so everything’s been closed for like, a week and a half? i think it’s been a solid week of nothing going anywhere except for supplies

and like, my mother right, she’s definitely on the autism spectrum (not that she would ever, ever admit it because she has a very specific understanding of autism and what she has is not that). But she’s like, extremely low on empathy, or rather at expressing empathy. it’s like, hotbuttoned to wanting to fix whatever the problem is, and when she can’t fix it, she just gets frustrated. and she is frustrated with me all the time.

so I admit that I’m having a problem handling certain things about my chronic illnesses. (and it’s been getting worse, even though its something I have to deal with everyyear. and it’s a 100% just my own stupidity, rearing its ugly head. I’m fully capable of doing everything properly. I just forget. and then dealing with the fact I’ve screwed up, or lost somethiing, or forgotten, or don’t have something else done, or something has run out, just... i don’t deal with it. and I should be able to do it, there’s nothing stopping my ability to do it. and yet it is a struggle, every single time. I’m so sick of struggling. and my psychiatrist told me I was still lying to myself last time I talked to him. I still don’t know what he meant. and I’m lowkey terrified to go to my next appointment. he keeps cancelling them, because of conflicts. I got told off when I said I was running out of medication. honestly, I just...it takes so much effort to just stay alive.)

I admit a problem, or say I’m struggling and my mom yells at me, honest to goodness yells at me that everyone else has to do it, every single other person on this medication has to deal with the same process. did I think I was the exception. didn’t I realize that she is on the same medication, has to do all those steps too?

I am. intimately aware. that no one else struggles. over nothing. over nothing at all. quite like I do. I am fully and completely aware of the level of my own ineptitude and stupidity.

I am also fully aware that expressing too much negative emotion in this house is a sure fire way to start an argument. I know it. i just forget. I forget all the time.

asking for help in this family just gets you another argument. she gets mad that she can’t help, I know. but when I’m yelled at I just... shut down. I can’t handle it, it feels like knives inside. any attempt to explain myself, or refute what she’s saying gets immediately dismissed by as getting angry, or upset, or yelling. which I am obviously only doing to make her feel bad. or I’m overreacting. one of the two. I’m always overreacting.

like I can’t stop crying. the original issue is dealt with, and resolved peaceably. I’m not going to lose that $200. i just wish I hadn’t allowed myself to react at all. I really wish I hadn’t said I was struggling. I wish she hadn’t yelled at me.

I wish this wasn’t still something that I was dealing with at my age. And with the world’s economy just, completely going off the rails, like, we’re heading into a new dimension. I don’t see how I’ll ever be able to afford my own place.

i just need somebody to listen. I have to release these emotions like a pressure valve. I don’t know I can’t remember that she doesn’t understand me at all. If I tell her I accomplished something, or immediate reply is ‘is that all, what about this?’

like, does any of this matter? am I making this all up? is this what I’m lying about? am I reacting about nothing?

I feel like I’m suffocating all the time. like i’m trapped in tar, or pulled under water.

I told half of this to my friends. and they’re great. helped me make a plan to deal with the thing, listened to me complaining about my mother. but it’s a lot to put on their plates. I talk so much, I know it bugs them. I’m a burden on everyone.

i can’t figure out what i’m lying about. what did he mean? what did he mean? am I lying about being depressed? am i lying about feeling anxious? am I lying about wanting to be better?

I haven’t seen him in months. and I know he doesn’t like me. I know he thinks I’m overreacting. I probably am. Am I lying about needing help? am I too lazy to help myself? to do the work?

I told him the last time I was there that it’s getting harder to keep working towards my degree. that i don’t see the point in finishing, that its hard to see the point in anything. that’s when he said I was still lying to myself.

i

I don’t want to keep feeling this way. I can’t stand it, what a useless, pointless, pointless life

am I lying about that? am I faking it? what did he mean? what did he mean? what am I supposed to do?

does any of this matter, while this crisis is going on?

on the plus side, I’m like, significantly more likely to die is a catch the covid. strangely enough, it terrifies me. I’ve not done anything with my life worth doing, leaving nothing behind but debt and regrets and people better off

what a useless, useless, stupid life

what am I lying about, what is it, what is it, what is it, I can’t stand it. I can’t stand him not explaining. I can’t stand that every time I’m in there I feel like I’m faking it, like I’m two seconds away from a breakdown, like I’m bothering someone, like I’m taking up his time.

what did he mean? why wouldn’t he explain himself? what am I lying about? I didn’t think I was the habit of lying to myself, save about maybe what kind of work i’m going to put into my degree. but I can’t . . i don’t see the point, it’s all so pointless. I’ll get to the end of it and be right back where I started, except in more debt. I can’t get a good job unless I apply, without good relationships with people in the industry. if there are any jobs left at the end of this crisis. what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck .it’ll just be something else I can’t do, something else I’ll struggle with pointlessly. all I can see are the things I can’t do. it would be so easy to get good marks on everything.. I could get 100s on almost every subject, if I jsut did the fucking work.

but i don’t. and no amount of cajoling fixes that. who’d rely on me in a workplace? nobody in their right fucking mind. not the least of which I can barely replicate work other people do let alone add anything of use to what’s happening. everything is so confusing, all the time

i just...

i want to be done with fucking things up. I want to be competent and orderly and confident. I want to feel good about myself. I’m so tired of being so fuckin goddamn worthless. even when I do something well I gotta follow it with a massive fuck up

what the fuck is wrong with me. am I lying about the work I need to do to fix it? what the hell did he mean? what other goddamn way am I making something out of nothing??

it’s gonna be a rough goddamn year, folks

I really should look up facts about emotional abuse (liek, severity and long-term consequences) and I’m kind of too chicken shit to do it? 

things are just so horribly complicated, you know? I think that’s why I like fanfic; there’s something far more clearcut about motivation and consequences and characterization when it’s written down. when there’s like, a purpose, some kind of arc or momentum, or moment created. you know how you’re supposed to feel because the narrative leads you there. 

it’s probably the thing that bugs me the most about the current Discourse. Like, I think it’s really not helpful to conflate fiction and reality. Reality is so much messier. I can pick and choose the narrative of what I tell people and what I tell myself about what my family was like growing up, what my parents were like. It’d all be true. But it’s like, it’s like the way I interact with most people - my default mode is like, cheery wide-eyed innocence or overly-friendly snark. That’s not exactly what I’m like, it’s just what’s easiest, what causes the least amount of mental gymnastics. I can and will default to that when I’m emotional or anxious or in new situations or at work. especially when meeting new people. It’s not fake but I do it because it’s effective. it’s not everything that there is. least I hope it’s not. okay, so I might be empty underneath but regardless, the mask itself is performative to a certain extent. 

It doesn’t make the other parts less real (lets go with that, yeah). But it’s harder to figure out what those parts are, they’re a lot harder to express or to describe. they’re a fuckton messier and uglier and require a lot more work.  

I don’t know where I’m going with this really. I’ve been seeking help for my mental health for a long time. The number one issue is my self-worth/ability to human, followed rather closely by my self-efficacy, my skills at emotional regulation, and my belief in my ability to change. I mean, it manifests like depression and anxiety, but at its base are those issues. processes? And if I start to think about how many of them relate back to my parents and my dad, there’s just...a ton there. more than I’ve ever really talked about. I mean, I talked about what my dad was like to people before, lots of people. Things he did, things he said. The ways he was so incredibly difficult to be around. But I never really talked to anyone about the consequences of that? I have really, really fucked up views about life and marriage, and obligations, and happiness. If I think about it too much, I can connect all sorts of dots. But just because you can see something clearly, just because it has a clean narrative, it doesn’t make it true. 

I mean, it feels like I make it worse than it is to talk about all of it. It wasn’t all bad? My life is/was extraordinarily privileged, and before all these medical conditions kicked me in the fucking face, was perfectly fine, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing really to complain about, you know?

so it feels awfully wrong to complain about it and yet i do, cause I keep thinking about it. I thought I had laid all these feelings to rest? he’s been dead a long time, it’s not like it’s an active area of my life anymore, figuring out how properly deal with him. and it took a long time to move all the grief around, and the anger and the guilt and the loss, and the love.  but I’m not...really fixing anything about myself, despite all the therapy I’m in. it’s hard to quantify if it’s important, what my dad was like. like i was never abused. I mean, he spanked me once with a plastic spoon (and he hit me once with his artificial legs, which is almost funny now except at the time it was frigging awful, mostly because he accused me of nearly killing him, or of not caring if he died, or of being responsible for his near-death? i don’t really remember which. I remember being whacked on the head though and sobbing in the shower, that part I remember very clearly. it’s basically funny? I don’t normally mention the blame part, just the being hit on the head with fake legs. it tends to bring a chuckle out of the people who knew him best and it mostly makes me laugh now? oh those crazy hypoglycemia stories, i have. so many. the moral: never leave two volatile diabetics alone in the house for a weekend. i don’t think he even remembered doing it.) and like. like, my brother has a much better claim to have suffered emotional abuse. my mother too. he was downright cruel to them, especially my brother. my father liked me best. we really got along, you know? 

when I think about abuse, I think trauma. something acute, or chronic, but something.... something that someone is able to point to, and go, this here, this was wrong. this person was bad to me. but there was nothing really that bad? about my family life? for me at least, like I said, he was kindest to me. it was just the way that it was. like, no family is perfect. how do you know if its bad enough to complain about? if it’s bad enough to explain the things about myself that are so, extremely dysfunctional? parts of it were awful, like double plus not fun, but other parts were just fine. I miss my father a lot. I miss him all the time. it seems to disingenuous to only talk about the bad parts, you know? he wasn’t all that he was. and I know far too many people who had terrible, terrible fathers. it feels like a mockery of their experience to call my own family life ‘bad’. By any normal marker, there wasn’t anything bad about it. 

and in the end, is that explanation of my dysfunction, like, pointing to my dad and the way he acted as the root of why I’m like this, is there a point to doing that? we’re responsible for our own actions. is it a cop-out to say, I’m like this because I learned it from these experiences/environment? like, I don’t know. it doesn’t feel real enough to say that. it doesn’t quite capture the reality of it to put that narrative on it, when that’s only one narrative of many. 

it certainly doesn’t seem enough to stack up to people who lived through real, actual trauma. this certainly is not that. its too nebulous. Only the people who really knew my parents - myself, my brother, my brother’s wife, my mother’s best friend, my father’s close friend, only they really knew what it was like. and no one outside of my mother and brother really get it, what living with him was like, that unique blend of love and anger, how draining it was to be around him, how volatile his mood could be, how much we miss him. i can’t explain it. I’ve never been able to, not adequately. I started to, in my last appointment with my psychiatrist. I know my psychiatrist has been super ...disbelieving? of how ingrained my mental illnesses are? like I don’t really have enough reason to have them? I know I’m reinforcing my own negative self-beliefs and sabotaging my recovery, like, I know he’s dismissive because I’m not really trying hard enough. I mean, I absolutely know that I’m not getting better because I’m not doing enough work, I just, have no idea how to do the work? I also think he doesn’t quite see enough reason why I am the way that i am? you know, he’s asked me twice if I’ve been sexually assaulted. once when i told him I had early onset chronic depression. and the other time when i told him I was asexual. that’s the narrative he’s searching for but it doesn’t fit. 

I’m not sure what narrative I do have. is there one? am I grasping at straws? trying to shift blame outside of myself and shirk responsibility for my own issues? it feels like I am. 

at the same time, I’ve written two private posts about things that I do that I can directly attribute to stuff relating to my dad. and they’re not really shareable because they’re kind of way too depressing and over the top negative. its not fake; it certainly is true (from a certain point of view) but it doesn’t feel....real enough.

especially given how long its been. I stopped living with both parents in 2005, though there were extended periods of being around them both after that. He died in 2012. I am much, much older now than I was and I have a good deal more perspective on how I feel about him. I am not a child. Yet, it feels childish to talk about it? 

I guess I’m searching for validation. how do i explain it enough though, to capture what it really was? if it was anything at all?

anyway, this has been far too long a post

i maybe just managed to get across an extremely important point to my mother

about boundaries

specifically, that I need her to ask for the stuff she wants because I am not and cannot be a mindreader. And she lies about how fine she is all the time, like, my mother hasn’t let herself truly relax since at least oh....1993? But my empathy ability is all sorts of fucked up and we miscommunicate all the time. On a really fundamental level, we don’t understand each other. I can’t really anticipate what she’s thinking or feeling. I need people, all people but specifically the people I live with, to explicitly ask/tell me what they want from me. It’s not rude to ask me to be quiet. I am very loud and I talk a lot. I really, really hate how much I talk. And I don’t pick up on how annoying it is until long after the person has become annoyed. And then it’s a whole thing, like, I don’t want to say an emotional trigger? but it starts a whole cycle which doesn’t feel super great. my mother and I reeeeeally don’t communicate very well. 

I am ...incapable of picking up on non-verbal cues. I need people to be upfront with me. It doesn’t dawn on me that somebody would not just tell me what they need when the thing itself is so small and easy to do. Like, big stuff, sure that’s hard. But asking somebody to shut the fuck up for awhile? Super easy! My mother thinks it’s rude to ask for anything. And she thinks if you have to be told to do something, you’ve not been paying close enough attention. 

(haha, yeah, that attitude is not a good attitude to emulate)

(especially because my father thought it was a sign of weakness to ask for anything at all! and that being offered help meant you weren’t able to do it on your own and the person asking thought you were going to fail) 

(yeah, so the consequences of failure of any kind or of expressing one’s own emotions/discomfort in this house were not good? emotionally? it’s hard to really think that any of this shit matters, like, i know emotional abuse is real but it’s super hard to call this abuse at all, simply because it seems like I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. I’m a frigging expert at that, and I’ve been a whiny bitch since I was about 8. I never felt unsafe or was hit or sexually abused and I didn’t live in poverty or want for anything (I lived in blissful ignorance of the depths of my father’s terrible, terrible financial schemes). it’s so frigging stupid to still be rehashing all this shit? the awfulness of my parent’s relationship, that is, how awful my father was to my mother does explain ...a lot of my issues, though. i am, in terms of personality, pretty much a carbon copy of my father. and, rather importantly, i have the same medical issues that caused him so much unhappiness, in fact, I have more than he did, though my diabetes is significantly better controlled. and like, if my father had been healthy my mother would have left him. I think about that a lot. I think about that an awful lot. how much happier my family would have been if my parents had gotten a divorce back in the 90s. if that had really been an option. how do you leave someone who is so sick? who is too sick to work? who couldn’t even receive benefits? who would sue you for alimony? 

in other news, water is wet, my father trapped my mother in an emotionally, financially, and spirit-draining relationship. fun times. there is a toxicity at the intrinsic core, you know? i hope my brother has escaped it. who knows though. he certainly put his first wife through hell. I hope that he’s changed enough. are people really capable of change? I think of the two of us, he’s more capable than I am. somedays I think it’s comforting that his first wife doesn’t hate me, and that she still has some contact with my brother. Not a lot, cause it’s awkward and awful. but it has to count for something that she’s been to his new house and met his family? I don’t know why I’m asking tumblr, the hellpit that it is, but that has to count for something, right?  I think my first cousins escaped it too, this family awfulness, maybe. two of them at least. the other first cousins, not so much, but I don’t really have any contact with them. the rest of the family is dead. so many unhappy people. so many people that made other people unhappy.  

anyway)

but I think I’ve finally gotten across to her how much of this non-argument we just had could have been avoided if she had simply stated, can we talk later? I just want to sit quietly for awhile. 

i mean, i should have just realized. but I didn’t. I never do, and probably never will. that part just doesn’t seem to work super well. hopefully in the future, this whole saga can be averted with some simple statements of want. 

like, just be upfront with me. I live in perpetual fear of being tolerated. if you don’t tell me, I’ll never know. and the only way to prevent the annoyance of myself is to just...withdraw. and like, I keep trying that and it keeps not working on the longterm. i am too frigging needy for that. 

anyway. fingers crossed. 

i’m going to mainline some tylenol and forget that this whole afternoon existed

I see a therapist, like a real live person, at the beginning of may. I’m so utterly petrified that I’m going to say the wrong thing and undermine the help that I need. I wish, like I always do, like I have always, always wished that I knew the right thing to say and the right way to act. I need to be honest, and calm, and somehow condense my 20 plus years of medical history and my fucked-up family life into a succinct, half-hour session. I have to trust this person immediately, be open, be attentive. that’s ...a tall order. like I said, I’m petrified that I won’t say what I’m supposed to in order to make my case and I’ll be dropped from priority. I come across as....well, as not really that ill.  My psychiatrist called me defensive and combative. which I am. it’s not a pleasant trait but my god its firmly in there.  I’ve been living with depression since I was about 10 but it’s not...not very visible. It takes a very long time for that sadness to be apparent to someone else. It comes across as hostility and nihilistic humour, to be honest. I don’t like admitting it to myself, how deeply this combination of futility/self-loathing goes. It comes on like it’s never left. I think I failed my exam today. I’ve been contemplating dropping out of school completely because I don’t really see the point in continuing. the margin for error is so so small and I am unforgiving towards any mistakes when I could have tried so much harder. I don’t really know how to fight, you know? And it’s all so horrible, self-reinforcing. I know, point-blank, I have no reason to be like this. Yeah, emotional abuse from my father and my mother probably is autistic and is entirely too logical and judgmental for a fuck up like me as a daughter. also she was horribly horribly emotionally abused for like, a long ass time. - like I learned no coping skills or emotional regulation and I have like, negative self-worth and I have always been super super intense, childish, and the last to pick up on any emotional cues. that’s all pretty small stuff though, like everyone has a shitty childhood? my life has been pretty privileged, I cannot deny that at all. my psychiatrist keeps looking for trauma, reasons for me being like this. I don’t...really know how to explain to him that there’s no real reason, I’ve just always been this way. too loud, too close, too possessive, too needy, too young, too slow, too judgmental, too constantly seeking validation. Wholly, completely self-centered. Emotionally manipulative. I look into my memories and there is barely anything real, it’s all just a miasma of anxiety and talking over people. like, I don’t remember what things were like when I liked myself? I must have, at some point. I don’t remember when doing stuff didn’t fill me with fear, when the memories of good times weren’t tainted by my fuckups. And the constant, constant need to be liked, to have some kind of purpose, connection, something real. Some reason to keep getting up and putting myself through all this. The amount of friendships I have ruined or that have slipped through my fingers, or I have undervalued, or I have strained, just by being me. I never, ever, know it’s going to happen until it does. There’s an inevitability to it. I mean, my father was a lovely person, until you got to know him. He would give you the shirt off his back but he’d never, ever apologize for anything. We were all happier when he lived on a separate continent. IK mean, we talked all the time and we saw him a couple times a year. But the day to day living? That’s...that’s the kind of distance my presence requires. He knew he made us that unhappy. He was so terribly unhappy himself. He had plenty of reasons. I miss him a lot. We’re basically the same person. Unhappiness just kind of oozes out, infecting everyone around us. It’s hard to see at first. But it’s there. You feel it once you get to know me. 

How do I describe that to someone I don’t know? I can barely describe it to myself. I can barely type it without crying. How inevitable and ingrained this unhappiness is. And there’s no reason for it. It’s just...it’s like I’m missing something. Some piece of humanity that would make me real. That would make what I do sincere and normal. I know I have an issue with boundaries. I know I come across way way way way too much way too quickly.  It’s been a constant refrain since I was about 10: if only I didn’t need people, I would be all right. I don’t know what I’ve done until after the fact, until its too late. Needless, endless apologies should be my tagline. 

it’s just so horribly lonely. I’m so tired of being alone. I’m constantly trapped by and surrounded by my own self-hatred. It’s so cliche it makes me sick of myself. I don’t have any reason to be this hard on myself. I don’t have any reason to be this depressed. I can barely qualify as having depression. I just ...don’t see any point? Of living? Of trying?  I don’t remember what it was like not to feel this way. I don’t think I was ever normal. 

it’s this constant struggle of ‘I have a mental illness’ and ‘no i’m just lazy and entitled and I don’t want to do the work I just want perfect results’ and ‘I don’t have a legitimate reason to be this way’ and ‘I really cannot handle this for another second’. My whole family is the type to say they’re fine when they are literally crying their eyes out/in severe amounts of pain/ready to collapse/at their limits. everything’s fine, fine, fine, always fine. 

i do know that in the end, the only one who can save me is me. i just don’t really see any reason to. Like, I keep grasping at straws? I can’t kill myself though, I can’t do that to my mother or my brother. The thought of living for another 40 years (I mean, my diabetic complications will probably get me sooner than that) just feels me with dread and exhaustion though. The primary reason I don’t want to have kids (other than medical, cause I’m on too much medication that’s rough on a fetus) is because I don’t want to be resentful towards my kid for having to stay alive for them. Who can I say that to? How horrible does that make me sound? What a fucking load of shite, I’m so full of it. For some stupid reason, I thought things would just be better? I thought being on meds, and having a stable life, and being back at school after fucking it up so badly the first time, that I’d be better? 

It’s a wasteland, though. The space between not wanting to live and not being able to die. It takes such constant effort to keep all my shit in check. everythin just spilling out everywhere. 

But I’m just...like this. This is just the way that I am. I’m so sick of myself. I can’t fully put it into words how much I hate myself. All these opportunities and possibilities and a life that’s been free of trauma and responsibilities, and I’m just ...kind of a waste? A big ole burden on my family and friends? It’s...the weight of that makes it hard to breathe. It makes it really hard to try to do anything and it’s so fucking stupid. Just this big old cycle of never ending uselessness. I don’t really believe I can do anything. Everything, friendships, communication, school work, organizing shit, engaging with things, meeting up with friends, keeping my life together. All of it is ...more than I’m really able to handle. Everything’s a bit too much? Like i was supposed to tell my bank that I’m a student by november. I got the letter and everything. 

I just never went with it to the bank. 

Still haven’t. 

Thats such a microcosm for my life. All the materials, all the ability, all the chances, all the ducks lined up in a row and then...nothing. Just a disappointment and a missed chance. 

I can’t believe I’m 32. Nothing but my own self-hatred to keep me company from here on it.  Well. And my cats. I am though, a bad cat owner. keeping these hellbeasts inside is more than I am capable of. Haha, that’s pretty low on the priority list though. 

This is the work that I need to do. I don’t have a clue how to approach it. That’s what I need help with. Finding something to hold on too. It’s getting harder and harder as I get older. It shouldn’t, because my life is actually so much better now that it was. The bad stuff just gets harder and harder to walk back from. I think it’s the loneliness? I wish I wasn’t so horribly horribly lonely. My choices are always, do it alone or don’t do anything at all. Reach out and be rejected. Reach out and panic when someone reaches back. Reach out and alienate the person forever. Reach out and be told it was not my place. Fail, again and again to differentiate. Fail, again and again to learn. 

anyway. Tylenol. sleep. one more week of exams. 

my marks are going to be so horrible this year. 

the problem with your family believing that you have to suffer in silence

is that when you express preference, or dislike, or ask someone to please stop doing something - 

it becomes this whole thing, this whole argument. or, like an endless stream of apologies for shit that doesn’t matter until you wish you didn’t ever say anything because the whole non-issue has ground life to a halt. or they decide to do the thing more, because it builds character

like, no wonder I have fucking issues with boundaries and taking up space. this whole family is predicated on suffering in resentment and passive aggressiveness

expressing your opinion and stating your preferences shouldn’t be this like.....horrible, awful thing.

I’ve learned such horrible behaviours from both parents. no wonder I’m fucked

..

what’s the point in being smart if your brain is the source of so much anguish?

I think a lot about bashing my head in with an axe. stabbing myself in the head with a long knife. just ...something, something to make it stop. 

i’m ....not  exactly sure how to keep trying, you know?

I still feel as awful about myself and my ability to navigate relationships as I did when I was 8 years old. I don’t believe I’m capable of improvement or change because nothing I do seems to be working. What’s worse, is that my attempts to accept myself and just own up to my own weirdness and be okay with that just... well. When I’m reminded again of how odd I am, how draining I am, how I don’t really understand how to connect with people. How childish and thoughtless I am. It’s like it’s worse because I wasn’t guarding against it? But I also realize that being this...over the top reactive and constantly, constantly apologetic/convinced of my own awfulness/driven by an intense need to apologize and undermine other people’s sincerity drives other people away. 

I need constant reassurance. I know how exhausting that is. I want to be relevant and helpful, I want to have a reason to keep being here. I want to be able to balance out the awfulness I bring into the world by doing some good. But it’s not real good. I want to been seen and liked, so I make it about me. It’s not about actual goodness. 

I don’t really think I’m capable of changing. And I’m worried so much that everything I’m working towards will just...collapse. the way it always does. I’m terrified of even attempting to do things. How can I use this degree if I’m too scared to apply myself to jobs in this field? 

I’m so unnecessary. Like, my life is incredibly unnecessary. The things I bring into this world are so few in comparison to what I could do if I was not like this. 

I don’t want to keep feeling this way. I don’t want to keep bothering people and driving people away and doubting my own place in all the friendships I have. I don’t want to overstep my boundaries. I don’t want to want more than I’m supposed to have. I want to be content. 

I just...don’t really see how any of that’s possible. I don’t know how to stop hating myself for everything I do. And I know how exhausting that is for everyone else. I know how toxic that is in any kind of relationship. 

But I thought I was getting better. Still desperate, perhaps, but more confident. I think I was just oblivious. I ....I want people to like me so badly. I take it too far. I really wish I could stop having this same conversation. All I end up doing is driving the people around me further away. 

I’m really not strong enough to keep doing this. I just want to stop caring about these things that are hurting me. The things I use to hurt myself. I want to be able to stand up for myself. I want to be able to know what’s appropriate in social settings. I want to keep my mouth shut. I want to be able to contribute in a collaborative, meaningful way to the things that bring me joy. I think maybe that’s why I’m so bad at making internet and fandom friends? Fannish enthusiasm is not the basis of a friendship. I have nothing of my own to offer in return. I think I might not be able to create things. I certainly cannot help people create things. 

I’m ...I’m so sick of being less than I wish I could be. Less than I pretend to be. Less than I should be. 

Why can’t I figure out that i don’t need to be involved in stuff? I don’t need other people to reassure me of anything, it’s not their place. I don’t need to reassure other people, it is also not my place. 

This self-hatred is such a weight. Everything, everything reaffirms it. All I can do it try to minimize the damage of my own personality to the people who are stuck with me. And I know that’s infantilizing the choices of my friends and family. They’ve told me, repeatedly, literally again and again and again, that they like me and want my company. It doesn’t help. And they get frustrated. And so the cycle begins again. 

I just don’t know how to get rid of it. I ....nothing I do is good enough to fight against this self-belief. And I don’t forget things, the things that I agonize over, the things that showed me the way I was trying to come across is not the way I was actually viewed. It’s actually easier in some ways when the friendship ends. I would like to go see an old friend of mine who now lives down the street. She has a baby. I should go see her. I could go see her. I won’t though. I don’t see a way to get through that interaction without having super good emotional armour and titanium levels of calm. Otherwise, I’ll end up being too much, smiling too much (because I smile when I’m uncomfortable). Overly familiar. Not familiar enough. Overstaying my welcome. Saying things that kill a conversation. Saying things that I mean but don’t follow through on. Being so insanely jealous of her beautiful family and happy, happy life. I’d agonize over it for weeks after. It something was truly bad, I would never ever forget it. It’d become another thing to hurt myself with. That’s the result of doing anything. It just...becomes another thing to add to the pile of awfulness. 

I have so very few memories of pure joy or contentedness. Of connectivity. Where my presence truly brought someone happiness. I try not to think about them too much. I don’t want to newly remember some previously misremembered or misinterpreted detail. I don’t want to ruin those memories. 

I don’t think happy things very often. 

I wish I was happier being alone. I’m so pathetically lonely all the time. It exudes from me. It’s not anyone else’s problem to fix though. People have their own burdens to carry. 

I just wish things were different. I wish I was different. I don’t remember ever liking anything about myself, at least, not things that didn’t eventually make me feel bad. I was a good singer from an early age. People in class and my friends hated when I sang because I was so much better. I came across as stuck up. Friends would try to include me in things. But I’ve always been so exhausted by social interaction it would inevitably end really really badly. 

plus I was so fucking ugly and fat for so long. the only way through was to stay in my own head. I couldn’t allow myself to notice people’s reactions to me, otherwise the whole illusion would collapse. That much disassociation I think was not a good thing, not a good thing at all. 

I always told myself that I would kill myself before I was 25. I always knew there was no way to be okay with the other things people wanted - a family, a marriage, kids, a career. But now I’m stuck being alive until something actually kills me. And so far, it’s been a useless life. A life without meaning or purpose. A life of negative net effect. 

I don’t know how to balance that. By improving myself, becoming more trusting and less reactive, by being less of a burden, and contributing to the overall good of the world?

I can barely function enough to keep myself alive. Like, it takes a lot of effort to take the medications I take in the right quanities at the right times and get refills when I need them. My attempts so far to do all the things in the above paragraph have resulted in...well. Worse things than how they started. 

I don’t know how long I can keep doing this. I don’t want to do it anymore. None of it. I don’t see how any of this is going to get better. 

anybody else with this life would have done great. I had every opportunity to do well. I have all this potential in so many different fields. 

It’s such a waste of a life. 

I can’t shake it. I can’t seem to shake it this time. I don’t have time for a full breakdown right now. I can’t keep making myself a burden on those I’ve used to pull me out of this in the past. I can’t take the time to recover on my own that things have taken in the past. I can’t show any of this to my mother, at all. She has enough to worry about and she worries about me constantly. She’s too old for this. I’ve brought so much unhappiness into her life. 

I have to stop being bothered by stuff. I have to be unaffected by stuff. I worry about all types of connection and communication. But when I stop contributing, I’m just a drain. When I try too hard, I’m desperate and overstepping my boundaries. 

I don’t know how to live in the correct margins. this seesaw thing is really, really annoying. 

What a useless life. If any of the joy I’ve brought over people was not then ruined by the eventual dissolution of our friendship by something I did. Or me not being able to respect someone’s boundaries. Or me expecting something and being too devastated when I’m shown that that was too much. No wonder it was too much. I don’t give back what I’m supposed to. I don’t support myself the way I’m supposed to. And I don’t support my friends the way I’m supposed to. 

All of this is so....every time this starts I’m reminded how selfish it is to have all this self-hatred. I don’t know how to get rid of it. I’m drowning under the weight of it, the stretch of it before me as I age towards a lonely, pointless death. 

No wonder dysthymia is called the existential depression. It’s such a burden to everyone around me. It’s my own fault that I can’t fix that. 

how can you be a better person if you can’t recognize that you’re a bad one? 

I don’t like being resentful of the people in my life. But without them, there’d be nothing else keeping me here. one bad night and poof, gone and done for

I don’t know what to do. 

I need to keep myself contained a bit more. I interfere or try to jump in where I’m not needed. I think people should listen to me and care about what my concerns are. I need to be less than what I’m doing. 

I’ve tried to make myself disappear before. It was pretty awful. I felt like I was dying all the time, like a death knell stretched out. Like I was a ghost. Like I was never even here. It hurt all the time. There was no point in tryng to do anything. 

I don’t know what to do. 

I can’t figure out the right way to act, the right thing to say. The right level of friendliness. The right level of engagement. I’m so sick of being close to someone and it fizzling the fuck out. It’s always because of something I did. i never realize it in time. I never see it coming. But then suddenly, the ground beneath my feet is gone. I can fool myself into thinking that life is ephemeral, that things don’t have to last to be real. 

I lie to myself a lot. that’s one of my best. 

It’s always because I needed too much. I was too much. I’m too much. 

I don’t know what to do. 

There are so few people that seek out my company. I’ve always had to make the effort to be included otherwise I’d be forgotten. I try to be okay with being left behind. I don’t fault my friends for doing it. It still hurts though. Everything that happens just makes this feeling worse. EVen when I’m included, when I’m remembered without having to be right in front of them, like a bad penny, I still fail. I can’t be happy for someone else. I don’t think...I don’t think I’m capable of it. I will drive everyone away, eventually. I can always make things worse.  

I think I infect people with sadness. Or with anger. Annoyance. Discomfort. I make people uncomfortable. I need too much. I’m not really a person, you see, I’m not really real. I’m just a bundle of sadness and desperation in a trenchcoat. I can’t figure how to act like a person. I can’t figure out why I’m so wrong, all the time.  

I’m living a life constantly wanting to die. I don’t remember when i starting thinking about death. It was early. But I can’t, I can’t do that to my mother. I can’t. 

I’m trapped in this space inbetween. it’s barren and and harsh and full of demons of my own making. it cycles all the way through despair to something I can’t even name. it’s so goddamn endless, like a duststorm in the desert. like the doldrums out at sea. I don’t know if I can spend another 30 years like this. things were worse in the past but I think I used to believe things could get better? That there were experiences worth having?

now I know though. I know that I infect everything I do with this...this awfulness. Every single thing becomes a new way to torture myself. every experience and memory is tainted with how much I fucked up. And the worse I feel, the more I alienate the people around me. I’m so tired. I’m so sick of myself. I want to stab myself in the brain. I want to rip out my heart. 

I want to stop driving people away. I expect things I can’t quantify and it...I don’t even know I’m doing it. I try to pretend so hard that I’m not falling apart and I fail at it, I just... infect others with it. My sadness comes out like anger. It comes out like desperation. 

I want to belong. I want people to seek out my company. I fuck it up every time. 

Isn’t that the definition of crazyness? to do the same thing, expecting a different result each time? I dont’ learn. I don’t know how to stop trying. I don’t know how to stop wanting, stop sucking the life out of the people around me. 

the world is better off without me in it. I don’t see a way out of this life that balances out the awfulness I’ve propagated. god, I make things about me all the time. I’m so very self-centered, you know? flaky. unreliable. fucking stupid as shit.  I worry about how people perceive me all the time and I want to control what’s going on all the time. such a control freak. i can’t handle being wrong. i can’t handle frustration. I can’t keep my mouth shut. 

I should be lesser. I shouldn’t try so hard. I should just let people get on. I’m best when I’m by myself, I know this. my best memories are when i’m by myself. half are tinged with trying too hard with random people or feeling like the loneliest person in the world. but it’s better than having someone with me. It’s better than the awfulness I spread to them. 

it’s like looking in through a window, through glass. like being trapped under water. I want to belong. I want to be safe. I want someone to like me best. I want someone to be my emotional crutch and constant companion. 

I can’t give them love in return though. is it any wonder I’m still alone? 

people know. they know how to protect themselves. It’s better not to get trapped with someone like me. Someone who will trap you with pity and vulnerability and need and issues as long as your arm. I can’t feel love, I’m terrified of sex, and the thought of romance makes me want to hide and never come out. But I want it, I want it so much. I want to not be so goddamn alone all the time. 

I made so many mistakes in the past. I don’t see a way out of this trap, this cycle, this black hole. it used to be this intense sadness, endless tears and wailing, gnashing of teeth. That was before, when I used to think it could get better. 

I know now that it won’t. This is worse, this is so much worse. 

god I need some help. I don’t know where to go. There’s no one that can help, there’s no infrastructure here. My next appointment is not for a month and he’s already told me he thinks I’m combative and judgmental. I was trying so hard in that first meeting to stop myself from screaming hysterical. My sadness comes out like anger. I’m not angry at other people. I’m angry at myself. but that doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter what I intend, only how it comes across. I was trying to stay as calm as possible, be as open as I could handle. All I did was make him not like me, from the start. I can’t tell when people dislike me. I try so hard to be likeable and I’m not. I try so hard not to let other people see how sad I am, all the time. And I come across as angry. How...why did he have to tell me that? what was I supposed to do instead? why won’t anyone tell me how I’m supposed to act, what I’m supposed to say? why does everything come out wrong? why can’t I realize it on my own?

My two closest friends who would be able to understand don’t need this kind of negativity in their lives. All I do is bring people down. The other friends I have are either not close enough or wouldn’t get it, they just don’t get it, I wouldn’t be able to explain. 

I need reassurance all the time. it’s such an awful, awful trait. 

I just want to feel safe. even for awhile. 

it’s the most fundamental lesson though. no one can save you but yourself. no one is coming to rescue you from despair. That’s not how this works. 

i’m so old to be still feeling like this. How can I never learn? how am I not somehow better than I was? I’m still here, ruining friendships and alienating people, still making people worse and exhausting their resources, in the year of our lord 2k19

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to stop hurting other people. I don’t know how to forgive myself for anything. I don’t know how to stop leeching off other people. It’s so draining. I try to be sincere and positive and helpful because I know that and I make it worse. I don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to fix what’s wrong. I don’t know where to even start. What I’m doing is not working. more than 20 years, it’s not working. I don’t work right. 

there’s no way out of this life with fixing all these issues. they’ll plague me until my kidneys fail and my eyes go blind and my fingers fall off. I’m barely holding it together as it is. I don’t ...all I see when I look ahead is pain. Pain and causing distress. 

I want this to stop. Wanting something is not enough. I want a lot of things. I’m very, very terrible at learning how to accept that I won’t get them. 

you can’ t just decide you’re friends with someone. you can unilaterally make that decision. that’s not how it works. I don’t know why I can’t remember that. 

god, I can’t believe I’m still typing this sentence. it’s been the same one since I was 8. I wish I didn’t need people. I wish I could be happy being by myself. I wish I didn’t speak or let things affect me, or having any impact at all on anybody. just...drift, like a ghost. if I could just be content with that, if I could just fix myself, then i wouldn’t hate myself quite so much. resent how fucking not normal I am, sure, but i at least I wouldn’t feel as much like a burden, as much like everyone hates me. As much like there’s something deeply deeply wrong inside, that even those closest to me can’t stand. people will let you down, this is a fact of life. it’s a fact of my life. perhaps it’s something that’s returned in kind. 

I’m such a very, very bad friend. 

god why can’t I improve myself? what the hell is wrong with me? I don’t even have a proper psychiatric disorder. I don’t have childhood trauma. I don’t have any reason to be like this. 

This is just who I am. 

What a fucking waste. 

is there a point to resolutions?

is there a net gain when they inevitably fail? do we benefit for learning that old adage, fall down 7 times, stand up 8? that beckett quote - fail. fail again, fail better. something like that. 

or does failing just...make us feel like shit? reaffirm the belief in our own lack of ability? 

you can see your own hypocrisy, your own lack of ...ability. willpower. 

its...that’s damaging, right?

one day and I’ve already broken my resolution two or three times

I wish my brain would just stop, I really do. somebody come bash me in the head, donate me to medical research. find me the equivalent of curare for serotonergic receptors 

motherfucker i’m so tired of myself

there’s no where I can go with this feeling. There is no way I can share the depth of it. I can’t do that to someone I love. I am unable to do it to a mental health professional

I would like to put this hatred down. I wonder what kind of asshole I would have turned into if I wasn’t like this. I used to be so confident. I used to be so weird but I didn’t care. Childhood was so easy, in the beginning. I think maybe other people hated me. But I didn’t notice. 

I don’t notice quickly enough now. But, I get there. in the end. (it’s worse that way, it’s so much worse)

I just want to feel nothing for awhile. that’d be real swell. 

on this date, at this time, I make this promise to myself 

(it’s always the same one, it breaks so easily, i always break)

but hope springs eternal, right?

since I can’t....navigate boundaries and friendships, especially ones online - though real life ones are also awful and exceptionally devastating - I make a pledge to curtail my....neediness. My tendency to be overeager, my horrible attempts at being useless or relevant. 

There is a line between engaging in the way they want and being a nuisance. Unless something is specifically addressed to me, by name, or by the two people I’m sure will want to hear from me, I will not send out messages or respond. (I’m not sure where reviewing fics falls under this - on paper, people say they want reviews but I still seem to do it wrong?? sometimes I get it right. I don’t understand the difference though. there’s so much I don’t understand.)

I refuse to be more of a nuisance than I already am. I can’t seem to stop myself. But I can remind myself that it is not my place to offer advice or to commiserate or respond to people I don’t know. Other people are not there for me to feel useful. 

People want a hand when they reach out. There’s something wrong with mine. Something that’s not right. It has ever been thus. I’m so horribly stupid. It’s another lesson I keep failing to learn. 

I’m sick of being too much. I’m sick of this feeling when I realize how much I’ve fucked up, again.  

I need to learn to keep to myself. I mean, I’ve been saying that since I was 8 and i’ve never learned how. ao3 didn’t exist then though, so...

fanfic forever?

i’m so tired of hating myself

I’m so tired of hurting other people

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck 

anyway see ya tumblr seirously fuck this place

so in the last month I realized why I have such an intense hatred of myself, like, the roots of it, how it started 

and why I’m such a perfectionist

but like...I don’t really know what to do with this information. my sessions with my psychiatrist are not really...that helpful? I always feel like I’m faking, like I don’t really have any reason to be there. every time i say something, he’s like, yeah that’s pretty common, most people feel that way. and I’m like??? that doesn’t make me feel any better? makes me feel worse, actually?? I think the pills are helping. I think about death a whole lot less and I can concentrate a little bit better. But my apathy and lethargy are pretty high. I’m not sure what i expect to happen. I guess I keep thinking there’s going to be a magical epiphany moment, and things will just get better. no one’s going to save me but myself, and like, wow. wow, that’s exhausting. 

things...do keep getting worse, though. I think if I stay at home for much longer I will actually go insane. I’m just so tired. Its starting to affect my health in other ways. like I ran out of long-acting insulin yesterday. all I have to do is go to the drug store and get more. but I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it. I can’t begin to describe how stupid that is. I didn’t test my blood sugar for 4 days because I ran out of strips. I don’t even have to pay for them cause my copay is maxed out! what the hell is going on

this ...inability to cope is so ingrained, I don’t remember not thinking this way. like, maybe before I was 9ish, but....what good does that do me?

I’ve been seeing this psychiatrist for awhile. I’m just so tired. I’m too fucking old to still be this screwed up. 

...

tumblr dont sleep on letterkenny

can't sleep, can't sleep I

can't stop thinking about knives,

twisting sharp inside