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I hadn’t got the energy to write last week, I had an assignment to complete but I could barely get out of bed most days and was constantly worrying that I was going to fail. Fortunately I applied for an extension and have been given an extra week to finish it.

My mood has been up and down again, never above “just surviving” though. I still haven’t been able to discuss how I’ve been feeling with any medical professional though, my attempt to get a GP appointment was ruined. I phoned on Monday morning and they couldn’t give me one until the following Monday, which I couldn’t take anyway because I have to be at home to see my psychiatrist. I’m not sure I am up to telling him (the scary consultant) about my plans to kill myself, about how I ordered a lethal overdose quantity of pills. It’d be best to say something, I suppose, but I don’t think I can quite reveal all.

The last few days have left me wondering what exactly can be done. Obviously they can’t change what bothers me, my enormous lack of life experience, repulsive appearance and boring personality. All they can do is try to help me cope with being how I am. I’m not sure if “accepting” who I am will be part of what they want me to do, that’s what my mum wants me to do apparently, but I can never do that. I don’t want to do that. I can’t settle for being such a horrible, vile waste of space. I really would rather be dead than have to live like this for years. I’m sorry if this is controversial,  but it brings to mind “fat pride”. I can’t understand why people want me to adopt the same type of cognitive dissonance or delusion. I know I have problems, I know I’m an awful person but I’m not about to say “That’s how I am. Fuck you, I’m brilliant.” I can’t pretend everyone in the world has a problem except me, that would be delusional.

I tried talking to my sister but she tries to minimise what’s wrong with me. I’m tired of people saying “Oh I don’t have many friends either, most people don’t” but I simply don’t believe it. I can see hundreds of photos of her and her friends together on Facebook, she tells me stories about them, she has a boyfriend and recently went on holiday with him and some friends. That’s so far removed my situation that it’s not even funny.

To give an example, when I was at school, sixth form and college (and now university I suppose) whenever there was a holiday, I’d never see anyone else apart from my family. I wouldn’t go to anyone’s house or be invited anywhere. Nobody would come to see me. When I went back after summer, the people I hung around with (who bullied and psychologically tortured me) would belittle and laugh at me for being so reclusive and hiding away at home for months at a time.

Please tell me if this is a common experience, I’ve been mocked on a social anxiety forum for revealing this before so I doubt it, but people seem determined to convince me that I’m not unusual.  From age 11, when I started secondary school, I’ve had no-one I could call a proper friend. I saw no-one outside of school. Every day I’d go home and do things by myself or with my family. At weekends I would do the same, holidays were the same. I’ve never been out on Friday and Saturday night, never been to a party, until this year I’d never been to a “club” (it wasn’t even a proper one really), never had a girlfriend, never kissed anyone, never held a girls hand, never asked a girl out. I’ve never been on holiday apart from with my family.

I can’t help but be depressed by this horrific waste of life. Maybe I don’t deserve to have been so cruelly deprived of a life, at this point I can’t see why I’d deserve anything other than bad things. In any case, I feel massive crushing jealousy towards everyone I see around who gets to do these things. Anyone who has a life, people who have friends, people who have someone that they can actually talk to beyond saying “Hello, how are you?” which is the limit of my relationship with anyone. I wish I had a friend who I could call and talk to, even that seems beyond the realms of possibility.

People say that it takes time, but I’m 24. Twenty four years old and I don’t have the social skills or life experience of the average 12 year old. Some people tell me that I can learn, but how do you do that? Normal people get that kind of thing out of the way when they are younger. They have friends going through similar things. I can’t imagine many people in their mid twenties are still worrying because they don’t know how to kiss, not that I’ll ever have to worry about putting that into practice.  It’s pathetic to even think about it.

I’m so ridiculously immature, no psychiatrist or therapist can change that, and that is one of the main reasons I am so depressed.

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Despair

I’ve tried everything that I’m supposed to do. I’ve had a month long back and forth email conversation with Samaritans, tried to distract myself, talked to my family. A few months ago I went to the hospital of my own accord and told them I felt like I was in danger of killing myself and they spoke to me for a while and sent the crisis team round afterwards. None of this has changed anything in the long run. The problems are still there and they are deep lying and in some cases insurmountable.

The time has come when I can’t stop thinking to myself “Why bother?” I don’t think the pain is worth enduring any more. Life is no fun at all for me, I get no enjoyment from anything and I see no future worth looking forward to. Everything from now onwards will be a downward spiral of misery, loneliness and ever-increasing mockery and disgust from others.

What reasons do I have to carry on? I can’t think of any particularly good ones. Sparing my mum the grief is all I can think of that is stopping me right now but I don’t know how much longer that will keep my alive. Is saving her that pain worth keeping myself miserable and utterly despondent for however long she has to live? I don’t know, maybe for once in my life I will be selfish. I have no friends to leave behind, my funeral will be an empty place. Whenever you hear about a young persons untimely death on TV, people always say “He was so full of life and always laughing, everyone loved him”. If anyone was asked about me they’d probably think “He was so withdrawn and sullen, I was in his class for 10 years and he never said a word” before lying with a similar cliched load of rubbish. I can’t say anyone’d be surprised, I’ve always been “that guy” wherever I’ve studied, lived or worked.

I’m getting tired of thinking about the future. It’s a black hole of pathetic loneliness for me. I don’t want to rot away in some single bedroom flat, holing myself up in there day after day like I have done for the past 20 odd years. There are people on the social anxiety forums who are in their mid thirties and forties who are in that position, some of them still living with their parents and I can foresee exactly that same thing happening to me. I can’t live that life, I won’t let the people who laughed and tortured me have their theories proven right. I’ll take eternal nothingness over that.

The jealousy I experience every day is getting too much. When I went to the arboretum in my home town, there were lots of people around my age there sitting together in groups and just chatting or reading. It makes me want to cry because I’d love so much to be able to do such simple (and probably mundane to most) things. Instead I walked alone, trying to avoid looking like a drug dealer or homeless crazy person. Being an outcast is intolerably painful because there’s no end to it. The only solace I ever got was becoming a hermit and never seeing anyone or what I was missing out on. I can’t take that any more though, that was the cause of my first suicidal break down. I think it was 18 months with no human contact other than my parents and sister.

What triggered my break down was seeing a documentary about older virgins and a guy who decided at 23 (now younger than I am) to pay an escort to have sex with him. I realised how pathetic and what a monster people think of such losers like him. He was a joke, the whole point of the program seemed designed to mock and make a spectacle of these weirdos who were so undesirable they had to pay someone to like them. I’m not proud of this but after about a decade since puberty and having no experience whatsoever (I don’t think I even started a conversation with a girl when I was in secondary school, I can’t remember ever doing it anyway) kind of gets to you.. I considered doing the same thing briefly. The more I thought about it, the worse idea it became of course. Beyond the moral ramifications, I realised that even a woman who was being paid would probably refuse to come within 2 feet of me.

I don’t want this post to make me sound like some kind of sex crazed maniac, I’m far from it. I think humans have a need to express affection and love though. I need which I have never and will never get to fulfill. I’m far, far to messed up in the head and monstrously ugly to ever know what it’s like to hold another person close, despite how much I crave it. The agonising pain of seeing every girl I have ever liked go off with someone else, never realising I existed will always be there. I have no redeeming qualities and it would be delusional to think otherwise.

It’s been a long time now and I’ve given a lot of thought to it. It’s not a rash decision, I think tonight may be the night. I don’t feel like crying, just numb. I have the pills, I just need time alone.

Mixed Feelings

I came back home today and found a letter from the psychotherapy place, they’ve offered to put me on the waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy but couldn’t tell me how long it’ll take until I can see someone more specifically than “several months”. I’d hoped that it would be sooner than that, although I suppose I’m lucky to get the opportunity at all without having to pay for it. By the time it starts I’ll probably have finished university for the summer, which puts me in the bizarre situation of being back at home but not being around anyone who I know.

It’s going to be difficult to make any progress when I don’t even have to opportunity for any socialising, at least when I’m at uni I could see and say a few words to a person I know every day if I wanted to. When I’m at home, there’s nobody except my family, who I have no problem talking to. I dumbfounded my psychiatrist by telling him this last time, I wouldn’t accept that there was no-one I could ring up and arrange to meet. “No friends? How about a friend of the family?” Nope, sorry doc. I’ve told them this before, I’m sure they don’t listen or they think I’m exaggerating. I really sat at home and didn’t speak to anyone outside my family for months and months. Nobody wants to know me, it’s obvious to me why that is, but they either don’t listen or don’t care (probably both). The place where I live doesn’t help things either, there is literally nothing but houses around here. There isn’t even a shop any more, you have to walk for about half an hour to get to another housing area where there is a Spar. Hardly a vibrant and inspiring place. The local town is a rough area and pretty much consists of £1 shops and bookies. If you tried to strike up a conversation with someone there you’d probably get knifed.

It’s very disheartening to think about how long this would all take if I try to stick with it. I’ve already been waiting over a year since I realised CBT is what I need and it’ll probably be another 6 months before I’d even get to make a start on things. Another package arrived today as well, a way out. I’m not sure how long I can stop myself from using it. I walked around the house with a suicide note in my pocket for 4 days last week, distraction only works for so long.

Problems

I’ve been extremely lucky in a lot of ways, I’ve never had to deal with the kinds of problems that most people experience. I’ve never broken up with anyone, fallen out with friends, had to deal with ex’s. Never had to worry about anyone else apart from myself really (of course I do worry about my family). Of course all this came at the cost of always having been alone and deprived of human contact but I’ve rambled enough about that already.

As I sit here hungry again because I’m too scared to go into the kitchen and face making dinner with people around (this time I’m worried that they will ask what I’m having and think I’m weird because all I ever seem to eat is pasta, namely because it’s quick and easy to make.) I wonder what my life would be like if I wasn’t paralysed by fear of mundane and quite frankly, ludicrous things. I don’t think I could cope with being a real person. I don’t deserve to call myself a man, I’m just an overgrown child. If I ever managed to become normal, form relationships with people, have friends who want to spend time with me, go out, actually let someone know the real me (whoever the fuck that is, I don’t know any more) I don’t think I could cope with all the extra responsibilities and burdens. I just don’t think I’m cut out for life, not even this easy one I was lucky enough to be born into.

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.

Anxiety Resurgence

It’s been a long time since I was around a lot of people on a regular basis, so I haven’t experience huge amounts of social anxiety for quite a while. There have been odd days here and there but not prolonged periods like when I was at school or work, avoidance has been doing it’s trick. Now I am at university, however, I am starting to get those feelings again more often. I’ve already missed a few meals because I’ve been too afraid to go into the kitchen because I can hear voices of other people in there who I don’t know. I’ve even got to the point where I came out of my room to get a drink, walked to the door and heard people laughing and shouting and just walked back to my room to hide until they had gone.

One thing I’ve been told several times is that university societies and clubs are good places to meet people, and wanting to try and make some friends I decided that I would challenge myself and go along to some. I really wanted to join the Cine society but unfortunately that wasn’t running 😦 I ended up asking the president of the psychology society if it was ok if I joined now, since I didn’t sign up at the fresher’s fayre and she said yes. Last night they had a film night so after much worrying and arguing with my mum over MSN about going, I eventually plucked up enough courage to go there. Now, one technique you see in a lot of literature about tackling SA involves making predictions about social events or occasions and then going along anyway, then comparing what happened to your prediction and hopefully then realising that you were wrong and things turned out better than you expected. Unfortunately for me, last night was another occasion where what I predicted turned out to be exactly right; the other people there were all friends and knew each other and I ended up on my own looking like a loser. There were only 7 people there and the other 6 were all talking about people they knew and things they had done on previous nights out and stuff, hardly topics I could join in on even if I could bring myself to butt in on others conversations. So that turned out to be useless just like the other times I have been out, other people just don’t go to things alone looking to make friends. Despite what my mum says, it is highly unusual for someone to be my age and have zero friends, everyone else has people to go places with.

I don’t know what to do now really, I’d been told that everyone at uni would be in the same situation; that they wouldn’t know anyone either so they’d all want to make new friends, but that isn’t how it’s turned out for me. Everyone already knew tons of people from college, school or their jobs, on the first afternoon here when I went into the kitchen to say hello to my flatmates, there were already a bunch of their friends in there and I didn’t know who was living here and who wasn’t at first. I didn’t arrive with a prepared social group, I’m alone.