Ten Years On

Content warning for talk about suicide.

It was 10 years ago today that I tried to end my life after going through a lot of anguish in the prior year or so. A lot of it was documented on this blog, it seemed like I used to write about it endlessly at that point until I got tired of repeating myself all the time. It’s difficult to know what to make of what has happened in the time since. Every year I think back and to be honest I don’t really know what it was that triggered me to do it at that particular time. It was far from the worst time in my life, I was much more miserable during my first job for instance. I had a part time job that I actually liked and I was about to start the second year of my degree. I seemed to be constantly preoccupied about how far I thought I’d fallen behind where I was supposed to be, which seems laughable now considering I have achieved nothing since then.

Nobody ever really talks to me about this stuff. I know it’s uncomfortable and no-one really wantes to consider what it is like for a person to reach that point where death is preferable to spending another day on this earth. I can honestly say that I had given it so much thought for hours every day and I didn’t want to live any more, it was not a cry for help or anything like that. I didn’t take any half measures, if I hadn’t been found then it would have killed me for sure and it took months for me to recover from what I took even after I left hospital. Every year I think about whether I’m glad that I survived and then make myself feel guilty because I am honestly not glad or relieved that I didn’t die back then.

I have re-read some of the final words I left (I remember handwriting some more at the last minute but don’t know exactly what I wrote) and one of the things that I feared the most is becoming the person that I am now. I’m pretty much in the same position as I was back then except without potential and youth on my side any more. I know it sounds stupid, but I secretly wanted people to think about “what could have been”, I was grasping on to the tenuous remnants of promise that I’d shown early in my life and had the foresight to know that with each passing year I would drift away from the young man with his life ahead of him to the pathetic loser who wasted it all and wanted to get out while I could. I doubt many people who read this will understand that thought process, I think it requires you to be someone whose life peaked very early.

My therapist would say to me that if I was so good at predicting the future I should tell him next week’s lottery numbers. I know this was a humourous attempt to try and challenge my certainty about where my life was/is heading but when you are as single mindedly self-obsessed as me then you become an expert on these matters. I saw the writing on the wall. The phrase “hideous 30 year old still living at home with his parents” was in that note and I’ve surpassed that by 4 years already.

I suppose there are a few things I have done in the mean time, and I feel like I am a different person now to back then. I did eventually graduate, although I have never managed to make use of my degree despite it being in one of the subjects people always tell you is desirable. If I could go back to 2012 and force myself to immediately try to get into work then I might have made something of myself but I didn’t, I let myself slip into one of my infamous avoidant cycles that continues to this day, getting worse and worse with every passing moment. It’s virtually impossible to explain this to anyone who just wants to think you are lazy (most people when it comes down to it). I’ve tried to write about it on here before, but when someone can’t understand how you end up in a situation like this what you need to realise is that the easiest thing in the world to do is ‘nothing’. Unless there is some external pressure on you to take serious action then it becomes too easy to slide into putting things off to the next day, which becomes the next week and then the next month. I am guilty of not taking drastic action earlier and now I have got myself into an almost impossible situation once again, just like I did at university the first time, at college and then again at my second attempt at university. Those times I was able to somehow escape by either quitting or someone taking mercy on me, but there’s no easy way out of this.

Deep down I knew back then that my life wasn’t over and that I still had potential, but it scared me to admit it because I knew that I faced failure if I tried to carry on with my life. It turned out that I was forced into continuing and I have failed in just the way that I knew I would. Is it partially a self-fulfilling prophecy? Probably, but I know myself too well and I know all too well how much other people want to tear you down and I can’t open myself up to letting them again. I could have tried harder years ago but I was afraid of becomig trapped in a situation like I was at my first job that scarred me for life. I simply cannot take living like that again.

This is what I can’t fully express to people in real life because nobody wants to hear that you might try to kill yourself again when you already tried once. I know that people who have attempted suicide before are vastly more likely to die from suicide and I always have to hold back when it comes to mental health professionals because I don’t want to raise any red flags there, and when it comes to my family I don’t want to worry them. I am completely trapped in my current situation because the fear of being stuck in an environment like I was at the first job has imprisoned me here. I got close to telling my therapist, but held off the last part, that what I fear the most is becoming stuck in a place like that around people who want to tear me down because I know now that I would end up killing myself for sure.

I didn’t do it back in 2006/7 even though that was the absolute most miserable, wretched period of my life for a number of reasons. One was that I hadn’t crossed that line into genuinely considering suicide at that point. It’s difficult to remember back to a time when I hadn’t made that mental leap and I have to remind myself sometimes that most people (nearly all? I don’t know exact figures) never actually consider ending their life as a genuine thing they might do, but once you have crossed that line I don’t think you can ever go back again. It took a good 3 years of depression for me to get to that point and I can’t see myself getting away from it again unless I go through some significant upheaval which seems more and more improbable every day. Another thing is knowing how to do it. I don’t want to get into details too much because I don’t want to give anyone ideas, but it’s easier now than ever to get access to things that you couldn’t back in 2006. When you are 21 no matter how depressed you are, there is still a tiny part of you that knows, even if you can’t admit it, that things can still change. I got a second (and third if you count my university reprieve) chance but I don’t know that if I fucked things up again in my mid 30s that I would get a fourth.

I’m running out of time and options. Sometimes it spurs me to desperately try and make strides towards improving my situation, but I can never stop from getting overwhelmed by how far away I am from getting back on track. The events of the past 9 months have not helped matters (I will write about what has been happening with my mum soon, the short story is that she has been through a hell of a lot but is hopefully on the road to recovery now). Being alone is the constant thorn in my side when it comes to this. I meant to write about it before, but you simply cannot imagine how much it impacts your life when you are so isolated if you haven’t been in that situation youself. It drains and immobilises you on every level and in almost every aspect of your life.

One thing I have learned, much to the chagrin of my younger self is that it’s not possible to live a fulfilling life purely inside your own head.

There have been many times when I have been in the dark place and life not only seemed not worth living, but I actively wanted to die but so far I have never put myself in physical danger since then. I will admit here that when my mum got her cancer diagnosis and I feared that she was going to die, I got to the point of buying pills because I didn’t think I could survive mentally, or materially without her but I have got past that for now.

I write here because this is the only place I can be brutally honest about how I’m feeling. I know the reason why is because I desperately crave some kind of validation for my feelings and there is no way I can talk to the people I know in real life this candidly. It’s shameful really, but what I actually want is for someone to hear about what I’ve been through and what my life is like and tell me that I am justified in being so miserable. That it *is* fucked up. That I don’t deserve it. That I am not a terrible person. That it is understandable, for large periods of time, that not being alive seems vastly preferable to living like this.

The only people I ever speak to in real life are my mum, dad and ever more rarely, my sister. I can’t honestly accept what they tell me though because they are not objective about me at all. I think I did manage to get some genuine thoughts out of my last therapist after my usual mental jousting that I always end up engaged in, but 50 minutes a week for a couple of months barely scratches the surface of my messed up life.

I feel as though I’ve gotten massively off track here… To be honest, the reason posts on this blog became more sporadic was because it was easier for me to try and supress my feelings and avoid facing up to things than to endless rehash them like I used to. Coming back here always makes me think back to when I first started writing about my mental health. It was the beginning of a chapter of my life that I have very mixed feelings about. In a lot of obvious ways, it has been extremely painful, but I have also grown a lot over that time. As weird as it sounds to type this, I like the person I am now a lot better than who I was in 2007 when I first admitted I had mental health problems. My earlier writing embarrasses the hell out of me and even though most of it has been done in relative isolation, I think I’ve experienced a lot of good things and escaped the limited existence of my teens to early 20s, even if only briefly and was better for it. Physically, I am yet again back in the same room, sitting in the same bed writing this post as I did in my earliest writing. As I have done before when reminiscing like this, I decided to look at the social anxiety forums where I made my first foray into reaching out and see what some of the people I used to talk to are up to. One of them I recently removed from facebook because of their horrible reactionary views, one I still occasionally talk to but I am afraid to let them know how pathetic my situation still is because they’ve moved on to bigger and better things. Another, who I probably wrote about extensively on here because I had a stupid crush and minor obsession with, surprised me because I just saw that she is engaged. Maybe I can see it as a small success that it didn’t make me miserable or jealous to read that. I’m not proud to admit it but a few years ago that would have devastated me because I had such a stupid unrealistic desire to be with her. When we first “met” I remember reading about how she was in danger of being kicked out of college and her story resonated with me so much because I was in virtually the same situation myself a year earlier. Of course, it’s a nightmare actually trying to get to know and stay in contact with people who have severe social anxiety and I ended up losing touch with her but never forgot the few conversations we had that gave me hope and helped me more than it logically should have. Of course this just hammers home the point that yet again I am being left behind by everyone I have ever known. I’ve written before about childhood friends have gone on to have normal lives and how pathetic I feel in comparison. It’s almost got to the point where it doesn’t hurt so much any more because I expect it.

It’s depressing to contemplate the fact that I am in a totally different universe to everyone else. I will keep on getting left behind, in the dust of everyone I ever knew. Simply getting through the day without actively wanting to die is the best I can do, and although I have just managed 10 years without crossing the line, I can never rule out the near certainty that my life will end that way. I don’t know when, all I can do is hope that I can find a reason to carry on. It seems ever more remote, but perhaps I can force myself to take solace in the fact that I have come this far so maybe there is something deep down, as I now know there was in 2009, that I have to live for besides not wanting to upset the dwindling number of people who would notice if I died. I just decided tonight after all this reflection that I will try to find something. Wish me luck.

Advertisement

Waiting

I’m still waiting to find out what will happen with my mum. There has been a lot of back and forth with the hospital but she is seeing the consultant tomorrow (31st) and hopefully we will know more after that. In the past week I managed to fall out with my sister because of everything that’s been going on. My mum was trying to get through to the doctors on the phone but was finding it hard to contact anyone who could tell her anything and even though she said that she wanted to do it herself, my sister said that because I hadn’t been phoning them too that I didn’t care and if she dies it will be because I didn’t do enough. I ended up shouting and swearing at her because even though I know I’m a worthless piece of shit, the one thing you cannot say about me is that I don’t care about my family when they are literally the only reason I haven’t already killed myself.

I know that anyone who reads this will probably think the same thing, that the stress of everything is what made her say that but I don’t think that is the whole reason. For a few months or more now I’ve felt like my sister has started resenting me and doesn’t even really like me any more. It’s so sad to face up to this, I started crying uncontrollably again after this all happened and she hasn’t spoken to me since. I know she has been saying some things about me to my mum (before this cancer stuff) but I can’t get a straight answer out of her about what it is. She was basically my only friend and I feel like I am having everything taken away from me, soon I will have nobody who cares about me left.

If there is bad news tomorrow I’m afraid I will not be able to take it. There’s only so much more shit life can throw at me. I’ve had years and years of depression, loneliness and hopelessness but I always had my family and now they could be ripped away from me too. It sounds selfish to say this but I don’t want to be left alone. I can’t face this pointless existence by myself and I fear that soon I will actually have nothing to live for.

Losing everything

I am guilty of taking my family for granted. Every time I feel so depressed and suicidal, I never fully considered that I am lucky that for the most part I have the love and support of my parents and sister, and I didn’t truly appreciate them.

For the last couple of weeks my mum has been feeling very ill and has been unable to eat much. I don’t want to go into details because it’s not my place to talk about it but today she had to go into hospital for a scan and we got the worst news, that it’s likely she has cancer.

It’s impossible to know how to handle these situations, as soon as she got back I knew it was bad news and I just couldn’t help but cry uncontrollably. I felt so utterly terrible that throughout all the times I have wanted to die so badly that it was a betrayal of how much she didn’t want anything to happen to me. I can’t imagine life without her, it feels so selfish to even say it but my mum is the person who never ever lost faith in me and always wanted me to have a good life even when so many times I just wished it was over. I don’t know how successful any treatment could be, at the moment I cannot help but fear for the worst and I can’t mentally not prepare myself for that.

It has been such a wretched two weeks even before this. I meant to write last week about how I was attacked and threatened with assault, for no reason, on the bus home but didn’t even get around to it before more terrible things happened. I don’t know why I deserve all this, I can’t help but think I must be an awful person but I don’t want anyone else to suffer because of it.

All my life since age 11 I have been hated and singled out for abuse and I don’t know how much more of it I can take. I keep thinking back to nights before school when I would be awake, filled with anxiety and terror and my mum would always try to calm me down and help me. I think she felt helpless the older I got because there isn’t much a parent can do, especially when I never told them what was really going on.

I remember vividly how after my suicide attempt when I returned to university, whenever I came home my mum would almost be in tears as I left to go back because she was afraid I would try to kill myself again when I was away. I feel so terrible for everything I put her and my dad through, I wish I never felt so hopeless and bereft of the will to live but there is no other way I can look at life.

I hope beyond anything else I ever hoped for that she will be ok somehow, that maybe it can be treated. I can’t stand to think of her suffering and what makes it even worse is that I know that she fears for what will happen to me, knowing my fragile mental state. I fear it too.

Edited: sorry for being so needy

Changes

I remember sitting on a bench with my dad some time in the early 2000s talking about how England were bidding to host the 2006 World Cup and I started thinking how I would be 21 by that time, which seemed a very long way off, and that I would probably have a good job then and would hopefully be able to pay for me and my dad to go and see some of the matches. Back then people used to tell me that because I was good at computer stuff I would get a good job and have a lot of money and I foolishly believed them. As it turned out, that world cup was eventually hosted in Germany and by the time it rolled around I had already dropped out of university, gone to a virtually useless college course and was about to begin an extremely low paid (less than the minimum wage if you worked it out hourly) tech support job that I hated and have written about at great length on this site.

One of the traps that I fell into then and several times afterwards was assuming that, given time, things will work out or change for the better. Many times in the past before I was depressed, I used to think about things might be better in the future. The thing is, unless you can do something about it then nothing will change. I have wasted so much time and that’s why I still find myself in virtually the same situation (except massively in debt) as I was back in 2002 or whenever it was.

I don’t know how other people do it. There must be something (or many things) that I am just incapable of doing because I can think of no end of people who I used to know in the past who you would think didn’t have things together as much as me, but they have turned out vastly more successful than me (not that that is difficult, but you know what I mean). It sounds bitter and I supposed I really am bitter, to talk about this but I can’t help but feel defeated when I think about the people I knew at school that were very far from being the most intelligent or hard working, people who probably got bullied as much or more than me for being weird, who have managed to make something of their lives.

I hate showing these ugly emotions, but when I think about how I used to be thought of as clever and was picked on for that reason (among others) I feel fucking furious that I have absolutely nothing to show for it all. Why did I have to get all the downsides of being intelligent but get none of the supposed rewards?

What changed? How did they do it? I know what changed for me: nothing. In some ways I am the exact same person I have been for years. Hating myself, terrified of what people think and say about me. I think I might have been mistaken in the past. I probably could have made something of myself if I’d been able to get some kind of help and know what I know now. I didn’t used to be a completely lost cause, but with each passing day I crept closer and closer to what I am now.

I have written about this before but it bears repeating. The easiest thing in the world to do is nothing. Things will never change if you don’t make things happen. I don’t know how to do that any more, I don’t know if I have the chance to change things for the better. I will address this in a future post but there is a vicious cycle keeping me where I am and every part of it makes it impossible to break out of any of the other parts.

When I first seriously contemplated the idea that I had social anxiety and depression back in 2007, I can distinctly remember sitting exactly where I am writing this post now and I reading a forum about social anxiety which essentially started me off on what I think of as a new “chapter” of my life. One of the people who I met on that forum eventually gave me the courage to think about going back to university and even moving away to a different city, which had previously been unthinkable to me. The next two years saw probably the biggest changes I had been through in my life, including it almost ending.

That I have been on a backslide ever since I left university causes me a lot of anguish. To some people it doesn’t mean a lot, but even though I went through some enormously testing times including long periods of feeling suicidal, it was the best time of my life. I felt like I had a purpose. I sometimes wonder now if it was just escapism, but back when I was there I didn’t feel like I should be ashamed just to exist. I would not have described it this way at the time, but I was proud to be a university student at last. Nowadays I feel like I am looked down upon just for walking along the street. People here have an almost psychotic hatred for those without a job.

A few months ago I went back to the city where I lived while I was at university and it was the first time I had returned since I went to my graduation ceremony in 2012. I didn’t write about it here, only in a personal journal thing. It stirred up some strange emotions though. Last year I had seen a photo of the view I used to see from the road that led to my flat and I felt very sad that I didn’t live there any more but I wanted to go back there. It’s not an amazing place, just your average English town really. I thought about going back there a few times but I didn’t know if it would make me too sad.

Almost on a whim one day in July I decided to get the train and just go for a few hours since it doesn’t take too long to get there. When I got there I realised I could conceivably have started and finished another bachelor’s degree in the time since I left. I wrote in my journal that it felt like a dream, and it really did. I almost went back into the same routine, walking down the same part of the pavement I did for 4 years and almost as if I was on autopilot. It seems odd to write about it like this because it’s probably not a special or deeply significant place to anyone but me, but the whole experience was so surreal. I walked past where my old flat was in the halls of residence and up to the university building itself. It’s changed a little bit in appearance but it felt different somehow.

At the time I wrote how I felt as though people knew I shouldn’t be there any more, this was no longer my place to be. I walked along the roads I still knew so well but I didn’t feel welcome any more. Nobody said anything to me of course, why would they? but I felt so sad that this was no longer home to me, I was just a visitor now. I was glad I had sunglasses on because I actually got tears in my eyes.

As I returned to the train station this feeling was underlined. I used to go there most Friday’s to come back to my parent’s house for the weekend but I knew I’d be heading back to uni in a few days. This time I was going back for good though, I was only here temporarily. In my journal I wrote that, with hindsight, I was wanted here. I was welcomed by people I never thought would want me to be there, they asked me to share a house with them. I had members of the university staff fight for me to get my fees waived for the year I had to re-sit. I didn’t know how lucky I was at the time and I feel a deep sadness now that has all passed.

I don’t know if I will ever have anything like that again. I did not appreciate it at the time and I now feel like an idiot for ignoring all the good things I had back then.

I sit here, right back where I was in 2007, on the same bed, feeling the same feelings of hopelessness. This time I am older and have let another chance at making something of my life slip through my fingers. I was ridiculously lucky to get a second chance in 2008. I don’t know that I will ever be afforded another opportunity like that again.

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.

Five years on

warning: contains frank discussion of suicide

It is five years ago since I tried to kill myself. In some ways a lot has changed in that time. I just read back on some of my posts from around that time, something which is difficult because I honestly hate myself more after reading what I was thinking around that time.

I can’t remember exactly what was going through my head in the days leading up to it. The pills must have really done a number on me because there is a total black hole in my memory (which is otherwise very good) from that point up to a couple of weeks later. The only record I have is what I posted on this site. One thing that surprises me is how many people commented and offered their support. God knows why, I really don’t think I deserved it. It looks like I had some kind of upswing right before crashing and it scares me to think about how I don’t even remember what caused me to actually start taking the pills. I remember quite clearly the fact that I had researched what I intended to do and had the stuff stockpiled for months in advance. There wasn’t any major event that tipped me over the edge.

The thing I have often thought about since is how I feel about the fact that I wasn’t successful. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to die and had done for quite a long time. Do I wish that I had died? To be completely honest, despite the fact that I have had some good times since then and even knowing that I did finally manage to graduate, I still can’t deny that I do. I will concede that at the time there may have been some part of my subconscious that wanted me to be discovered and that’s why I slipped up, but in retrospect I just wish that I had been more thorough.

My situation is no better, in fact in a lot of ways it is objectively worse. I still live in the same place and have no friends or life to speak of. I am older, more in debt and I have nothing to look forward to. If you showed me back then how my life had turned out then I would have been more sure than ever that there was no point to carrying on except for other people’s benefit. Upsetting my family was the only thing holding me back for a long time and I don’t know how much pain I should have to silently endure to keep them happy.

I don’t feel as actively awful as I did back then. The acute feelings of despair are less frequent and I mostly feel a dull all-consuming ache rather than a desperate desire to be dead. I can tread water for a while longer.

There is no future for me though. Each passing day is another wasted one. I have missed the boat on ever having anything like a successful life, wasted whatever potential I may have had. People like me just aren’t compatible with what the world wants.

I don’t want to worry anyone who may be reading this. Please believe me (and I am always honest on here, even if it does make me seem terrible) that I am not in any danger right now. I can’t really describe what I am feeling right now. Disappointment, maybe. Melancholy.

I don’t have anyone to talk to. Nobody wants to put up with someone as permanently miserable as me and I cannot convincingly act as though my existence is constantly permeated sadness for very long. I may finally be getting closer to going back to my doctor. They have a new appointment system where you have to speak to them on the phone first which is awful for me, but I am tired of being stuck just spinning my wheels. It’s sad really but I have slid backwards so much. I remember sitting here in this exact spot at the end of 2007, contemplating the fact that I was going to be alone at new year and making my first forays into contacting some other people with social anxiety. Since then I made a few online friends and even met some of them but that has all slipped away from me and besides a couple of people I occasionally talk to on twitter, none of whom know anything about my problems, I am back where I started.

For some reason this is the hardest thing for me to write about, but I want to be able to see some way out of all this. I don’t know how I can ever be able to be free from these feelings or if it’s even possible. By admitting this to myself I am opening myself up for more disappointment, hope is more dangerous than giving in to despair. Maybe there is some way for me to survive. It’s painful to think about, but I hope that there is.