Lately when I feel frustrated or upset I get this funny tingly feeling… in my chest and arms… kind of like a shiver, because I'm cold, but like something more too.  A feeling like I want to cry and scream and just hide.  Are these small panic attacks?  I find that I don't cry, or get the lump in my throat… but I just feel wrong.  It's like there is an emotion trapped inside of me that is just fighting to get out.  I stop it before it does…

 

I'm so tired of being told my aches and pains and these feelings are all in my head.  I feel crazy when people say that.  It isn't right that people can label me and tell me I just need to calm down or find the right drugs, or just stop making myself sick.  Why is it I feel physically sick and still it's in my head?

 

I just need a break.  I feel like I'm on all the time.  With co workers, clients at work, and then with my family… and with him.  Why can't they see that I'm not happy… and why won't they accept that the space I'm requesting isn't a slight on any of them, but for my own sanity?

 

I just want to feel ok.  I want to feel like talking and having friends and being somewhere other than home… being somewhere other than work.  I want to escape and I can't.  I feel stuck… worse than I was when I wasn't leaving the house.  How sick is that?  I feel like for every good thing this has done for me I'm still no where near where I need to be. 

 

I wish I could wake up… be the person I want to be. 

I wrote the above early this afternoon… here's where I'm at right now…

My mom was and has been upset that I've not been around much during the weeks… I get home from work… hang out long enough to eat dinner and then lock myself up in my room… where I go between checking email, watching a movie/dvd… and talking to one single person online.  She wants me to talk and be with everyone, but I'm so annoyed with all of them.

My mom was in the hospital, and I'm scared for her health even now.  It's hard to be around her when she's not completely 100 percent.  And it's hard to talk to her about anything without feeling like a burden.  Talking the little bit about my life… those few things about work.  The things I don't tell anyone else… and she becomes distracted and interrupts or changes the subject while I'm mid sentence or mid thought.  My siblings have always done this to me… it's really very hard to cope with it when my mom can't even listen long enough for me to get all my thoughts out.

And my siblings don't help.  I feel like there is so much on my shoulders right now… living at home fulltime I don't feell ike I have a break.  And when I do take a break… to go to a movie I feel like a jerk.  Even though I deserve to get the hell out of this place.  I deserve not to feel so sad all the time.  I don't deserve to have so much pressure on me when everyone should already see that I've been cracking and breaking down with work and everything else that's been going on.  BUt no one does.  They don't see me.

And then there's Russ. 

I talk to him every weekday and evening and night.  ten minutes or so during my lunch break, emails throughout the afternoon once he's at his desk, ten minutes after work while he's on his first break… IMing back and forth until he goes on his lunch break, and then half an hour of talk time then… intermittent IMing again until his second break where we talk for ten minutes… and then the 45 minutes or so of his getting off work and driving home.  I put so much into keeping that schedule… and it's his.  Not mine.

I want so very much to have what we talk about on the phone and on the computer.  I want his friendship and I want him.  I want the blockades to disappear and I want him to do what he has to so they will.  He won't.  And I know… I'm asking for too much.  I know I should give up and move on… but he's the first person to really make me feel like I'm heard… or at least sometimes I think he hears me.  Maybe he's just saying what I want to hear.

Tonight was a bad night.  Between the talking to my mom gave me, and then the argument and subsequent tears that followed I'm just tired and absolutely worn out. 

I keep going back to feeling like it will never get better.  That I never will be the person who can make it through.  The girl who will cope because she will find what she wants and needs at the end of the road.  I feel like I'm at the end of my rope and no one is going to help me.

All I ask for is someone to stand next to me… someone to stand behind me and let me fall.  Give me the stability I need so that I can find my way out of this horribly dark place.  One hand… one voice to help me… someone to actually listen to me without judgement.  Someone who can listen without getting upset when all I'm doing is telling the truth. 

It's too much to ask…  I see that.

I know I should be able to find and fight for myself… find a way out of this place all on my own… but I can't.  Everytime I turn around I see people paired off… I see them helping each other.  I see them leaning on one another and being supportive of the process of growing.  And then I look in the mirror and stare at the dark circles and the sense of nothing that shows in my eyes.  I feel like there must be someone out there who is just as lost as I am… and no matter what I do… I won't find them in time. 

Having this site is all fine and dandy… and talking to Russ on the phone and internet is great…  but it isn't what I need.  I need arms to wrap around me and hold me.  I need someone to tell me it's ok to cry and to vent, and to just allow myself to be who I am.  I need someone to look at me, right in the eyes and tell me that no matter how horrible I see myself… that is just one facet.  And all I need is for someone else to help me see what I'm missing. 

I know I'm better than this.  I know there must be alot of redeeming factors in who I am… I just wish that when I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning… I could see them as clearly as everyone else does.  Because right now… all I feel and all I see is worthless.