Dazed and Confused

[Phoenix-09]

I'm writing this in a state of mind where confusion and depression are the dominant emotions, so I'm not sure if any of this well make sense, or at least, won't be very articulate.

 

For a while now I've believed that I suffer from depression, only to talk to people who tell me that half of the problem is that I believe that. Sometimes I'm not so sure.

 

Tonight, however, I've decided I've had enough of feeling this way...feeling like I'm useless, and that nobody cares about me. Well, that's not true. People do care, but I feel like they care about someone who isn't real. To explain - I feel like I'm living a lie. I feel like I've never been one of the "cool kids," and even now as I've left high school and gone on to university life, I don't feel very great around people because my lifestyle is just so warped.

 

I have strange things in my room that sometimes I don't even think are that great. I used to be heavily into anime and Japanese things but now all I want is recognition of my wider artistic tastes in music, and yet there seems no way to get more music or to experience wider things without feeling like a total fraud.

 

I feel like a monster...like a terrible son, a failure at life, and a horrid friend. I fall in love with the wrong people and break more relationships with women than I can count. Some of my best friends have left me because of either the depression or because of how I felt for them. It's like loving someone is wrong, so I believe that I'm simply not good enough for anybody.

 

Tonight I honestly feel like hurting myself severely, and the only things stopping me are the realisation of what it would do to everybody in my life, and the physical pain it would cause me. I've had enough accidents in my life to know that I don't like being hurt or cut, not to mention by my own doing.

 

I feel more unattractive every day, be it my body, my interests, or just my personality - sometimes the whole gestalt of being. I've done the Landmark Forum, which I thought was the final step to beating this, and I've seen a kinesiologist, but I still find myself lost for purpose and completely devoid of true friendship and love in my life.

 

I'm also tired of giving myself fully to other people only to feel that I'm just not good enough for them. I feel like the devout worshipper of a deity, except that the deity is every other person in my life, and I am simply not worthy of their kindness.

 

And of course I feel unskilled, that I'm unable to do anything but read about strange things and talk about things that nobody cares about...

 

I guess I needed to type this out more than anything else...all of my close friends and family are away and I cannot seem to get anybody to help at present, so I'm here.

 

I feel like I'm already dead inside, and I'm simply waiting for the day when my death will not send echoes of emotional and physical destruction through my social networks, however small I believe them to be.

 

Thanks for listening, whoever you are.

[Daddy Bear]

Ah, an outsider. One of my people. Welcome to ENA, Phoenix.

 

Boil it down, if you could: what changes would you have to make to your life in order for you to enjoy it?

[Phoenix-09]

Well for starters I'm sick of doing things for people that go unnoticed. Sometimes it gets to the point where people actually think that I don't pull my weight - at my flat I do the dishes and I vacuum the floors just like everyone else and for some reason they think that I only do it when they are. One guy recently challenged me saying that I only do it when he is, and I figure he was insinuating that I only seem to do things when other people are.

 

I feel like everybody sees me as a bad guy, especially when it comes to living with people. Sometimes at work it feels like other people think I'm doing a terrible job, when I'm doing everything in my power to do things to the best of my ability.

 

So really when it boils down to it, I feel stifled at home, so I need to move. Work is improving.

 

My spell of depression that sparked this message really was started by jealousy, so I need to get on top of that by not comparing myself to other people so much - that can only end in depression.

[avman]

Hello Phoenix.

 

It sounds to me like you place an awful lot of importance on living for other people instead of living for yourself. Having your state of happiness all dependant on other people is not healthy. You spend all of your time trying to please others and you never really get true self satisfaction from just being you.

 

Your first step is to learn to love yourself just for who you are. Focus on what a good person you are and try to learn to derive your satisfaction and peace from that. Understand and realize that you do the best you can - and if some people don't always appreciate it well that's their problem and not yours. Doing this will help you let go of some of those resentments of others and also release some of that self hatred you have building up inside you.

[Phoenix-09]

Yes I agree - I think I do place a lot of importance of what people think of me because sometimes it can have an effect on what actually happens to me...I don't like being yelled at for "not pulling my weight" at home, or being called lazy etc.

 

I've recently found a trigger that causes a panic attack. I don't mean to share my whole life story but throughout the entirety of school I was an outcast. Now that I've left high school I'm supposedly free to be who I want to be, but I don't know who that person is. Further than that, I see my friends all having a great time and succeeding at university and I just dropped out of design school last year without a clue as to what I want to do.

 

Visiting their Bebo pages (online community like Facebook and link removed), I find my gut wrenching when I see my ex girlfriend or my other friends going out to parties or seeing their ball photos. My high school ball was terrible and made me want to die because it was all a reflection of how terrible my social life was and how much I went unnoticed and/or hated in the school. I have no great photos of parties with my friends and I didn't really make a great social circle at university because I'm so timid and shy.

 

I have spent years collecting junk that I don't think was consistent with what I think is now emerging as my true personality, or at least a transformed one. Years of dabbling with occult items made me an outsider and I hate that about me, so I want that to change for starters...

 

Yet it still feels like I'm incomplete, because really, I missed out on everything adolescence had to offer. So I feel dead inside...and that really -really- sets off some suicidal thoughts.

 

Of course I think I'm gaining some control here...thanks ENA.