24th of July 2000

I'm anxious and over-stressed on a permanent basis. It doesn't really matter what happens in the outside world because I have enough inner conflicts to populate one globe. Of course it increases the stress to have to deal with real-life crap and it's usually enough to cause an overflow. When there's already a stressed out mindset and then something else is put upon it... ugh. That's why I don't deal well with real-life. I already had a zillion nightmares inside my head before the added worry the entrance exams and suicide attempts and whatever have caused. It's all inside my head, though, and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating to be this... lost. I would like to be emotionally 'normal'. It'd be much easier to everyone, myself included. I try to sort out my head but it's difficult.
I need this journal to sort myself out.

Even the concept of needing something startles me. These are the thoughts I deal with: "I'm not allowed to need anything." I wake up thinking I shouldn't exist because I'm hurtful and bad and horrible. It's not a question of having low self-esteem, it's a question of having no esteem for self at all.
I used to indulge in clever mind games to make people say I was worth something. Of course that didn't work, partly because I was well aware of what I was doing. I'd rather not do it anymore. It's not worth it, and besides, it actually makes things worse. But anyway...
(Sometimes I'm horribly tired of being me.)
If I could be perfect, I think I might be happy with myself. Perfect human, I mean, although this also includes being perfect at everything I do. It's not so doing-orientated, though. I want to be a perfect human more than anything. Perfect means good. Perfect means... perfect. But I have no clear thought of what perfect would mean. Perfect to everyone. Only good deeds, good thoughts, good emotions.

I don't think I treat other people that way. I don't think some of their emotions are good and others bad, I don't, generally, judge them by how good they are, what they do. I do categorise people that way. She does this, therefore she is like that. But it doesn't mean I'd think she was somehow worse than I am. Instead, everyone seems to be better than I am. I have a distorted view of reality. I tend to think people are better than they actually are. I tend to ignore the bad sides and their bad deeds and think that they're more worthy than I am even if they hurt me. I validate their actions for them, they're valid because they felt that way/did this thing/are like that, whereas my own actions can only be bad and hurtful and never justified.

I reason other people's actions before they have even started explaining. I don't expect them to apologise because from their point of view whatever they did, however much it hurt me, is valid and right for them. I overwrite my own emotions and reactions because I'm not as important. In the end, I end up closing up and hating myself, feeling worthless and horrible and disliking them 'for no reason'. I end up getting mad at them without any visible reason, projecting all the stored hurt on present situations without really understanding what I'm doing, how and why.

Instead of reacting appropriately (ie. how I feel) in a situation, I bottle it up, thinking that I have no right to let it out (a wrong belief which is based on the emotional explosions [when all the stored things build up and finally overflow] and the damage they caused [which I fear and which makes me think I'm a horrible person for causing others to hurt]) and eventually it'll cause more damage, both to me and others, than it had if I had expressed it in the first place. Hence the raging letters to Eq. Hence the emotional catharsis I need to make happen. I'm trying to let it out but it doesn't help if I keep it to myself. If I don't let the other person know what their actions made me feel like. And I'm afraid of doing that, I'm hesitant because I'm afraid of their reaction, and would rather wreck myself than put myself in such a situation where I might lose someone important to me. Instead of wrecking myself, I manage to wreck everything that's important to me (which is what I tried to avoid in the first place).

I don't trust. I think my emotions are bad and invalid and I think they think so too. I cannot express even the most positive of emotions (love, etc) without thinking I'm probably causing distress and somehow damaging the person. Note my own reaction to expressed positive emotions about me ("for fuck's sake! don't do this to me!").
I actively connect such things as love with pain, hatred and being unprotected. I don't want you to love me because that means you're vulnerable. Which means that I am vulnerable. I cry for others more than I cry for myself. I can live without the excess pain. Loving me means you're... accepting me. Me, who does not accept herself. I'm afraid, quite frankly. I'm afraid fo trusting people. I'm afraid of pain. I'm afraid of the need to be loved. I'm afraid of how much I actually need people. I'm afraid because I feel like dying when I think of losing him.

I don't want to admit that. I want to be safe and emotionally dead. Loving means having to deal with all the insecurity and fear I try to ignore on a permanent basis. It leaves me vulnerable and dependent on other people's actions.
And on the other hand, I can't be emotionally dead while alive. That makes me want to be physically dead, too. If you love me in spite of my suicidality and irrationality and general weirdness and hurtfulness, you love me more than I love myself. It makes all the hatred for myself seem useless, unnecessary. I can be worth it even when I'm not constantly beating myself over something. I can be worth it even if I'm not perfect. And if I'm worth it, me, then something must be horribly wrong with the way I perceive myself and the world. What do I hold on to, if not my hatred for self? How do I protect myself from you if I stop believing I'm bad? How do you justify all the crap if I didn't deserve it? I had to deserve it, I had to, because there is no other reason for it. No other reason except that they felt like that and took a few wrong turns on the way (the exact same ones I'm taking now?).

When he once said he loved me (and I found myself trusting his word [which still surprises me, actually]), I felt like everything was slipping away and I had nothing I could trust. I felt horribly unprotected. I felt horribly lost and lonely and scared. And I need(ed) him to give me a hug, to tell me it's all right, because only he can drop my shields like that, only he can make it all right.

Back again.