Lonely and feeling lousy as always.   -_-  I have a person or two I owe an e-mail to, but all I can keep thinking is, why bother?–why go to the trouble?  Because as soon as I begin to appreciate and expect hearing from someone, they bail out–forget I exist–ignore me, even.  Every time.

"Expect" is kind of misleading, as by now, I no longer trust anyone to ever be there for me when I need them.  EVERYONE bails out.  Without fail.  I learned this when somebody I had thought was a friend for over four years suddenly started ignoring me, and never even gave me a reason.  Things had been okay between us–we'd never had a problem.  I'd never even bothered him with my personal problems and such.  So I couldn't have scared him off with my neediness.  Before that, I thought that at least if I knew somebody long enough and they proved through actions that they could be relied upon, that meant they'd be there for me.  The moment he proved that wasn't true, I lost my ability to ever trust anyone again.

I've also since learned that even having known and been good friends with someone in real life doesn't mean they won't just bail out.  This has been proven twice in a matter of months.  A long time back, somebody I'd been friends with in school saw me at the therapist's and got in touch with me via mail.  I thought maybe she was lonely like me too, but turns out she had a family, so I never did understand why she wrote me.  But she said she wanted us to be friends again and would love to correspond and maybe even meet.  We wrote back and forth for a while.  Then I grew anxious and put off writing her for over a year.  My mistake, I know.  But I finally did write to her, explaining the entire situation, pouring my heart out in fact, and asking her forgiveness.

That was before this past Christmas.  Haven't heard back.  Guess she wasn't as eager to get back in touch as she'd said.

Then just recently another school friend accidentally found me online and e-mailed me, all eager to hear from me.  Prior to what had happened with the first friend, I might have been willing to reciprocate.  But it hurts too much now.  I sent her the shortest barest reply I could.  Didn't want to put too much work into it, and didn't want to bother or bore her with my own dull stuff.  She replied and insisted, what have I been up to?–surely I had something to write to her about!  I again sent a very short reply saying that I still write like I did in school, but didn't really do anything else; I'm not that funny or interesting anymore.

She never replied.  Wow.  She sure was eager to get back in touch, too.

At least prior to this, I had good memories of the friends I'd fallen out of touch with.  I had thoughts that, IF we could get back in touch, we could be friends again.  Now I know that isn't true.  I don't even have good memories of the friendship I had with these people anymore, knowing how quickly they decided to write me off in the end.  They're just the same as people online.  Even worse, in fact, because I WAS friends with these people once, but they still decided to forget about me.

And as I already indicated it's no better online.  It seems the harder I try, the more I fail.  I NEVER succeed in anything.  I'm literally feeling that I'm just not meant to have friends.  Maybe I'd be willing to keep trying if I knew there was a point when it finally WORKS, but I haven't had the slightest hint that it ever will.

I found the personal page of somebody supposedly associated with the Mackinac Island tourism bureau after she friended me on a photo site, and hopefully e-mailed her to ask if she really was, because I would love to correspond with such a person.

She never bothered replying.

I swallowed my fear and got back in touch with a guy who'd contacted me in the past and I'd fallen out of touch with due to my anxiety.  He replied cheerfully, to which I quickly replied in great relief.

Haven't heard back from him since.

Even tried penpal sites numerous times.  The people involved either never replied, or replied once, expressing enthusiasm about being penpals, and then ignored me.

Needn't even get started on all the other people who bailed out or decided to forget I exist, for whatever reasons.

At my last session my psychologist suggested that my neediness is what drives people away and keeps people from wanting to befriend me.  I admit this could be the case at times.  But most of the times, these people came to ME first.  I didn't contact them–they contacted ME.  THEY came to me, said they found me interesting or likable, and, despite my warnings that they might not like me after all, insisted I was wrong and they'd love to be friends.  And one by one they all bailed out.  Even the ones I wasn't needy or clingy with.  In fact, I almost always GO OUT OF MY WAY to not be demanding on people.  If anything I'm too shy to bother people much.  I don't even know how to ask for help without humiliating myself.  I dread the merest thought of bothering somebody, no matter what the reason.  Take a look, every day I wish I could die, just not wake up anymore, spend my days crying, while my therapy appointments keep getting cancelled or pushed back over and over and heaven forbid I should call them and request to meet them sooner because I'm hurting so much.  Emergency?  There's no such thing as an emergency for me because I simply don't matter enough.  My frequently postponed appointments are proof of that, somebody else is much more important than I'll ever be.

In short I HARDLY go demanding friends' time or anything…but they bail out anyway.  I don't know what it is that I'm doing so wrong, but apparently I am.  Psychologist says people can sense neediness.  I don't know, maybe.  But if this is so then why do they approach me FIRST?  If I'm so needy then wouldn't they just avoid me to begin with?  And then, when I don't even cling to them or demand their attention, why do they bail out anyway?  What's with that, huh?

I've tried literally everything to be a good friend, but for some reason it's never what anybody else wants…even when THEY'RE the ones who approach me first and say that it is.

I wish I could rely just on myself.  Learn to stop caring about other people for better or worse, just say screw them, and be entirely selfish.  Uncaring.  Cruel, even.  Because nobody's ever going to care about me, I wish I at least could.

I don't even know how to do this right.  Some stupid part of me keeps hoping and wishing that I would find somebody I can be friends with, no matter how many times I'm proven to be a stupid idiot for bothering.  I must be a bad person and am being punished, but I don't even know what for.  It seems so unfair.  Why do even hurtful selfish uncaring people manage to make friends but I can't?  And why do I keep getting false hopes from other people only to always be let down?  The world could at least leave me alone if it's never going to care about me in the first place.