I've been trying to work through a lot of my issues lately so I can feel better and make something of my life. I feel really conflicted when it comes to "blame." I use the quotation marks because I don't even like that word, I just can't think of a better one. I don't want to be one of those people who victimizes themselves and blames everything else for their problems like depression and anxiet or what have you. However, I have spent too much time blaming myself for everything that is wrong in my life and it is having a terrible effect, as it would on anyone.

The other day I was sitting talking to myself as I often do when I need to work out some repressed feelings or something like that and I ended up completely melting down, screaming and crying to myself in the car. I came to some realizations that even now I'm not really sure what I should do with. I've always been horribly shy and only now at 22 have I been able to adjust to being a normal functioning member of society, via my customer service job.

All throughout my childhood my mom spanked me. But for me it doesn't just feel like it was spanking and being older and smarter now I know for the most part it wasn't. She'd use hangers, brushes, rulers, spoons, or whatever was handy but it wasn't just a couple swats to teach me a lesson. It was her taking out her anger on the only other person she could control. I would start crying of course because I was in pain but that would just make her keep going. She would tell me that she wouldn't stop until I STOPPED CRYING…Even when she realized that I wouldn't stop crying she would then just put a pillow over my face and continue. This is painful for me to write about because it wasn't until recently that I really started to think about what made me the way I am now. As I got older I started trying to defend myself and stopping her from doing this to me and that just fueled her even more. She engengered rage and hate in me and I wouldn't stand for how she treated me. That lead to me being chased with brooms and hammers as she attempted to hurt or "punish" me. I even had to move my dresser in front of my bedroom door to stop her from hurting me..

This is where I am conflicted. Am I to blame for all these years of doing nothing with my life? Being depressed, aimless, hopeless, angry, anxious and just all around pathetic and self-loathing. Should I have tried harder to change myself and my out look?? Even today I try and be happy. People tell me happiness is a choice and I just need to try if I ever hope to get anywhere but when I hear that I get anxious. I get anxious because the trying is hard. Even now I'm starting to lose my focus because thinking about how hard I need to try to be better and make something of myself is scaring me.

I really don't know what to do, I've been having some better days but they are always followed by the deep desire to kill myself and be free of having to worry about where I"ll be in a year and what my co-workers say about me. Or having to go back into work. But then all that is followed by hate. I am pathetic for wanting to quit when my life isn't even hard compared to pretty much anyone else's.

What makes this all the more difficult is that I have no one to talk to about this. I have no close friends and the ones I do have don't have the time or simply don't understand the gravity and leave me feeling even worse than I did before. They think its easy, I just need to be positive or well you shouldn't think that, that's ridiculous. Why would you want to do that? etc. And it actually starts to get to me. What if I am just blowing this all out of proportion in an attempt to get attention. If I stopped caring about what people thought would I just be fine?

I am really trying to help and heal myself because I do not have the money or resources to pay someone to help me and there is no such thing as free psychiatric help where I live.

I am just hoping for someone who has had a similar experience or anything to tell me if I'm crazy or what…I mean are we all not products of our environments? And even if we try hard not to be, that resistance only shapes us more…I don't know I just need some help please.