Hello.

Hello vast internet and its readers. Forgive me, for we have not spoken for awhile; nevertheless, my pen still meets with paper.  Today I begin a personal social experiment, a self-diagnostic.  At the very least, it will be many hours of answers to questions asked during therapy sessions all compacted neatly into one little notebook.

Meanwhile, I recommend reading the following for male and female, young and old readers alike:

EM-ARE-EYE

So tomorrow I will be getting an MRI, having an MRI, undergoing an MRI…whatever. The point is me=MRI tomorrow for participation credit in a PSYC study, researching who knows what.  Especially since a scan of the inside of my brain will produce two possible results:

1) Revealing little aliens operating my body from inside my brain, just waiting for the perfect moment to burst out and take over the world. (This could explain the Pinky and the Brain thing-don’t worry, it’s a YouTube reference)

2) A single, lone tumbleweed.

Rule #1

 

Rule #1:  Do not take a maximum-strength decongestant prior to an attempt at sleep.

The Letter

First I must preface this with I am sorry.  I am sorry that you are my best friend, the one stuck listening and dealing with my shit.  I am sorry that instead of being friends with the old me, the version of me that no USC person knows because she ceased existing at fifteen years of age, you get the wreck that you have known these two and a half years.  I am sorry that because of my personal shit, I am needy in that I require confirmation of our friendship and constantly feel left out and unwanted.  I realize that this makes me somewhat of a burden, and therefore understandably not the most fun and wanted person.  I realize that I fall short of all the normal, unhaunted people that you could be friends with, people who require less from a friendship and come with less baggage.  I know this is unfair, but I can no longer remain silent.

Prior to my fall from sanity, I was popular, extraverted, and fun. I promise.  I had unprecedented self-confidence and extended my happiness and self-assurance to others.  I had many friends and dated.  I dated older guys, high school guys when I was only in junior high.  I would go to parties and hang out with friends, always fun loving and happy go lucky.  I was a person you would have loved to befriend.

At the age of fifteen I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  Shortly after I went through a period of major depression, which ultimately changed me, probably for the rest of my life.  I withdrew from my friends and became extremely introverted.  My self-confidence was shattered.  People mistook my withdrawal as snobbery and thus only perpetuated the vicious cycle.  I no longer liked myself, and I no longer believed in myself.  In that year and the years following  prior to my partial recovery, I saw the darker sides of myself that I never wanted to see or know.  Parts that I cannot forget, though I wish dearly that I could.

Eventually, I stabilized and regained somewhat of my self-confidence; however, my social abilities would remain stunted.  I still retained social anxiety, which I fix by self-medicating, but drinking does not always prove helpful.  So many occasions, especially at USC, require social aptitudes in a sober state, all at which I fail.  I am terrible around strangers, and I have a marked inability to make friends unless they are practically forced upon me. For this reason, I rely so greatly on you.  I only have a small number of friends, so it is imperative that I keep the few that I have. 

Last semester was a shitty semester for me, and it brought forth another major depressive episode.  I try not to talk about my shit and bother you with it, and I attempt with all my remaining sanity and strength to hide my despair and pain from my friends.  It is not fair that the lot of you be plagued with my own personal plague.

I tried with all of my knowledge, power, and ability to mend myself over the summer before returning to USC.  I hoped to start fresh and reprioritize my goals and remaining years at SC; however, as always I fell back into my old habits of shutting myself off, presumably to study.  This aggravates my depression, causing me to fail miserably at my academic responsibilities, which obviously contributes greatly to the vicious circle that is my mental hell.

Truthfully, the me at that party the day after Halloween, that was the closest I have been to home, the real me dying inside, since my sophomore year of high school.

All this to say, that lately I have been nearing my lowest of lows, treading a very fine line.  Whether it is your fault of not, because I am in no state to judge or interpret the reality as my mind is far dissociated from it, I feel as if I am losing you as a best friend.  I feel distant, no longer a part of the “group” or “in crowd”.  I think of myself as uninvited and unwanted.  As I said, I can no longer distinguish between cognitive fallacy and the truth.  My lack of self-confidence has consumed me.  So please, I am asking you, just let me know for once, straight forward without any bullshit, exactly who my friends are.

I could use a few friends, so it would be nice if I knew them.

And for the record, this is the most honest I have ever been or ever will be.

From the Desk of an Invalid

I have come to realize that I very much take for granted the small things.  Like the ability to chew without thinking about chewing.  Or eating whatever I prefer.  Or the choice to toss and turn and sleep on my stomach with my face buried into the pillow if my subconscious so chooses.  As a newly rendered invalid due to the removal of four impacted wisdom teeth, I am feeling somewhat less wise, grossly unsettled, and agitated as hell.  Thus, if I was not fighting a borderline precarious state already, I am now blatantly and hopelessly stuck in the middle of a horrible funk.  Everything is too much effort, and life tastes as foul as the blood in my mouth.

I have been here before; no doubt this is anything but uncharted territory, but the external and environmental stressors certainly do not help when coupled with the pre-existing internal tumult.  I am up.  I am down.  Every moment is a struggle between a good day and a bad.  The only constant factor remains my lack of belief in myself.  I even view this blog as a failure.  As demonstrated by the calendar, much time has passed since my last post.  Each time I attempt to write, as my pen meets with paper, my words fall flat, and I am forced with the realization that they are unimportant, insignificant.  No one cares.  And if no one cares, why bother to record the monologue?

Controversial Psychology: I am ugly.

As far as my beliefs regarding the more controversial of the disorders discussed in my Abnormal Psychology class, such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), Conversion Disorder, and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), I am skeptic of all three; however, I am guilty of the same fascination with the “more exciting” of the disorders that seems to be held by our western society, and this fascination, though it should be purely regarded in a professional manner, tends to lead to belief.  Nevertheless, I am certainly convinced of the existence and validity of the classification for Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD.

I believe that many people fall into a large range of negative self-perceptions that are completely false compared to others’ perceptions of the person in question.  Therefore, it makes complete sense that an exaggerated or even extreme form of this “low self esteem” should exist.  For example, whether because of personal life problems or because of the woman’s socialized role in western society, how many young girls and women look in the mirror and say “I am too fat.  I should lose weight.  I am not pretty.”?  This sort of self-dialogue by young women is so commonplace in our culture that it could not possibly be considered a mental disorder; however, more severe cases have been labeled as “low self esteem” when the feelings of aesthetic inferiority linger for long periods of time and when the feelings are unsubstantiated by common consensus.  These two conditions of conscientiousness and low self-esteem are certainly valid, and no one could possibly argue that these feelings and/or states are not truly felt by the individual.  So is it that bizarre for a more extreme variant to exist, for a perfectly normal or even pleasant looking person to feel that he or she is a monstrous and distorted figure?  The disorder seems like just one more disastrous step in the gradation of a person’s self-perception of his or her appearance.