I can remember having ambitions when I was younger that I thought weren't possible. I wanted to do things I was convinced I wasn't smart/good enough to do. Somehow I challenged myself anyway, holding onto the idea that if I could do them it would make me "happy".

Now that I've done so many of them I still feel empty. Like it doesn't matter that I did any of it because I'm still alone and always will be.

I don't know a way explain how I ended up this way. My parents are still married and my father always showed he cared. There's no reason for me to feel like I'm not worth being with. I repeatedly allow men to take advantage of me and still gaze adoringly seeking attention and approval. Lately I've felt like a relationship fraud because I realize that I never loved any of them, I'm hopelessly in love with the idea of being in love. When someone doesn't live up to my expectations to return my intense gestures of care and commitment I become hurt and hostile.

Yet I jump into the next available instant relationship again and stare with angry eyes that beg to know why I'm not worth it. Why I can lose sleep, work 2 jobs and go to school full-time simultaneously and give whatever resources I have to keep us together and try to make him happy; or whatever totally dysfunctional system I've immersed myself in…and still never seem to be worth any sacrifice to show that I matter.

As I've gotten older I've come to see that it doesn't really matter what's going on in my life, there's so much anxiety in me that I will find somewhere to direct it. Even if it's only onto myself. Now there's hardly a sparkle of hope left because I know that there's no real end to feeling this way. convinced that I will be perpetually alone, misunderstood, and ultimately discarded.

For my entire adult life I've feared that my ultimate truth is that I will eventually come to a point that I won't be able to control my desire to be gone. There's something very wrong with regularly fantasizing about ending everything permanently. I need to know how to hope again.