Walking Through Life

2005-04-26T01:30:00.000-05:00

Highly Sensitive Person

I'm just now reading the book The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron. I identify very closely with her description of highly sensitive persons, or HSPs. The book is copyright 1996. I've only read the first two chapters of the book, and I already think that I should've read this book nine years ago.

There appear to be exercises and the end of every chapter, at least some of which involve reflection. Since I have this blog, and since it effectively functions as my journal (I stopped writing my private journal in book form ever since I started this blog), I considered posting my responses here. I decided, "Why not?" (Now, I'm generally ignorant of the copyright laws or anything of that nature, so I'm not sure if posting my responses on-line is considered breaking the law. Actually, this happened to me once before, and I gladly removed the illegal material. If necessary, I'm willing to do the same thing here (although the authorities probably wouldn't care whether I'm "willing" to remove them or not).)

Chapter 1

Think of three major changes or surprises in my life: one that seemed bad, one neutral, and one good, in that order. Answer three sets of questions for each event:

The Bad

The bad one clearly has to be the event that I still, even to this day, believe was the worst thing that happened to me in my entire life. It was my "emotional separation" from the closest friend I ever had, S.C. This happened at the end of my freshman year in college. It was sort of like breaking up, but not really because she was never my girlfriend to begin with. It was the event that precipitated my depression. Prior to this, I never thought or felt like I had depression. I had some problems, and I felt sad at times, but no more than any other person, I thought. I also felt optimistic that I would be able to solve these problems in the future.

Think about your response to the change and how you have always viewed it. I believe I had the worst possible response to this change. She was the closest friend I ever had. Emotionally, we were very intimate (at least, that's how I felt). I shared my deepest thoughts and feelings with her. I never did that with any human being before in my life. Moreover, in some ways she felt like a mother to me -- more so than my biological mother. Often I would tell her how my day went, and she was willing to listen. My own mom and dad never asked me that when I was growing up, so I took that to mean they didn't care. Sometimes I think that I should've just told them how my day went without waiting for them to ask. But, come on! I was just a kid! I didn't know that I was supposed to do that. Parents are supposed to show an interest in their kids anyway, aren't they?

Getting back to S.C.... She was empathic, I guess. By this I mean that after I told her about anything "bad" that happened to me during the day, she would react as if the bad thing actually happened to her. That tremendously validated my feelings, which was something I never experienced before. Thus, she became a critical source, and unfortunately, the only source of support for me.

So, when she was gone I took it extremely hard. She was everything to me. My only source of support was gone, and that's how I've always viewed it. I came to feel like my parents did nothing for me in comparison. I withdrew from the outside world into myself. My social life dwindled to nothing. Previously, I used to work out on a regular basis. I completely stopped that. As a result, I gained what must have been a hundred pounds. That made me feel even worse about myself. Emotionally, I was in turmoil. I started seeing a counselor and a psychiatrist at this time, but the pain and emptiness I felt never subsided, even to this day. Countless psychiatrists and psycho-pharmacologists have tried virtually every medication in the book, all to no avail. I remember that by my junior year, I started to think seriously about committing suicide.

Did you feel you responded "wrong" or not as others would have? Most definitely. I felt like I shouldn't have taken it so hard, and I believed that 100% of other people would not have taken it so hard, either. "Time heals all wounds," doesn't it? I came to believe that there was something wrong with me by taking it as hard as I did.

Or for too long? Yep, I would say that twelve years is too long.

Did you decide you were no good in some way? Yes (as I answered earlier).

Did you try to hide your upset from others? Absolutely. In fact, because of this event and my subsequent response, today I'm a master at hiding all of my emotions from others. At the time of the event, I did this for the simple reason that no one else seemed to pick up on the pain I was feeling. S.C. was the only person in my life who had actively asked me how I was doing, and she did so very frequently. So, I thought that others would think I was weird for feeling the way I did. I couldn't tolerate others "thinking I was weird" because I didn't want to become completely isolated from society.

Or did others find out and tell you that you were being "too much"? No, this never happened, and I know exactly why. I was too afraid of even being considered "too much" by any human being, even if they just thought it and never said it out loud. I hid all my true emotions.

Consider your response in light of what you know now about how your body automatically operates. Well, I guess now I shouldn't be so hard on myself, since biologically, I pretty much responded the way I should have, i.e. the way an HSP would. I never experienced a relationship like I did with S.C. before in my life. I never experienced an "emotional separation" like that before, either. In that way, it's natural not to know how to respond. It was difficult to understand why another person wouldn't want to be around me anymore, given how "nice" I tried to be with everybody. It was also difficult to think of how to go on with my life. My classmates were my age, too, and at the ripe age of nineteen, most of them probably never experienced as deep a relationship as I did. Consequently, they wouldn't be able to pick it up from me. They wouldn't have understood me when I talked about it. Finally, they wouldn't know how to help. It was natural to lose confidence in myself, to feel flawed, and to feel unlikable. It shouldn't be anything to be ashamed of.

Think if there's anything that needs to be done now. Well, I guess I should share what I've learned here with someone else. But the only person I can think of is my therapist, and I've already explained in past entries how I hate his guts. At least, I guess, there's some importance in writing this down (or typing it, in this case), like I'm doing now.

The Neutral

I had a hard time thinking of this one. All I could come up with was my transition from college to the real world. It "should" have been neutral, or just a major change, but I didn't adapt very well for the following reasons:
1. I wasn't able to find a real job until four months after I graduated. This was depressing because most of my classmates started work not more than one month after graduation. So it became one reason to feel flawed.
2. The job I got didn't require a college degree, just a high school degree. My work-study job in college was more mentally stimulating. This hurt me much more. It made me feel like my intelligence and education, which were things about which I felt the most pride, were totally irrelevant and insignificant.
3. Perhaps most importantly, I felt completely socially isolated. It actually took me four and a half years to graduate because I had to make up for a class I failed. The vast majority of my classmates graduated in only four years. This was the first time I ever failed a class. The fact that I didn't graduate with my classmates may not be that important, but there were two incredibly painful side effects:
  1. I had what I call a "mint condition" yearbook. You know, basically anybody who has friends gets messages from them written in their yearbook. My completely blank yearbook was hard evidence that I was friendless.
  2. It felt impossible to make contact with any of my classmates. I felt that they wouldn't have understood why I graduated late. I was way too afraid to admit that I failed a class. Also, we weren't really "peers" anymore. Each of us had gone our separate ways. One actually has to make a concerted effort to stay in touch. It's definitely not as easy as it was before because there are no longer any shared experiences.
Think about your response to the change and how you have always viewed it. Outwardly, I didn't respond that badly. I showed up at my job every day like a good soldier, earning paltry pay and being treated as mentally inferior. Inwardly, I wanted to kill myself. I specifically remember one day where I got up in the morning, and the first thought I had was to put a bullet in my head. How have I always viewed it? Actually, given the circumstances, I believe I responded quite naturally.

Did you feel you responded "wrong" or not as others would have? No. Like I said, I pretty much believe that others would have responded the same way I did, given those circumstances.

Or for too long? Again, no. I think that my responses are natural for anyone who's had my past.

Did you decide you were no good in some way? Yes, all of the reasons made me feel flawed, as I outlined above.

Did you try to hide your upset from others? Yes. I felt certain that others wouldn't understand why I was feeling the way I felt. Therefore, I basically tried to appear as normal as possible. I even remember one of my co-workers in particular thinking that I was basically a "happy" person. This was a testament to how much of an expert I became at masking my true feelings with a fake smile.

Or did others find out and tell you that you were being "too much"? No (for the same reason I gave for the "bad" event).

Consider your response in light of what you know now about how your body automatically operates. It looks like my neutral event has more to do with depression than it does with sensitivity. Oh well, I couldn't really think of anything else. The typical stuff is still true -- it was only normal for me, as an HSP, to think of what to say in my new working environment. Most people want to make good impressions at a new job, which explains why I hid my upset feelings from them. Given all the things that happened to me, it is understandable that I lost confidence and felt flawed (like I said for the "bad" event).

Think if there's anything that needs to be done now. Writing this down.

The Good

This was actually a lot of fun, depending on how I think about it. One of the companies I worked for threw rather elaborate parties for anyone who had a birthday. Planning for the party was held completely in secret. On the day of the party, the birthday celebrant would be called aside by an excuse, such as there being a meeting one of his co-workers thought he should attend. But instead of a meeting, it would be his surprise birthday party.

As an HSP, I seriously wished I would be ignored on my birthday. I cursed the fact that on that year, my birthday fell on a work day (although they never let employees whose birthday fell on a weekend go; their birthday parties would take place on a Friday or a Monday). I also debated in my mind whether they actually knew when my birthday was. I wrote it down when I filled out their employment application, but I was hoping that that information was buried in paperwork and would never see the light of day.

When the day arrived, about two-thirds of the day passed, and there was no indication of any party. "Thank God," I thought to myself. I was starting to feel relived that I was going to slip through the cracks. At one point, of my co-workers said, "Hey Gilbert, there's a meeting right now in room xyz. They need your input. I'll go with you." This actually happened with some regularity in the past. Because of my expertise (which, I think, is another HSP trait), I was called in to meetings that would ordinarily have nothing to do with me, but I would be invited to make comments from a technical perspective.

Surprise, surprise. It was my birthday party. The room was packed. Everybody in the company was there (it was a relatively small company). I didn't get away with it, after all. What was my initial reaction? My face must have been beet red. I remember feeling very anxious, but also very happy at being the center of attention. At the time, I'd say the anxiety was slightly stronger. In HSPs, I believe this is what's called a state of overarousal. That makes sense to me. Everyone in the company was looking at me. Since an HSP is normally highly sensitive, I had no choice but to try my best to numb myself to the sensory overload.

In the end, I had very mixed feelings. Sure, I'd say that the anxiety was there the whole time. But I also felt very happy about what happened. It was a lot of fun. The cake was great. Everybody was socializing, especially me (I didn't really have a choice!). None of the terrible things that I usually predict will happen to me in such situations happened. I got a card, and there was a comment from everyone in the company. (Hmmm... I wonder if that makes up for my "mint condition" yearbook....) I kept that card. Thinking of that card always gives me warm feelings, even today. Nobody rejected me, or anything remotely like that. I hope that that's something I'll be able to treasure forever.

Think about your response to the change and how you have always viewed it. My response was slightly positive. I felt a little more comfortable around everyone else. I didn't feel more comfortable because in my mind, I told myself that this was a one time thing. These people don't really care about me. They're only acting as they would at any birthday party. I've always viewed it this way.

Did you feel you responded "wrong" or not as others would have? Yes. I described some of the HSP aspects of this above. To be specific, I think others would have been delighted at being the center of attention, and they wouldn't have felt any anxiety at all.

Or for too long? Yes. The thoughts and feelings I had about the party lasted for several weeks.

Did you decide you were no good in some way? Yes. Even though overall, I was happy about the party, I still felt no good because of the high degree of discomfort (the anxiety) I felt.

Did you try to hide your upset from others? Yes. As usual, I tried very hard to hide my anxiety and appear like I was enjoying the party. I did enjoy the party; I just didn't want to show that I had any negative feelings about it. I believed they wouldn't understand that and would think something was wrong with me. Why would anyone feel bad on their birthday?

Or did others find out and tell you that you were being "too much"? No.

Consider your response in light of what you know now about how your body automatically operates. Like I said above, apparently this is standard stuff for HSPs. A surprise birthday party is pretty much a textbook example of an event that causes high arousal. Being the center of attention, especially when the entire company is there, is probably an overstimulating event for anyone. I shouldn't be ashamed of anything.

Think if there's anything that needs to be done now. I might be able to share this with my therapist. He seems to like to hear about positive events from me, if not only to interrupt the continual drabness of the usual misery I spill before him during our sessions. In addition, it felt really good to write this down. Most of my posts to this blog have described abject misery. This party really qualifies as one of the few good things that happened in my life. It actually makes me emotional, right now, that such things are possible for me.

Other Notes from Chapter 1

As a footnote, I must mention that The Case of Charles is immensely infuriating to me. I'm sorry to change the tone, but here's this guy who has the same sensitivity that I have. What's different is that he's had the benefit of great parents, which in turn have enabled him not to react badly to negative events in his childhood. As a result, he graduated from an Ivy League university, and now he's a fucking professor. He lives in a quiet neighborhood, with a fountain in his backyard and good music.

In case I haven't mentioned it before in this blog, being a professor always has been and still is one of my ultimate goals. The fact that this guy has achieved it -- well, I suppose I should be encouraged that such things are possible for an sensitive person, but I'm incredibly jealous because he's got the life that I believe I'm entitled to. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure professors have problems, too, but I'd rather be a professor with problems than an unemployed bum with problems.

The quiet neighborhood, fountain, and music are low blows to me. I've always wanted to move out of the city I live in because it's overstimulating. I always had an inkling that the environment I was in was not the best for people like me, and thanks to this book, now I'm sure of it. The fountain upsets me because I once visited the house of a professor, and he had a fountain. The music upsets me because of an internship I had when I was sixteen. My supervisor once invited me to a ride in his car. It was an Infinity or a Lexus -- some kind of luxury car. What struck me the most was that when I was in his car, I felt like I was on another planet. I don't know that much about cars, but I think that his car had very good shock absorbers, so good that I felt like I was floating, or levitating. We went over potholes, and it felt like nothing. The car radio was on, and it was playing classical music. I love classical music. Basically, I felt like I was in heaven. Fourteen years, I think, is a long time to be away from heaven.

I feel so much rage about this that I want to fire a powerful energy blast at Charles, a la Dragonball Z, and annihilate him to such a degree that not even a single cell of him remains. Then, I want to erase all trace of him from history, as if he never existed.

2005-04-19T09:33:00.000-05:00

Thoughts From Therapy

I feel a little motivated to write again, which is cool. Things are heating up again in therapy, about which I'm very angry. But maybe this is a good thing, since it seems that if I'm to make any progress in my life, I have to challenge the ideas and beliefs I have about the world.

What pisses me off is that for the umpteenth time, my therapist asked me what it is that's preventing me from moving forward. Note that I've been seeing the guy for over two years. To me, that seems like more than enough time to get to know me. (Of course, I could be wrong about that, since 1) there are many paths to explore in psychotherapy, and it's possible that there are some areas that I haven't fully fleshed out for him, and 2) some people spend something like twenty years in psychotherapy without making any progress. As for the latter, I don't personally know anyone like that, and I think I've been around a lot of people who have depression. Then again, I don't usually go around asking them how many years they've spent in therapy.) He doesn't seem to understand that all I really want to do is die. I want to die because right now, it looks like the only way I can end my suffering. What are three of the most common words that people say before committing suicide? "Goodbye, cruel world." My sentiments exactly. Nothing captures the emotions I've had for the past twelve years (the total amount of time that I've had depression) more than those words.

Anyway, I felt that by now he himself should know the exact reasons why I haven't done things to make my life better. It makes me angry that he doesn't. It doesn't help that I don't really like the guy very much. I told him so, but he stated pretty bluntly that the only alternative would be to start over with someone else. That seemed to be the greater of two evils, so I decided to stick with him.

To be fair, the guy is probably doing the best he can. I guess that's really the best I can expect from anybody. Really none of the therapists I've had have successfully motivated me to do anything constructive about my life. Once there was one guy, however, who I connected with very well. He was more of an intellectual psychiatrist, which I consider myself to be sometimes (an intellectual, not a psychiatrist). He was actually the director of the psychiatric division of a hospital where I once stayed. I thought he was a very bright guy, so it made sense to me that he would be the director. Unfortunately, I only had one brief fifteen-minute session with him, which was a perfunctory activity for any director.

The Chicken or the Egg?

One problem among many that I have with my current therapist has to do with a particular psychological theory he believes. He simply believes that the more things that a person does, the less depressed he or she will feel. In other words, in life you have to "just do it" whether or not you feel like doing it. I believe in the converse, which is that motivation must come before activity. He thinks that this is putting the cart before the horse. But why does a person do anything in life, for example? Because at a very basic level, he or she has a motivation to do it. Why does a slave follow the orders of his taskmaster? Because he is motivated to avoid the pain of getting whipped (unless you have a sadistic taskmaster, who whips his slaves no matter what they do. I don't see how that would be effective in getting them to do any work, however.). If a person has a gun pointed at his head, why does he do things he ordinarily wouldn't do? Because he is motivated to minimize the probability of getting killed. Why do teams in sports, or boxers in boxing have coaches? Well, there are many reasons, but one of the coaches' duties is to motivate his or her players to win. You might say that with the paycheck he receives, that should be reason enough for him to win, or that it's his job to play to win, but still, both of those reasons count as motivations for him to win.

Fear vs. Truth

Another idea that he's tried to impress on me is that I have this elaborate set of negative beliefs about the world, therefore I'm making myself miserable by holding on to these beliefs. It's as if there's a serious drama or opera going on in my mind. It's only in my mind because in reality, no one else, at least recently, has imposed any negative judgments on me. Basically, I'm living in my own world. Well, can you blame me? Based on the experiences I've had in my life, reality sucks. On the other hand, he may be right. Part of therapy is about confronting one's fears. In order for me to change and to grow, in the process I'm going to have to do some things that I won't like. I used to want to justify my beliefs by saying that every person forms beliefs about the world. Mine are not negative, they just seem to me to be the most correct beliefs, i.e. they're closest to the truth. But I also know that it's true that I'm avoiding people because of an irrational fear.

Fear Itself

Given that this is the case, what is the method for overcoming this? Most people believe that it's gradual exposure over time of what I fear. What should happen to me, I guess, is that I should experience being around people and gradually realize that they're not going to bite my head off. I don't know... I don't know. That scares the shit out of me. I feel like I just can't, including even the smallest step of saying hello to somebody. What if they don't smile back, or what if they ignore me? What if they're one of those people to whom you've been introduced, but you're not supposed to say hello to on a regular basis? To someone without social anxiety, I guess that's not a big deal. But to me, it's a huge deal. So basically, I'm not supposed to think it's a big deal? The only times that this has ever happened to me was when I was intoxicated. I lose most of my inhibitions, and my judgment becomes impaired. To put it simply, I don't have the ability to react fast enough to someone who is rejecting me. Believe me, I've told psychiatrists about this, in particular that I wish there were a pill I could take that would make me lose my inhibitions, as if I were drunk, but without the nasty side effects. But most psychiatrists I've seen have medicated me for depression, not social anxiety, thinking that the latter is not as important, I suppose. One psychiatrist did try Neurontin on me, but that did jack shit, as have most SSRI's I've taken.

Paradox

It boils down to a matter of taking risks. At this point, if I can manage to make more strides socially, it will be a big step towards reducing my depression. After all, I have no friends. That's not an opinion -- that's a plain, hard fact. For someone who has no friends, then, it is not unreasonable to predict that they would harbor a dislike of humanity. Therefore, how can I, an a priori hater of humanity, want to make friends of them? More importantly, why? As a counterexample, I love my pets. They're the only living entities that have been with me through thick and thin and haven't judged me (that is, except for bacteria, assorted fungi, and the like. Unfortunately, they lack the capacity to make such judgments. If they didn't, they might reject me as well.). This is my paradox. Even though I hate humanity, as a human being, I have to make friends with other human beings. I'm supposed to get along with them. If I were an alien from Pluto, then I wouldn't give a damn about making friends with humans. Hell, even Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden have friends.

Being Vulnerable

Of course, you can say that I haven't allowed other people to like me. I'm like a turtle who refuses to go outside his shell, which leads to my next point. A prerequisite to taking risks is allowing myself to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable means sticking my neck out at the risk of being rejected. Being vulnerable means initiating contact with someone even though they may not be in the mood for talking, or they may eventually end up not liking me. Being vulnerable means making eye contact with someone while I'm speaking to them even though they may frown or have a strange expression on their face while I speak. Being vulnerable means asking a girl out on a date even though I'm broke, unemployed, and way out of her league. Being vulnerable means getting to know someone even though they may think I'm weird, or boring, or socially awkward, or stupid, or fat, or just a plain old loser. Being vulnerable means saying something to a person even though they may find it offensive. Being vulnerable means writing this blog and being open to criticism.

Damn, I Played Hookie

All I want is to know, specifically and explicitly, what the hell to do in case these negative things happen. How do social workers, psychologists, counselors, and therapists know what to say to the people they're trying to help? They know because they've been trained. How do police officers, firefighters, EMT's, etc. know what to do in cases of emergency? They've been trained. Well, I'm sorry but I must have been absent the day they taught social skills in school. Why don't they train people in this stuff? Because most people don't need explicit instruction on these skills; they pick it up automatically. Well, guess what. I haven't picked it automatically. That sucks for me, doesn't it? I've been playing a game of musical chairs, and I'm the only fucking one left without a seat.

Others have told me that I shouldn't care about what other people think, and I shouldn't let any negative opinions they may have about me get to me. On the contrary, it seems to me that I have to care very much about what other people think, if I ever want to have any friends. If a person doesn't like me, then I don't have much of a chance of being their friend, do I?

Keeping My Hands on the Plow (How Dull!)

How do I want other people to help me? Maybe I simply don't want to be helped. Do you, reader of this blog entry, want to help me? I don't think so. If you do, good luck! I'm not writing this blog in order to be helped. I'm writing it as a free expression of thought and feeling. The only thing I'm willing to do in therapy, at least right now, is to keep exploring and talking about more ideas and ways that I can change my life for the better. They also have to be things I'm willing to do, or can become motivated to do, either by myself or someone else. I'm not down with "just doing" anything. So for now, the process continues.

Is it twenty years yet?

2005-03-02T10:45:00.000-05:00

Sex Is Always On My Mind (well, pretty much)

There's something else I wanted to write.... I've been dying to tell this to somebody, but I guess writing it is the next best thing. It's kinda silly, but I don't care. My top five happiest moments of the past twelve months have all taken place in the subway! In chronological order:

One
One day I was on my way into the train station when I saw a man and a woman talking to each other. They both looked to be in their forties. What I noticed was strange about this situation was that the woman was speaking Spanish, but the man spoke English and only had a very rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. The woman kept saying, "Cuarenta y dos? Cuarenta y dos?" but the man couldn't understand. They were standing by the entrance, so when I approached, the woman started speaking to me in Spanish. Luckily, and much to my surprise, I understood her question. She wanted to know which entrance to take to get the train that goes to 42nd Street. I answered, "Aqui," which means "here". Haha! Woo-hoo! I'll be damned, but my high school Spanish class actually paid off in real life! She was satisfied and grateful. The man said to me, "Oh, 42nd St.! I kept on thinking that she was saying four, four something, and I was trying to remember how to tell her how to get to the #4 train from here in Spanish." I was beaming for the rest of the day (and quite some time after that!).

Two
I was sitting on the train. There were enough people on the train so that all the seats were taken, but no one was standing. A young couple sitting directly across from me asked me if I could take their picture for them. I did, and they thanked me. Now, this may not sound like such a big deal, but in my head I told myself that they asked me because I looked the most approachable of anyone else in the vicinity, even though they actually may have just picked me randomly. I still felt good. :)

Three
I was sitting in a mostly empty train. When the train was stopped at one station, I noticed a woman (who happened to be very attractive -- tall and blonde, my favorite) walk in and ask a guy sitting by the train door if this train stops at such-and-such station. The guy shifted around in his seat for a while, but didn't answer. He acted as if he didn't even acknowledge her presence (which is not uncommon in the city where I live, since it can be dangerous). There were about half a dozen people in her vicinity who didn't answer her either, so eventually I said to her, "No, it doesn't." I was over ten feet away. She said, "It doesn't? Thank you!" and quickly walked off the train. Don't forget, normally I'm scared to death of talking to a person who's right in front of me, let alone someone over ten feet away in a room with people. So I ended up feeling good about myself (but I'm sure her being pretty hot had something to do with it ;) ).

Four
I was standing on the platform at a train station waiting for the train. A woman who was absolutely gorgeous asked me for the time, and I gave it. She was asian, and she had beautiful long hair. I don't remember, but I think my jaw was open when I was telling her the time. :)

Five
I was sitting on a bench at another train station when another beautiful lady walked by and asked me for the time. When I told her, in the cutest voice she said, "Really?" as if she were surprised, and then thanked me and walked away. She was tall and pretty, and her voice was just the icing on the cake.

Ahhh subways...

2005-03-02T03:45:00.000-05:00

...peeking out from under my shell...

Hello, world... For better or worse, I'm still around. I haven't forgotten about this blog. In fact, often I feel embarrassed by some of the things I wrote here in the past. But as I stated in the beginning, this is still a journal of my thoughts and feelings, and as such everything I've written so far is valid. They may not depict me as a completely sane person :), but they still reflect the thoughts and feelings I had at the time.

One reason I haven't written so much is that -- and this is probably a good thing -- the path my life has taken no longer matches the dark and depressing tone I initially intended here. I think one way of saying it... is that I've kind of mellowed out a little. I still think about suicide -- I could still blow my brains out later today, for example. I guess that may really never go away. It reminds me of the movie A Beautiful Mind, one of my favorites, where Professor Nash's imaginary people are still there even when he's old and gray, but he has still managed to live a fulfilling life.

I really haven't found anything in my life recently that's been gloomy or depressing enough to write about. I finished that DBT class I was taking by October of last year. Afterwards, I started to participate in generic group therapy. November was catastrophic. I made the mistake of switching off Medicaid insurance to an HMO, and the therapy I was getting wasn't covered. So I had to disenroll, but it took about a month, and for that entire time I was without any kind of psychiatric help. Now that I mention it, that period was gloomy enough to write about, but I still didn't write because I (and nobody else, ostensibly) cared about this blog. Eventually, I got my Medicaid back, and that brings me to today. Most recently, thanks to some pushing by my therapist, I got myself to sign up for a bookkeeping class last month at a local continuing education school. Last night was week three of twelve. I've felt a little better because of the class -- more engaged, something to look forward to.

And that's it. I still don't have a job, and I still don't have any friends (except of course, loyal Prof. Greenber, my parakeet. I don't remember if I mentioned that Suchashakti died some time ago. Oh well, they're just parakeets.). To me, that's more than enough for me still to want to cash in on a one-way ticket out of existence. But for now, I'm still hanging around.

2004-06-02T16:37:00.000-05:00

... Or A Few Months

Well, it's been a really long while since I last wrote anything. Sorry about that. Actually, I once had a five-year span where I only wrote about two or three times in my journal. This is significant, since I used to write in my journal almost every day since I was 18. Since then, it's been more hit-or-miss -- many times my motivation to write would dwindle to zero.

And that's how it was over the past few months. So, I have to say that from now on, I'm probably not going to write as regularly as I used to. I know that blogs that update frequently are probably better than those that don't, but I'm pretty much out of things to say. Everything I said since the beginning is still true. Not much in my life situation has changed. I'm still miserable, and life is still definitely not worth living. I've pretty much spent the past few months like a human vegetable.

A few small things are probably worth mentioning. A while back, I mentioned that I was supposed to undergo ECT. Well, my psychiatrist noticed a slight improvement in me after I started taking Adderall, which is a medication I had never tried before. So, the ECT is on hold for now. If you ask me, yes, there's a slight improvement, but I'm not exactly doing handstands.

I've finally managed to start doing a better job of managing my diabetes. I'm doing these annoying finger sticks every day like a good soldier, and I'm actually taking the pills I'm supposed to take every day more often. It's a very very small step, because I'm also supposed to be watching what I eat and exercising, but right now I get overwhelmed just thinking about that. I don't remember how much I've written about this before, so I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, but I've been overweight for nearly all my life, and I guess it's only now that I'm older that my physical health is paying the price. But it's not like I just recently decided to stuff my face and sit on my ass all day -- I've almost always been like this, including since I was a child. I managed to lose over 40 lbs. twice in the past, but I did so only by going on these agonizing starvation diets and exercising every day and at every opportunity. I learned (the hard way) that this never works in the long-term because the moment you stop dieting and exercising, you go back to your normal habits, and the weight inevitably comes back. It's basically yo-yo dieting. For me, whenever I go on any diet, I can't help but feel like I'm depriving myself, either by my choice of food or by the quantity. What I need to do is permanently change my habits, and right now that just seems like too much. To do something permanently, to me, means more or less to do it for the rest of my life, and I can't see myself making any change in my diet or exercise for the rest of my life. To make matters worse, my doctors don't seem to pay any attention when I tell them this. Most of them say, "It doesn't matter, you still have to lose weight." Hmph. I guess that's true, but it doesn't make me feel any better. It'd be a lot easier if I thought my life was worth it.

Incidentally, I've also learned a little lesson about the things that people say to me (or to anyone, for that matter). I used to be very sensitive (and still am) to comments people make to me. Even though they may only be trying to be helpful, I used to feel hurt about the way they phrased what they said, or I would imagine that were certain implied criticisms in their statements. I believed this because if they were in my shoes and truly understood how I felt and where I was coming from, they wouldn't say the things they say. I still believe that's true, but I've come to understand two things: 1) Even if my interpretation of what others say to me is hurtful or critical, that may not be their intent. (This is probably something most people learn in kindergarten, but hey, better late than never.) 2) Being understood by someone else, at least to me, is really a luxury. So, instead of expecting to be understood by others all the time, I'm trying to be more accepting of times when I'm not understood. (A lot of conflicts between people are due to misunderstandings, anyway.)

And so life goes. Until next time.

2004-04-01T01:45:00.000-05:00

Sorry to do this, but I'm going to be on vacation from this blog for a while. I should be back within the next few weeks.

2004-03-29T08:53:00.000-05:00

Is There No Place On Earth For Me?
I've been spending some time reading the book Is There No Place On Earth For Me? by Susan Sheehan. It was recommended to me by someone who read the entry I wrote on Shame last month. It reminded this person of "Sylvia Frumkin," whose life the book describes. When it comes to books on this subject, I usually don't read books that others recommend to me. I like to think I've read every book out there on depression, and none of them has inspired me or motivated me to make changes to my life.

This book seems to be different, though. I try never to say anything about something I read unless I've read it in its entirety, but so far I can't help but mention some interesting things. (Once I finish the book, however, I reserve the right to abnegate anything and everything I say here. :-) ) So far, it's given me a sense of perspective about my own life situation. When I started this blog, I thought it was a relatively big deal. I thought it was quite unusual for an intelligent person to be depressed and suicidal for eleven years and to have been hospitalized on three separate occasions as a result. Sylvia Frumkin's story makes my problems sound like a walk in the park. I was worried when I first started about the possibility of my problems sounding trivial when compared to someone else's, but I decided to go ahead anyway. I don't retract or regret anything I wrote. Just because someone else had a rougher life than I did doesn't invalidate the pain I that experienced. Sylvia's difficulties were arguably much worse than mine were. She had to stay at mental hospitals much longer and much more often than I did. It made me realize that there are other people out there going through the same things that I'm going through, or worse. If this book ends up changing the way I look at life, then I don't understand why this book isn't required reading for everyone, starting from the 5th grade (or as early as possible). Hindsight isn't 20/20, but if I read this book when I was still growing up, it would have at least warned me of some of the realities of how life can turn out, and I could have adjusted my own plans accordingly. Even if I tried my best in life, I could still end up like Sylvia.

I will explain why I feel this way, but not right now. It would help if I finished reading the book first!

2004-03-26T06:58:00.000-05:00

Computers, computers, computers...
I still feel very lonely and isolated these days. Actually, I've felt lonely and isolated since April 1993, so this isn't really news. I'm not even sure how I've survived this long. I guess I just want to repeat myself in case I forget. :-)

I've been able to occupy myself with at least one thing, though. I've almost finally finished building my new operating system. I hope I don't have to abort at the last minute, which is what usually ends up happening whenever I do anything with computers. I'm trying to use the Linux kernel with GNU software. Working on this eats up a lot of time. On the one hand, this is good because it helps decrease my idle time, which is the time when I am most despairing and suicidal. On the other hand, it's bad because it's a way for me to run away from my real problems instead of confronting them and dealing with them. Regarding my hardware, most of it seems to work on this operating system, except for my CD-writer. Initially, I was ambivalent about this, so I decided to go on with the installation anyway. However, I could decide on a whim later on that using an operating system that won't let me burn CD's using the hardware I currently have isn't worth it, and I'd just give up and use Windows. (Noooooo!!!) Even though this work has kept me occupied, the fact that I have no friends still gives me moments here and there where I want to kill myself. Trust me -- even though I may not end up killing myself, being in that state of mind is no fun at all.

I wish I could be a computer. Computers aren't suicidal. Computers don't feel anything. I would be cold, logical, and efficient. Actually, scratch that. I wouldn't be able to be happy, so I don't think I want to be a computer after all. It would be pretty cool, though, if a computer had enough self-awareness to kill itself, you know, if for example it ran Windows. :->

2004-03-23T07:14:00.000-05:00

Work
Why is it that in our society we have all kinds of support groups, such as Twelve Step programs, support groups for alcoholics, substance abusers, women, victims of abuse, diabetics, the handicapped, overeaters, and more, but there are no support groups for those who are simply too weak and lazy? Am I the only human being in history weak and lazy enough to need a support group for being weak and lazy? Pardon me if I think that seems highly unlikely.

Why do I have to work? Work sucks. Why can't I be normal and have fun in life, like the birds and the bees and so on? (I know, birds and bees work, but that's because they don't know any better. :) ) Why can't I just relax and chill? If I get bored doing nothing, then it should be up to me whether I choose to work. I shouldn't be forced to work, even if it is necessary to earn a living. I only have one life to live. I'm not going to waste it doing menial, unrewarding forms of labor. I would work if it involved something I was interested in, like computers, or if the compensation was high, or if at least the work was mentally stimulating. I ain't sweepin' no floors. If menial labor is a requirement for existence, then I choose not to exist. Execute me. Genetically engineer my DNA from "respawning." Life is not rewarding enough to endure a lifetime of drudgery. As I've said before, I was brought into this world. I never chose to be born. If, when I was an infant, someone told me the things I was required to do in life, I would have thought about it for a moment, then I would have said, "Nah, cancel that shit," and I would have chosen to return to non-existence. Easy as pie.

2004-03-20T07:27:00.000-05:00

Here's To Hope
Nothing new to report. My visit with my psychiatrist last Wednesday was uneventful. Nothing's happened since then. On the computer front, the OpenBSD install I tried failed because I'm using unsupported hardware. The lesson I learned here is that just because an OS says it runs on x86, it doesn't mean that it will run on my x86. Right now I can't afford to purchase any different hardware. Linux does support my hardware, though, so I'm going to give that a try and see how far I get.

I had to visit my endocrinologist last Thursday to check up on my diabetes. They checked my weight, and I found out that I balooned up to 288 lbs. Lots of famous people died right after they reached a weight they never attained before. I wonder if I'll be one of them. When I went in to see my doctor, I told him the truth -- as everyone should with their own doctors -- that I wasn't doing a goddamn thing about my diabetes. I wasn't doing those annoying finger sticks, I wasn't taking my medication, I wasn't following any kind of diet, and I certainly wasn't exercising. He seemed to have a sense of humor about it, though -- he asked me, "How long do you want to live?" It would have really been funny if I gave him the true answer to that, which is, "I don't want to live."

I always get antsy around any medical professionals who have no background or training in mental health, or at least in some sort of sensitivity training. Those without special training tend to have a hard time believing that depression is no joke, and that it's not something I can just "snap out" of. I really don't give a shit. Everytime I go to sleep, I hope I never wake up again. Let's hope tonight's the night.

2004-03-17T08:11:00.000-05:00

The Prom
I feel like shit. I even feel nauseous. My eyes are glazed over. My cognitive faculties are barely enough to write down the thoughts I have in an organized fashion. I have to leave in a few minutes to see my psychiatrist. I don’t even want to leave my apartment, let alone see anybody. Everything I need, or at least everything I think I need, is right here. I can get myself into a nice groove just staying right where I am, sheltering myself from all the noxious influences of the outside world.

In one of my rare excursions into civilization, on Monday I had to go to a barbershop and get my hair cut. By the end of the trip, I wanted to disembowel myself. It wasn’t the barber’s fault. At least, not directly. The place I go to is pretty good for socially anxious individuals. I just go in, get a haircut, pay for it, and then leave. No fuss, no muss. No worrying about having to participate in some forced conversation with a person I could care less about. No toiling through awkward moments when I’m trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to say. I know -- this is the exact opposite of what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to be seizing this "opportunity" to "practice" my interpersonal and conversational skills so that I can "overcome" my shyness, and therefore, my depression. Why is it, then, that I feel like being boiled in oil is more rewarding than doing any of those things?

The haircut itself was great. The torture came from the television set that was right next to me. In case I haven't mentioned this before, I hate TV and I avoid watching it like the plague. Especially network television. As luck would have it, the TV in the barbershop was tuned into one of those brain-dead sitcoms that make one want to vomit more than laugh. Obviously, I didn't care to find out what the name of the show was. Unfortunately, what was most painful for me was not the sitcom's inanity but its subject matter. The situation was about some teenagers trying to ask each other out to their high school prom. I would have probably thought it was pretty funny if I wasn't busy trying to leap outside of my body. Everything about it was sheer torture. The kid finally getting the courage to ask the girl out was torture. The girl's excitement at being asked out was torture. If there's any single reason that makes me want to kill myself more than anything else does, it's that I never went to my own high school prom. Not only that, but I never did a thing about asking anyone to go, and I haven't changed one bit since then. This makes me feel like a permanent freak that has absolutely no justification for living. There's no recourse in society for a guy like me. I suppose being too shy to approach a member of the opposite sex is not all that uncommon. But who the fuck stays that way up until they're thirty? Except for people who've taken vows of celibacy, I don't know of anyone. One would think that even the shiest guy would have made some kind of progress towards overcoming his shyness by then, even if it was by accident. Heterosexual men aren't supposed to have their hands held when it comes to shit like this. In my experience, if I do, my sexuality is questioned and my peers ostracize me. Even what I'm doing now makes me want to commit suicide. You would think that instead of bitching about this, I would just shut up and do something about it. I don't know. I guess I just don't understand life.

2004-03-14T10:39:00.000-05:00

Carrying the One
I've been feeling sick recently, so I haven't been able to write as much as I've liked. I haven't even had enough time to read my own blog to respond to any comments, e-mail, or anything else. The truth is that I've been too embarrassed to write. It's not because I'm afraid other people might be mean to me, but because I'm afraid of revealing my utter stupidity! I did one of those things where you spend a really long time trying to solve a particular problem (in my case, a week), but when you find out the solution to your problem, it only takes about half-a-second to execute, and you realize you shouldn't have spent nearly as much time trying to figure it out as you did. In other words, it's like taking a week to figure out that you made a mistake adding two numbers because you forgot to carry the one. I made the operating-system equivalent of that mistake. I guess my fear of being dumb is stronger than my fear of being weak. (It's funny -- if I spent the entire week doing nothing except stare into space, I would have no reservations about writing about that.)

Crying
Other things... I heard from somewhere that people who have really deep-seated anger problems can participate in special therapy groups where they get the opportunity to express their emotions safely. For example, they get these foam bats or pillows and they get to bang on things with them and scream if they want. What if a person has deep-seated sadness problems? I can understand a person being so angry that he or she wants to scream his lungs out, but what if he has uncontrollable urges to cry his eyes out? Sometimes, more than anything, all I want to do is roll up into a ball and cry violently.... not one of those cries where I'm just naturally sad about something, but a cry that's so painful that it's the end of the world. Sometimes I just want to cry uncontrollably and not care about how loud I'm crying and not want to bother explaining to anyone else why I'm crying. Sometimes I want to cry so hard that taking out the time and effort to specify and elucidate my thoughts would take me too much out of the experience of crying. I just want to cry for the sake of crying. That's irrational, isn't it? If I did something to fix the situation that made me want to cry in the first place, then that would seem to be more helpful than crying, wouldn't it? Then why would I rather cry than doing anything else?

2004-03-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

Getting back to CVS... I thought I understood how to run it clearly enough, but whenever I tried to checkout the entire OpenBSD source tree, it would maddeningly break somewhere in the middle and refuse to continue. At the time, I didn't bother going through the CVS documentation to see if there was some way of getting around this. (Don't try this at home, folks. Never do anything without reading all the documentation. (I wish life had thorough documentation. If it did, I probably wouldn't be suicidal to begin with. In the "computer" world, people who don't RTFM tend to make problems much more difficult than they should be, or they create more problems instead of solving them. I don't understand why the "real" world should be any different.))

I eventually realized that I had completely forgotten about DOS's stupid reserved filenames. Because DOS is DOS, it imposes certain idiotic restrictions on names of files. For example, filenames like "com4.c" and ":tt" are not allowed. So, I actually took the time to manually go through the entire source tree and take note of filenames that DOS wouldn't swallow. Then I downloaded each file manually, saving each file under a filename that DOS could live with. Then I renamed each file back when I compiled the ISO. About four hours into this, my brain wizened up to what I was doing and realized what a complete waste of time this was. So, with a great big "fuck this" I decided to abandon dealing with the source tree altogether. Well, that was an interesting day. :)

2004-03-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

OpenBSD
Life sucks as usual. Nothing much to report... Actually, I've kept myself busy the past few days trying to learn some technical computerese on my own. I figured it's better than lying in bed and staring at the ceiling for the entire day. I hate Microsoft Windows with a passion, so I've been trying to install a different operating system on my PC. I heard OpenBSD was very secure, and I've had some background with UNIX, so I decided to give that a shot.

The first thing I had to do was gather all the installation material. I've installed RH Linux before by simply downloading their CD-ROM images from their website, burning them onto CD-R's, and then booting them from the CD-ROM drive. OpenBSD offers a CD-ROM installation. I have to pay for it, but all the files themselves are available via anonymous FTP. Not wanting to pay for something that I believed I could do for myself free, I decided to take the cheap route.

Since I'd done UNIX installs before, I didn't bother going through any of the OpenBSD documentation. I did read something, though, that said the best way to retrieve the source was via AnonCVS. Now, I've heard of CVS from all over the place, but I'd never actually tried to use it myself. Given that my choices were to spend the rest of the afternoon either staring blankly at a wall or learning how to use CVS, I chose the latter.

Uh oh, I'll have to stop for now and pick up from here later. Sorry! I hate doing this -- it diminishes the reader's experience. Oh well, 'til next time...

2004-03-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

I Need Love
I don't want to live if I don't feel loved. However, I don't need love in order to survive. But who's going to love me again? Where's that going to come from? To others, not being loved may not be a big deal. To me, it's like having my heart, my mind, and my entire being violently ripped apart.

It also makes me feel like not wanting to do anything. If I had a girlfriend who loved me, I could feel motivated to do lots of things. For example, I could be motivated to go to work. Right now, I feel too depressed to work. If I said this to my hypothetical girlfriend, she may say something like, "Please, do it for me." That would get my engine running. I would do it if it was for her, but not for me. Why should I work? The main reason why most people work is to earn a living. I.e., in exchange for working for their employer, they receive a salary. In turn, they use their salary to pay for things they need, such as food. Even if I worked at my dream job, it wouldn't be enough for me to feel like life is worth living. I know, theories state that work overcomes depression. Still, I need energy to do work. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I don't have the energy to make a single step. For what it's worth, all I have is the energy to ponder making a single step. Unfortunately, actions speak louder than words, or in this case, thoughts. (Sorry about all the clichés. :) ) Another side effect of having a girlfriend would be that I would be less lazy, and I would take better care of myself. I would take care of my diabetes. I would eat healthier and follow the diet I'm supposed to be following. I would exercise more often. I do none of these things now b/c I don't love myself at all. In fact, many times I hate myself.

Imagine two hypothetical people, person A and person B. They are exactly the same, except that during their childhood Person A grew up in a loving family but person B did not. Person A's parents loved him or her. They took an active interest in his life. They did things with him, but they weren't doting. In other words, they made sure that he had structure and discipline, and that he stayed within his boundaries. They spent time with him. They paid attention to his emotional needs. They recognized and honored his accomplishments. They were proud of him. They did these and other supportive, encouraging, warm, and caring things for him. Person B's parents did none of these things. They weren't cruel or abusive, but they weren't anything else either. All things being equal, if person A paid any attention to his parents, he must have much more self-confidence than person B.

I am person B. I contend that if I were person A, I would not be depressed or suicidal today. Unfortunately, such a thing cannot be proved. I know that having loving parents is not the only way to have high self-confidence. It sure as hell doesn't hurt, though. If my parents took an active interest in my life, I would have gotten the message that the things in which I was interested were worth in being interested. In other words, it would have helped me believe that the actions I took to pursue my interests had meaning. The absence of this was one of the ways that I came to believe that my actions had no meaning. I could have made friends that could have and can do this. But if my parents were like this, I would have gotten the message that my actions had meaning by default.

Right now I don't find my life worth living. Therefore, I need to get substantial answers to many questions. What am I going to do about this? Given that I am person B, is there anything I can do to become person A? How do I proceed? How do I make life worth living? By making friends? This is too hard for me for many reasons. One, rejection destroys me. I make too many negative interpretations of other people's behavior. Where do I find the energy to overcome that? What are my alternatives? I guess I'm supposed to ask the other person exactly what he or she means. Two, the potential for rejection plus the need for me to coordinate several difficult behaviors in the act of socializing make forming friendships just too much of a hassle. Maybe my bar is too high. Maybe making friends should never be a hassle. Regardless, this is why I just completely avoid socializing altogether. Three, all the work I have to put into this doesn't look like it will yield the intended result (i.e. the long term benefits of making friends isn't worth the effort involved). Four, the simple fact that making friends requires effort for me automatically puts me at a disadvantage to others who already have friends. Five, making friends is not supposed to be something that takes thirty years to accomplish. I'm jealous of other people who can make friends easily. I attribute this partly to my parents coming from another culture, but mostly just to my shyness. Some people are just born naturally sociable and outgoing. Is it fair that I have to expend tremendous amounts of energy to make friends, while others can do the same effortlessly?

2004-03-02T14:59:00.000-05:00

Wanting What Should Happen To Happen
I had one goal. I wanted to be able to walk into a store near my home and buy one box of ten 3 1/2" floppy disks for myself. That's all. I did not achieve my goal because I wanted what should have happened to happen.

I went into a STAPLES store near where I lived. I figured that a box of floppy disks was a pretty common thing, so I expected I'd find it out in the open, probably somewhere near the front of the store. The first sign I noticed that this was going to be a bad experience was that as soon as I walked in, the place was packed. I found out later that an OfficeMax store across the street recently took a dive, so predictably all the customers that they had now stuffed themselves into here. That was aggravation number one. Aggravation number two was that the disks were not out in the open as I hoped. Now, you would think that if I had the slightest bit of difficulty finding something, I would have just asked for help from someone who works there and spared myself the headache. However, there were problems with that too, but I'll get to that later. I eventually found the floppy disks behind a locked cabinet along with several other pieces of expensive computer equipment. This was aggravation number three because why would anyone in their right mind want to store something that costs less than $5.00 in a locked cabinet?

At this point, I had no choice but to get someone to help. Aggravation number four was that I tried to get the attention of at least five different people, but they all completely ignored me as if I weren't even there. Talk about your invalidating environments. I know that the effective thing to do in this situation was to wake these people up and to be more assertive in getting them to help me. I didn't do this because I believed that this is not the way customer service is supposed to work. Store employees are paid to assist customers. It's their job to help me out. I believe that I shouldn't have to bend over backwards just to attract their attention. There are some stores I walk into where, as soon as I set foot in the place, the salesmen cater to me hand and foot, and if I tell them I don't need any help, they still watch over me as if I'm an armed criminal.

Anyway, I noticed that they had a customer help desk, and I thought I was in luck because it was empty. Wrong. It was empty for a reason. I stood directly in front of the help desk guy for at least five minutes, and he never looked at me even once. Then, a person who was ostensibly his boss or a co-worker came by and asked him to help another customer who needed help. Then he dropped whatever he was doing and helped this other customer out, leaving me completely alone at the help desk. Not only was I invalidated, but now I was abandoned. I finally managed to catch somebody who was alone who paid attention to me. I said to him that I needed to get something from behind the glass cabinets. He said to me, "Keys... I don't have any keys.... Ask that guy." As if I gave a fuck whether or not he had any keys. All I wanted was my box of disks! He ended up pointing to the same prick who had ignored me earlier, which was the last straw. He didn't acknowledge my existence before, so what reason would I have to believe that he would do so now? By this point, I was so flabbergasted by the entire experience that I just left in a huff.

As I said, I believed that they should have come to me, not the other way around. That's what got in the way of accomplishing something as trivial as buying a box of floppies. I was a cash-paying customer, and they just lost my business. It didn't matter that the amount of money I was spending was only $5.00. If I were shopping for a $2,000 computer and I had the same experience, they would have lost that money as well. If I were an IT director looking for a vendor to furnish computers for my company, they would have lost that money as well.

2004-02-28T16:06:00.000-05:00

Breath Be Not Proud
That's it. I don't care how what I'm about to say makes me sound.

One of the reasons why I'm suicidal and depressed is because I don't have a girlfriend. Dammit, why don't I have one?! I thought the saying goes, "There's someone for everyone." If there's someone for everyone, why is there no one for me? This makes me feel like a pathetic freak!

I hate constantly referring to the past, but when I was growing up, I never had a girlfriend. The way I explained this to myself so that it wouldn't bother me was that I thought some people were just "late bloomers" in life. I.e., some people just didn't pick up the knack for talking to girls at as a young age as other people did. This was fine with me because I thought I would just indulge myself in other things at that age. I would do so until either one of two things happened: girls would become more interested in me, or I became more adept at talking to them. So, even though girls are great, there were lots of other things in the world for me to get involved in.

The fact that neither one of the two things I expected to happen happened makes me feel like I wish I were never born. I expected that one day I would have more confidence talking to girls. That never happened. How could it? I was too shy and avoidant even to approach a girl. Girls never become more interested in me, either. I thought girls in general liked men who were more mature. I hoped that the older I got, the more women would approach me. Therefore, I decided not to do a thing until I got older. What a lethal mistake! I ended up wasting roughly fifteen years of my life that I could have otherwise spent gaining experiences with women! I mean, how long am I supposed to wait until women find me suitably attractive? Until I reach sixty? (As a side note, this goes to show how fatal life can turn out simply based on what one tells oneself. Moreover, I didn't realize my folly until recently. It makes me wonder what other beliefs I hold on to may permanently ruin my life.) This is so so so incredibly painful and unbearable. I don't have the ability to go back in time to when I was younger and still wondering about all of this and tell myself, "Excuse me, young man, I've got something critically important to tell you. Don't wait until you're older to start talking to girls. I come from fifteen years into your future, and all this time I just waited until I got older. I never got a girlfriend!"

This is so important to me because it's one of the reasons why I don't place any value to my life. I feel so fucking alone in this goddamn world. Feeling loved seems to me like the only way I wouldn't feel alone. Nobody loves me. Why is this important? Actually, I don't have the answer to that. Do human beings need love to survive? Technically, I don't think so. All a human being needs to stay alive is air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. However, I don't know whether a human being that doesn't feel loved would want to live. I do know that I don't feel loved, and I definitely do not want to live. Life would be infinitely more bearable to me if I felt loved. Love makes the world go round. If I felt loved, I would feel like I mattered again. I would feel like my presence in this world makes a difference. Love would give me life. It would give me a reason to live. It would give me drive, purpose, and motivation. If someone had a crystal ball, told me that for the rest of my life I would be broke, unemployed, unsuccessful, and that I failed at everything I tried, as long as I was loved, it wouldn't matter. It would still be enough for me to keep on living.

Now this may be going overboard, but the more people that love me, the more reasons I have why my existence matters in this world. More people would desperately want to know what's going on with me as often as possible because, since they love me so much, they think about me all the time. If I felt hurt, for example, it would affect the lives of more people because, since they love me so much, they can't bear to see me suffering in any way. I guess all I'm saying is that I don't know how to live without someone else loving me. If nobody loves me, what's the point? Why should I live? Why should I even breathe?

2004-02-25T16:45:00.000-05:00

Suicide: Read This Second
I came across this page on suicide the other day and I wanted to make a few comments on it. There are many wonderful things said on this page, but at the same time, there are many problems on this page that I must point out. First, I want to say that I have the utmost respect for what the authors of this page and what others like them are trying to do in general. If their message stops people from committing suicide, as I'm sure it does, then I think that's wonderful. Having said that, I must add that the statements made on this page are not guaranteed to help every suicidal person. If there's anything worse than reading something that's not helpful, it's reading something that you're told is supposed to be helpful but isn't.

The page delivers a very soothing message filled with care, understanding, and empathy for people who are thinking about suicide. It goes on to state that suicidal feelings result when pain exceeds pain-coping resources. Therefore, to eliminate those feelings you must reduce your pain or increase your coping resources. It sounds very nice and neat. However, it doesn't tell you what I, being a suicide veteran myself, have learned, which is that that's much easier said than done. I've tried to do both things for the past eleven years, and I'm still just as suicidal as ever. Before you even think of saying that eleven years isn't long enough, let me just add that it's been eleven years too many. It shouldn't have lasted more than one day after I started being suicidal.

Next, it gives five "things to think about," obviously intended to be of help to the suicidal person. I have thought about them, however, and my conclusions make me feel worse. First, it states that people do survive suicidal feelings. How? I must have read at least a hundred stories about depressed and/or suicidal people who have gone on to live happy lives. None of these people, however, had to deal with the same set of problems that I must suffer through today. The circumstances that led them to become suicidal differed enough from mine to the extent that if I tried to imitate what they did to survive, it would have no effect in my life. Second, it says to wait 24 hours before doing anything. Or a week. Motherfucker, I've waited for eleven years! When you look back at eleven years of pointless suffering, clearly the humane thing to have done was to put myself out of misery at day one. Third, it erroneously states that people turn to suicide because they seek relief from pain. Therefore, suicide doesn't solve this problem because, since they're dead, they won't have the ability to feel the relief that they seek, or anything else. That scintillating sample of sophistry would have set the Sophists themselves salivating. People turn to suicide because they seek an end to pain. They could care less whether they feel "relieved" or not. They pay a small price by sacrificing any feelings they may have had if they decided not to commit suicide in exchange for ending their pain now.

Fourth, it tells you to contact someone who will help, and it lists a few publicly available resources. That's a great idea as long as you are aware of people's limitations. People come, and people go. The person helping me can only be with me for a finite amount of time. He or she will not always be there for me 24/7. I believe I need that, because I can't stand living in my body for more than one second. Nobody can live my life except me. No one walks in my shoes except for me. Am I to spend the rest of my life feeling okay only when I'm with someone? Is life nothing more than an endless quest for companionship? I can't stay on a suicide hotline 24 hours a day. Suicide counselors are suicide counselors, not babysitters. They have their own lives, too. After a while, they'll probably just throw me into some hospital. For some suicidal individuals, this may be the best thing to do. For other suicidal individuals like me, whose goal is to build a life in the real world outside of the hospital, this isn't a good thing to do.

It goes on to describe other benefits of talking to someone. It says that doing so may be enough to regain my balance. For some, maybe, but for me, it hasn't in eleven years. It also says that the best coping resource they can give me is another human being. Unfortunately, the first few paragraphs at the beginning of their page have been more caring than any individual or group of human beings has been to me in eleven years. Those words have lasted longer than the amount of time any other fucking human being has bothered to care about me. The last time I contacted a Samaritan, or a suicide counselor, or another stranger, it was a waste of time. The other person didn't tell me anything helpful at all, not because he didn't care, but because he didn't know a single thing about me. As far as therapy is concerned, I've found that slightly more helpful because the other person at least knows me a little better. Therapy, however, only lasts 45 min. a week. That leaves 7 days, 23 hours, and 15 min. more for me to worry about.

Fifth, it states that suicidal feelings themselves are traumatic. Yeah, you'd better believe it! Finally, it mentions that depression can be treated. That doesn't mean it will be treated. I've received treatment for depression for eleven years. I don't feel any better.

Oh well, I wish words could be my friend. O first few paragraphs of http://www.metanoia.org/suicide, will you be my friend?

2004-02-22T17:46:00.000-05:00

I've been busy trying to put together a FAQ about this blog over the past couple of days. Not because anybody told me to, but because I thought it would be helpful. In addition, I thought I would have fun doing it. I did. :)

That's why I haven't had the chance to write too much in the past few days. I met with my pdoc recently. I forget if I mentioned this here already, but he's a real piece of work, too. I guess he tries to care, but he ends up pissing me off more than most people do. I think he has a little overbearing streak. Sometimes I get the feeling he thinks he's so perfect that it must be my fault that I haven't gotten better yet. He acts as if it's impossible for him to make any mistakes.

At any rate, we spent some time talking about ECT. I don't think I'll get anywhere until I start getting those treatments. In the past, I always dismissed it as an act of barbarity that had no chance at all of working on me. How can it help me if it won't change any of the pathetic facts of my life? ECT won't magically give me a high-paying job or a girlfriend. I believe that these are the only two occurrences left that have any chance of making my life more bearable.

I've reconsidered this, though. ECT might be useful if it can change the way I react to events in life, i.e. if it can electrify the "giving up" response out of me. As I said in previous entries, right now I write from the point of view of a depressed person. Not only that, but I think, feel, act, and react like a depressed person would. If ECT can somehow change, or at least slow down that way of responding in me, I may have reason to hope. I wouldn't automatically decide that all actions were futile, that anything bad that can happen will happen, or that anything and everything I did was meaningless. Instead, I would at least give myself some additional time to think that through on a case-by-case basis before I jump to the "life is hopeless" conclusion.

As I described in a previous entry, I "learned to be helpless." I automatically decide that anything I do will not make a difference in my life. I do this without bothering to think through whether whatever I consider doing is actually futile or not. On the other hand, if I did give myself a chance to think it through, I could potentially decide that my actions do make a difference. This will at least give me a shot at changing my life, whereas I would have previously decided that I had no such chance. For example, imagine that somebody tells me that I should go out of my apartment today and do something. As of right now, I would tell that person to go fuck himself. I would decide automatically that getting out of my apartment just for the sake of getting out of my apartment is a waste of time for any reason. It seemed like it was always like that in the past. It was easier for me to believe that it would always be like that in the future rather than to try to think through for each given situation whether going out of my apartment would be helpful or not. ECT, however, makes that decision not so automatic. Therefore, after receiving ECT, I would take extra time to consider the person's suggestion. I wouldn't assume that going out of my apartment would be a waste of time. Instead, I would take the time to think about whether it would help me or not. It's as if I wouldn't immediately refer to my resumé of past catastrophes when making a decision. In fact, maybe the ECT will make me forget that resumé exists in the first place.

In any case, it will be interesting to me to compare my post-ECT entries in this journal to my pre-ECT entries.

2004-02-19T19:51:00.000-05:00

Guile
I've got it! I am fishing for sympathy! I never admitted this to myself before because I didn't want to sound like a pathetic loser. I've done elaborate dances for my entire life to avoid that. I won't feel ashamed of myself, though. I believe that it was a natural adaptation to my environment. I must have made the observation when I was very young that people with sicknesses or injuries received extra attention. They seemed to evoke emotional responses like sympathy from others. At that time, I never believed I was lovable (I never felt loved by my parents or anyone else). My brain had to come up with a way to cope with this specific pain. By doing so, it was only trying to fulfill an innate human need. It was a natural response. For example, when you're hungry, you don't have to "think" that you're hungry. Your brain automatically notices that one of your needs is not being met, whether you are consciously aware of it or not. Therefore, it must create a response that will satisfy this need. Today, it may tell you to buy food at the supermarket. To our ancestors, it might have said, "Go into the wild and hunt some game." Whatever it is, it's only doing so because it has to fulfill a need.

My brain crafted a behavioral response in order to feel loved by someone. Anyone. In turn, this would serve as evidence that I'm lovable. Other people love me, therefore I must be a lovable and valuable person. To my detriment, however, I also believed the inverse of this statement: if no one loves me, I must not be a lovable or valuable person. I.e., I'm worthless. To avoid that outcome, I had to seek as much love and attention as possible from other people. It's like intentionally walking around with a cast and crutches when you're not injured to get others to notice you and extort some kind of emotional response from them. In other words, I surreptitiously engaged in a conniving, underhanded, duplicitous, malicious, and manipulative ploy. This is one of the reasons why I adopted the "woe is me" attitude. Consequently, I'm always pessimistic about myself. I never look at the bright side of things. I always focus on my dark side and my dark past, present, and future. This is why I always sound so depressing!

So what does this mean? As I said earlier, my brain developed this response so that I could feel loved by someone. If I didn't behave this way, how else could I believe that I was a lovable person? What evidence would I have? The answer is that my brain believed this response elicited the most affection from other people. In my experience, I didn't receive as much affection from others if I tried any other ways. For example, let's assume that it's dinnertime. You plan to eat out at a restaurant, but you haven't decided yet which one. Imagine that all the restaurants are located equidistant from your home, and all of them share the exact same price for their food. The restaurants range from take-out joints to four-star cuisine. Which restaurant will you choose? Since all restaurants cost the same and are the same distance away, your brain selects the four-star restaurant because the food you eat there will satisfy your hunger better than any of the others.

In my experience, no other ways of behaving brought forth as much affection from others as putting myself down did. Whenever I would be myself, nobody ever paid attention to me. Everyone labeled me as dull and boring because I liked to talk about math and science, while everybody else liked to talk about sports and sex. Since I functioned normally, and the others unceremoniously chucked me into the dull and boring category, they had no motivation whatsoever to pay attention to me. Feeling sorry for myself was the only way that I could make others pay attention to me. I exerted a measure of control over them. It's as if I had said, "I command you to have affection for me," and they obeyed.

Finally, I cannot underestimate the importance of articulating this into writing. People suffering from depression are usually too depressed to perform such high-level cognitive functions. They go to their therapists and say, "I'm depressed." He or she knows exactly why he is depressed, but he doesn't have the energy, motivation, or presence of mind to formulate this into words. This could result in impeding his therapist from understanding him clearly enough. I don't know of how much importance this is, however. I've heard of people who take antidepressants or undergo ECT and feel completely normal again for the rest of their lives. I'm hoping that the way I've described my experience of depression here has some value, and I hope that one day it will be helpful to others.
--

Having said the above, this will probably be the last entry on my history of depression. My entries here will still be cheerless and depressing. The difference is that I probably won't talk about my past that much. At this point, I believe I've written enough (or at least covered the most important points) in this blog to explain who I am, why I'm depressed, and what events caused my depression. If I commit suicide, I have no need to write a suicide note. Everything is right here. Of course, I don't believe this world deserves a suicide note from me, or from anyone for that matter. I have no obligation to give explanations or justifications for my actions.

As I said, everything is right here, unless BlogSpot goes down for some reason. Google no longer caches my pages, probably because of its blatantly abject contents. So, these pages aren't mirrored anywhere. I guess you wouldn't want little kids to type some random words in a search engine, end up on this blog, and read something about wiping my dick on some chick's hair. "Daddy, what does 'cum' mean?" Then again, I thought that was what Google's SafeSearch was supposed to do. Maybe they thought what I wrote was so reprehensible that they didn't want to have any hand in perpetuating its existence. Oh well, it's their search engine, so they can do whatever they want with it.

If I die, no one will probably know that this blog exists. Even while I'm alive, no one knows that this blog exists. :) When I started to get into this, I submitted this page to scores of search engines in a futile attempt to advertise it. I had no idea how ridiculously impossible it was to promote a blog. Today, this blog still gets no hits. I got more hits on a personal home page I created back in 1995 than this blog does now. This is the case even when I enlisted the help of promotional sites that specifically state they will send tremendous amounts of traffic. I guess that somehow they consider zero a tremendous amount. Of the few individuals who do visit, the average time they spend on this page is probably about five seconds. Posting a blog on the web is like writing a New York Times Best-Seller on crumpled pieces of scrap paper and throwing them into the wind. (Some NYT Best-Sellers deserve to be written on scattered pieces of scrap paper instead of being in print.) I think that even if I posted the cure for cancer, passwords to every adult site on the Internet, and nude photos of every female celebrity here, still no one would notice. Talk about suffering in silence. Sadly, if no one's reading this blog, then no one's reading this either, so the self-referential irony I'm describing is lost as well. I'm like a stand-up comic performing in an empty room.

The only way this blog could be made known is if Blogger, BlogSpot, or one of the search engines to which I submitted this blog makes the connection between it and me. Only these web sites know the real life person behind this blog. Therefore, I only have one chance: someone who works for one of these organizations must become aware of my suicide via a newspaper or some other means. If this person discovers my name in their databases, then from there they'll be able to connect the dots from my name to this blog. Of course, this doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of happening. First, the media almost never reports suicides unless the deceased is someone noteworthy. Otherwise, the only way to find out about a suicide is to go out of your way to a police station and find out if they filed any recent reports of suicide. Thus, Blogger and the other organizations have no way to become aware of my suicide by chance. Second, in the highly unlikely event that someone from one of these organizations does notice my suicide, the chances that this person will come across my name, or any name for that matter, in their databases are slim to none. No one can possibly know the names of every single person registered in their databases, especially organizations that have large numbers of registered users. (People with photographic memories might be an exception.) Otherwise, this person would have to go out of his or her way to perform a search for my name. What possible motivation could a person have to search their databases for a specific name just because that person committed suicide? I'm certain that employees of these organizations have much more important work to do. Third, this person must have the patience to sit down and actually read this entire blog. Fourth, he or she has to decide whether what he just read is important enough to let someone else know about it, like the police, my parents, or the media (not a chance). He could just as likely conclude that he's reading the author's fictional, albeit extensive account of the thoughts that some imaginary depressed person would have. Or, he may think that it's just nonsense spewed from some psychopath, akin to the Unabomber's Manifesto. It's not going to happen.

Eppur Si Muove!
As an aside, if you temporarily disregard his mail-bombing activities, Ted Kaczynski was a bright guy. He also had to endure a torturous childhood. He was also extremely shy and never socialized with other children. (Hmmm, this is getting scary.) If I met Ted in real life, we would actually have a lot of things in common. He's like a long lost brother. I guess the only difference is instead of mail-bombing others, I'll be mail-bombing myself.

I wish some fucking psychologist out there would get with the program and realize how fatal the consequences of being shy and socially isolated can be. Then, he should let as many people as possible know about it. Social isolation is the seed of many deviant behaviors. If someone took the time and effort to help Ted feel comfortable with the other kids, he or she would have saved the lives of the people Ted would have otherwise killed. Of course, there's no way of guaranteeing that. I'm asserting that, all things being equal, if Ted felt more comfortable and spent more time with the other kids, this must influence his behavior in some way. In my opinion, it would have been enough to cause him to decide not to send out his mail bombs. For example, suppose Ted weren't so isolated and he had some close friends whom he could trust. Even if Ted still considered sending out his mail bombs in this case, he would have brought it up with his friends if he were truly close to them. Unless his friends were exactly of the same mind as Ted, they would have definitely talked him out of it. If he had really good friends, they might ask him questions in order to find out his underlying motivation for sending out these mail bombs. For example, let's say he told them he wanted to kill people because he hated humanity. From there, his friends could recommend plenty of alternatives besides killing people that would allow him to express his hatred. Or even better, they may try to persuade him to think that human beings really aren't such a bad lot.

Isn't the stuff I'm saying obvious? Am I the only person who is aware of this, and everyone else is clueless? Who am I, Galileo? Am I the only person who knows that the earth revolves around the sun, while everyone else is too boneheaded to understand?

Based on this instance, helping out a shy kid can save lives.

2004-02-18T16:13:00.000-05:00

I really should take a shower. Who would've ever thought that taking a shower required effort? If I don't have to go anywhere on a particular day, I usually never take a shower unless I can't stand my own stink. I think my personal record for the longest period of time without taking a shower is about a month. After two weeks, however, I knew I stunk to high heaven. Luckily, I still have enough sense to clean myself if I have to go somewhere outside of home.

I still feel depressed. Last night I actually managed to sleep overnight, the time most people go to sleep. Previously, I would be awake during the night and asleep during the day. I never particularly cared about sleep. Back in the days when I still had drive and ambition, I could go days without needing any shuteye. That's yet another reason to be depressed. In the past, my actions were meaningful enough to the point where sleeping became a low priority. Today, my actions have no meaning. It's like when you have an empty stomach, you feel really hungry, you can't concentrate as well, and your stomach makes all kinds of grumbling noises. The purpose of the stomach is to digest food. When the stomach does not contain any objects to digest, it does not operate the way it was designed to. Hence, the grumbling noises. I believe the mind works in the same way. If my mind is empty, and I have nothing with which to occupy it, it makes grumbling noises of a different kind. One of the mind's higher cognitive functions is to think about something. When the mind doesn't have anything to think about, it also doesn't operate the way it was designed to. It churns on itself, and I believe that's what gives me the feeling of my mind being torn apart.

I wish I could sleep all the time, permanently. I spent this morning trying to give myself something to do for the day. I tried to do this in order to avoid that intensely painful feeling of not being able to come up with anything to do. After an hour passed, I failed. I can't even look at porn and jerk off anymore because the goddamn antidepressants they force-feed me fucked up my ability to become horny. I can't even get a hard-on if I tried. Now that's depressing. Don't pdocs realize that having to take these pills just adds to my depression (or any guy's depression, for that matter)? Back in my teens, I could get hard just by looking at a woman who had any hint of being attractive, even if she were fully decked out from head to toe in winter clothing.

I decided to do what I usually do, which is to guess what to do moment-by-moment in an unfocused way. I would never have a specific goal or plan to achieve that goal. Given this case, it might seem to make sense to make up any goal just to keep myself occupied. I refuse to do that. It goes against my principles to attribute meaning to actions that I know are meaningless, or at best insignificant. This also harks back to my higher functioning days. As I said earlier, at that time my actions had meaning. If I wanted to work more efficiently, I needed to prioritize my activities. This causes problems today because the only goals I can set for myself are the same goals that were of low priority in the past. For example, today I could set a goal of cleaning my apartment. Maintaining a clean environment was never a priority in the past. Back then, my room was a mess, and it stayed a mess. I had all kinds of crap on the floor -- lecture notes, old exams, assorted garbage, and week-old ham sandwiches. As long as I knew where everything was, cleaning my room never held much importance. It was more important for me to calculate the Laplace transform of a Bessel function than to make sure my room was clean. Given this situation, how is it possible not to be depressed?

2004-02-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

Zero
My mind is completely empty. I spent the last few hours sleeping my life away. I've spent most of my life sleeping the hours away.

This emptiness is unfathomable. I can't even think of anything to write in this blog. I feel overwhelmingly depressed, as usual. It just never ends, and I never feel like doing anything about it. This is hell.

If I had a weak constitution, as I had in the past, in moments like this I would probably head straight for the nearest hospital immediately. Now my constitution is slightly higher only because I realized staying in a hospital is worse than lying in bed at home. At home, it at least feels like home, and I have all my material possessions around. That makes me sick, because I try not to be a materialistic person at all. People like that have no depth or creativity, in my opinion. At the hospital, I would mope around without my stuff, and I would be surrounded by strangers. In other words, although I don't really give a shit about my life, I give enough of a shit to care about my environment, i.e. the home or the hospital.

Despite all this, life at home is not exactly a barrel of laughs. The social isolation is killing me. It makes me feel as if a powerful, invisible force inside my head is tearing my mind into shreds. This is all I can write.

2004-02-17T17:08:00.000-05:00

On Assholes
Still the same... No progress. Yesterday my aunt invited my family over for dinner and asked me to take a look at her computer. That would be slightly interesting, I thought. When in front of a computer, I'm usually immersed in whatever I'm doing. That causes me to lose sense of time, which is important because it distracts me from the torment of my own reality.

We had some spaghetti, which tasted pretty good. When I was in the middle of eating my meal, a person I never saw in my entire life waltzed right in and joined us for dinner. That made me livid. My mother told me before we left that this dinner was strictly supposed to be a family affair, i.e. no outsiders. I was furious, but thanks to a lifetime of repressing my emotions, I looked composed and undisturbed. To me, only being around close relatives is entirely different from being around relatives and strangers. With close relatives, I can let my hair down, so to speak, and I have no need to worry about anything. I can walk around wearing nothing but briefs without offending others. (Yes, I wear briefs, not boxers. Boxers are too airy for me. I like my genitals snug.) I can walk around with my hair messed up if I want. I can pick my nose and fart as much as I want. In contrast, I absolutely hate having strangers around. I fucking have to put my guard up. I have to act polite and friendly, which sucks.

I found out later that this guy was a friend of my second cousin. He likes to drop in to my aunt's house at random times and hang out, uninvited. I detest people who do that. I'm the type of person who hates surprises. I always want to know exactly what the fuck is going to happen well in advance. What's more, the second this guy opened his mouth I knew I didn't like him. I can't explain how, but with certain people, I have a knack for knowing exactly what their personality is as soon as they speak. This guy was incredibly annoying. He spoke with this loud, nasal, intrusive voice. He was also one of those egotistic motherfuckers who think they're king of the world. I could tell by listening to the statements he made and the way he said them. Poor assholes like him have to inflate their own ego just to give their lives meaning.

I was in the middle of eating, and I wasn't full. Nevertheless, about 30 seconds after he barged in, I excused myself from the table feeling extremely pissed off. It became apparent to me that the only way I could bear the rest of the evening was to lock myself in the room with my aunt's computer. I did exactly that. I made sure I would never be in the same room with that asshole and would never hear his arrogant voice. Thankfully, I felt much better. The computer itself had a bunch of garbage appearing at startup, so I got rid of them. I noticed Kazaa and I was about to uninstall that adware-laden monstrosity, but my aunt told me that she still wanted the ability to connect to their network if necessary. So I couldn't get rid of the mountains of spyware and adware installed on her computer, since doing so would break Kazaa. That eliminated about 95% of the things I intended to do. The only thing left was to show her how to set her own desktop wallpaper. Much to my dismay, since I didn't literally lock myself in that room, that asshole (I never bothered to learn his name) intruded and examined what I was doing. He was bored and just decided to wander in. I would rather have had him wander somewhere else, preferably several miles away. He looked over my shoulder to inspect what I was doing. As you can probably guess, I hate people who do that, too. He repeatedly asked me what I was doing, and to top it all off he told me what I should do. Not only was he an asshole, but he was a know-it-all asshole. He gave me idiotic suggestions on what to do. Fucking asshole didn't know that my knowledge and experience with computers exceeded his by about a billion times. When he realized that I completely ignored him, he eventually left the room.

That ended up being an infuriating experience. Unfortunately, as of today I vow never to set foot in my aunt's house again, except in extremely rare circumstances. Even if I do go, I won't be caught unprepared as I was last night. I learned my lesson. Next time, I'll at least know that that asshole, including any other assholes like him, may barge in at any time. Bring 'em on. I'll be ready.

2004-02-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

A Collection Of Essays: The Origin Of Failure
(Actually, it isn't, but based on its length, it could pass as a dead look-alike.)

The Best Laid Schemes O' Mice An' Men Gang Aft Agley
Just checking in... I feel the same, as usual. Empty and depressed. I don't have the energy or motivation to do anything about it. The following explains why. (I apologize for the length. I usually try to write as succinctly as possible, but in this case, I didn't want to leave out any details. I don't remember if I mentioned any of the following here in the past. Depressed people don't usually care to remember anything.)

Starting in high school, I created a very specific and detailed plan for my future. I was going to study such-and-such in college (sorry, I have to keep it classified). Immediately afterward, I planned to get an entry-level job doing such-and-such. I planned it so that every possible facet of my life was covered. I would earn a living by having a career as a such-and-such. The friends I made in college would be my social life. Making close friends in college would cover my emotional life. I thought that this plan would take care of every possible contingency. This process was similar to making a blueprint for building a house, or planning a military battle. First, you outline your plan of attack. Then you take care of your army's needs, the same way I took care of my needs. You make sure you have a supply route, you make sure you have medical personnel nearby to take care of any wounded, and you need a path of retreat in the event your attack fails.

My supposedly foolproof plan proved to be foolish. The first chink in the armor was the start of my depression, caused by a relationship issue I had at the end of my first year in college. Before that, I socialized as often as I could in order to make as many friends as possible. My efforts paid off -- people called me all the time, and I got tons of personal e-mail. However, when the depression began, I started to isolate myself. I was too mired in my own misery, and I had no interest in interacting with anybody. Therefore, this shattered the plans I made to cover my social and emotional life. Today, no one calls me. Every time I come home to my apartment and the light on my answering machine remains steady, especially when I've been gone for a long time, I feel the urge to kill myself. Friendlessness. I'm aware that I reap what I sow. Nevertheless, the fact that no one ever calls me further proves my worthlessness. I never receive any personal e-mail or snail mail, either. Even something as trivial as my mailbox consisting entirely of spam makes me want to commit suicide.

All was not lost, however, because I did craft a plan "B". In the event that my social and/or emotional life failed, I could devote myself to my career, and that would have been enough to keep me going. I loved what I was studying, and I looked forward to working after graduation. It wouldn't be a fulfilling life without social or emotional connections, but it was enough for me to find life still worth living. Then and now, I believe the most important thing in life and for humanity is the creation of knowledge. That one constant separates us today from our caveman ancestors. It leaves a permanent mark for humanity because it survives us after we die. Therefore, I believed my life only had meaning as long as I contributed to the pool of human knowledge. No other actions held any significance.

My enduring faith in scientific progress came about from my childhood. (Yeah, I know, yet another one of those corny flashbacks to childhood. Nonetheless, it's true -- for most people, the development of their present behavior originated in childhood.) There weren't very many ways to feel good about myself when I was growing up. My parents were mostly indifferent to me. They never did things like ask me how my day at school went, nor did we ever display physical or emotional affection to each other. My peers at school ostracized me because I was the class nerd. Only my teachers gave me any positive feedback. They praised me for my academic performance. Therefore, I felt that academics was the only thing worth pursuing. I actually hoped to be a professor or researcher in my field. I eagerly looked forward to the day that I would achieve this. Making friends or having a social life wasn't worth the effort because it wasn't as rewarding. I'm not trying to sound pompous or conceited, but I believed that the prodigious accomplishments I made guaranteed my dreams would come true. When I was a kid, the first time I took the SATs was in the 7th grade. I got a higher score than that of most high school seniors. By the time I was a high school senior, I was told that I was smarter than 99% of the population based on my test scores. For Christ's sake, I graduated from an Ivy League university. (I'm sparing my alma mater the embarrassment of being loosely associated with me by not mentioning their name.) Premier United States east coast universities don't hand out diplomas to just anyone. The average earned income of alumni from my school is over $200,000 per year. (Had my staggering income of $0.00 not knock down the average so much, that number would be higher.) You tell me: how can someone who's basically told that he's God when he's a kid possibly be happy with his life when he becomes not only mortal, but a bum by the time he's an adult? I'm sure it happens, but I've personally never heard of anything like that. Most importantly, I've never heard how they went on to live a happy life afterward, if they managed to do so. In the news, you never hear things like:

"John Q. Doe's business failed miserably today thanks to sheer stupidity on his behalf. Doe managed to achieve this spectacular debacle in spite of his carrying several advanced degrees and his Ivy League credentials. 'I just didn't have a clue what I was doing when I started this business,' he responded pathetically when queried by reporters. Doe was forced to move out of his stately multi-million dollar residence in Southampton, NY. He decided his next move would be to relocate to the bright lights of New York City. 'That's where all the action is anyway,' he cheerfully added. Doe currently resides in a medium-sized cardboard box on the sidewalk at the northwest corner of 42nd St. and 10th Ave."

Returning to the subject of my failed life plan, the final strand was cut a few years ago when I was laid off my job. The cut didn't actually happen the day I was let go. It happened when I couldn't find another job afterward. That was the last straw. Since the status of my social and emotional life went unchanged, the failure of my plan was complete.

This is important because I don't want to do anything now. I worked extremely hard and made many sacrifices to make my plan work. I endured a miserable life because I expected a payoff to come in the future. It never came. I felt that all the hard work and pain I went through was a useless waste of time. I placed myself in overdrive -- while in college I pulled all-nighters to study for exams, and I had a job at the same time. This is the reason why I have no energy or motivation to do anything today. What's the point? I'll just fail anyway, the way I stupendously failed with the first plan I created. Putting effort into doing anything would be futile and meaningless. When I put myself in overdrive, and I still failed, it was over. No matter how hard I worked, I would still fail. This is how my life became meaningless.

Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman, a professor of psychology, conducted an experiment in the mid 1960's that exactly illustrates my situation. The experiment, as described in his book Learned Optimism, entailed administering mild electric shocks to three dogs. In the first part of the experiment, the first dog was administered shocks that he could shut off by pushing a panel. The second dog was administered shocks, but he had no control over them. He would not be able to turn them off, no matter what he did. The third dog got no shocks at all. The second part of the experiment involved three large boxes, each with two compartments separated by a low wall. Each dog was placed into his own box. This time all the dogs were administered shocks that they could escape by jumping into the other compartment. The results of the experiment: the first and the third dog jumped over the wall. The second dog gave up, lay down, and let himself continue receiving the shocks. I am the second dog. I learned that no matter what I did, I could not stop the shocks. I could not stop failure from happening to me. Thus, my behavior can be explained perfectly. Since nothing I did made any difference in the outcome, I just gave up. I lay in bed all day. I let myself continue to suffer the pain of failure. I'm not trying to jump over the wall into the other compartment, where a potentially better life for me awaits my arrival.

People have told me countless times not to let what happened to me make me give up. That seems to make sense, but the energy isn't there. Imagine I ran a marathon, except that once I finally reached the finish line, the marathon coordinator tells me that I ran the wrong marathon. At this point, if I want to complete the correct marathon, I have to run all the way back to the starting point, then run the correct path to the correct finish line. What the fuck!? I spent all my energy just getting to this finish line. Now you're telling me to go all the way back and then do the entire thing all over again over a different path? How is that even possible? If I owned a vehicle and my fuel tank were empty, my vehicle wouldn't run. Period. It wouldn't move unless a tow truck came along and hauled it away. This is why I come across to everybody as a needy and lazy son of a bitch. People look at me and think I'm a normal person, so they wonder why I do nothing in life. They don't see my empty fuel tank, and my tow truck never came by. They don't know that before I ran out of fuel, I wasn't lazy. I was hard working, and I wasn't needy. Because I believed in my plan, I believed that I could be self-reliant and take care of myself, without needing anybody's help.

I just can't run another marathon. Some therapists have told me that "according to the theory," activity overcomes depression. If I start to do just one thing, gradually I'll gain momentum to be able to do more things, and eventually I'll become a functional, working person again. Wrong. Because of what I said earlier, I need a plan if I want to get anywhere. My original plan failed on the social and emotional goals. How will I achieve that in my new plan? My original plan satisfied my self-esteem because I would have a good career and I would be recognized for my work. How the fuck can I have self-esteem sweeping floors at McDonald's? I need solid answers to these and more questions if I want to have a plan that has a shot at working. I can't plan a military battle without knowing where my army's supplies or medics are coming from. If I don't have a path of retreat... I get killed.

2004-02-16T02:52:00.000-05:00

I feel like the blood inside of me is drying up, slowly taking my life away. I don't know what kind of value I can attach to these empty times. All I can say is that I exist, I breathe, I feel, and I think, though not in a focused way. In this "empty" mode, my thoughts are never focused enough to articulate. These endless hours have populated my life ever since my depression started. If I listen to my mind, my life is not worth enduring this suffering, and it should end. Otherwise, I would have to accept the fact that the rest of my life will be completely barren and empty. That's not life. That's torture.

I can't even distract myself long enough to try to think of something besides depression. My identity has become depression. Whenever someone tries to get to know me, everything I say originates from the perspective of my depression. I have to explain any and every event of my life through depression. My interests are depression. My hobbies are depression. I do depression for a living. (Though, the pay is very low. It's very tough to get by with an annual earned income of zero dollars.) My favorite activity is depression. My favorite type of music is depression. My favorite TV show is depression. My favorite radio station is depression. My favorite sport is depression. My favorite game to play is depression. The favorite books I've read are depression. My favorite topic of conversation is depression. My favorite place to shop is depression. My favorite web site is depression. My favorite color is depression. My favorite fruit is depression.

2004-02-15T22:51:00.000-05:00

The Psych-Helmet 2000
I must carry on with the depression, even though at times it feels unbearable. It reminds me of my profound emptiness again. I spent most of today lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, immersed in emptiness. To make matters worse, I have nothing to do until next Thursday. The only thing I can think of doing between now and then is practicing my imitation of a human vegetable. I think I've gotten pretty good at it. Too bad lying awake in bed isn't a sport, either. I've gotten good at that, too.

I wish there were a way that I could turn myself off instead of having to be awake during my idle times. If I had a social life, turning myself off would be a bad idea because over time I'd lose contact with any friends I had. Since I have no social contacts, that wouldn't be a problem for me. Turning myself off wouldn't make any difference. Many times, I've had this fantasy where I turn myself off until the year 2500. By then, I believe that they have an invention that gets rid of depression safely and permanently. They call it the Psych-Helmet 2000. I put it on, and first it scans my entire brain and detects any signs of mental illness. If it finds anything, then it painlessly injects nanomachines into my brain that have the ability to remove the mental illness. By that time, medical science will have complete and detailed information about the functions of every individual neuron in the brain. They will also have maps of neuronal arrangements associated with every mental illness. Based on these maps, the nanomachines will rearrange the individual neurons into the correct order, i.e. the order where the mental illness is no longer present. Then the nanomachines harmlessly leave my body, I take the helmet off, and I go back to being a normal, functional human being again. No muss, no fuss.

2004-02-15T14:08:00.000-05:00

Bits and Bytes
I miss one of my favorite old television shows, "Bits and Bytes." I actually wouldn't know nearly as enough about computers as I do now if not for this program. It was a half-hour educational program on PBS about computers. It was produced in Canada, and it started in the early 80's. To this day, I haven't forgotten the names of the hosts -- Luba Goy and Billy Van. I loved the way it presented as many computing concepts as simply as possible. They even had a cartoon character to help explain. They even dedicated one show to BASIC programming. At the time, I knew a little BASIC (as much as an 11 year-old could know). Watching that one show made my interest and skill at programming skyrocket! Luba Goy was actually teaching a regular, everyday guy like Billy Van how to program! When's the last time you saw a program on television that taught you how to code, much less a guy who had neither knowledge nor technical aptitude with computers? They devoted another show to online services. Even at that time, I learned about the wealth of information available that I could access. That's when I first discovered CompuServe and got my first online account. I still remember my ID#: 72767,2117. I also used my 300-baud clunker of a modem to dial other BBS's that I also learned about thanks to the show. (Did you know that if you tried to download a typical 650MB CD-ROM image with a 300-baud modem, it would take 210 days, 8 hours, 41 minutes, and 57.33 seconds, or roughly 7 months to complete?) I always cancelled anything I was doing so that I would never miss a show. Hell, I even learned a few phrases in French!

What the fuck is up with these asinine TV shows like Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and American Idol? Personally, I'm waiting for a TV series that will explain the fundamentals of operating system design to the Joe Blows of the world. And I want to see it on FOX. :)

Ave et vale, Billy Van Evera. I salute you. Though you are gone, you will not be forgotten.

2004-02-14T20:40:00.000-05:00

False Advertising
I wonder if I made a mistake when I described this blog as a journal of depression and suicide. It started out that way, but gradually it became peppered (if not flooded) with self-indulgent fantasies, inapposite memoirs, self-referential blather, personal opinions, immature preaching, irrational defensiveness, narrow-minded cynicism, and more. Maybe I should asterisk this blog's description with the aforementioned "features."

I still feel depressed. I know I'm repeating myself, but I'm probably going to say that about a million more times over the next few weeks. I think I've said that before.

I had a bag of cheese puffs for breakfast. So wonderfully nutritious. I felt slightly nauseous afterward.

I've almost always felt depressed. Sometimes I wonder how a person can possibly withstand his or her life with so much sadness, especially if the person has no supports. In my case, I really don't know. What comes to mind is that I'm forcing myself to live despite all this misery. It seems that the best end for any person forced to suffer through such a life is to be put out of his misery. Why was I born? I never asked to be born. I was brought into this world. Why must I suffer so?

2004-02-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

"Is't Possible?"
I remember one time in high school where we had to act. I'm the type of person who couldn't act if my life depended on it, so I was understandably nervous. Our teacher split our class up into twos. Then he assigned random passages in literature to each pair for us to act out. I was paired up with a kid named T.P. whom I didn't particularly like very much. If we could choose our partners instead of having them assigned to us, I would definitely have not picked him. He was brash and rowdy, whereas I was quiet and reserved. We were like oil and water. He pretty much ignored me, even though we were in the same class for the entire year. When we were paired together, I was pretty surprised that he was very nice to me. I always assumed as far back as I can remember that any individual who ignored me didn't want to have anything to do with me. So I expected him to be disgusted and very annoyed that he had to work with me. I felt a little better that this wasn't the case.

The passage assigned to us was an excerpt from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Personally, I hate reading Shakespeare. But since so many people revere him, I decided that I just lacked the ability to appreciate his work. It's like those Magic Eye stereograms. Either you have the ability to see them, or you don't.

Anyway, the selected scene only involved two characters. I was to play one of them, and T.P. would play the other. When I first read my lines, I wondered how the hell I was going to perform this on stage. I couldn't read anything from Shakespeare, much less act it. The words resembled English, but I could never understand their meaning. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to adjust my acting according to the text. I.e., if I was supposed to look puzzled, I had no idea when to do that based on reading the text; if I was supposed to sound angry, I also had no idea; and so on.

So I found the whole assignment incredibly difficult. I had to force myself to memorize lines that I couldn't understand. I worked very hard -- in the days leading up to the performance, I practiced in front of a mirror many times. The only line I can clearly remember to this day was, "Is't possible?" Everything else was nearly impossible for me to memorize, but this line was the simplest of all. I also remembered it because it sounded like a pretty weird but funny thing to say.

T.P. and I never actually practiced together beforehand. That was a pretty important thing not to do, but I never asked him to practice with me because I was still terrified of him. Even though he was nice to me, I felt our personalities were so dissonant that it would have been very uncomfortable if we did practice together.

Predictably, our performance was a disaster. To begin with, being on stage made me feel nervous. For the initial part of our performance, we recited our lines well enough. So far so good. Later, however, everything got messed up somehow. I don't know if it was because he skipped a line, or I forgot a line, but our act became totally out of sync. Not only did I feel so embarrassed, but also I was scared that T.P. would get really pissed off at me. I was so confused that at one point, I just said the line, "Is't possible?" out of the fucking blue. I was positive I said that line at the wrong time. Luckily, T.P. was very understanding, and he wasn't pissed at me at all. The funniest thing was that we actually ended up okay. Despite the fact that the conversation we acted out sounded like absolute nonsense, we never broke down at any point during our hopeless attempt to act. I think in the end, this impressed our teacher the most. He knew that we recited our lines completely out of sequence, yet since we didn't break down and never gave up, he decided to give us a B. I was expecting an F.

Afterwards, I was relieved that it was all over. Unfortunately, T.P. and I never spoke to each other again. It's not because he didn't like me. During the time we worked together, he always treated me with respect and understanding. I think he knew that it would have been impossible for us to get along, so we just went our separate ways. The sad part was that I ended up wasting my time by being afraid of him. If I hadn't been afraid, we would have ended up exactly the same way, but I would have spared myself the unnecessary torture and terror.

The Un-Confidence Game
I have to tell the following story -- it opened my eyes about the true meaning of confidence.

During my stay in college, I usually spent weekends with the boys at a very popular bar on campus. One weekend, one of my buddies invited a friend, G.C., from his home town to join us. They came from the same high school. G.C. was only 16 and was still in high school, but he had a fake id. He was a short, skinny guy who looked like a dork and was an obvious 16 year-old, but the bouncers checked his id and let him in anyway. My buddies and I were all either 19 or 20 years old at the time, so we needed fake id's as well. However, we at least looked like we were over 21.

We came into the bar pretty late -- about half an hour before closing time. The bar was still packed, though, and there were still lots of sweet honeys around. My buddies and I really didn't do much -- we just ordered drinks and checked out the scene. The first thing G.C. did, however, was to get himself plastered. After all, a 16 year-old having unfettered access to alcohol doesn't happen every day. But being a 16 year-old, he was also intensely horny.

He looked around and saw a group of hot chicks sitting by themselves. There were no guys around. Showing absolutely no fear, he just sat right down at their table without even knowing them. We couldn't make out what he was saying, but he obviously looked like he was hitting on them. I wished I knew what he was saying. What surprised me, even to this day, was that after a while, one of the chicks actually let him make out with her. It lasted at least five minutes. This girl was incredibly hot. She had long, straight, brown hair and a perfect body. She looked to be around 19 years old. The moment I witnessed this escapade, I was extremely shocked and painfully jealous. If I got to make out with a hot 19 year-old chick when I was 16, I would have cum in my pants right then and there.

By this time the bar was closing. One of the bartenders actually had to break them apart physically. After we left the bar, G.C. didn't follow the girls. I think what happened was that these chicks went to the bar earlier, but they weren't interested in any of the guys that were there. They hung around just in case some cute guys did come along. I guess that by the time G.C. shamelessly inserted himself among them, they were too drunk and bored from sitting around the entire time without anything happening that one of the chicks just let G.C. get some action from her so that the night wouldn't have been a complete waste of time. When the bar was closing, she realized she just made out with a 16 year-old dork and got the fuck away from him as fast as possible. I was still persistently jealous because the damage was done -- even though the chick would have nothing to do with him afterwards, G.C. got more action that night than I've had in a lifetime. I learned the lesson that if you want to score, having confidence is more important than avoiding stupidity.

2004-02-13T21:59:00.000-05:00

De-structive Criticism
I’m feeling very depressed again today, in spite of feeling better earlier this week. Someone called me a crybaby today. Oh well. My natural instinct is to feel hurt, as I thought all human beings would. But I'm supposed to tell myself things like, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me," or, "Words can't bring me down," from Christina Aguilera.

I actually received more negative responses than positive. I guess I should have expected as much from the Internet if I write this kind of stuff. Maybe this resulted from writing the other things that had nothing to do with depression. I only wanted to have the freedom to express myself, whether it had to do with depression or not. Actually, there is a connection: individuals who do not get to express themselves freely may react in many ways, including becoming depressed. It just amazes me how callous and insensitive people can be to a genuinely depressed person like me. Sure, I believe in free speech and freedom of expression as much as the next guy. People should be able to say whatever they want. To me, however, this just gives more evidence in favor of the assertion I made earlier that human beings are intrinsically evil. How is it at all possible, given this experience, to believe that humans are good at all?

Unconstructive criticism is an interesting phenomenon. It's the easiest and simplest thing for a person to say. It requires no thought; he or she is only revealing his natural reaction to whatever he is criticizing. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the least helpful form of feedback to the one being criticized. It takes much more thought and effort instead to sit a person down and say something supportive like, "Listen, I know you're proud of what you've written, but you should know that it might cause some people to think of you as a crybaby. If instead you did such-and-such, people will be less apt to think that. Or, if you told yourself so-and-so, you wouldn't feel as bad about yourself."

Alternatively, I could tell myself that I shouldn't care about what other people think. However, what if the other person's criticism is accurate? Wouldn't it help me in that instance to pay attention to the criticism? For example, let's say that someone tells me that I'm a worthless, good-for-nothing piece of shit. If this were in fact true, wouldn't it be to my advantage to listen to him? Shouldn't it motivate me to perform actions that would make me a more productive member of society (assuming that I know what those actions are, since the person criticizing me is not inclined to reveal them)? Suppose, however, that this person's criticism was false. Instead, the person criticizing me made a poor judgment, because I know for a fact that I already am a productive person. In that case, it would not be to my advantage to listen to him.

So the important question becomes, am I a productive member of society or not? Since the answer to this question is subjective, this causes a dilemma. Should I just ignore him if I really am a productive member of society? Or, should I listen to him because I'm a productive member of society, but I need to be more productive? What if I don't know how to be more productive, since the person criticizing me isn't telling me? What if he doesn't know how? What if all he knows is that I'm worthless, and he's implying that I should take it upon myself to do exhaustive research on precisely how to be more productive? What if I fail to find any such information? Wouldn't it be logical, then, to conclude that I really am a worthless, good-for-nothing piece of shit? Since it is impossible to know the answers to these questions beforehand, the best possible response is that I should care about what other people think. In the case that the person's criticisms are accurate, if I listen to him, I would be motivated to improve myself. If I don't listen to him, I would be missing an opportunity to learn something that would improve myself. In the case that the person's criticisms are false, I can simply ignore them.

Maybe what would help me most is to stop considering myself a member of Homo sapiens. Sure, I share the same body parts, but the similarity ends there. My brain operates on an entirely different frequency than everyone else. I think differently, I act differently, I make decisions differently, I see the world differently, I have different interests, I have different values, I have different ideas, I have different goals, I have different priorities, and so on. I don't belong on this goddamn planet. I'm like one of those radio stations at the end of the dial that no one listens to. It's the best radio station to me, but not to anyone else. Since no one else listens to it, it gets low ratings. When a radio station gets low ratings, it shuts down. It goes off the air and out of business because its operating costs exceed the revenue generated. My operating costs glaringly exceed the satisfaction and happiness generated. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that it's time for me to shut down, go off the air, and go out of business for the last time.

Oh well... If expressing my feelings means being a crybaby, so be it. I should look on the bright side. If people say it to me often enough, I'll just get used to it, and it'll no longer bother me. I hope so.

2004-02-13T05:04:00.000-05:00

Mind Games
An event that occurred last Monday caused me to rethink my attitude toward life. I imagined having to play in a basketball game. My team consisted of normal, everyday guys who had no basketball skills. The opposing team had the greatest basketball players of all time, including Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, and Shaquille O’Neal, among others. The game was to be broadcast on national television. All of the media buzzed about the game, including newspapers, TV, and radio. Masses of reporters gathered for a packed press conference before the game, where I had to answer questions for the media. One reporter asked, “So how do you expect to win this game, given that the odds against your team winning are greater than the odds against someone winning ten Powerball jackpots in a row?” I paused for a moment. If it was so unlikely for my team to win, why should we bother playing at all if the outcome was predetermined?

I considered this for a long while. Gradually, I came to believe that the key difference was psychological. I don’t have any control over the other team. I can’t put a hex on them and make them play badly. I can control my own mind, and I can control what I say to my teammates to motivate us to win. Most of the other people talked about how heavily outmatched we were and how the opposing team was going to walk all over us. If I, as a player on my team, bought into this, then we might as well have thrown in the towel and forfeited the game immediately. I believed that we would lose, as the statistics ordained, and it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The difference is that I can’t think like this going into the game if I wanted to give my team any chance of winning. I have to put myself in the frame of mind that causes me to perform at the highest level possible. I have to believe that if we play our hearts out, it’ll make a difference.

We decided to believe in ourselves. We went ahead and played the game, but we lost by 148 points. Even if this meant that by our attitude we avoided losing by 150 points, it was worthwhile. By believing that we had no chance of winning, our fate was sealed. Instead, by believing in ourselves, we gave ourselves a better chance, even if we still ended up losing.

I wondered if other people thought this way about their lives in general. Do people selectively ignore negative qualities or facts about themselves on purpose in order to give themselves a happy life? I used to think that this was the same thing as living a lie, or “living in denial.” When I interact with people in a social situation, or any other situation for that matter, how can I just choose to ignore the fact that I’m fat, I’m weird, I’m lazy, I’m a coward, I’m old, I’m shy, I’m awkward, I have no friends, I have no hobbies, I have no money, I have no car, I have no job, I have no career, I live in my own filth in an apartment that looks like an abandoned warehouse and smells like a sewer, and so on? But maybe it’s not a matter of living a lie. Maybe it’s a matter of doing what I can to give myself the best chance of winning in life. It didn’t matter that my team had absolutely no basketball skills. It didn’t matter that the opposing team was immensely quicker and more agile than we were. What mattered was that we took charge over the things we could control. If we could control our attitudes toward a game of basketball, I can control my attitude toward my life.

What happened on Monday renewed my faith in reality. (Not the world, not humanity, but reality. I still believe that the world is a cold, cruel place, and that humans are intrinsically evil, but I learned that reality doesn’t suck as badly as I thought.) I realized that in spite of having the most depressing and worst possible things happen in my life, there’s always a chance of something positive happening. This doesn’t end my struggle, though. This hasn’t made me rule out suicide as an option. If I get dismayed because days, months, and years pass by without anything good happening, then I will probably decide that it’s better just to end it. I used to believe that nothing positive would ever happen to me again -- or at least that the likelihood of something positive happening was close to zero. Close enough to be zero, for all intents and purposes. Monday proved me wrong.

Most, if not all the entries written in this blog so far came from an extremely depressed perspective. I did this because I identified most closely with the emotions associated with depression. However, what happened Monday actually made me feel “icky.” I had held on so strongly to my depression to the point where it caused me to develop distorted interpretations of reality. I interpreted that anything or anyone challenging my attitude was really trying to get on my case and tell me to “shut the fuck up,” which was the same thing as invalidating my emotions and experiences. When the impossible happened and something good actually took place, I felt weird. It felt like embarrassment. I was embarrassed because I had been such a staunch supporter of my negative beliefs that I never gave a moment’s thought to the possibility of something good happening. Now that something good really did happen, I feel like an idiot. It's like being a former supporter of a politician running for office that lost and faded into obscurity. The supporter never mentions what he did in the past because he’s embarrassed that he was associated with a no-name loser. People almost never talk about the ex-politician. Some have even forgotten his name.

I felt like all this time, I should’ve lightened up. Life wasn’t as bad as I was insisting. Instead of being negative all the time, I should relax and give myself a chance for positive things to happen. However, last Monday could be the last time that anything good will ever happen in my life again. Given that nothing good has happened to me for the past eleven years, it’s a pretty sure bet that nothing good will happen for the next eleven (if I choose to live that long). I guess the lesson I learned here is that I have to believe that David can beat Goliath. I have to believe in Cinderella. I have to give myself a chance for something good to happen, if that’s what I want in life.

Etc.
I apologize if what I wrote above sounded really corny, but my shift in attitude was real, and I don’t have the writing skills to convey the impact that had on me without sounding trite. And I’m really sorry I can’t give any more details about what actually happened. I’m dying to say what happened, but because I want to protect the privacy of someone I personally know, I won’t. (I know, socially isolated individuals aren’t supposed to know anyone personally. Okay, I was wrong. I have one exception. But it’s just one. :) )

A final bit of news is that I've started receiving critical feedback (read: hate mail) over this blog. I guess this was inevitable. Being flamed must be the Internet equivalent of a Red Badge of Courage. I prepared to write a 2000-word essay in my defense, but at the last minute, I decided not to. My "cooler head" prevailed. I realized that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, so I just let it go. Score one for wise mind (a DBT concept)!

I hope I’ll remember this in the future. I’m scheduled for shock therapy (euphemistically known as ECT) sometime within the next couple of months, a procedure well known for its memory-wiping side effects. I’ve heard stories of people forgetting entire decades of their lives. When they try to ask their doctor why they were never told that this could happen, they find out that he disappeared, probably to some unknown location in South America. I’ll write myself a note the day before my electrocution to remind myself that I have a blog. :)

I wish I could ask for “old-school” shock therapy. I want to be awake when I experience first-hand the feeling of being electrocuted under restraints and flopping around all over the place like a fish out of water. I would even ask them not to give me a mouthpiece, so that I can feel the experience of biting my own tongue off and of seeing my blood spurt out of my mouth like a water fountain. If I survive the experience, I would ask for my tongue back so that I could attach it to a necklace and wear it around my neck as a keepsake. (Although I’m not sure that a person can survive having their tongue cut off. Isn’t there an artery in there?) Because of having to numb myself due to a lifetime of painful emotions and experiences, only being electrocuted would tell me if I was capable of feeling anything anymore.

What I really should do is ask them to crank the notch up a little bit. Around 2,000 volts at 10 amps for about a minute and a half should do the trick.

2004-02-11T00:27:00.000-05:00

Today I just wanted to write something along the lines of a "statement of purpose."

I intended this blog primarily to be a journal. However, I did not intend this blog to be a “This morning I got up, took a shower, brushed my teeth, and when I took a shit I wiped my ass with my left hand instead of my right” kind of blog. I like to think this blog appeals to a wider audience. I’m trying to write from the perspective of an individual suffering from depression and suicidal thinking. It’s similar to William Styron’s Darkness Visible or Kay Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, except that they’re well-known and I’m unknown. Nevertheless, an account of depression is an account of depression.

In Darkness Visible, I couldn’t understand how Styron seems to make a complete recovery just by his stay at a hospital. Since my depression started, I’ve stayed in three different hospitals for a total of eleven weeks, and today I still wish I succeeded in committing suicide as I originally planned back in 1995. Now, I’m not trying to take away from Styron’s experiences by implying that he hasn’t suffered as much as I have. No matter what the situation, chances are that there is always someone worse off than another is. What bothers me is that I couldn't find an account anywhere in Darkness Visible describing details of how he recovered. I originally read both books in an attempt to find exhaustive case studies of depressed and suicidal individuals who managed to survive despite their suffering. I figured that if someone else before me succeeded in fighting the good fight, I could just mimic whatever he or she did so that I could recover from my own depression.

I don’t understand how a depressed individual can “magically” recover from depression by staying in a hospital. I believe strongly in causality, i.e. whatever happens happens for a reason. This doesn’t mean that I believe someone swatting a fly in Cambodia causes stock prices at Wall Street to skyrocket. It means that I believe that many causal relationships between events go unnoticed. If Styron recovered by staying in a hospital, then during his stay, in my opinion, specific changes must have taken place in order for that to happen. Maybe just being away from the real world for a while did it. Maybe he made specific changes in his state of mind or in his interpretation of events that enabled him to have a brighter look at life. But what exactly were all the changes, and where did they take place? Did he tell himself that if he screws up when he’s trying to balance his checkbook, he should just chill out and not have a heart attack? Or did he tell himself something broad like it’s not worth getting upset over the unfortunate events that happen in life? Or did he become more optimistic and find more things in the future to look forward to? And if he did make changes, how did he come to know what changes to make?

In An Unquiet Mind, the conditions surrounding Kay Jamison’s depression differ significantly from mine. That’s one of the problems with depression –- although depressed individuals may share symptoms of their illness, they don’t necessarily share the life circumstances that precipitated their illness. Jamison suffered just as much, if not more than I have, but she did have some important supports that I lacked (and currently still lack) that she might have taken for granted. This leads to the second point why my blog deviates from the norm: Kay Jamison had supportive friends and loved ones whom she could turn to. I don’t. I took the social anxiety / avoidant / social isolation path into depression’s grasp, along with many other deficiencies.

Social isolation is a particularly insidious condition. Try looking at the first page of search results for social isolation at Google. Nearly every result contains a reference to the elderly (at least, as of this date). The elderly? Only the elderly suffer from social isolation? What does this mean? Am I the first and only creature in the entire universe freakish enough to be socially isolated below the age of 65? Did I break a world record by being the only person in all of history who was so much of a loser that he couldn’t make any friends? Is this supposed to make me feel good about myself? Is this supposed to give me a reason to live?

Social isolation is a fate worse than death in some ways. When you die, you will probably get a funeral, people will grieve for you, and people will miss you (although I know that you wouldn’t be alive to appreciate it). When you’re socially isolated, nobody knows a single thing about you. They don’t know if you’re happy, they don’t know if you’re depressed, they don’t know what you do, they don’t know what’s going on in your life or how that affects you, and so on. Your presence is not noticed in any world except the one in your mind. Your actions have no meaning. Your feelings are irrelevant. You may start to adopt odd behavior from being away from others for so long, which separates you even more from others. When you’re in distress, you have absolutely no one to turn to. Nobody is there for you. No one can hear you scream. You must suffer in silence.

Worst of all, social isolation is intentional. You’re the one not answering phone calls or keeping in touch with people. You’re the one locking yourself in your own apartment. You’re the one not asking for help. You’re the one who isn’t reaching out to others. You’re the one not taking interest in other people’s lives. Other people may try to help you, but you have to allow them to help you. Isolating yourself is equivalent to refusing help, even though you know you need as much help from others as possible if you want to have a chance of surviving. You choose to suffer in silence.

Because of all of the above reasons, I’m writing this blog not just as a vehicle for self-expression. I’m trying to write as specific and as detailed an account as possible of my own particular descent into darkness, mostly because I haven’t found such an account that already exists (although I might not have looked hard enough). I'm not trying to flaunt my suffering by belittling the suffering of others. However, I probably won’t sit here and do things like writing flowery poetry to convey my experience of depression (though I don’t have anything against that). I’m trying to create a quantitative, concrete, methodical, analytical, and objective account of what I experience, why I experienced it, my interpretation of what I experience, and why I interpret the experience the way I do. It’s possible that I sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about. It is true that I don’t have any formal background in psychology or anything remotely similar. All I can do is describe what I experience in the way that I experience it. One also may argue that depression doesn’t lend itself to this kind of analysis. It may not, but that won’t stop me from trying.
--

In other news, I have to say that something very important happened to me on Monday. Unfortunately, I can't say anything else about it. :( I lacked the prescience to write this blog under a pseudonym. I'm afraid some people out there can put two and two together and deduce my identity in the real world. Some of these individuals will seriously take issue with what I've written. Of course, if I had any balls, I shouldn't care. It's just that I've said things here that I, or any civilized person, would never say to or in front of other people under any circumstances. Oh well, if it happens, it happens. All I know is that I told the truth.

What I can say is how this event affected me, which actually may be more important. I can't finish writing about it now, but I'll pick up where I left off next time.

2004-02-08T03:24:00.000-05:00

My telephone line kicked the bucket again. This aggravation has caused hell for me now for three days. I had to call my telephone company again from a payphone. I'll have to post-date my entries here. This fucking pisses me off.

I still feel so depressed. I'm probably going to say that hundreds of times in this journal. It's true. Failure always follows me. I've said that before, too. When it comes to anything negative, I'll probably repeat myself.

I just feel so much emotional pain. It makes me want to cry sometimes. Often I don't cry because I'm almost completely desensitized to all my emotions. This probably comes from when I was younger. I was conditioned to believe that all that matters are actions and results. If I had any emotions that interfered with completing a given task, I had to disregard them. Over time, this caused undesirable side effects. It had the effect of making me fail to recognize many emotions. Whenever I chatted with someone and the subject of my feelings came up, most of the time I had no idea what I felt, thanks to a lifetime of ignoring my emotions. This prevented me from being able to form many close relationships, because sharing my true emotions allows me to feel closer to someone. Also, I have virtually no spontaneity. I need to learn to react to my emotions naturally if I want that. To me, not having spontaneity forms a real barrier to making friendships.

Speaking of friendships, another obstacle for me is to suppress my emotions in order to avoid making the other person uncomfortable in any way. Some people call this "people-pleasing." I force myself to like whatever the other person likes. I almost never express any negative emotions because I believe this will minimize any potential friction between the other person and me. Expressing negative emotions terrifies me if it causes anger in the other person. Unfortunately, I end up shooting myself in the leg. By not expressing my true emotions, the other person never gets to know the real me.

I can't carry on feeling as much emotional pain as I do for much longer. Right now, I deal with it by distracting myself from the pain as much as possible. Luckily, I can do this. If I had unrelenting physical pain, nothing could distract me from that.

Writing this journal helps a little. I could never do this before, because it seemed futile to write down things that other people would never see. Writing in the journal had no meaning for me. Now it does because of a little trick I made up. When I write an entry, I pretend that I write to someone who deeply, deeply cares about what I do and how I feel. This imaginary person feels sad whenever I feel sad, and feels pain whenever I feel pain. I feel like I'm sharing my burden with someone because I'm making another human being aware of the unbearable pain and suffering I've gone through for the past eleven years. (One may argue that if I managed to survive for eleven years, why can't I survive for eleven more? I can't because I feel the desire to die on a daily basis. If this urge is left unchecked, I will kill myself. There is no light at the end of my tunnel. I can only see into the future for a few days. After that, I don't have the foggiest idea how I will survive. It'll be equally likely that by that time I'll be dead rather than alive.) I may sound like I'm fishing for sympathy. I'm not because I don't care whether the other person responds to me or not. All that matters to me is that I won't be suffering in silence, which to me is a fate worse than death.

Of course, the key word here is pretending. This whole thing might make me sound like a lunatic. Lunacy or not, I must do this in order to survive. In my condition, I need as many ways as possible of hanging on to life, even if it means concocting an imaginary friend. It's similar to believing in God in Christianity. Its first commandment mandates that one must believe in God, even in the absence of any physical evidence. As defined, God does not manifest himself in the physical world. The existence or nonexistence of such an entity cannot be proven. Therefore, one must have faith in order to believe in God. This faith is exactly the same as my belief in my imaginary journal-friend.

So far, it works. I'm worried that at some point in the future, I'll think that this whole deal was just an enormous waste of time. I hope this won't happen because I have a motive -- I want to do anything possible to make my never-ending pain more bearable. After all, even if I did stop doing this, I wouldn't be any worse off than before.

2004-02-07T17:40:00.000-05:00

Fucking telephone company fucked up my telephone line last night. (Yes, as one of the lowly ones, I can only afford to connect to the Internet using dial-up. Yet another reason to be depressed. I wish they could provide free Internet access to individuals who receive SSI or SSD. Starting with me. :) ) So I couldn’t log in to write any entries. Apparently they just fixed it, since my telephone magically works again.

Life still depresses me as much as it ever has, although I think I feel a little better ever since I started writing this journal. I get this weird embarrassing feeling whenever I look over what I wrote here in the past. “I wrote that? What a whiny little baby!” I guess that’s because it’s a snapshot of what I wanted to express at that particular time. In the future, where I may have wizened a little, past journal entries would look embarrassing and foolish.

That may not be the real reason, though. If I met myself on the street, I would think that I was one weird motherfucker. I can only say that I’m a product of my environment. When I grew up, my environment was a vacuum. My neighborhood’s environment only influenced me during the time I was in school. I almost never played with the other kids. Just thinking about it terrified me. Ergo, if my writing style (or anything else I do, for that matter) looks bizarre, it’s because the things I learned at school, like reading and language arts, were the only things with which I could occupy my mind. As another example, everyone in my neighboorhood spoke with a unique accent, but I never picked it up because I never left home. When I went away from home to college, whenever I told others where I was originally from, they would say, “But you don’t have that accent!”

In other news, I visited my urologist a few days ago. There I managed to do probably one of the most brainless things a human being has ever done. The first thing I had to do once I saw the doctor was to urinate into a cup. So, I mindlessly traipsed into the bathroom, intending to do just that. Instead, in a preposterous move, I urinated into the toilet bowl instead of the cup. This was one of the most embarrassing and idiotic things I’ve ever done, not just because of what I did, but because I don’t have a single explanation or excuse for it.

The future does not look bright (people with depression tend to have that in common). I still feel a burning sensation every time I urinate, and they find blood in my urine every time they test for it. Instead of turning my brain off earlier, if I had enough sense to give them a sample to work with, I’m sure they would’ve found blood in it too.

Well, we’ll see what tomorrow holds. Nothing’s going on in the future for me except for a barrel full of doctor’s appointments. The excitement never stops! Stay tuned for the latest updates!

2004-02-04T21:15:00.000-05:00

I've been looking over some of my entries here so far. In retrospect, I feel pretty embarrassed by the Private Property entry. I'm not going to remove it, though (unless I'm forced to), because it accurately depicted what I had the desire to express at that particular moment in time. I did think, however, that it made me sound like some horrifically depraved sicko that needed to be sent to a mental hospital immediately and never again be allowed to see the light of day.

Here I learned the lesson that an online journal differs from a personal diary. Only I can read my personal diary, so I can write whatever the hell I want because it won’t offend me. Others, however, can read my online journal. Since what offends an individual may vary, I'd better clean up my act unless I don't mind some outraged individual sending cops to barge down my door and put me away.

I also noticed that this blog looks more like an autobiography than a diary. In spite of that, both types of writing consist of personal thoughts. They differ only in that an autobiography chronicles the past instead of the present. I rarely write about the present because I have no present. In the present, I feel like an empty shell of a human being or like a person who really wants to commit suicide, but can't. It's like being stuck in some kind of limbo. It's completely barren, and there's nothing around. There's nothing to write about. I can write about the past, though, because I have memories of events that happened, emotions I felt, and decisions I made that brought me to the condition I have today.

Shame
I used to play in a school marching band starting around 10 years old. I learned how to play the snare drum. I found out that I had a talent for it, which made me happy. Unfortunately, I remember the horrors of being in that band, which overshadowed everything else.

The band was more than a group of people playing musical instruments. It was a social group -- kind of like a clubhouse. This was an ancillary reason why I joined because at the time, I was painfully shy and never played with any other kids. So being in the band was supposed to be my way of interacting more with others. You don’t have very much fun, however, if you don't really belong in that clubhouse. You don't like doing what the other kids are doing because you're not interested in the same things that they are. So, instead of being fun, the experience is more like going to a birthday party of someone you don't know. Everyone else is having fun, but since you don't know anyone, you don't have anyone to talk to. Since no one knows you, the people at the party just ignore you and have fun with their friends at the party.

That sums up my experience in the band, except that the birthday party lasted for about eight years. The feeling of isolation I had was beyond painful. I concluded, at that time, that the other kids didn't want to be around me because I was a freak. This was one of the first times that I started to feel ashamed of myself. Technically I was a freak because the other kids couldn't understand why another kid wouldn't act like they did or enjoy the same things that they did. Since no one told me otherwise, I came to believe that it was my fault. I was fucked up because I didn't like doing the same things as the other kids. Therefore, I set a goal to be like the other kids as much as possible if I wanted to have any friends. As long as I was still different from the others, I was nothing. A fuck-up. A freakish oddity. Why else didn't I have any friends?

This message was reinforced day after day, week after week. Practices were held once a week. The other kids would always be hanging out and fooling around with each other before it started. But I never came earlier than the exact time that practice was scheduled to start. I did this so that I could avoid the pain of being the only person by himself with no one to talk to. Once practice started, I felt much better. We all had a common goal -- we had to listen to our instructor and do the practices he gave us together. There were no unstructured moments where I would have to feel the intense agony of not knowing what to say to anybody. My plan didn't work very well, though. Often practice started late, so the scenario I tried to avoid at all costs would happen anyway. It was sheer torture. Every time that it happened just added more evidence of how much of a complete freak I was. It happened after practice as well. The other kids would hang out, but I always bolted out of there as fast and as inconspicuously as humanly possible to avoid feeling even more isolated. I desperately wished more than anything that one day I finally would be comfortable around the other kids.

We took buses to go to the parade locations. This ride was just as tormenting. I always sat by myself, while the "cool" kids sat in the back of the bus, being rowdy. Many times, I just wanted to cry because of the unimaginable pain. I believed that the other kids didn't want to hang around me because I wasn't normal, and I didn't act the same way they did. Because of this, I would never make any friends.

To make things even more unbearable, some of the kids started having boyfriends and girlfriends, but girls went nowhere near me. It was as if a judge had issued an injunction that excluded any female from coming within a 1000 yd. radius about me under penalty of arrest, except that the girls did this voluntarily, even if there were no injunction. One time, I walked into a room and I stumbled upon two other band members making out. "Why doesn't this kind of stuff happen to me?" I thought. "Oh, because I'm a freak." I came to believe the worst about this, too. I believed no woman would ever want to be my girlfriend. Since I didn’t even have any male friends, how much more impossible would it be to have a girlfriend?

Finally, we participated in contests. We would compete with other bands and the winners received awards. Usually individual competitions would take place first in the afternoon. The band competitions took place in the evening. The competitions took place in a sequential order, meaning that when it was your turn to go, you played your piece. When it was your band's turn to go, you did your performance. The time when it was not your turn or your band's turn to go was unstructured time. Often it lasted several hours. The other boys would sometimes kill the time by playing wiffle ball in the schoolyard, or they would hang out with their friends or girlfriends. I, however, having talent for neither sports nor girls, was forced to be alone. I set a goal to avoid looking as if I were alone as much as possible. I ended up having to expend enormous amounts of energy just to do that. I was forced to be creative. Sometimes I would go into the area where the instruments were stored and pretend I was in the process of organizing or removing some of the equipment. In actuality, I would move the same piece of equipment back and forth, or I would pretend to tune a drum that was already tuned. Band uniforms were stored in the same area. So, on other occasions I would pretend to be looking through the uniforms for mine, although in reality I already knew exactly where it was. (Actually, I did this less often because one time somebody noticed what I was doing, and he found my uniform for me.) Other times I would take out the garment bag that contained my uniform and repeatedly zip and unzip the zipper. Or I would pretend that one of the buttons was out of place and I looked like I was busy trying to fix it. When I did that on one particular occasion, the other kids weren't really paying attention to what I was doing, but I kept zipping and unzipping the bag for almost an hour and a half. Since the other kids weren't looking, some of the time the emotional pain was so intense that I couldn’t keep up my façade any longer, and I secretly broke down and cried to myself. That day is deeply burned into my memory as if it happened just yesterday.

Talking to my parents about this was absolutely futile. Often it made me feel worse about myself. My mother was a devout Catholic. Therefore, all she ever told me was that suffering is a part of life, and there’s nothing you can do about it. What you must do is endure it, the same way Jesus had to endure his torture and crucifixion 2000 years ago. My father, on the other hand, was aware of my band experiences, but he told me that I was to blame for it because I am responsible for my own actions. Instead of compassion and validation, which was what I hoped for, I got blame, criticism, and self-recrimination. It was my fault that I was shy because I was a coward. I was too much of a chicken to talk to other people. Chickens, however, are fearful because that’s the way they are. Their brains come with an inherent biological instinct to flee upon sensing danger. Their brains developed this response because without it, they couldn’t survive. Those who instinctually fled upon sensing danger survived longer than those who didn’t -- long enough to pass this trait along to subsequent generations via reproduction. This is natural selection. As a human being, I inherited this trait. The important distinction between other human beings and me is that the part of my genetic code that determines my sensitivity to danger is higher than the average. Because of this, I flee or avoid situations that are typically not dangerous at all -- most significantly, social situations. I end up getting the undesired effect of social isolation, which in turn means that the odds of my reproducing and passing my genes onto the next generation are infinitesimal. In effect, I am being naturally selected against. My flawed DNA will not have an opportunity to pollute the gene pool. This is great for the future and for subsequent generations, but what about me, right now, today? What is to be my fate? I didn't ask for the genes I have. Is it fair that I carry genes that adapt poorly to the environment, while most other people don’t?

By behaving the way I do, I am only reacting according to what is contained in my genetic code. How can I be faulted for being the way that I am, the way that I was born? That’s like saying to an apple, “Hey apple, what the hell is wrong with you. You’re supposed to be an orange. You’re not an orange because you’re weak, you’re unmotivated, you’re lazy, and you’re not trying hard enough. Try harder!” Moreover, since this trait is unique to me only, I must take extra steps to take this into consideration with anything I do. People without this trait have no such burden. Consequently, I am naturally at a disadvantage compared to other people. It’s like being in a race with one special rule: everyone can start running once the starting signal is given, except for me. I am required to wait 30 seconds after the starting signal before I can start running. What then happens is the moment I start to run, I am being faulted, criticized, and mocked by onlookers for running too slowly and for not already being ahead with the rest of the runners, which is a physical impossibility. The other runners, obviously, have no need to play catch-up because they started on time.

In essence, this was the message my father sent me. All of the emotional pain I was going through was the consequence of my own actions. I got myself into this mess; therefore, only I can get myself out. Not only did this not make me feel any better, but it also had the effect of invalidating all of my emotions. Any painful emotions I felt were not valid because they were of my own doing. If I weren’t so lazy, and I tried to be more enthusiastic, and I put more effort into it, I wouldn’t have these emotions to begin with. As a result, any time I experienced any painful emotions, I chastised myself for being weak and lazy. And since I felt painful emotions most of the time due to the band experiences, I chided myself most of the time. Then I did it even more often –- often enough to become a habit. Then I did it so much more often that I came to believe that I was weak, lazy, and good-for-nothing because that’s the way that I was. That’s the way I was born. That was my identity, and as such, there was nothing I could do about it.

I was tremendously relieved when I finally left the band eight years later to go away to college. Despite all the emotional trauma I experienced, I didn't leave before that because this was supposed to be my outlet for socializing. In spite of how disconnected I was from the other kids, there was always the remote chance of connecting with somebody. I was also told that it was better than staying home, being by myself and doing nothing. I did get along with one person pretty well. We were both kind of shy and soft-spoken, and we were both nice guys. Unfortunately, I haven't spoken to him or seen him in twelve years.

I don't know how this affected me, if at all -- that's for some psychologist to analyze. What I do know, however, is that I wouldn't wish what I went through to my worst enemy. No one should go through an unhappy childhood. No one should have to avoid being ostracized by going to great lengths to develop eccentric behaviors. No one should go through life believing that they are alone because of who they are.

2004-02-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

What follows will sound sick and perverted, but I'm going to write it anyway. This is a journal of my thoughts, and I am about to write down what I think.

Private Property
A couple of years ago I took part in a hospital's day treatment program. One of the therapists on the staff was a woman named L.C. This woman has been the center of all my sexual fantasies since the day I first laid eyes on her. She is always the first woman that comes to mind whenever I start to fantasize.

L.C. is the prettiest girl you could ever think of. She's about 5'9", has silky, shoulder-length brown hair, and has a perfect ass. And since she's a therapist, she's also very warm and very gentle. Those are just frills, though. The important thing is that she's one of those women who are highly "fuckable." You know, like for example when you see a piece of chocolate mousse pie, it looks so tasty that you want to eat it. You're not going to draw fancy circles on it, and you're not going to use it to wallpaper your living room. You're going to eat it. It was made to be eaten. Whenever I look at L.C., I don't see a person. I see an object. An object so fuckable that all you can think of doing is fucking it. It was made to be fucked.

I want to own L.C. I want her to be my plaything. I want to be able to do whatever I want to her. I want to be able to fuck her any time I want. After I fuck her, I want to be able to use her silky hair like a towel to wipe off my dick. I want her entire body to be my property.

That's not all. When she's at work, if she's in her office I want to be able to barge in any time I want. When she sees me, I want to see the struggle in her eyes when she knows she should do her work, but her primal urges are too strong and she jumps all over me. I want to be able to cum all over her face, and if she's about to lead a group, I won't let her towel it off. I want her to walk into her group with my cum dripping all over her face and dripping into her eyes so that she has trouble seeing. I want to see the looks on the faces of the other people in the group. Finally, I want to watch her struggle with having to lead the group and dealing with the embarrassment she feels when she looks at the expressions on the other people's faces.

2004-02-01T14:17:00.000-05:00

Venting
I just finished eating lunch. Afterward, I stayed at my dinner table for at least half an hour, apparently doing absolutely nothing. In actuality I argued with my therapist in my head.

I hate my therapist. I'd get rid of him, but only having Medicaid insurance severely limits my options. He doesn't understand me at all, and he manages to say the least supportive and encouraging things. Unfortunately, a lot of therapists I've had have done the same thing. You'd think it wouldn't bother me anymore, but whenever I have to talk to an especially clueless individual, it makes me want to scream.

He constantly compares me to his other clients, who happen to be street beggars, drug addicts, ex-murderers, and other assorted lowlifes. He unsuccessfully tries to make me feel better because I don't have any of their problems. Instead, I hear him saying that his other clients have real problems while I don't. I just have a problem inside my head. So he treats them seriously and doesn't really have to put too much effort into helping me. If that's the case, believe me, it shows. He consistently says nothing but the most idiotic and useless things.

I'm very worried that any form of therapy is doomed to fail. This is because I must bring certain things to the table in order for any therapist to be able to help me. First, the motivation to work with the therapist and change my life can only come from me. This fails because the only motivation I have is to die. Second, I must be concerned about my life and the work I do in therapy. This fails because I really don't give a shit about anything anymore, much less working with some guy who listens to me only because he's paid to. Third, I must be interested in what the therapist says and what goes on during these sessions. This fails because I definitely have no interest in what my current therapist says, and this makes the entire session effectively useless. Fourth, I have to cooperate. I didn't mention this earlier, but I'm notorious for never doing what any therapist tells me to do. Ninety-nine percent of the time the things that therapists tell me to do I've either tried already and had no results, or they sound so stupid that they would never work. Fifth, I have to have expectations. This fails not because I don't have any expectations, but because my expectations are way too high. I expect my depression to be cured. I expect to be happy again. I expect to have my career back on track. I expect to have a social life again. I expect to have enough money to be financially secure. Finally, I expect to have casual sexual relationships with many different women. Only then will I find life worth living. (Okay, I slightly exaggerated on that last expectation.)

Sadly, I'm probably just going to have to live with this. My therapist basically only has two options: sit there and listen to me, or throw me into the state mental hospital. Do you still wonder why I want to kill myself?

2004-02-01T07:38:00.000-05:00

Depression Costs $5,000US
Scattered pieces of mail litter the floor near the entrance to my apartment. I have no desire to pick them up, much less read them. Some of the mail lay untouched for over three months. Others have shoeprints on them.

This condition has persisted since the company I worked for three years ago let me go. I didn't care for anything sent to me. During one of my brighter moments, I managed to notice two of my company's final paychecks. The sum of the two checks totaled over $5,000. Compared to the money I was earning previously, that amounted to only a few pennies. I threw them into a pile, intending to deposit them into my savings account at some arbitrary point in the near future. Not really caring about what I was doing, I also threw several pieces of junk mail onto the same pile.

About one year passed. One day I noticed a pile of junk mail I had. I was about to throw all of them in the trash, but out of my habit as a junk collector I quickly went through them one by one to make sure I didn't find something I might want to keep. Much to my surprise, I saw the two last paychecks my company sent me. Oh shit. By that time I spent all the money in my savings account. I rushed out of my apartment to the bank and tried to deposit them. The checks did not clear. In vain, I frantically tried to call my company and ask them to reissue my checks. Luckily, my company still existed, but almost the entire staff changed. I knew the former comptroller intimately (she was a very cute, friendly, and intelligent blonde (how often do you see that?) with a bright smile), but I didn't know the new guy at all. I repeatedly left several messages on his voicemail, but all of them went unanswered.

I used the last bit of my energy to go to my city's legal offices to find out if I had any recourse. I thought I heard them say that I could file a lawsuit. By that point, however, I had absolutely no energy left, and I didn't feel like I had the endurance to fight it out in court. I dejectedly walked home feeling utterly defeated.

Later I found out that the company lost a lot of money since I left. They were actually in the process of merging with a larger company. Economic conditions forced the old staff to reduce to fewer than 20 employees. For the new comptroller, reissuing checks to an employee he never even heard of probably didn't rank very high on his list of priorities.

You would think that I learned a lesson from all this. It did confirm my belief that the best way to hurt rich people is by making them poor. The strength of my depression, however, made any desire to permanently change my habits dwindle to nothing. Unopened pieces of mail still lie dormant on my floor. I have little hope that that will change in the foreseeable future.

I could really use $5,000 right about now.

2004-01-31T19:52:00.000-05:00

Five Grand and Nothing to Do
At the beginning of 2000, I got a new job together with a $5,000 signing bonus. To celebrate, I decided to visit a local, upscale "Gentlemen's Club", which was something I had never done before, nor could I have afforded to. I hadn't been around a woman in a long time, and I was aching for a release.

When I first entered, I was extremely nervous, not knowing exactly what to expect. The main area had very little light. It enhanced the ambience, but it also made it hard to see. I heard some music playing. I also noticed three strippers dancing halfway down the room on a stage. "Wow, I'm around naked chicks in person," I thought, which was something that only happened to me once before. I was very excited but nervous at the same time. Everyone else looked at ease, as if they had been here several times before, which was probably true. I took the first seat at the bar. It was closest to the door, which was important in case I had second thoughts and decided to haul my ass out of there.

Aside from the strippers and the audience, I eventually noticed several lovely women spread out around the room, all appearing to be in their 20's, roaming around and talking to different men. Soon a buxom blonde, around 5'5", started to talk to me. She was as dazzling as any model or Hollywood actress one sees on the movies or TV. In my entire life I had never been around a woman like this, let alone have one talk to me. I felt more nervous than flattered, though, which made conversation difficult. She seemed to know what she was doing, however. We had a light chitchat and exchanged small details about our lives. I don't remember any details about what I said, and the only thing I could remember her saying was that she was Italian-American. After a while she said, "So, do you want to have some fun?" No red-blooded man alive could have said no.

We were about to leave when another woman, just as enticing as the one I was with, approached us. She was a tall, natural blonde, at least 5'11". She said, "Would you like a twosome?" I had to stop myself immediately from saying yes, which was what was screaming in my mind. This was the first time in a long time that I was with any woman. I decided that having a twosome would be overkill, in spite of the wonderment of having a fantasy turned into a reality. I also said to myself that it would probably cost me an arm and a leg. Therefore, I grudgingly declined, and I continued walking with the original woman I was with.

I followed her into a dark hallway that eventually led to a stairway. We went upstairs, where I saw several rooms. The layout looked similar to that of a hotel, except that it was smaller, there was very little light, and the doors were close to each other, hinting that the rooms were small. She led me inside one of the rooms. It was a cramped room, about the size of a typical bathroom, though I was sure no activities that typically occur in a bathroom were about to occur here. She invited me to lie down on a bed that was against the wall.

The subject of money took place. Before going into the club I had cashed out $1,000 out of the $5,000 I received from the bonus, though I didn't really expect to spend more than $300 this night. Unfortunately she must have sensed my naïveté, because she managed to wheedle out of me the amount of cash I was carrying. She ended up milking the entire $1,000 out of me. In my defense I can only say that I had no clue how this kind of thing worked. I knew that there was a base fee, but I also knew that only a percentage goes to her and the rest goes to the club. So I assumed I was also supposed to pay a tip, but I wasn't sure, and I thought it was highly unlikely that $1,000 was the amount of money typically spent in these situations. For Christ's sake, I thought, for a fraction of that money anywhere else I could get.... (Oops, I don't think I can talk about that here. Man, censorship sucks. Why should I censor the natural form of human expression? Censorship is basically lying. It prohibits one from telling the truth about how human beings really think and act.) I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I had the faint notion that leaving a cheap tip would turn her against me, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. Moreover, I was too excited to care about money at that point (if you can imagine a person being in such a state).

Next the fun started. She slowly took off her top. She had beautiful, full, natural breasts. Their size looked to be 36, or 38D or 38DD -- I really don't know how to measure these things. All I knew was that they made my jaw drop. I felt like I was in heaven at that point already, given how horny a guy I was. Then she walked over and laid on top of me. I could feel her tits on my chest, and her face was so close to mine I could have kissed her just by lurching my head forward a little.

Then, surprisingly, we continued the light conversation we had before we came upstairs. I seriously doubted that this was what normally took place when one does what we were doing. We discussed things like life, philosophy, and psychology. I told her that I was very shy and that I almost never go after women. It also occurred to me to seize this $1,000 opportunity and ask her questions about women in general. I didn't have any female friends at the time, so I asked her things like what were women like, on a psychological level, what things do women like about men, how women want to be treated by men, and so on. Throughout this discussion she was grinding her chest into mine and massaging my crotch, where I had a raging erection. I remember a thought crossing my mind: "This is definitely not something that happens every day."

At one point, she asked me, "Why are you here?" "What do you mean," I answered. "Guys like you don't usually come here. You should be doing things like going to bars," she said. I wasn't sure, but I thought I had just received one of the best compliments of my entire life. I always thought of myself as a complete loser who could only score if I paid for it. Women (and men) almost always ignore me as if I were invisible, let alone think of me in a romantic way. I was too shy to press her for it, but I think she meant that I wasn't as gross, disgusting a creature as the usual types of men that come here. In other words, she meant that I was at least decently good-looking. Maybe I'm just a lunatic, but hearing that statement from a woman like this would have been like Albert Einstein saying to me, "Hey, you're pretty smart."

Afterward she led me into another room where I noticed a glass partition. I sat on a stool on one side of the partition. Then, on the other side of the partition, she came in, stripped completely naked, turned on some music, and started an incredibly sexy dance. Before we went in, she told me that I could masturbate on the other side. I don't know if it was the novel conversation we had earlier, or the fact that I was completely clueless about going to a club like this, or the fact that I was terrified out of my mind during this entire experience, or the fact that I was slowly realizing that I had just been gypped out of thousand dollars. Whatever the reason, this was the first time I could remember having to jerk off under pressure (the time I had paid for was running out). Therefore, it just didn't happen. In spite of being in front of the perfect woman dancing completely naked in front of me, my penis was as limp as a wet sheet of toilet paper. Time was quickly running out and she was patiently waiting for me to cum, but I had no choice and I weakly said, "Sorry, I can't." I felt so humiliated.

Later we said our goodbyes and before she left she said, "Stay in the bar for a while. Order some champagne, you deserve it." I did think I deserved it, but if she had told me to go climb Mt. Everest, I would have mindlessly done that as well. So I ordered an entire bottle of champagne and had it by myself. I felt terribly awkward, and I was sure I looked like a complete loser. My only excuse is that I was still in a daze over the events that had transpired that evening.

Gradually I came to my senses and attempted to make a quick, discreet exit, but another woman approached me before I could do so. She was a tall woman with long brown hair and pretty eyes. Needless to say I thought she was exceedingly beautiful, as I was certain all the women here were. I knew I should have left but I felt compelled to talk to her. She had some trouble speaking English, and she told me she was from Mexico. She put her hand on my lap, but it felt as if she had just put her hand on my dick -- that's how excited I was. Strangely, I felt connected to her and very comfortable talking to her -- more comfortable than I felt talking to the woman I was with earlier that night. Eventually she invited me to come with her, but after going through the experience of losing a thousand dollars in the span of a few minutes, I realized that this was my cue to leave. I gently told her "no." This was terribly difficult because I felt like if I met her on my own outside of this club, we would have gotten along extremely well. Painfully I noticed that she was upset, and she spent some time trying to change my mind. I even noticed her being angry, which frightened me coming from a woman as divine as she. I was certain, however, that she was upset not because she really did like me and was sad to see me go, but because she had wasted her time on a pathetic... client when she could have been making money already off someone else.

I finally managed to leave. I was still carrying that bottle of champagne. I had drunk half of it, which made me feel slightly buzzed. Walking outdoors in the cold air sobered me up a little. I left the club with a feeling of awe at what I just experienced, but at the same time, I castigated myself for stupidly giving my money away.

2004-01-30T18:14:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling a lot of despair today. I should be used to it by now, but feelings are feelings, and despair is despair. I went to the doctor's clinic this morning for a sonogram of my prostate. That clinic is the worst clinic I've ever been to. It's almost always standing-room only, and at times it's beyond that. It can take 15 to 20 mins. just to sign in, and that's if the receptionists decide to pay attention to me. After that, I'm lucky if I get called within 90 mins. Then there's the second waiting room for the particular specialist or operation I have to receive, and I have to wait even longer, as if my nerves aren't frayed enough by then.

Today when they called me, I found out I was supposed to drink 1 1/2 glasses of water an hour before the sonogram. Today they told me that. It would have been nice if they told me beforehand so that I could have drank the water before coming to the clinic. So I had to drink the water now and wait yet another hour before they could do the sonogram. Why me? Incidentally, all this hubbub was necessary on the account of finding out there was blood in my urine and that I felt a burning sensation whenever I urinated. I hope it's nothing serious.

The only other event today was that I called to find out if I was summoned for jury duty. I wasn't, but I have to call again Monday night. I served as a juror once back in '98, and it was quite cool. Actually it was a boring automobile accident case where nobody even got hurt. The guy was just trying to milk some money out of the city, but he obviously staged the whole thing. It was boring, but I used to watch Law & Order a lot, and I tend to enjoy the feeling of power of deciding someone's fate. :)

2004-01-29T13:31:00.000-05:00

The past few days have been completely empty. I haven't communicated with a single soul since last Monday morning. No grocery clerks, no cashiers, no phone calls, no e-mails, no frivolous internet chats, nothing. I haven't left my apartment since Monday either. The worst times are when I'm home and I feel like I have absolutely nothing to do. It makes me feel like cracking my skull open. But this is not uncommon for me. Depression paralyzes me. In my judgment there's nothing out there worth going to. People constantly tell me, "Get out, go for a walk, do something." Sorry, I will not go out just for the sake of going out. If I do things, I do them for a substantive reason, and most often to produce a tangible effect. If I go out and take a walk, it may not cause any changes in me at all, I may not feel any better, and it certainly won't cure my depression. "It might," you may say, but that means that I would need luck, and luck has abandoned me long, long ago.

Even writing this feels like a chore. The only reason I'm bothering with this is that it would be such a waste in the event that I do end up committing suicide and all that happens is that I just become another anonymous statistic. People who commit suicide always, always do it for a reason. Nobody is born suicidal (at least, not that I'm aware of). I'm fucking tired of hearing news stories of suicides where the person's acquaintances say things like, "Oh, but he was such a nice guy. I have no idea why he would kill himself." "He always looked so happy. Everything seemed to be going for him. I just don't understand it." There are things that people never share with anyone, problems that they never share with anyone, and most importantly, pain and suffering that they never share with anyone. The reasons for this are their own; they vary from person to person. How do I know this? Because I'm one of them. People who see me, and even those who think they know me very well, would believe that there's nothing wrong with me. In fact, it wouldn't even occur to them that I was depressed and suicidal because of the happy façade I put on whenever I interact with people.

If I end up turning myself into worm food, I want there to be something, some kind of record that will survive me of what led me to take my own life, of the portion of the unimaginable pain and suffering that I can translate into words, and possibly, of the psychological mindset behind it. During the time that I am alive, if I want to survive, I have to believe that my actions still have meaning. I have to believe that writing this journal makes a difference –- that even among the innumerable blogs, journals, diaries, and other web pages on the internet, none of them have the unique combination of words that are written here. I have to believe that the world is slightly different, and hopefully, slightly better off because of the words I write here, as opposed to a world where they were not written. These words were written by an individual whose existence is recorded in human history, without whom these words would never exist, even if they are never read and cause no observable effect on the world at large.

I am getting professional help. I have been for the past eleven years, and I still want to blow my head off. If nothing else, I'm going against my better judgment and writing this in the hope that some future psychologist may possibly analyze and detect the method behind my madness, and perhaps save some other individual from suicide. Because I'm not the first person to commit suicide, and I certainly won't be the last one.

Dynasty Warriors 3 (DW3)
Well, that was exhausting. I'll try a lighter topic. Right now I'm going to down a burger and fries at McDonald's (those of you who are perceptive will notice that I am not even close to following a diabetic meal plan, nor do I care). After that I'm going to go play DW3 on my Playstation 2. I should explain.... I play this video game religiously. It is also the only game I play on my PS2, or on any other system for that matter. I've played it several hours a day, almost every day of the week since it first came out way back in 2001. It's a completely irrational and freakish fixation, something that alone warrants a visit to a mental health professional. In fact, early last year I had a two-month stay at a psychiatric ward, and since I obviously couldn't play any video games I felt like I was actually suffering withdrawal symptoms from not playing the game in such a long time. When I got out, during the first few minutes of my first game back I felt an intense, euphoric rush.

I love this game. It's even beyond love, it's kind of a way of life. It's one of the few things left I still get any pleasure out of, and it's one of the only things keeping me going and preventing me from committing seppuku. I've always loved games of this genre, ie. martial arts / kung-fu fighting. I wish I could write games like this. There are several things I find so compelling: 1) you never play the same game twice, 2) it gives you the illusion of a very large playing area, and 3) there are elements of military strategy involved, which has always been something that turns me on. :)

2004-01-29T04:12:00.000-05:00

No change. At this point, I'm writing entries just to maintain my sanity.

2004-01-28T13:02:00.000-05:00

I want this. Computers rule.

2004-01-28T09:20:00.000-05:00

Apple Juice Prison

I've had to stay in three different psychiatric wards so far in my life. The last place I fondly call, "Apple Juice Prison." I stayed there during June of 2003. It was by far the worst of the three psych wards. Living in the first two was like staying at the Holiday Inn. This last place was basically a jail cell. There was a horrible stench in the place, it was poorly lighted, and the staff bossed us around and treated us like dogs. Must be some kind of new therapy for depressed people -- push them around and make them feel even worse than they already are so that they can fully appreciate what feeling shitty is really like.

After I was admitted into the ward, the first thing I was given were small containers of apple juice. They tasted okay, but they were covered in some kind of slick, colorless liquid that I could only hope was water, which made me feel pretty grossed out. So the entire time I stayed in this ward there was absolutely nothing to do. Apparently they were short-staffed due to a hiring freeze. Like I gave a shit. But there was no therapy, no groups, nothing at all except my own thoughts -- the same thoughts that were making me want to kill myself in the first place. What a wonderful situation. I may as well have been thrown into solitary confinement. The only thing that gave me any solace was the slimy apple juice. They had endless cartons of the stuff, which made me think they got them at bargain-basement prices because, for some unknown reason, someone had been desperately trying to get rid of them. But in the end, the apple juice was the only thing during all that time that was always there for me. It was my only friend.

2004-01-28T01:48:00.000-05:00

Reverie

I miss S.C. so much. S.C. was a girl whom I was both close friends with and intensely infatuated with in college, if one can imagine such a thing. I miss her in so many ways. I miss her body, I miss her mind, I miss her thoughts, I miss her emotions, I miss her hugs, I miss her presence, and I miss knowing that she was always there for me.

I believe those were my formative years, just when I was discovering my identity. Because of my relationship with her at that exact moment in time, I feel as if her identity was intermingled with mine. That's why when our relationship finally failed, I felt more than torn apart, more than heartbroken. I felt like I lost a part of myself -- the part that was most alive.

Even now, almost eleven years after our relationship took place (I'm calling it a relationship here in the loosest sense, because in actuality we were romantically involved for only a few seconds :) ), during idle moments my thoughts invariably return to her. I see only two explanations for this: 1) as I mentioned earlier, parts of my identity are intertwined with hers, or 2) I'm just seriously fucked up. Quite possibly both are true. Eleven years? That's a verrrry long time. I haven't had any romantic relationships since then, because there is simply no other person like her. Not only did she look like a model (she looks very similar to and is just as beautiful as Liv Tyler), but she was an astute intellectual, and she was very interested in math, computer languages, computer programming, and the internet. And everyone knows of the age old stigma against women with technical interests (luckily this is slowly becoming obsolete). One couldn't ask for a more perfect match for a computer geek like me. (Well, personally I prefer blondes as gentlemen do, but you can't win 'em all.)

We used to talk on the phone together for hours, which I imagine takes place in most relationships (I can only say facts about myself with any authenticity :) ). One would naturally expect that a huge void would open up, simply because since I can no longer talk to her on the phone for several hours, that time that used to be occupied is now empty and I must come up with something else to do. But no activities (except, of course, sex, drugs, and rock & roll, which I avoided indulging in at the time) gave me as much pleasure and a sense of fullness and completeness as talking to and being with her did.

2004-01-27T08:07:00.000-05:00

Life
Life so far has been extremely unbearable. I have failed to succeed at almost all of the plans I had created for myself. I feel very despondent and am unsure how much longer I will be able to survive.

Diabetes
Later this morning I have an appointment with my podiatrist. Since I found out about my diabetes, I've had to see countless doctors in every conceivable specialty. I feel exhausted by it, and I wish I did not have to go through all of this. Of course, this is a puerile wish; I have only myself and heredity to blame for this illness.

DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy)
Last night I attended the second meeting of my DBT group, where the idea is that I learn skills to improve my life. Unfortunately this was mostly my therapist's suggestion. I learned DBT before, and the problem I had was that I did not apply the techniques correctly to my own life, primarily because I believe I have an irreconcilable difference with the principles of DBT. DBT is a set of skills, or tools. Like any skills, they are only effective if I *use* the skills. An unused tool lying by itself does nothing until you pick it up and use it. Using these DBT skills, like using any skill, requires work, and work requires energy. I lack the energy to do *any* work, not to mention a lack of motivation.

The Ladies (potentially offensive content)
I was stimulated by a few things during that meeting, though. Three ladies in that group are very attractive, and two of them are to *die* for. The first woman, let's call her R.R., is the group leader. She appears to be in her twenties, she's a short woman, slim, has a great body, and is very pretty. The first time I had a one-on-one with her I had a serious erection and had a hard time concentrating on answering her questions. :) But when the group actually started I was completely floored by two other ladies. One of the ladies, let's call her L.S., is R.R.'s intern. She's very energetic and enthusiastic, and she also has perfect breasts. At one point I made a comment as part of a discussion in the group, and L.S. spoke after me, referring to something I said. I felt like she had just kissed me on the cheek! The other woman, let's call her T.C., is on our side -- she's one of the group members. She appears to be in her late twenties. She has blonde hair, is short, and also has perfect breasts, though slightly smaller. She is just the cutest little thing. It's so sad to see someone like her suffering so much.

What I just wrote may be considered offensive. Be that as it may, it is the unadulterated truth about how I felt and what I experienced. Above all, I value truth above almost anything else.