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Time is running out

Things feel like they’re crumbling. I have to pay for my uni fees again this year and I’m almost financially tapped out. Unless I can open another student bank account with an overdraft, I’m going to struggle to make rent. I’ve been hunting around for things to sell on eBay and for a job, but just looking at my C.V. reminds me of what a complete loser I am. 24 and only 4 months of real work experience and almost a years worth of unemployment. I’m going to be straight to the bottom of the pile/bin for whatever I apply for, especially in today’s economic climate.

The more I am forced to think about real life the more I realise I can’t cope with it. I’m just too weak, mentally. Some people say they over analyse things, but I do this so much and to such an almost psychotic level that it stops me from doing almost everything. I can’t even think about doing things because I don’t want to consider how badly I’d screw them up.

Everything from what clothes to wear to how I walk, what my facial expression looks like is a pain that drives me crazy. Can you imagine someone that is thirsty but daren’t go in a cafe to buy a drink because they have some malformed idea about not being “good enough” to go in a place like that? That’s what I’m like. I can’t even explain it properly, my brain is just broken.

I remember a shop that I wanted to go in a while back when I was at college. I used to walk by every day but I could never get the “courage” (it seems ridiculous using that word in this way) to actually go in there. I take self consciousness to an extreme new level, I’m honestly amazed I can go outside at all. I barely did for about a year but being inside gets too boring and mind numbing.

How is such a messed up individual supposed to cope with the world? I started listening to the audio series on overcoming social anxiety by Dr Richards, and he introduces himself as a former sufferer of SA and how he used to be scared to go to the mail box in case his neighbours saw him and talked to him. I can relate to this somewhat, but then he goes on to talk about how anxious his job as a high school teacher made him. This is the problem I always find, it seems like everyone always has at least some normality about them. How do you get a job like that if you are as bad as me? When I talk to other people with SA it’s always the same story. The line that consistently makes my eyes roll is when people say “I’ve got no friends except my boy/girlfriend”. Well how the fuck do they manage that but not be able to make a regular friend?

I just have too much wrong with me and I’ve been to lazy and scared to fix things when it was possible. I don’t care what people say, 24 is too late to start a life from scratch. I’m a fucking write-off.

Things feel like they’re crumbling. I have to pay for my uni fees again this year and I’m almost financially tapped out. Unless I can open another student bank account with an overdraft, I’m going to struggle to make rent. I’ve been hunting around for things to sell on eBay and for a job, but just looking at my C.V. reminds me of what a complete loser I am. 24 and only 4 months of real work experience and almost a years worth of unemployment. I’m going to be straight to the bottom of the pile/bin for whatever I apply for, especially in today’s economic climate.

The more I am forced to think about real life the more I realise I can’t cope with it. I’m just too weak, mentally. Some people say they over analyse things, but I do this so much and to such an almost psychotic level that it stops me from doing almost everything. I can’t even think about doing things because I don’t want to consider how badly I’d screw them up.

Everything from what clothes to wear to how I walk, what my facial expression looks like is a pain that drives me crazy. Can you imagine someone that is thirsty but daren’t go in a cafe to buy a drink because they have some malformed idea about not being “good enough” to go in a place like that? That’s what I’m like. I can’t even explain it properly, my brain is just broken.

I remember a shop that I wanted to go in a while back when I was at college. I used to walk by every day but I could never get the “courage” (it seems ridiculous using that word in this way) to actually go in there. I take self consciousness to an extreme new level, I’m honestly amazed I can go outside at all. I barely did for about a year but being inside gets too boring and mind numbing.

How is such a messed up individual supposed to cope with the world? I started listening to the audio series on overcoming social anxiety by Dr Richards, and he introduces himself as a former sufferer of SA and how he used to be scared to go to the mail box in case his neighbours saw him and talked to him. I can relate to this somewhat, but then he goes on to talk about how anxious his job as a high school teacher made him. This is the problem I always find, it seems like everyone always has at least some normality about them. How do you get a job like that if you are as bad as me? When I talk to other people with SA it’s always the same story. The line that consistently makes my eyes roll is when people say “I’ve got no friends except my boy/girlfriend”. Well how the fuck do they manage that but not be able to make a regular friend?

I just have too much wrong with me and I’ve been to lazy and scared to fix things when it was possible. I don’t care what people say, 24 is too late to start a life from scratch. I’m a fucking write-off.

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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.

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.

100 Posts

I just realised that my previous post was the 100th I’ve made on this site. I’m amazed at how quickly I rattled off 1000 words without really thinking about it, I guess loneliness and depression is one subject I know a lot about. 

This site began with some blog posts I made on the now defunct social anxiety friends website, a place where I met some people who I still talk to online regularly and have met a few of in real life. I’m glad that I found them, they’re pretty much the closest thing I have to real friends and were probably more instrumental in improving my life situation than anyone else. I wouldn’t say that I’ve made huge strides since then, but I’ve done quite a few things I’d thought I’d never have the courage to do. 

I really appreciate the people who read my website and post comments, thank you – you keep me (relatively..) sane and have genuinely helped me. It’s kind of liberating to talk about my problems with such lucidity on here, something that I can’t do in real life, though I sometimes wonder why I bother to announce these things to the world. It’s something I’ve been considering over the last couple of days and I guess that what I really want is an answer. I know in all likelihood there is no solution, I find it hard to believe that enough people have gone through the same experiences as me (I seem to be an aberration even on social anxiety sites) to make it likely that any will run across this site and give me any words of wisdom.

I suppose the fact that I’m still here must mean there is a small part of me that still has hope. Every day is still a struggle to find reasons to carry on though, I genuinely wonder (please tell me) if my life is really hard enough to warrant feeling this suicidal? Can people read my previous couple of posts and think that is a decent way to live? Once again, I do realise I could be a blind leper with cancer, and I do realise how lucky I am to have a roof over my head etc. Maybe I’m being naive but I imagine some people would be shocked at how badly (admittedly mostly due to my own faults) I live. 

I just read this quote on a forum for people with social anxiety:

I’m a sexual being and I also want a lover. I’m not willing to compromise on that. Well for short periods of time, during illness and that – yeah, fair enough. But not in the longer-term.

This isn’t something I can even comprehend, that a person could make such demands of life. This may be pathetic, but that kind of thing is to me, in the same realms of possibility as winning the lottery, that’s genuinely how I feel about it.

Maybe it’s what blogging is all about, but I feel compelled to apologise for attention-seeking. I’m just so desperately lonely and deprived of human contact (I barely even feel human myself now) that I want someone to hug me and tell me I’m going to be ok, even if I know it’s not true. I wish I could feel alive even for a little while 😦

Note: I’m not criticising the person who I quoted. You’d better believe I’d feel similarly, were I in a position to do so.

Solitary Confinement

I often wonder if being isolated so much can make you go crazy. Some weeks I barely open my mouth to speak, I’ve been in the single digit words a day many times. It’s easy for me to do, I don’t have any friends on my course so nobody says anything to me before or during classes, most of the time when I’m at the flat I just stay in my room. It’s not like anyone misses me… Sometimes when I get home and see my mum or sister, I talk uncontrollably like I have piles of words built up inside that I need to let out. None of that stuff is things that would be of interest to anyone else though, it’s not just a matter of me being uncomfortable around people at uni, I genuinely have no idea what to talk about with them.

I used to get the same thing at work. I’d go in at 1.30 and say hello, then other than answering any phone calls (which I completely detested) I’d be silent until 10.00 when I got picked up, then I’d come home and babble my head off for a while. I honestly think that I would have gone nuts if I didn’t have the internet to make some connection with the outside world. I’ve no idea how people like me got on in the past, they were probably taken away to a padded cell somewhere. 

Today hasn’t been too bad apart from the overwhelming sense of loneliness and isolation. When I was on the train yesterday I overheard a conversation which hammered home just how pathetic and hopeless I am. It wasn’t anything nasty or cruel, I just can’t come to terms with how I am the complete opposite of what people want in a friend and especially a partner. I got thinking about how I’m coming up on a quarter of a century of being alone, it’s extremely doubtful things will change now. I bet if you ask most people, they had a boy/girlfriend when they were teenagers, no matter how silly that seems to them now, it’s still more serious than I’ve ever had. I looked up a poll on a large student forum in the UK and 80% of people had their first kiss before they were 18, 90% before they were 19. It’s rather depressing knowing that I’m in at least the 90th percentile of disgusting, repulsive people in the country. 

I know that I shouldn’t worry about, that this is the last thing that should be on my mind and that getting worked up about my lack of a relationship is a little like getting worked up over a paper cut when you just lost a leg, but I can’t help it. Even if there was someone who could accept my horrendous appearance, I’ve got a long way to go before I’m not crazy any more. After all, if I hate myself and constantly wish myself dead then I don’t know how I can reasonably expect anyone else to like me 😦

Oh well, here’s a couple of photos that I took today. It’s a steep walk up to the cathedral and I was tired out by the time I got to the top.

 

Steep Hill leading up to Lincoln cathedral

Front of Lincoln Cathedral