As I’m writing this, my thoughts are flying apart and breaking. Isolation and loneliness don’t even feel like anything anymore, but instead have become constant aches within my life. And as I write this, those emotions have reared their head again and made themselves domineering forces in my life.
All of this pain is self-inflicted. I really wish that I could engage in conversations and with others. I certainly have had enough chances to do so. Yet, I choose to retreat inwards — partially to protect myself and partially because I don’t think that my presence is welcome by anybody.
My mental scars from the end of junior year of high school still linger. I don’t think they’ll ever go away. I still feel the mental barriers that I have to put up when talking with others. I’m wary of sharing anything of any importance with anybody else, because I don’t want to end up in a situation like the end of junior year.
The depression doesn’t help either. My own anxieties and insecurities stop me from adequately judging situations. They cause me to read too much into social invitations and small conversations. Every denial becomes a mountain of pain; pain that compounds more and more as everything grows.
I feel intense loneliness almost constantly. There isn’t a workable solution to this. I’m stuck in an infinitely regressive spiral where I descend deeper and deeper into solitude with each action my anxieties force me to take. The insecurities then worsen, and the cycle continues and continues and continues and continues and continues.
I’m stuck in a precarious position where I can’t reach out for help either. My mind simply cannot fathom the notion that anybody would in goodwill try to help. If I disclose my loneliness, anybody who tries to help me will then only be doing so out of obligation, which makes me feel even worse. I retract from help, not because I don’t want it, but because I don’t trust anybody who tries to provide it. When this retraction inevitably causes the help to disappear, I fall further and further away from everybody else.
I really wish that somebody could enter my brain and rewire it. Make it more normal and less fucking awful. I wish that I could enjoy normal things, and feel like there was some purpose in life, and not feel like I am in a completely different and isolated world. I wish that I could let somebody else understand me and break out of this self-inflicted solitary confinement that I have thrown myself into. It just isn’t possible though. Not in my current state, not with the scars from the past when I had already tried to let someone else into my mind.
Tonight, some of the people on my debate team had a small party. I was invited, but I didn’t go. The bars of my solitary prison have only grown thicker with time, and I don’t foresee a way any of this gets better.
