Time keeps on slipping away

I’m not sure how long I managed to try and stay in the positive (kind of) mindset I wrote about in my last entry but unfortunately it has long since passed. It is clear to me now that the isolation is no good for me at all. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the only time for probably 2 years where I have felt any semblance of self worth was when I got to spend a few hours with some people who I can almost convince myself liked being with me. Last night I was thinking about how the best time of my life was probably from mid 2011 to mid 2012, my final year of university (it is probably no coincidence that this period was a big downturn in the number of posts I wrote here, I tend to only write when I am feeling bad). It was a strange situation because the sociability of my living arrangements had decreased more and more: I started off in the halls of residence, then shared a house with 2 of my flatmates and ended up living on my own. This let me spend time alone when I needed to though, and I still saw my classmates so I wasn’t totally isolated. Compared to most people I was still practically a hermit, but this was the most comfortable I have been.

My current situation is constantly deteriorating. I have always had a decent relationship with my parents despite their ridiculous situation of being separated but still living in the same house. Things have started to get on top of me lately though. I don’t want to badmouth them because it would seem massively ungrateful since they let me live with them but things have begun to get a bit strained. I can’t stand to listen to my mum going on about things she has read in the Daily Mail (for people outside the UK, a hateful newspaper) and making horrible comments about people she works with (too fat, too thin, too lazy, too obsessive. You can’t win). It makes me depressed to think about what she would say about me if I wasn’t her son. I keep spending more time alone in my tiny room whenever we are all in the house. I remember a time when all I wanted more than anything was to be at home but now I cannot wait to escape this place. Sometimes I feel as though I am going through life 10+ years behind schedule.

To put it simply: there’s no way I can see my life getting any better. I know it doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things but my birthday is coming up and I remember this time last year how determined I was that I wasn’t going to let the year just slip away into nothingness but that is exactly what has happened. I have achieved nothing in the past two years, they have been a complete waste of time during the part of my life when I should be getting things done.

One of the very few people I have on facebook from the “before time” prior to when I tried to restart my life in 2007/8 is a girl I went to primary school with and we were friends when I was very young but lost touch after we started secondary school. I can quite vividly remember an early time I felt what I would describe now as social anxiety, was when someone told her that I had a crush on her. Anyway, I saw on facebook the other day that she got married. I didn’t feel jealous, I have not even spoken to her in person for over 10 years, but it did hammer home how much my life has diverged from the people I grew up with. When I occasionally see them they look like adults but virtually nothing has changed for me since I was in school.

It is impossible not to feel like there is something irrevocably broken about myself that I can let things go so wrong. I remember when I first started writing the entries in 2007 on another site that I transferred over to here, that one of the main things I was depressed about was how I had missed out on key development in major parts of my life. I am in pretty much the same situation now, 7 years on. I am still the same loser that I was back then except now I don’t even have time on my side. I thought 23 was too old to change things but I was wrong about that. I wish I was that age again. I don’t know how I would do things differently but at least I had time. Now I don’t have that, I don’t have any hope.

My old therapist used to ask “How would you like your life to be different?” or what I would like to change about my life and it used to leave me stumped. You would think that someone so unhappy would have a huge list of things but I could never give concrete answers and I still can’t. Part of it was that I knew what they would do if I could think of something, they’d try and come up with some way of working towards it so I would always be second guessing about what my answers would lead to. If we restrict it to the realm of things that are actually possible, then I can’t really envisage anything that could make things OK. This is my major problem, I would much rather just not be alive than to try and patch up this ridiculous life that I have made for myself.

I sometimes wonder if anyone could be so far gone as me and still manage to turn things around and not want to die. I know there are people with much, much harder lives than me and that I have things extremely easy but they must have some kind of will to fight on that I don’t have. What is the point? If it came down to being as miserable as I was at my first job in order to survive then I would vastly prefer to be dead. Other people might have the comfort of coming home to someone they love or seeing friends but I know that will never be possible for me.

There is nothing for me that would make the awful parts of being alive worth going through.

I apologise for such another rambling and depressing post. I still have not been able to make a doctors appointment, I still have no job and I haven’t spoken to anyone outside my family in any sort of social situation since when I last posted in September. There is not much else for me to report.

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Isolation

I have been thinking a lot about how being alone is so damaging to my (I don’t want to speak for others, some people like being alone, although I would question how many would prefer complete isolation…) mental wellbeing recently. I think I touched on this in a previous post but I have been thinking back to when the last time I actually spent time with or talked to anyone outside my family and apart from a few occasions with people who I wouldn’t even call acquaintances, it has been over 18 months. I am afraid that it is doing irreparable damage to me. Even my own family doesn’t really seem interested in what I have to say. Practically every time I try and talk to one of my parents they either change the subject to something about themselves or just start doing other things or walking away. I know that I am not the most interesting person but I am starting to feel invisible. In the rare times when I do get to say anything, I feel like I am falling over my words or almost stuttering, which I never used to do. Years of being stuck in this situation can’t be good for you.

Since I last posted I have continued to feel very depressed. It’s still not quite as bad as it has been in the past, the period in late 2006 when I was at my first job being the absolute worst that I’ve ever felt, even more so than when I tried to kill myself, but I do feel more hopeless than I have in a long time. It seems strange to think back a few years when I was writing such despairing posts on here. I did feel absolutely terrible at times but by all accounts I was so much better off then than I am now. I was younger and doing something with my life that isn’t seen by society as a complete waste. I had a lot more going for me then than I do now, people I talked to online who cared about me and even a few people who would speak to me in real life.

I have slid so far backwards, I am practically at the same point that I was when I first started the original posts 6 years ago that eventually became this blog. The main difference is that this time I have nowhere to go. Back then I still had university ahead of me and I was young enough that I could get away with being behind on a lot of things. Now every single day I feel more and more inadequate compared to other people my age. Even the people I met who were years younger than me have already far surpassed me.

I’m tired of being an embarrassment. There is nothing that can be realistically expected that would make things seem ok to me now. There is no path that I can see that would lead to me ever feeling any different, it’s too late to turn things around now.

No Progress

(warning: suicide discussion below so don’t read if that bothers you)

I didn’t realise I had left it so long to update, time seems to pass very quickly when you don’t have a lot happening in your life. Throughout 2013 I don’t think there was a single time when I met up or spoke to anyone who could remotely be considered a friend. The last year I have slid backwards so much, it’s so disappointing compared to how relatively well I was doing in say, my last year of uni. I am practically back to 2007 levels of isolation but in a way it is a lot worse because at least back then, I know with hindsight that I had somewhere to go. I was younger and I had that opportunity of going to university as a second chance at life. I was yet to meet some of the people who, despite only making the very faintest of a connection with, at least didn’t mind spending time with me and didn’t go out of their way to make me feel worthless. Unfortunately the circumstances that led to that, being at university or talking to them online, have now evaporated and I’m back here on my own again. It is impossible, for example, that any of the people who I lived with at while I was away at uni would ever have got to know me under any other circumstances than us being randomly assigned to share a flat. The people I knew online have either moved on entirely and no longer need to talk to a disastrous loser as me or I have neglected to talk to them for so long they have forgotten about me. I don’t have anything to say anyway. My life is empty. I don’t have anywhere to go or anything of note to contribute to anything.

It is strange to look back and think about how strongly I felt my life was over and wanted to die so much during the time when I tried to kill myself. Strange because everything was immeasurably better back then. It took another 3 years, until I was in my final year of university to realise how much I actually benefitted from being there and appreciate all that I had built up over those few years from when I felt at my lowest point (before I started blogging) and now it’s all gone. There’s no way I was worse off in 2009 than I am now. I wasn’t hurting for money or unemployed, I had people who would spend time with me. I had friends online.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about how I tried to die and I have very conflicted feelings about it all. I feel bad for all the trouble I caused other people but I don’t think I was unjustified in what I did. Some people might expect me to be thankful that I was unsuccessful and that I ought to be glad to be alive but I am not. Do I wish that I had died? I would have missed out on some good things but none of them really make up for the pain and disappointment that I feel having to be me. If I could choose to change things, I wish I hadn’t been found and everyone could just put me to rest and get on with their lives.

I don’t feel fully justified in using the word ‘pain’ to describe how I feel but I don’t know how else to word it. I feel more of a sense of crushing inevitability and a dull ache than serious pain. I hate being the awful, worthless person that I have become. There are few bigger examples of wasted opportunity than me.

It was my birthday in January and it was one I have not been looking forward too. I don’t think I will be able to stand reaching a milestone age next year and still being the same unaccomplished loser. I have a suspicion this year may be my last. Back in 2009 I could have been convinced that it wasn’t too late, that I could have turned things around because I had time on my side. Looking back, I can admit that I was wrong about some things because it wasn’t too late at 24 to do anything. I’m rapidly approaching passing the point where if I was to die it would be considered a tragedy and reaching the stage where people would wonder what took me so long.

Acedia

noun \ə-ˈsē-dē-ə\

Spiritual torpor and apathy; ennui.

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Though I’ve not been so badly affected by the serious symptoms of depression recently, the general lack of enthusiasm for pretty much anything is still here and has been for some time. For almost my entire life I have been interested in and loved using computers. If I could have carried on the vast enthusiasm and dedication I had towards the subject into my current studies I have no doubt I’d be in a better position, grade wise.

I suppose it happens to many people, that they lose the passion for the subject they are studying but it is quite a dramatic fall for me. It’s not that I hate computers but I just don’t find myself wanting to learn more programming languages, keep up with new technological developments or any of the other things that I used to avidly do. I still spend 90% of my waking hours at one, but it’s not for the pure technical exercises that I used to do. Even when I was in sixth form (the 2 years prior to beginning university) the people I associated with (I no longer think of them as friends) and I used to always be looking for ways to make our IT projects more complicated and we’d get frustrated with how much more we knew about the subject than any of the teachers. I owned hundreds of magazines, read countless websites and posted on tech forums.

Depression has the effect of making you lose interest in things that you used to enjoy, and I can safely say that is the case with me. Even earlier in this post I almost recoiled at typing the word “love” because it seems such a foreign emotion to me now. There isn’t really anything in the world that I can say I thoroughly enjoy or love. I love my family of course but when it comes to passion for any sort of hobby or interest I can’t think of anything for which I’d use such a strong word to describe my feelings toward.

In the very rare occasions when I’ve been asked what I have been doing, over the weekend for example, I honestly don’t know what to say because to anyone who observed me I really wouldn’t appear to have done anything. I know it’s bad but I sometimes make things up just so I don’t appear to be such a complete weirdo.

I keep thinking about those things the therapist gives you where you write in what you did for certain hours of the day etc. Mine would be completely full of “sat around at the computer, not working.” for the vast majority of the time when I’m not at lectures. The amount of time I am isolated away from any form of human contact is beginning to worry me. If I didn’t go home at weekends then I would literally spend months at a time saying little more than one word replies to people. It can’t be good for you, but there’s very little I can do about it.

One thing I do like is listening to music but again it is a solitary activity for me. I can’t stand being asked what kind of music I like, I’ve always hated that long before I knew what social anxiety was, I’ve always found that a bugging question. I don’t know how to respond, are they asking for certain bands/artists? The main thing I worry about is that if I try to describe a genre or name some band that they think is embarrassing then I’ll feel like an idiot because I’m no good at defending myself or my opinions (in person at least).

Anyway that paragraph was meant to lead to a point… A band I like is playing in my home town in a couple of weeks and I really wanted to see them because it’s likely they won’t play there again and it’s quite a small venue and I don’t have to travel far. Of course the problem is that I don’t have anyone to go with. I have been to a gig on my own, roughly this time last year actually, and it was ok but I did feel strange being the only person obviously by themselves. I bought a ticket anyway but I am still in two minds about whether to go or not. Because of the timing, I’d have to let my mum know since I’d be coming back to the house afterwards but I know she’d want to know who I was going with and would probably think I was weird for going on my own if I told her. I’m hoping she’ll assume that I’m going with one of the couple of people I knew from an SA website that I occasionally see in town.

Oh well, I’ll let you know what I do.

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Frustration

The last few days have been overwhelmed by frustration. I went for my CBT appointment on Thursday and my therapist seemed much more impatient than usual. I know it must be difficult to deal with me and I have apologised before for being such an awkward patient (which he of course denied I was), it takes me a long time to vocalise my thoughts or explain things which I find embarrassing. A lot of the time I sit in silence and he rattles off suggestions of how I might have felt until he says the right one and  I nod. It’s a slow process indeed.

This time however, he just seemed to be out of patience. He set me the task of asking a stranger for the time and asked how that would make me feel. I knew it made me feel scared, but I couldn’t put into words exactly why and what I was afraid of. Having had some time to think about it; I guess what I’d be worried about is the person wondering why I’m talking to them. Why did I choose them to ask? They might think I’m coming on to them or trying to distract them while someone pickpockets them or something. Another more likely thing is that they’d just ignore me and walk past, because nobody wants to be stopped and hassled by a weirdo like me. I don’t know, it’s hard to express these thoughts aloud when they are so embarrassing. Even though I realise that none of these things would be harmful, I’d still be scared to do it anyway.

Assuming the best case scenario, I manage to do this tiny activity and report back next week, I’d probably be given something larger to do and so forth. But how long would it take building from being a functional retard like I am now to becoming something resembling a normal human being? It will be in the order of years even in the best case. I don’t know if I can handle being such a loathsome wreck of a person for that long. I’ve already wasted almost a quarter of a century, some of the times in a persons life when major personal development happens and, by and large people find to be an enjoyable time.

I don’t really know how to end this post. I think I’ve gone past a point of no return regarding suicide. Once you get it into your head that it is not only a viable escape from the pain, but the best and most immediate one, then it’s hard to take your mind off it and stop your thinking from going there automatically. I don’t know if it’s possible to stop doing that. They’ve tried using guilt on me, but there will be a point (in fact there already was a point) when the pain is too much for that to hold me back. What can I do? Become a permanent inpatient and doom myself to a life of being constantly sedated and under lock and key until I die alone? What a great life to look forward to.