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When I was in high school, my stepmother said that she thought that I should do a job where I worked with my hands.  She was right.  So why instead of exploring the possibility of trade school for me did they pack me off instead to an academic college that I wasn't prepared for, that I barely got into, where I bombed out and had a nervous breakdown within the first year?  They KNEW better.  They knew I struggled with the discipline of academic work.  They knew I was mechanically inclined and that I enjoyed making things and fixing things.  So, why?  Why?  I can't even blame myself for this, one even in my wildest imaginings of what I should have or could have known or done.  I was 17, for heaven's sake, I didn't know anything.  My parents just wanted me out of their hair.  Then after the breakdown and hospitalisation, they bought me off with a small monthly allowance, told me to go find a job and a place to live, and kicked me out of their house.  So I scraped by the best I could, never building anything.  I suppose I should be grateful that they at least gave me money for a while, but...Really? 

I keep thinking about this and I'm so angry.  I've never wanted to be a victim.  I'm tired of blaming my parents.  But the truth is, I AM a victim of their failure to look after me, and a lot of what makes me unhappy in life IS, despite my best efforts, the result of how they failed me over and over again.  What the *&^%$#@#%$^& am I supposed to do with that?

One of the things that stops me from writing is the need I have to give everything context.  Nothing that I feel or that I have to say makes very much sense without reams and reams of context.  There's just no way to understand any of it without the whole story, and the whole story is long and COMPLICATED. 

The noise in my head is really loud these days.  I have so much trouble doing anything above the very bare minimum that my living with and having responsibilities to another human requires of me.  I can't seem to do much to help myself.  Can't get out of freeze.  I think that I've been in a semi-freeze state for most of my life, and that the floods froze me up completely.  I worry that it's for life, just the way I am now.  Nothing gets me out of it anymore, not even cannabis.

Hi Bach, just barging in here... Functioning well despite feeling garbage feels a bit like magic, doesn't it? I've had a few of those days too here and there. It's really empowering that feeling like garbage does not have the last say in everything! 

It does feel like magic!  If I could do that every day, I'd really have something going on here.

I functioned very well today despite feeling like garbage. That's something to take hope from and build on.

    

I was very depressed for about 5 months.  Then I started feeling better around mid-December and I was really conscious of and grateful for getting a break from my intrusive death-wishing thoughts.  But in the last few days, without much of anything external changing, those thoughts have come back strong and it's painful again to be conscious.  I don't know why or how to fix it.  Unless it really is because of the swimming pool being closed.  I'm not sure if the lift in my mood coincided with when I started going to the pool regularly, but it may have.  I suppose I could try doing some other kind of exercise until the pool reopens, but it's really hard because swimming is the only thing that doesn't hurt. 

I'm so tired of myself.  Why can't I just be the person I want to be?

Today is the third straight day of blustery cold winds.  My house is not particularly cold or drafty, but wind around my house makes NOISE.  It sounds like thunder.  Or war!  Between that and the reports of the fires in California and my heightened emotional state from all this intense unexpected ongoing dialogue with Other, I am wildly overstimulated, on high alert.  I get so tired of being afraid all the time!

In 2019 I went to England to spend Christmas with my very special friend Penny.  She and her whole family, immediate and extended, were wonderful to me.  They included me in all their holiday traditions, gave me presents, and generally made me feel completely happy and welcome and wanted.  I wish I could spend every Christmas like that!

Thank you for the replies, friends.  My efforts to stay off from Facebook have been semi-successful.  For the first several days, I didn't have any problem staying away, and I felt great relief.  But then I started going there again, first only once a day popping on to see if I had any notifications, then leaving right away.  After a few days of that, I started scrolling again, just a little, and not clicking any links.  Once a day became twice a day, just a little scrolling became just a little more scrolling.  This morning, I clicked a link.  Now I'm fighting the urge to give in and lose myself in it.  Exactly like an addictive drug.  Scary!  I feel particularly bemused remembering how resistant I was in the beginning to even sign up for an account, and how I finally did sign up because my 25-years-younger half-sister who I barely knew encouraged me to, and I thought it would be a way to develop a relationship with her.  Not to mention that the online communities I was part of started dying because everyone was leaving for Facebook.  Now 15 years later, I still don't have much of a relationship with the sister, communities on Facebook are far too large and scattered for me to feel comfortable in, and it seems that I'm hooked on hurting myself mentally by hanging around on the periphery of everything looking for I don't even know what and getting anxious and dismayed both by the world I see there and the reflection of my isolated self. 

I long for connection.  But I cannot sustain it.  It's too scary.  The more I like someone and want to interact with them, the more afraid I get to even try.  I am not well, not well at all.

In other issues, my self-harm scars have started itching lately.  I desperately regret them.  Along with everything else I've ever not done, or done wrong.  I am not well, not well at all.  But I said that already, didn't I.

I need to stop looking at Facebook because every time I do, two things happen.  One is that I end up endlessly scrolling, clicking on stupid crap that might interest or entertain me for a few seconds but is ultimately just a waste of my time.  The other is that I see things that upset or scare me and then I have to put a lot of effort (and sometimes klonopin) into fending them off.  I really need to find distractions that are more productive, or, at least, less toxic.

I love him!  You are so talented 

I'm so happy for you, congratulations! 

I wish I wasn't so afraid of death.  Not so I could die right now or anything, but just so I could feel like there will be a way out some day.  Sort of like how having a bottle of klonopin handy makes it easier to tolerate my anxiety without actually taking it. I feel so trapped between the often intolerable pain of life, and the fear of death.  I think life would hurt less if I didn't feel stuck here.