Friday, March 26, 2010

Nov. 19, 1998.

Why?

She's constantly ranting to me. All the time, about a million times a week. She rants to me about the same things, over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Stupid bitch won't listen, however, when I need to rant to someone. She talks at me, interrupts me, rants at me, yells at me, takes things out on me when she's in a bad mood. I sit and listen, and not to often do I brush her off. But she will not let me rant to her. She refuses to listen to what I have to say. I can't convey my pain to anyone by you, you know, Nikki-chan. You're the only one who ever, ever cares. The only one who ever listens to me.

Why can't she shut her damned mouth for once; just shut the fuck up and listen for a single time in her life?! She's such a selfish, stupid bitch. Doesn't she see that I'm dying in this Hell?! I am so lonely. I'm getting to the point where death is becoming almost preferable to life like I'm forced to live it now, and no one fucking cares! If I was suicidal, no one would fucking talk me out of it. Because no one would give a flying fuck that I was that unhappy, just like no one gives a flying fuck right now.

I hate this life. I hate lonliness. I hate being so unhappy. And I practically hate them. All of them. Izzy, Hannah, Mom, Dad, Colin... all of them.

At least I have you, though, ne? I don't know what I'd do without you, Nikki-chan. I really don't.

I'll tell you what I was trying to tell Mom. In fact, I'll tell you more. I trust you, so I feel comfortable telling you things. Not like with them, you know?

Well that improv class was a flop. I'm no good at it, for once thing, and, once again, I feel alienated as hell. No one notices that I exist. *bitter laughter* If I want to be ignored, I'll just hang around Dad more often. I get enough of that from him.

So, anyway, everyone knows everyone else by now. Everyone's outgoing, and friendly to everyone. Except for me. I'm ignored, I'm lonely, and I'm shy. I don't know how to start talking to them, and no one cares to try to make an effort to get to know me, at all.

I bet that, like most people, they think I'm stuck-up, or rude, or just plain stupid, or something equally horrible, when I'm not. Not at all. I'm just shy. I can't help it that I'm so shy.

Even that girl Izzy's friends with just ignores me and/or gives me these looks of distaste now, and I told her on the first day how I'm so awfully shy...

Maybe I'm just not a likeable person? Maybe that's why I have almost no friends. Why Alyssa and Izzy have essentially ditched me. Why the person who says I'm her God damned best friend treats me like less than shit.

Why I couldn't... no, why I can't make a friend to save my life. Maybe I'll always be alone. Right now, it seems impossible that it could be any other way.

I don't think that I'm an unlikeable person... I wish I had someone I could ask just that: am I likeable? But, I don't have anyone I could ever ask something like that.

I'm not joining drama again. I'm sure that Kate and all the others will be glad to see me gone. Who needs a person like me holding them back all the time, right? I'm sure that's all I ever do. I'm equally sure that, even if that isn't true, it is to them. That they all see me (at the rare times when they do see me) as an anchor of sorts, holding myself and everyone of them all down.

They're all going out after the last class, or the next week, to go bowling, or something like that. All I know is that I'm not going. I have no place with them. I doubt that they would notice or care if I disappeared before they all went off together, or if I didn't sign my name to the phone list. Or, if I told them that, no, I couldn't make it, I have too much homework.

No, I'm wrong. They'd care. I'm sure they'll be glad I didn't come along. A few of them would, at least, the others wouldn't even notice.

Even if I do sign the phone list, I bet that they don't ever call me. I'm, as I have stated before, a social leper. I have no place in this world. If I didn't like to be around people sometimes, I'd become a hermit. Then, no one would ever be bothered by me again. I'd be in my rightful place. Alone. Out of society.

I don't know how to put my feelings into words. I want someone who I can tell all this to who would listen, and would care, but, as I have said in the past, there is no one. I sincerely wonder if ever I will find someone?

How can anyone deal with lonliness like this? Well, that's one question I can begin to answer: some people, to get temporary fixes, drink, do drugs, and other such stupid things. Myself, I have my own methods. My "acting", and all. I know what I mean, so I needn't, I think, be more specific than that.

Know who the only person I've confided in who hasn't hurt me is? Dani. Isn't that interesting? Ah, well. Give her time.

I should really be working on that story for English, but I still have time to do that later, so I'm going to keep writing in you, for now.

I don't really think that I'm a bad, nor an unlikeable person. I hate this life, and I hate the way in which I'm forced to live it, but I don't hate me. What reason have I to? There's nothing wrong with me that others should treat me the way they do.

I will, I believe, deep down inside, when you get past the desolation, that I will eventually find people who will truly and unconditionally care about and love me for me, about whom I will also care, and equally.

I just have to keep looking, and keep hoping. They're out there somewhere. Someday, I'll find them.

All my love, Nikki-chan.

With all my Heart.

With all my Soul.

- Vale

Notes from 2010: November 19, 1998.

Minor Trigger Alert: The "acting" I refer to is, I'm pretty sure, cutting. I don't know why I still got skittish about saying it outright, after I'd mentioned it in at least one other entry. Notice how I separate it as somehow less fucked up than chemical addictions. I was still in the "I can stop when I choose to" mindset at this point. If only.

From the context, this entry is talking about my mother, and how I felt like she shut me down whenever I would try to tell her how bad I was feeling. From present tense, I can't say how much those feelings were legitimate, and how much I was overreacting. I do think it was a mix of the two. My mother does tend to shy away from conflict. And while I probably took her unwillingness to discuss how depressed I was feeling a bit too much to heart, to this day she does tend to forget that I was once suicidal--in part because I never told her much about it until after the feelings had passed, and in part because she simply can't stand to know that I considered killing myself. And I think that her need to not know, understandable as it is, played into her reaction at the time, when I would try to tell her how shitty I was feeling.

This is the first post where I say outright that I'm starting to feel like I'd rather not be alive, though I don't totally go there yet. But by this point it's on my mind, despite the fact that I claim later on that I don't hate myself. I was already more than halfway to full-blown self-loathing, if I wasn't already there.

"Ne" means "right" in Japanese. I use that in multiple entries.

The improv class I reference was an after-school thing I was trying at the time, run by a local theatre group, and I was feeling like epic fail. Instead of managing to be a whole different (read: super-outgoing) person and make friends in a group where I didn't know anyone--as I always hoped would happen--I was, as always, left feeling like the weird, shy, excessively quiet one who no one liked, and who everyone wished would just go away. I still suck ass at improv--not the most fun for someone who naturally needs time to think before they speak--so it probably wasn't the best choice of extracurricular, especially since I felt acutely uncomfortable and like an outcast in my day-to-day life. Sad to say, the improv class only exacerbated those feelings, and I didn't manage to make a real connection with anyone there, which made me feel all the more like a loser who would never "make a friend to save my life."

For the record, I have actually had people (to my face) interpret my shyness as me being stuck up, stupid, rude or aloof, all of which killed me when I was trying so, so hard to please and to be what I thought other people wanted me to be. I've also been called laid back, which never fails to amaze me, since it's the polar opposite of how I feel inside. I'm pretty much cool with the misinterpretations these days. It can still be irritating sometimes, in an eye-roll kind of way, but it doesn't fuck with my sense of self anymore. I'm mostly comfortable with being a shy person, and it's interesting how different people read that trait. Sometimes people even get it right.

One trait that has stuck with me is the tendency to read others' interpretations of me more negatively than they actually are. This isn't unusual for very shy people. Even today, I assume too easily that someone's had a negative reaction to me when they haven't, or a stronger negative reaction than they realistically have. Knowing that I tend to think that way helps me mitigate my negative mind-reading. But since I can't exactly ask most people "so, how much of a loser do you really think I am?" it can still sometimes be hard to gauge how much is misinterpretation on my part, and how much is real negative reaction on theirs. But at least I don't assume most people can't stand me anymore. That makes it a lot easier not to hate myself.

Near the end of the entry, I talk about finding a group of friends I fit in with, who care deeply about me. I was a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there was nothing I wanted more than a family of friends like the Buffy/Xander/Willow/Giles quartet on the show. And if I'm completely honest, that's still something I want more than almost anything else--and have yet to find. I'd love to think it's still possible, but part of me thinks it's my version of the "one true love" myth: something that pop culture assures me can exist, is attainable, but that almost never happens in the real world.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Oct. 28, 1998. TRIGGER WARNING

TRIGGER WARNING

Sometimes I feel like I'm the most stupid, lazy person in the world. I'm not a good student, anymore. I wonder how many courses I'm failing, so far? Physics, I'm sure. Probably math. Maybe chem. Doing bad in German. Probably in English, history, and Life Skills, too. I feel like such a stupid, lazy little bitch, right now. I tried to cry, but I couldn't, really. I'm totally freaking out.

Yes, in my writing and façade, it seems like I'm almost fine, calm as a lake on a windless day, but I have yet to clean the tears off my face, I'm ready to break the window so it'll stop moving in the wind, I really need to scream and sob, and I'd be cutting myself up, if it weren't for my not wanting to have sliced-up arms and hands in my Hallowe'en costume on Saturday.

Also, a short time ago, I threw you across the room, which, unfortunately, knocked your cover right off, poor thing. I'm very sorry, Nikki-chan. That's my new name for you, BTW. It means diary, in Japanese. In Nihongo. I like it, I think it's cute. Kawaii!!! ^_^ *LOL* Well, I have to go translate old English for homework now, because my English sub's a bastard.

Jya-ne, Nikki-chan. *hugz*

- Vale

Notes from 2010: October 28, 1998. TRIGGER WARNING

TRIGGER WARNING:

So this is the first entry where I talk blatantly, if briefly, about cutting myself. I'm fairly certain I started self-injuring as a coping method near the beginning of eleventh grade, so it would still have been a pretty new thing for me when I wrote this entry.

Full disclosure: I got the idea to start cutting from a magazine article I read about people who did cut and why it was a bad thing. So even stories intended to deter people from engaging in unhealthy behaviours--which is part of what I'm trying to do here--don't necessarily have the effect the writer hopes they will. Nonetheless, I think it's important to admit that, while I recognize that cutting was (and, in the moments when I give in, still is) an addictive behaviour and a terrible, self-defeating coping mechanism, I also have to admit that in the worst moments of my pain--it did sometimes help. Not always. And it did nothing to deal with the underlying issues. It was a prime example of treating the symptom--the pain in that moment--but not the disease--the underlying depression that cutting couldn't take away.

I would never, never recommend self-injury of any kind as a way of trying to handle pain, for many reasons: Any relief is very temporary, and, if you draw blood, not worth the messy clean up. I was always afraid of the consequences (being forced into therapy? institutionalization? being forced to take medication? my family and few friends being horrified by me?) if someone caught me in the act or saw fresh cuts on my body. The scars--believe me--never go away. It is not bullshit to call SI addictive, and once you start it is very, very difficult to stop: it took me more than a decade to almost never cut anymore, and in bad moments the temptation is always there. The act of cutting can trigger suicidal thoughts at moments when you weren't actually thinking them yet. And, as I said, it does absolutely nothing to help you work through and move past the pain that makes you feel like hurting yourself in the first place.

But at the time... it was the only way I knew to help myself, as sad and awful and pathetic as that is. So I did it. I don't advocate it, and if you can convince yourself to never start at all, you'll save yourself the never-ending battle to stop for good. But SI was and is a part of me, for good or for ill. And I'm not going to hedge about that in this blog.

This is also the first entry where I mention finding it difficult to cry, even when I feel like I need to. I've read since then that that's not so unusual for a person who is severely depressed. I've never gotten back to that point again, and I'm thankful for that, because it would scare the hell out of me if I did. For me, it was a sign of how bad things were getting inside my head.

On a slightly lighter note, naming my diary and referring to it as "you" is something I picked up from the book Go Ask Alice. I read that for the first time when I was 12, and re-read it any number of times as a teenager. It broke my heart and left a huge impression on me, and even though drugs have never been my issue, I felt a huge affinity for Alice and the shit she was going through. Hell, maybe that's part of why I'm blogging my diaries today, since reading her journals meant so much to me at the time.

Finally: Yes, I did actually write out anime-style happy faces by hand in my diary. Yes, I do have to snicker at just how frigging nerdy that is.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Sept. 30, 1998.

Now it has been an eternity. Will the pain ever stop? I wish, sometimes, that everyone would just leave me alone, forget about me. I wish that no one knew I existed. I think that would actually make everything less lonely than it is, right now. If everyone would just stop bullshitting me, stop pretending to care. It'd be nice.

I'm still lonely.

Will I ever feel loved?

Sometimes, I wish I could just disappear. I... well, part of me is serious when it thinks about running away. When it thinks about going with Izzy and his friend to her mansion, with her millions, and hiding out there. Most of me know that would just cause problems, but part of me... part of me wishes I could. Really, really does.

Even if only for the ability to totally start over. Completely. Then, though, I'd have to be utterly alone. To start totally new. But, for now, it'd be close enough.

I hate my life (not living, just being so alone), school, lonliness, and having no one to truely open up to, who would listen to me, then open up right back.

Oh well. I have homework, now. I hate school so much... it's Hell on Earth. Fuck it all. I hate it, hate it, hate it.

Jya-ne.

- Vale

Aug. 30, 1998.

Hard to believe that it's only been five days since my last entry. It feels like an eternity.

Notes from 2010: September 30, 1998.

The September 30 entry is prefaced by a two-line entry from August 30, which for some reason I never had a chance to write more of.

I have no idea now who this millionaire friend of Izzy's was supposed to be. For the record, he never ran away with her either, since from the sound of my entry he'd apparently been considering it.

The parenthesis where I clarify that I don't hate living, just how my life is, are my words at that time. I was trying to keep those things separate in my mind because I hadn't yet given in quite enough to self-loathing to actively consider suicide, and I was afraid of getting to that point if I started thinking that it was, in fact, myself I hated.

I talk in this entry about wanting to go somewhere else and start over completely new, by which I meant, be someone completely other than who I was. I hadn't yet learned that it doesn't necessarily work out that way--at least, not if what you're running away from is, like my shyness, and intrinsic part of yourself. A few years down the road, I did have an opportunity to start over fresh as a university student, in a city where I barely knew anyone, and it didn't exactly go as I'd hoped. I did manage to work through a lot of my issues around being shy eventually--seeing a psychologist worked very well for me, with that--but it wasn't until I started therapy that I started making the changes I wanted so badly. Before that, it was like Social Distortion says in "Ball and Chain": "But wherever I have gone/I was sure to find myself there/You can run all your life/But not go anywhere". Sometimes it still feels that way. But I do like myself a lot more than I used to these days, and I have a lot more confidence that I am able to change the parts I don't like, if I put my mind to it.

The sign-off I use, "jya-ne", means "bye" or "see you later" in Japanese. I was all about boosting my otaku cred. At least in my own mind, since by this point no one else much gave a crap. *L*