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.

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New Psychiatrist and Self Loathing

After a 1 hour 20 minute wait with the Daily Express for company (ugh) I finally got to go in and see the psychiatrist I’ve been transferred to. He seemed like a pleasant enough guy, he listened patiently while I answered the same questions that I’ve been asked seemingly hundreds of times. When, where and how I get anxious, what I was like at school and so on.

One of his questions threw me though. He asked whether I was sexually active, something nobody else has felt necessary to enquire about (it’s evident that I am not just by looking at me) and when I responded no he asked when I last was. I thought the uncomfortable silence and throat clearing might have tipped him off but I had to say the horrible words myself; “I never have been”. He seemed rather taken aback by this and later on asked if I have or ever had a girlfriend and later on made one of the most ludicrous suggestions I have heard yet. “You should have sex” he said. As if it was something so simple, that I could go out and do on the way back after I pop out to the shops or something. I don’t know whether he has some kind of logical disconnect, I’d already explained to him that I cannot even talk to or form friendships with the people in my classes whom I see every day.

It will improve your self esteem, he tells me. You will enjoy it. No shit. I want to scream out in anger and furious jealously every time someone talks about having relationships, one night stands or whatever like anyone can just go out and do it. This stuff made me feel that horrible pain deep inside. Not the dull hopelessness, the “I want to kill myself right now rather than live another second as this pathetic creature” feeling. He commented on my age and told me that I need to change and stop accepting other people’s opinions of me as 100% accurate and form my own opinions about myself. At this point there is no difference though. I don’t know if there is a philosophical term for how I feel, but to me, nothing matters except what other people think. If all that mattered was how good you felt about yourself then insane people who think they are Napoleon or whatever would be considered the worlds most sucessful and aspirational figures, not the talented and attractive people we actually do look up to.

I was too saddened and quite shocked to explain to him the grim reality of being such a loser. It doesn’t take long to find examples of what a crap situation I am in. Even the examples in these sites (there is very little material out there that doesn’t refer to that film which name haunts me or religious claptrap about older virgins) don’t address the extra layer of utter pathetic inexperience that I unfortunately possess. I am a million miles away from even kissing a girl and I’m twenty-fucking-four. Has anyone ever been so god damned sheltered, ugly and such a loser and recovered from it? I sincerely doubt it unless a lottery win was involved somehow.

I really honestly want to kill myself whenever this topic enters my head. I’m probably about to make myself sound like a horrible snob here but I feel seething jealousy whenever I’m in my local town, which is a grotty place full of single teenage mothers and chavs and I see prospectless, petty criminals who manage to have some kind of relationship and I know that I never will. It’s times like that when I HATE myself for not realising earlier what life is all about and what you need to be successful. Hindsight is so wonderful. I wish I could travel back in time and tell my 11 year old self that being “clever” doesn’t count for shit in this world. It’s all about making connections with people and being outspoken and confident. Don’t waste fucking time being a goody good and thinking that not getting involved with usual teenage activities makes you superior. It makes you liable to turn out into a fucked up waste of a space that I am now.

I seriously might as well be a robot. I doubt anyone would notice. I have no capacity for forming relationships. I’m far too ugly and un-humanlike to ever have any hope whatsoever of getting with any girl. I can only bear the crushing realisations and watch my dreams torn down in front of my eyes in quiet reserved fashion for so much longer. I’m like the shy teen that never grew up, everyone else around me became adults and now people 5 years younger than me have overtaken me too.

I’m sick, so fucking sick of being such a useless sack of shit. Why do they want me to live like this? So I’ll devastate my parents if I kill myself, do they think about how devastating it is to live every single day as me? I wish I could make them try it for a few months. Days and days on end with not so much as a conversation, let alone any physical contact. Respect and being treated as a social equal? Forget it.

I genuinely wish I hadn’t left my pills at uni, it’d be risky being discovered too soon here but I really don’t think I can take much more of this. Damn that stupid bridge barrier.

Who am I, really?

I’m not bipolar or cyclothymic or anything like that (hypo/mania is thankfully something I don’t have to deal with.) My mood isn’t steady though, within 48 hours I have been the happiest I’ve been in years and back to suicidal again. I’m not over dramatising, I was cursing my luck that I left the pills at my university flat last night and the last train back had already gone.

People seem insistent that I should be the “happy” me and that when I’m down it’s the fault of depression, cause unknown. What if I am the sad person and when I’m happy it’s an aberration? Even when I’ve been in a good mood, I don’t suddenly find life wonderful and valuable. I don’t thank my lucky stars that I didn’t kill myself 2 weeks ago, or even 3 years ago when I first seriously planned to. Things are better than they were back then but not so good that I’d willingly go through it again.

Maybe I’m just one of those people who is always going to be unhappy, it seems more likely to me every day. I can imagine that if I won the lottery or something then I’d still be miserable. Perhaps it’s just who I am, but I don’t want to be that person.

I don’t know when I’ll feel suicidal next, it could be tomorrow or even later this evening. (I wrote this next bit in an email to someone, hope they don’t mind me reusing it) I am worried that if I feel like that again, I might go the whole way next time. Each time I have gotten closer and to be honest (if you ignore the fact that I wouldnt be here to say this) I wouldn’t be hugely regretful if I had killed myself a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t suddenly found life to be wonderful, I just don’t feel quite so crushed that action needs to be taken to end it. I have the energy to carry on for a bit more, but I don’t really know why I’m bothering other than I am worried about an OD going wrong or being paralysed if I jump. It’s hard to explain how I feel and I’m not sure a rational, sane person would understand but that’s the best I can do.

I wish my family hated me so I didn’t have anything holding me back, I’d honestly rather get this over and done with if it wasn’t for the fact that it’d upset them. As things stand, I’m just edging closer and closer towards the point where wanting to escape becomes stronger than not wanting to upset my family. I wonder how long they want me to keep up the pretense that I enjoy and want to live.

The crisis team are coming to see me tomorrow afternoon, the right thing to do would be tell them this, but I realise I can’t verbalise it properly. I feel ashamed that I want to die because I have things so easy compared to people with real problems. Perhaps I could write it down but I still have bad memories of trying that on my first GP appointment and him refusing to read it. I’m pretty sure I know what their answer will be; “The CBT will help you address this”. But I have major doubts it will change my attitude to life.

I don’t want to come over all nihilist, but I don’t see any value in my life. I want to know why people want to live so much, I fear I already know the answer and it’s because they experience things I have never and never will, things like true friendship, feeling a part of something, having someone who loves you.

Last night I annoyed one of my online friends by talking about this. I have a hard time believing that a fat, ugly, boring, inexperienced, lifeless, suicidal, depressive, quiet, immature, loner who has never managed so much as a kiss on the cheek in 24 years of life will be able to find a girlfriend. I can back all those adjectives up by the way.

What on earth would any girl want to do with a person like that? There isn’t really much more I could do or be in order to become less attractive.

I remember another boy in school who used to get made fun of because he never had a girlfriend when we were 15. In retrospect, that was pretty harsh and at that age being in such a situation probably isn’t too uncommon. The thing is, there will be girls around that age who haven’t had a boyfriend either and even the ones who do won’t expect much maturity from teenage lads (if they do, they’ll probably be disappointed). At 24 though, things are rather different. I suspect discovering that a guy who was still a virgin at that age would raise a lot of red flags, there must be something wrong if it’s not for religious reasons (I could make a point about the foolishness of such reasons but I don’t want to get even more sidetracked.)

I think women in their mid twenties have justifiably higher expectations from men than teenage girls. My friend tells me that it’s never too late to catch up, but I don’t see how it’s possible. When my parents were my age they’d been married 5 years, I know of people that went to my school in years below who have families now. It’s almost impossible to explain how utterly inadequate these things make me feel.

That 15 year old boy was probably nervous the first time he kissed a girl, but the odds of his partner being in a similar situation (according to the data I’ve found, assuming they are the same age) were reasonable so there would be the benefit of knowing that they were both in the same situation. I have to ask myself what girl (assuming they are insane enough to get past all the other crap and somehow like me) would put up with such inexperience from a person of my age? That’s just one simple example, I have no idea how to be in any kind of relationship.

In my whole life I’ve never talked about sex with anyone. I can’t remember when I found out the mystery of where babies come from but I wasn’t so sheltered that I had to learn in year 8 science class. People have made me feel as though I’m not allowed to think of myself as a sexual being though. That is a laughable thought. I’ve never talked to any of my “friends” (post coming about them later, it’s ok you can return from the edge of your seats now) at school about girls because to everyone there I was a non-person. Just a laughable entity who worked and got made fun of occassionally. During the whole time I was at high school I never once started a conversation with a girl and I only spoke when spoken to.

It was incredibly difficult for me to write that paragraph, I still can’t see myself as a person who deserves or is capable of forming that kind of relationship with a person. I am human though and I’m not assexual. I have a lot of issues, obviously and it seems to me that as I get older and older the chances of coming across someone who can accept such immaturity and inexperience are becoming exponentially less.

Agitated

I’ve been stuck inside all day, most of it spent in this chair where I’m sat now. My sleep pattern is all over the place, I woke up at 7 this morning and fell asleep again at 9, not getting up until 1pm. Consequently I am not tired at all, I feel like running through the icy streets until I’m out of breath and my muscles ache. I’m becoming tired of my life here, tired of being alone, tired of having nowhere to go and nothing to do. At least at uni there is the opportunity to do something worthwhile, even if I rarely take it.

I know my last ramble sounded a lot more positive, but it should have been posted on Thursday while I was still high on my brief taste of normality. I feel awkward and conflicted now. I managed to avoid panicking and no-one laughed at me, but I wasn’t one of them. I get special treatment, in a way it’s good because I’m not held to the same standards as them but I’m not a real person either. I’m probably making no sense at all, it’s difficult to explain. *sigh*

I want to get on a train to that place I thought about and throw myself off a cliff. I’m sick of being numb, maybe I’d feel alive for a few seconds at least.

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.