Self-Pitiful
11 November, 2002 :: 5:19 a.m.
This may turn into an excercise in self-pity, so anyone who stumbles across this may want to skip it. That's all warning you get...
I'm in one of my feels-like-I-have-no-control-over-any-aspect-of-my-life moods again. I literally want to just say fuck it and give up when I get like this. I want to sleep all the time--I hate sleep, it feels like such a waste of time. If I feel like sleeping all the time, there's definitely something wrong.
So I've been skimming through diaries tonight of people whose diaries I've never read and just wandering through my own thoughts as well.
So now I sit here wondering about how different I could have been.
What if I had a real father who showed he cared about me and made an effort to spend time with me?--this goes for both biological and step
What if we hadn't moved to the crappy little town of wellsboro right before I started sixth grade?--I was just feeling like I belonged, just became student council member, two years into little league, had a lot of people that I liked and talked to...then we move to wellsboro and I shut myself off, no extracurriculars, barely doing homework, barely talking to anyone...I gave up and by the time I realized I was stuck here and wanted to make friends, I had already alienated too many people. I was the angry-depressed-weird clothes wearin'-freak.
What if I'd had a step-father who didn't strictly believe in the saying, "children should be seen and not heard"?--who would make it clear that a sound was not to be heard from me unless I was asked something.
Would these things being changed have made me a more outgoing, happier person? I don't know, but everytime I'm meeting someone new and I feel like I can't speak until they ask me a question, I wonder about it; every time I think about being in little league and student council and band and chorus and how now I hate joining anything that has other people involved in it, I wonder; everytime I meet someone that I want to overcome my "inability to speak to new people" for, but find that I can't unloosen my tongue, I wonder if it's because I was constantly berated whenever I tried to speak at home or how, on the occasions where I was allowed to speak, I was ignored. I wonder if it's because I was made to feel like I was unimportant and annoying when I did speak and so now everytime I meet someone, and sometimes with people I already know and like, I start to say something and it catches on my tongue because I think, "why would they care about anything that has to do with me?"
I love my mom, but both of the choices she made in husbands suck. One left me feeling that no matter how much I try to improve myself, there's no escaping the DNA he shared with me and the other left me feeling that I was a huge burden and that the very least I could do in exchange for food and shelter was to keep my mouth shut at all times and keep the house straightened up.
All of this makes me angry at myself because I'm sitting here knowing that it doesn't amount to much. So what if I had to deal with that? I had food, cothes and a roof over my head. I was able to occasionally buy music and movies and books for myself. I know that I had a lot more to work with than a lot of people out there. My life wasn't that bad. But I can't focus on or even remember much that was good, only the bad jumps up when I scan my memory of childhood. It leaves me feeling like I missed out because I didn't bond with many people and I missed out on having great stories from my youth...until I graduated I spent most of my time locked in my room either reading, listening to music or drawing comic book characters. I avoided contact with humans as much as possible. I moved on to getting jobs and getting along with people at work, but not feeling comfortable when invited to parties or anything after work...I occasionally forced myself to go, almost always had a great time, and then would turn downt the next few invites sure that it wouldn't turn out that way again.
I need human contact, I have it with a few people, but I don't know how to change or increase what I have. I meet someone new, either I immediately think, "this person is an asshole and I can't wait to get away," or I think, "wow, this person is great, he/she will obviously think I'm a moron and we'll never talk again." And at the same time that I'd like to know more people, I only want to know them casually. I want to be able to occasionally hang out without feeling obligated to do things. So many days I get done with work and think, "I'd love to get together with somebody and hang out this afternoon," only to wake up a few hours later and think, "blah, it's easier just to pick up a book or pop in a movie than get together with someone...I start rationalizing, well, we couldn't do much anyway because I have to work tonight or I don't really have money to do anything, etc.
I'm tired of feeling like I've got a couple different people living in my head because when they start bickering about what they want to do, all I want to do is curl up in the fetal position and sleep. Sleep is always my answer to stress...paper due? Sleep. work not going so well? Sleep. problem with friend/girlfriend? Sleep. Car just broke down? Sleep. I don't know where I get this from...there has to be something wrong to only want to sleep when things are going wrong. This is not an evolutionary tactic we've picked up. I can just imagine an ancient ancestor...wild animal attacking family? Sleep. Running low on food? Sleep. Weather getting real cold and don't have proper shelter? Sleep. Humans would not have made it very far is this were our instinctive reaction to trouble. We're supposed to have a Fight or Flight Response--not Fight, Flight or Sleep response.
Well, I got that out of my system for the moment.