 about this dang one. Last week I managed it, this week…. after three exams in four days I just can’t. My wits are worn down, I flubbed two out of three of the tests, still waiting on grades. 
Today we were reviewing a statistics question. The content of the question doesn’t matter, but the answer does. We were talking about solutions to problems, my favorite subject. I figured out that there had to be a solution to this problem, and my professor said: “That’s math over your head. It’s over my head.” The lady has a PhD in evolutionary psychology, and probably knows more about social psychology than I’ll figure out for another decade. Yet it’s this arrogance, over my head. You joking? I’m always at the same time in over my head and underwhelmed by the challenges presented to me. That’s fricken the life of a broke student.
 I’m in over my head, but I’m used to it. Right now I’m working on applying to grad school and others are saying “that graduate school might be too hard to get into.” I know it though, but why not try? Why does everyone around me avoid the difficult by pretending it is impossible. Very little is impossible. Impractical is usually the reason, but frankly the people making those judgement calls don’t have all the data.
Right now I’m standing when I feel like everyone thought I would fall. I kept working when it seemed like I should throw in the towel.  Everything else? Smaller problems than the ones I’ve already lived through. The terrors of my present are nothing compared to the nightmare of my past.
What if it is all a delusion?
I’m working on a project on delusions, for a class I’m taking. For this class we have to assess the delusional state of a person, explain their symptoms and the source of the disorder.
It brings me to something close to my heart but that is hard to talk about. I’ve had delusions, and hallucinations, and further they happened while I was absolutely sober. There was no warning, just bang and the reality I knew was gone and I was talking to people that didn’t exist.
It occurs to me that this may all be a delusion, every moment from 2010 to present. Supposing there was some severe stressor; both parents dying violently, for example. Someone sick enough could conjure up an entirely different delusional narrative, and present it to themselves as fact. It might be so.
I have no evidence for this little hypothesis, but that makes it no less troubling. When I was delusional before I wasn’t very realistic about the difference between reality and un-reality.
I might imagine those parents still alive, and any help they provide would be entirely a construct of my mind, I might be effectively gaslighting myself. For a reality so horrible terrifies me to the core, more even than the possibility that it may be false. I could be sitting in an empty house, imagining the woman that loves me in the next room. I may have dreamed up people to like me, all to satisfy my own needs, to make myself hold on and not kill myself.
No way of knowing is there? This radical idea is mad in itself, and presenting to my potential delusions that I doubt their reality isn’t going to end well for me if they are real. I have to wait for evidence, for things that present as outlandish or foolish.
It’s a tough project, tougher than my project on suicide actually, if only because I have so many reasons to deny reality at the moment. I want to be connected, and such desire might motivate me to pretend. I’m not laughing as much as I was before, the bounce gone from my step as I determinedly march through my routine. The pain is there, denied, hidden, held back by years of careful planning.
Worse than all this, what if that dam breaks?
I cannot think of how I might cope, and thus I bolster the barrier and push through to the next moment.
I’m in so much submerged pain, and I’ve reach out to everyone, yet the people closest to me are making this the hardest day I have ever gotten through without a breakdown, without cracking completely open.
My best friend was on the verge of suicide, and I called people to help, now I’ll lose my home if I let her back in, my fiance is mad and somewhat blaming me… and I’m torn up more than I knew I could be.
I can’t cry, and I can’t come to terms with what happened today. I keep blaming myself, even though everyone else says I did what I was trained to do, what I was told to do. my heart is breaking, and I can’t feel it. Numb entirely the one time I want to feel, I want to cry and let go…… just so hard being strong when I want to be vulnerable. If these sleep meds don’t let me sleep I’ll be up with the crisis line all night, trying to stay alive….
I know, I know, protect myself… but dang it…. there’s nothing left of me in this hollow shell. All humanity was drained away doing the hardest thing I’ve ever done…. and I get the perspective of everyone involved, everyone but me…..  
Why do we hate pain, and why do we seek it out?
It upset me at the time because of the intimate relationship that I have with pain, and my job is essentially to remove pain from people’s lives, or at least bring it down to manage-able. 
It’s been bothering me for awhile about people who have toxic families. Beyond a certain point family is a chosen relationship the same as any other. It seems like that’s remove-able pain. Knowing that, I still have family that pains me, but not on the level that I can stand to live without them. Why stay though, if the pain is so severe, if the family provides no support?
Early on I did take this strategy with my depression, out with toxic people. I had no energy for them. Yet slowly and surely pain crept back into my life, most of it created or sought out by me. Why do I do this? What’s the point?
There’s no way there is anyone in my face to face life that I can talk about this with, but it feels like it’s going to poison my heart if I don’t get it out.
I had a dream about being intimate with my best friend. In some ways it is expected, I used to be romantically attracted to her. On the other hand, it’s inappropriate. She’s living with me and my fiance for christ sake. I’ve been dealing with her being suicidal lately, being the shoulder to cry on and so on. I feel very responsible, and that seems like a positive thing.
I just can’t say anything, do anything about craving a certain kind of tenderness from her. She can’t give it to me. She shouldn’t give it to me, it isn’t her job.
None of this stops the hunger within me for it. There must be some part of my heart that thinks I could give her comfort if I held her, or more. See, can’t even say it in an anonomous way. That I desire.. THAT.
It’s also scary that I’m a professional caregiver. My job means taking care of mentally ill people, this is going to come up again. I was warned about this by an early mentor; being attracted to those I’m supposed to be helping. I have to learn professional distance, and it seems that I’m being taught how to tame my desires by being challenged by them.
I’m frustrated, which just makes the dogged arousal worse. I want to solve, be active in my angle of attack for this thing, and I can’t.
There is a part of me that could see giving in, and the other part horrified. I couldn’t forgive that in myself. It will be a struggle to forgive that temptation, which is more innocent than acting on it.
I’ve been trying to be kind to myself, but this really makes that nearly impossible. The line has to be somewhere, violating my base morals is worse than just being a wreck.
Does anyone else think about those that die with no effort? It’s sad, sure, but does it bother anyone else struggling with suicidal thoughts that there’s such a thing as an easy exit?
I mean, there isn’t an age exclusive set of people, it happens to a wide amount of people. One minute their living their lives, the next gone. Could be me or you any time. Wouldn’t it be pointless if we were ready to end it and cause so much more grief when we were around the corner from an easy exit?
Life is good at least by all measures that anyone else cares about. I’m working on a degree in a double major I like, I have shelter, lots of stuff that I wanted/want, people that care about me. It seems like I should feel blessed, and usually I do.
No matter what I do though I can’t run from that feeling deep down that I’ve sold out. Worse still I sold out for cheap. For some petty creature comforts I’m working on one of the most difficult projects in my life, because deep down I like to work. My dreams, there’s no direction and no hope to making that happen.