My week

Somehow I made it to all my classes today, all I can do at this point is to remember how completely hopeless I’ll be if I don’t get this degree. There’s no explaining away a 2.5 year gap in work history when you’re in your 20’s and it’s not because you have kids to look after or anything so reasonable.

I haven’t spoken to anyone in person yet. Not since I said goodnight to my mum on Sunday night. I still can’t believe how people say so much more than me. I watched a program on TV the other day about a device that you can wear and it takes a picture every 30 seconds or when it detects motion and can build up an image of how you spend your time and uses artificial intelligence to pick out “events”. The researchers think they might be able to use this to improve AI in some way or other. It struck me as I watched it how incredibly boring my life is. I only ever go to the same places. The past 3 years for example, I would expect was spent 80% in my bedroom at home. I really haven’t lived a day in my life. 

I no longer think of myself as a real person. Sometimes if I see people having fun or just doing some mundane activity and I think that I’d like to have people who I could spend time with, I’m overcome with a feeling that it is stupid of me to feel that way. It’s even worse if I see a girl who I find attractive, I feel embarrassment that I entertained the notion that I could be liked, even for a split second. That’s for real people, not me.

I won’t name names, but even reading about other people who have mental illness leaves me feeling downhearted and envious sometimes. It’s too late for me to start being normal now. There is absolutely no reason why anyone would like me, I don’t even like myself, I hate myself. Why would anyone be friends with someone who feels such self loathing? 

I won’t pretend to be wise or anything of the sort, but when I sat in class the other day and watched the people in front of me laughing and joking around, I felt like an old man. It’s so long since I’ve actually had a period in my life where I enjoyed being around others, it seems impossible now. When I was a child, before people became concerned with social status and how badly associating with such a freakish looking loser affects it, I used to have a few friends. In a way, I feel stuck in that stage of life. I didn’t grow emotionally beyond the age of about 11.

When I think about how pathetic it is for a “man” in his mid-20s to be so inexperienced, it makes me want to cry (which I do far more often than I should). I remember reading the agony aunt pages in my sisters magazines when I was younger, kids writing in about how they were worried about their first kiss and how they didn’t know what to do. It’s so achingly pathetic that someone can reach my age and still have the same social obstacles to overcome. Not that I worry much about that itself any more, even if I do live much longer it’s not like I’ll have to deal with that awkwardness.

I carry this shame around with me 24 hours a day. I know people can see it in my face. I am terrified to put myself in a situation where the subject of relationships or whatever you want to call it, comes up. It’s not hard to tell from my narrow eyed, red skinned, freckly mess of a face that I’ve never been within 2 feet of a girl. I cringe if I’m ever around a conversation about such matters. On the first night I was here at uni, my flatmates asked each other if they had boy/girlfriends back at home, luckily they were tactful enough to not ask me, but I felt panic rush through my veins anyway.

To most people the 40 Year Old Virgin is a hilarious concept, but for me it’s my future. I can’t let it get that far, I won’t. Non-existence is preferable to me than becoming an even greater laughing stock and ever more lonely and twisted.

High Places

Every time I walk to classes I see that high apartment block calling me over. I want to climb to the 10th floor balcony and drop knowing I’ll have at least a few seconds of release.

I don’t know what to do. It seems like I should talk to someone, but who and what should I say? I don’t know if I want to be talked out of it.

Stupid SA

I’ve slipped back into old ways again. Since I’ve been back here since Christmas, I’ve only managed to make dinner in the kitchen once and that was when I knew no-one was in. I’m too scared to be around those loud people I don’t know. They scare me, I actually feel fear when I hear raucous laughter and conversations. I’m tired of letting this rule me but I don’t know what to do. I’ve been spending far too much money on sandwiches and drinks in town so I don’t have face them all. I worry about stupid things, like what food I buy and whether they’d laugh when they see what’s in my cupboard or think I’m weird or something. It’s hard to describe, but it’s the fear that people will have some undefinable negative feeling towards me that I experienced so many times in school, sixth form and the first uni I went to. I’ve had everything from my laugh to the way I walk picked on and criticised and it’s made me paranoid to do anything in public view. I worry about the most mundane things that people usually never give a second thought to.

One positive thing is that I might be able to see a different psychiatrist next time. I had to get my mum to phone because I was too afraid to do it myself, but my appointment with the creepy guy has been cancelled and I’m waiting to hear back about seeing a different doctor.

Also my CBT appointment has finally come through. I knew over a year ago that CBT was my best shot at getting better but it’s taken this long of jumping through hoops to get them to agree and set a date. I had to fill a CORE form in (don’t know if anyone’s done this before) which has several statements presumably to gauge how depressed you are and  you tick boxes from “not at all” to “most or all of the time”. I’m a bit worried about what they might think because I filled this in honestly, and I really do think about killing myself every day and all that… There was also a longer form where I got to describe what my problem is, how it affects my life and what may have triggered it in the past. This is the first time that I will have been able to fully express these things, the first time I wrote things down for my GP, he refused to read it and made me explain to him, which I struggle greatly with. I’m just hoping that they won’t dismiss me as unsuitable for it because of suicidal and depressed I am. I shall find out on the 2nd of February.

Loner

I’ve been arguing with my family again; I don’t know how they can ignore the fact that I am not the kind of person people want to know or be friends with, despite all the evidence that supports it. I know it’s hard for them to know what to do, deep down I think they know I am a weirdo and people won’t want to know me, but they don’t know what to do about it so they just keep lying to themselves and me.

People can’t read minds, all they know about you is what you say to them and I can’t say anything. I am totally useless at communicating with people in person. The only reason I have any of my online friends is because we spoke online first. For someone who only spoke to me in real life, I might as well be a robot because I can’t and don’t give anything away about myself.

I have no idea what a person who has no friends or acquaintances can do to make friends here, I’ve tried the clubs/socieites but people already have friends there. I don’t think there is anything, everyone else already knows people so they can go places together and not look weird. Nobody wants a creepy loner to come up to them, especially someone as socially awkward as me, that is a fact that has been proven by my experiences over and over again.

I don’t know whether it’s because I just started the higher dose of my meds and it can have this effect but I really feel slashing my wrists at the moment.

How quickly things change…

for the worse. I actually felt quite good yesterday and today, I was beginning to feel a tiny bit more confident about university and life in general but as usual it has lasted. I have come crashing down again, I just wrote a desperate email to an online friend of mine, one of the only people who understands me, asking her to email me back. It’s hard when the person you want to talk to more than anyone in the world has avoidant personality and extreme SA I am in tears at the moment, I can’t stand myself any more. I want to die. Even when I am happy, there is an underlying disappointment that those moods are just holding me back from my biggest desire, to simply not suffer existence any more. Maybe I can last the 3 days before I see the psychiatrist, I don’t know how much help they can be in 1 hour though. I feel like I need a good talking to every day to stop me slipping into these horribly desperate moods.

I’ve already made preparations for my departure. There are several notes for each of the few people I have been able to talk to over the last, empty part of my life. Evidence from my computers has been securely destroyed, I just need to get rid of some burned DVDs.

Feeling Inferior

I recently found out what apartment I’ll be staying in at university and through facebook, one of the people I’ll be sharing a kitchen with. Already I have started feeling hugely inferior and worthless. Just a quick glance at her page, full of pictures of her with friends on nights out, was enough to start me off feeling worthless. I can’t help but think what a huge let down it must be to discover that I am your new room mate. Even on my profile page I sound tremendously boring, I only have one photo of myself with another person. My interests are dull, I only have pity friends. It’s strange, the thing that makes me feel worst of all is how disappointing I will be to the other people I live with. I feel sorry for them for getting stuck with the freakish looking loner.

It’s only 2 weeks now until I move in there, I don’t know if I can do it. I tried to make myself forget about the bad things, but I just can’t put out of my mind how much of a huge step this is going to be. I haven’t even put much thought into how hard the work itself is going to be. I’ll have some time in the house on my own over the next couple of weeks since my mum will be back at work; I don’t know whether there will be anything to stop me this time if I decide to take the other way out.