07-28-05 @ 9:04 am EDT

Typed before coming online, so by the time I log off, my entire mood might be different yet again. -_-

I am not overdosing on sleeping pills or something else similar...it just seems I have to explode every so often, before I can try to simmer down. What's stupid is that after every time I lose it, I desperately feel like reaching out to people, which always ends up causing me to blow up yet again... -_- I may be writing this prematurely because this has been going on for two weeks now, but I thought I would at least attempt an entry while I'm semi-rational. I wonder what will happen if my journals fall into anyone's hands a hundred years after I'm dead. All of the entries for the past two weeks online, and almost all of them for the past year in my paper journals, have been negative...maybe AFTER my death somebody will say, "Wow, this girl should have seen a psychiatrist...this is a textbook example."

The truth is I really do log off every night crying, and log off lots of mornings crying now too...I'm just tired of it. I realize there are a few people out there who AT THE MOMENT seem to care about me. I'm just so afraid of what everyone else has done--people who have known me for years, down to people who knew me for all of one e-mail--that I keep thinking everyone else will just do it too. I don't mean to insult anybody because I feel most people who leave me hanging genuinely don't PLAN it that way. But it always happens. I'm terrified of relying on anybody I know right now because of this. I just don't feel I can really trust anybody anymore. And with how I've been acting lately, I really would not blame anyone who decided they've had enough and would just leave me hanging. -_- It must be insulting to keep offering encouragement to somebody who can only say over and over again, "I have no friends and nobody will ever care for me." I just can't work the belief into my head that anybody can care for me for long, because so far, nobody ever has.

I really do wish I knew some way to get help. The people on the message board do have a point but I still feel they missed much of what I said. They don't seem to realize that my mere act of ASKING THEM FOR HELP is what *I* consider a first BIG STEP in trying to get better. They see it as me avoiding responsibility and not really wanting to get better. They don't understand that to me, simply asking someone for help online is TERRIFYING! I don't think they comprehend the humiliation I feel stepping into that forum over and over (this is like my third time asking for help there, over a period of months, with the same results as always), begging for help, then being told to "Figure it out on your own" or "Get off your butt and do it yourself" (they haven't said the latter, but that's the gist of their advice). The people who know me?--you see how I never step to you and ask for your help, for your advice, for your listening ear, even when you offer it. It's not because I don't want to, it's because I'm too humiliated to, to embarrassed to bother anybody even if they insist I wouldn't be bothering them. So you see how hard it is for me to merely ASK somebody else to help me. To me, just doing that is a big step. To the people on the message board, it's just asking some strangers to do all the work for me, and so the result is, I never get any help.

They seem to believe that I should...I don't even know what they think I should do. They keep telling me to take the first step, face my fear, "beware the trap of the help-rejecting complainer" (direct quote--they said this twice), etc....but they don't offer actual HELP! Somebody posted a crisis hotline, which was as helpful as they got...they clarified that you can call these even if you're not suicidal (I'm more like latently suicidal, than actively suicidal...I wish to die all the time...but am too chicken to do it myself), but that's all the help I've gotten so far, and I don't see how calling a crisis line can help me. In addition, they posted a link to some sort of health services thing in northwestern Michigan and that scared me so much that I don't think I can go back and post. You see, it's an ANONYMOUS forum, and I never, ever said I live in Michigan. Which means that the person behind that post somehow knows my identity (maybe the webmaster or something), and knows who I am, and even though to those who know me well enough it's pretty clear it's me, still, I'm so embarrassed now that they CERTAINLY know, that I don't think I can return. And I don't live in northwestern Michigan, I live in northEASTERN Michigan. Plus I didn't even understand the focus of the site they linked me to; looked like it was aimed at professionals, rather than people needing help. That was as close as someone got to helping me.

The rest of them have been infuriatingly contradictory. It's like being on the Four Board all over again! When I first showed up, talking about how my efforts to help and entertain others had failed, they told me to stop relying on the affirmations of others and believe in myself. So...I tried that, and it didn't work. So I returned this time and asked them, how DO you believe in yourself when you have absolutely no self-confidence? To which they told me to...look OUTWARD, and try to help and focus on OTHERS! /:( What?? That was what they advised me NOT to do! When I brought up how I DID try some volunteer work, and went out in nature, and had a pet, they again moved back to..."You can't rely on helping others and on online friends and pets to gain confidence in yourself." !!! WOULD YOU PLEASE MAKE UP YOUR MINDS?? In any case, I TRIED reaching out, and I TRIED looking within, and neither worked, and I've told them this several times over, and they keep parroting at me to...figure it out for myself...stop being chicken and face my fear...so nothing's getting done.

It REALLY pisses me off when people spout out "Face your fear!" Hello, I'm socially anxious, and I FACE MY FEAR EVERY DAMN DAY. Simply CHECKING THE MAIL is facing my fear because there are always PEOPLE out there who can see me! Does NOT make it diminish, or go away. It's still there, years later. Facing your fear DOES help in some circumstances but when you're afraid of society itself, it just does not seem to work; at least, not for me. I have volunteered at the museum, I have had my ID picture taken, I have paid for items at the checkout, I have given people directions, I have called and dealt with bill collectors, I have waited for the cable guy to show up and hook us up, I have advertised and replied on penpal sites, I have gone into ONLINE ANXIETY FORUMS AND ASKED FOR HELP, and take a look, I am STILL as anxious and terrified as ever. So please stop spouting at me that "facing my fear" will be some magical panacea that will take care of all my problems. It isn't, and it won't. I need some sort of OTHER help.

But I don't have any idea where to find any. This is what I was hoping these online people would help me with. I'm NOT asking them to take care of all my problems, which is what I think they believe. But I do need somebody to hold my hand and guide me on BABY STEPS through the whole thing. I need somebody THERE FOR ME the entire way. Somebody to tell me EXACTLY what I have to do. Just leaving me here to "figure it out on my own" doesn't get anything done and never will. I need HELP from somebody.

I even asked my parents for help. Asking my mother...always ends in a big argument, me crying, and her ignoring me, after many shouts of "What do you expect me to do about it? I can't do anything! What do you want me to do??" -_- And in a way, she's right. What do I expect her to do?? By now I feel that the only thing that would help me is psychiatric help. And I just can't get that here. We do not have the money. My mom thinks I am remarkably stupid just for trying to find penpals online. (Well, as it turns out, she was right -_- , just not for the same reason she thought she was.) She doesn't seem to comprehend how utterly lonely and desperate I am. Neither of them does. They don't even know how I sit here crying to myself every day, or if they do know, at least they don't show it or don't care. I can't cry in front of them; I tell them I'm only "tired" and that "my eyes just hurt," just so I don't have Dad pester me to tell him what's wrong, then have him brush it off with "You should get out more" or "If you had a job, you'd feel better," and so I don't have Ma ignore me or end up yelling about "What can I do??" When I ask for their help, that's all that ever happens. It's just not worth the effort anymore. And I have no one else I can ask.

The forum people hint that if I just "call around" enough, some help will be forthcoming--but what?? This is a small town; they take it for granted that no, we have no soup kitchens I could feel useful in, and no, we have no interfaith churches I could go to, etc. SMALL TOWN--LIMITED RESOURCES! There's a thrift store, and a couple of Christian churches, and that's IT! There's no free help here that I'm aware of. I remember paying my psychologist with cash even back when I had insurance. $50 a week. $50 a week to us now would be FAR too much to afford when we are always late on our important bills; right now, the car payment and power payment are overdue. -_- And that was WITH the insurance! I can't even imagine how much it costs now that I'm NOT insured.

And as far as I know, we don't qualify for any help. Ma suggested trying to sign me up for disability once but she's never gone through with it. And I've heard horror stories about how impossible it is to get on disability. What would disability money be spent on?--paying the bills, I tell myself. And I still would not be getting any better.

This is why I hope I die soon. When my parents retire, which can't be in too long, where will I be? I can't do anything. I'm helpless. I don't understand why I was even born. All I am is a burden, financially and emotionally. And I can't ever imagine it getting any better. With PTSD sufferers, they talk about this thing called "foreshortened future"--PTSD sufferers literally envision themselves with no hope, no future. I don't have PTSD...but I don't see a future for myself, either.

These past couple of weeks are just strengthening this belief. Usually I would have slipped out of this state of mind a week ago. Why is it still here? Why am I still crying all the time? Every other time, I slipped out of it, at least for a while. It never lasts this long. And it just tells me that it doesn't matter even if I do slip out of it, I will still be useless, and a burden, and I will still hope I die before my parents retire because otherwise, I'm dead anyway.

Sorry this is so depressing; but this is my semi-rational mind. Mm-hm. This is how I think when I'm NOT ranting and raving. This isn't even a life anymore, it's just existing. -_-

And all the small stupid things make me cry because they just remind me of this fate. A song on the radio--an encounter with yet another person online--logging off and trying to write--they all remind me of how useless I am and how it's just not going to change unless I get some help. And I don't see that happening. The people in the forum say I have to do it on my own. But I'm stuck without a map and no clue which direction to head in and I'm blind as it is, so I need not only a map but a guide dog. Nobody out there is willing and able to do that. (And the people in that forum don't seem to understand or care for my metaphors.) I'm going to sit here in the middle of nowhere and hope that I at least wither away fast, and not slow.

I really wish I knew what to do. The thought of the rest of my life like this...I dread this almost more than anything. I would rather die young. 28 years old, and I have not done one thing with my life, and I can envision no future. The thought of reaching 40 terrifies me. Even reaching 35 is an awful thought...ANOTHER six years of this?? -_- I often wish that when I hit myself, I would get a blood clot, then an aneurysm (sic?), and then die in my sleep. That would be such a nice way to go. Why won't it happen?

Yesterday when I logged off sobbing even the cat wouldn't comfort me like he usually does. I didn't even have a comforting dream afterwards. And all my writing was absolutely stupid and pointless. I had nothing left.

And I don't envision it getting that much better any time soon. -_-