you do to him? He is your life and you are his. If you take that away or think of taking that away then you will truly be only what you think, as opposed to what you are. You are not who you think you are but more of who you do not think you are, just as you are as much of what you do not know as what you do know.Your mind is only apart of you and it will always be in a constant state of change. If you can understand that and accept that you will see you are no different from anybody else. You are somebody, you are a person, you are important and you do matter.
Take the time it takes to replace the old with the new. DO NOT think you cannot. It is an absolute fact that what ever you end up eventually accepting to believe will still be just that, a belief. If you die, a very important part of your son dies also. You cannot take that from him. You would end up cheating him of the most important person in his life. All this, simply because you have not given yourself enough time to fill in the blanks and become comfortable in your thoughts. You are better than that, you are smarter than that. That alone proves that you are a person.
Take care and big hug
Dave