03-25-04 @ 10:49 am EST

Every day, during the slight periods when I'm in a better mood, I think up different things I can post in a halfway-decent journal entry. Yet every day when I go online those ideas vanish because I realize how pointless they are. I just can't write anything worthwhile in here as long as this hangs over my head.

I've been crying for the past two days, not that the people who I really thought would care know, or would care. They are still nowhere to be found. And they are all I can think of. When I go into my room to try to listen to music and think of anything else, they're what I think of and when I should be relaxing, I end up sobbing. I hit my ankle so hard that I had to bite back the pain today. I didn't know how hard I'd been hitting it the past two days until I finally looked and saw the huge bruise there, as well as the bruise on my hand. Not that it matters any.

One part of me figures I deserve to be hurt because I must have done something to deserve not having anyone there for me when I need them. There is NEVER anyone there when I really need them. In the past, I had really hoped it was because the people who I thought cared were just busy--they're always busy--or they didn't know--I'm not very direct--or something. But it's been long enough where they should know when something is wrong--my journal is on PRIVATE, but it's not like anyone notices because THEY'RE NOT READING IT ANYMORE! Short of directly telling them--which I just cannot do--there is no way for me to tell them how I feel. I cried out for help in the past two or three entries before I made it private--the entries sat there for a WEEK and STILL none of them replied. I didn't understand.

I really, really wanted, and still want, to believe they are just busy--just don't know--just something. But how many times, how often, are they busy, even when I know they have been online, doing other things that take up time? How can they be busy for weeks and weeks? How can they not know by now when I need somebody to be there? They all said they wanted to keep up with me--yet for over a week this journal went unread. It's been private for almost another week now and not a ONE of them has noticed. Which means for at least two weeks, none of them have even bothered seeing if I'm even still here. Where are they? How come they don't realize something is wrong? I'm not the most direct, but I thought it was obvious. I guess not. I don't understand. I tried to, for weeks, but I can't.

Which is why I guess I am just not meant to have friends. That sounds like a stupid, fatalistic thing to say, but what other conclusion is there? This is not the first time this has happened--this is only the most recent time of many. MY WHOLE LIFE! I have never been able to keep ONE friendship. EVER. The only person I'm not angry with now is P., and that only because I know he will write to me by snail-mail, and he still comments on my story. But all I can do is fear if this should happen with him too. I don't want to tell him I distrust him--it's because I distrust myself. I have never kept a friendship, no matter how hard I tried. Why should I be able to keep his friendship? EVERY other time in the past when I was SO SURE I knew somebody, that they would be there for me...I was wrong. Every time. The reason I do not open up to him is because I know once I do, I would drive him off. If I didn't have that one last person, I think I would give up completely. I'm close to it as it is.

For ages people have been telling me it's my own fault. If I were more outgoing, they said, I would have friends. If I would talk back to people when they talked to me. If I would be forthright. If I would make eye contact. If I would show interest in other things besides me. I really, honestly believed that if I were not so shy, I would have all sorts of friends. Lately, I have realized that...even if I were more outgoing...even if I tried harder to make friends...I still will never have any. I know because the past month or so, I HAVE tried. I tried approaching people similar to me and complimenting them. I tried asking others questions about themselves. I tried commiserating, showing sympathy for others in situations I could sympathize with. It resulted in a few little thank you's, mostly in silence, and in no friendships. Meanwhile these people chattered on with their circles of real friends and I was not included. I was never included. Nobody even showed the least bit of interest in me in return. I spent so many words and all of them were just plain junk. Nobody needed them. Nobody even heard. I made no difference. I was not needed or wanted.

So when that did not work I thought, I'll just give up on making new friends. I've always known I will never be popular, because I have tried so hard all these years, in my own ways, to be noticed--through good grades, through art, through writing--but it has never worked beyond attracting the attention of a few people, and most of them never stay long as it is. So I could learn to be happy with the few potential friendships I already had. Those people who have been there for the long haul, who I really thought I could learn to trust, if I would just make myself learn. There was only a handful of them, but that's all I really need. I can live with not being popular, if I just had somebody, at least one or two people, I can open up to, rely on, people who will be there for me.

And now...I don't even have those. Those people are all gone now as well. I don't know where. Or why. I'm never told. For all I know they really ARE working on an e-mail to me or really ARE busy or whatever, but...it's been a long time now, two weeks of it without them even noticing something is up with me, and there is no word. How can they overlook me that long? Do real friends just forget about you for two weeks and more? I've always tried to keep up on them as best I could. I realize I am not the best friend myself--and I slip up--but with them, I really do try. I read their journals--if they have them, on the rare occasions that they post--I reply to their e-mails as promptly as I can. I try to be on the lookout for when they are feeling upset. I try to sense their feelings, for I know how I feel when nobody senses mine or picks up my hints. (I cannot count the times I have been rebuked for feeling mildly irritated, yet totally ignored when I'm truly depressed.) But the past few weeks...there is none of that for me. Am I a lousier friend than I thought I was? I can't see why everyone has disappeared, all at the same time. The one time in months when I have really needed somebody, and there is nobody left I can turn to. No one at all. I've exhausted every resource. I even posted in a social anxiety forum and got all of ONE reply. ONE! I haven't bothered to read it. It's probably somebody saying "Woah you write long posts you should try not to write such long posts bye." Because that's about all I get from strangers anyway.

I swallowed my shame and finally e-mailed the person I had written to in February, who I hadn't heard from for almost a month. They wrote back to say that they'd had some problems lately but they would have the weekend to finally reply to my letter. That was Sunday. Today is Thursday. Still no e-mail. I can't turn to that person.

One of the people who I thought was so like me and had thought maybe I could lean on in the future, if I could summon the courage, has been online frequently the past week or so, but has apparently not been by my journal, and I have yet to hear back from them. How long must it take? If they can't reply to all of what I said, then they don't have to. I was grateful to be updated a while back, but that was a long while ago now and there is still no word and I know they have been online doing other things. They said I could turn to them if I needed to, but I can't. Not now. I'm too ashamed of taking up too much of their time already.

There is another, one person who actually noticed one of the more recent entries before I made it private, but I replied to them and have not heard back yet. I do not know where they are. I have already bothered them so much and I am already so confused by everything that I can't turn to them.

Those were all the people I would have possibly felt comfortable enough opening up to, leaning on, trying to trust. I can't turn to any of them. I haven't heard from them in a long time, and I don't know why. I realize I sound like a spoiled child, wanting to know where everybody is and what everybody is doing...but don't they know by now? That if I don't hear from somebody in ages, I will just assume they are either angry with me or don't want to write to me. Especially if they said they would get back to me and then never did. Why should I assume otherwise? It's been this way my entire life. My whole life is an endless string of people who told me they would be there for me, they cared about me, and then when I cried out for their help they were nowhere to be found. And I never heard from them again, and I never learned why. They never told me. And yes, after enough times of that happening, I have grown bitter and leery and spiteful. I can think only the worst thoughts about potential friends now. I hate that I do that--who wants to befriend an angry person who secretly despises them a lot of the time and will turn on them at the first chance?--but by now, I don't know any other way to be. I've had the hand of friendship jerked away from me at the last minute so many times, I just can't trust anyone anymore, no matter how good their intentions. It's a vicious circle now; I wouldn't want to befriend me either.

All I can assume is I've done something wrong, and I keep doing it wrong. I keep asking, what is it that I'm doing wrong? Tell me! So I can stop doing it! But nobody ever tells me. If anything, people either try to tell me that I've done nothing wrong, or they tell me that EVERYTHING I do is wrong. Either way it doesn't help me. The people who say I've done nothing wrong are lying. I know you people are as angry with me as I am angry with you. I don't blame you. I'm a spoiled jealous little child demanding your attention. But why did you say you'd give me that attention in the first place if you never meant to give it? You could have just as easily have turned me down. I would have cried, but at least I would have known from the start. Rather than waiting and waiting and waiting and logging on every day to wait yet more and still finding nobody there and just getting angrier and more spiteful.

By now I would rather approach somebody for help and have them snap at me to go away and never come back, they hate me, they never want to hear from me again, than find a friendly face and...then never hear anything again. And just wait and wait and wait and never know what I did wrong. Because this happens every time, every time I am SO SURE this person is different, and means what they say...it must be me doing something wrong. I don't know what, but it has to be me. So many other people can't be wrong. It's just me.

I'm so tired of crying so much that I feel sick, and that my eyes hurt all day long. (I can only cry when my parents aren't around--lest they ask me what's wrong, and I have to tell them, only to hear "Get over it!") I'm so tired of wanting to take my mind off of things, yet returning to this again and again. I'm so tired of the few things I like in life not having any meaning anymore. I'm so tired of never knowing what I did that was so wrong, that drove everyone off, even the people I was so sure meant that they cared about me. I'm so tired of being so angry with everybody, day after day after day. I'm so tired of trying to give the benefit of the doubt, while at the same time knowing that nobody cares. I'm so tired of putting on the nice, apologetic face should anyone finally approach me and insisting that "No, you didn't hurt me, I'm okay, it was my fault, I'm sorry I was so impatient, please forgive me," when I'm really thinking, "Where were you? Why weren't you there for me? I thought you cared! I thought you KNEW me! I know I'm not the best but I tried to be there for you--where were you when I needed YOU? How come *I* never have anybody??" I'm tired of envying everybody who has a circle of friends they can rely on, while I have nobody. I'm tired of thinking and thinking and thinking about who I can share my feelings with, and always realizing there is no one. I'm tired of holding in so many things that I feel like I'm going to scream so loud that my throat will tear open. I'm tired of my bruises never hurting enough. I'm tired of not being strong enough to hit harder. I'm tired of hoping that I'm wrong when I know I'm not. I'm tired of spewing all this anger and hatred in a journal page these people will never even read, and then shoving it all down inside myself IF they ever return to talk to me, and insisting everything is okay, until the time it inevitably happens again. Which it always does. When I need somebody, and they are again not there. I'm tired of trying to be two people--of trying to be the nice person, so these people will just come back, just please come back...while at the same time the other person is saying GO AWAY! I'M SICK OF YOU ALWAYS HURTING ME! FUCK OFF! YOU'RE ALL THE SAME!

I'm tired of the one half of my mind wishing so badly that these people would just write back to me, so things could be the way they used to be, so I could have somebody there for me, so I could learn to trust somebody again...while the other half just bitterly thinks about how everyone has hurt me, everyone else will; I should not even bother anymore with ANYONE--I must push everybody away before they hurt me. I must not give anyone that chance ever again. Even total strangers--especially total strangers. Because every friend started out as a total stranger, and they once said they cared. Look what happened, every time. I hate that one part of me is still insisting on thinking of ways to make it up to everybody, just to get people to like me again, to even try to seek out new friends, while the other part of me wants to hurt everybody before they hurt me, because I know that they will. If I tell a well-meaning stranger to fuck off and leave me alone, even if my mind is screaming STAY! LISTEN TO ME!--then that stranger will be angry and will always hate me, but at least we won't get to be friends, just so the inevitable can happen yet again. I hate to hurt anybody, but...better to push them away when they are still strangers. It's tolerable for a stranger to hate you. It hurts most when a friend hurts you.

Well-meaning strangers, this is why I just can't accept your offers of friendship or a listening ear. I know what will eventually happen. You might not intend it to happen, and I really do believe that most of the time you are being truthful, but it will. Sometime down the line, it will. I'm sorry to insult any of you by refusing your help, but it's better than what will eventually happen if I lean on you. Nobody can accept me. I have known people for years, AND trusted them, and even they could not accept me. Nobody can. For whatever reason, it's just not meant to be.

The most painful thing I have learned is that it does not matter what I do. It does not matter how much I try to change, how nice I try to be, how outgoing, how false, how true to myself. It does not matter. There will never be somebody there for me when I really need them. I always thought that if I changed something about myself, then things would be different. But things never will be. There's no point to me ever trying to improve myself or be any different, then. There's no point to hoping for things to get better someday. Because things will all still be the same. And I can't believe how incredibly this hurts me to find this out.

I'm so tired of the only thing in my life having any meaning being my writing--only a few people care about that, and I just can't get people to care about ME. Not even myself. I've always cared more about my writing than about me. I'm so tired of my only true friends being fictional ones, dialogues in my own head. I'm so tired of being me, of being here. Of just being. But it will never change. I tried in what few pathetic ways I knew to make a change, but nothing did, and nothing mattered.

It's best I put this on private because I just have nothing left to post but this. Nothing else has any more meaning. I had hoped...but that hope is so quickly dying now, and nobody who I thought cared is even there to know. By the time they find out, IF they ever do, IF they even still care, IF they could even still like me after reading this, I'm afraid it will be too late. Maybe it already is. Maybe it has been for a long time and that part of me just hasn't realized it yet. The part of me that's angry and spiteful and hates everyone knows already. That part gets bigger and bigger every day I wait.

You know what kind of a person you are when there is nobody there for you, and that's not the kind of person I wanted to be. But I don't know how to be anyone else. And like I said already, it wouldn't matter who I am anyway. I'm not what other people want.