Just a Touch of Human

There's no single sentence that can be said that can change things. But a build up of positive words and encouragement might be able to. Over a long, long time. Individual people at your level really don't have that much emotional power, unless you give that power to them.
Everyone is different. You can't offer the same advice to every single person. But a general piece of advice can help a lot.
I'm glad I've written so much this weekend. It's got me to think and consider quite a lot. I've been arguing with myself, and agreeing and disagreeing with others and hating myself for the step by step analytical processes I'm going through, that I go through in every conversation or interaction with others, especially once it's passed.

I thrive on social interaction, but I'm a pretty lonely person, if that makes sense. I take people in as friends and I kind of develop this network about myself, with me in the centre, and I'll try and help and smile and nod and be friendly. It's an odd thing. When I want to be friends with a person, if they're a reachable person, I'll sooner or later end up friends with them. People are drawn to me, and I'm drawn to them, but I try and give more than I get because the people I'm friends with aren't generally too comfortable or at ease with the concept that they matter, and they need to know they do.

I'm no wordsmith, my words have become clumsy.
But I see exactly what people are trying to say, and it's exactly what I would say, or a variation, in their position. But because I've offered the same advice I can't accept it, a self-esteem complex. I need to look at myself more objectively. I need to see what it is that others see in me, that makes me worthwhile. Looking at myself I see nothing that is respectable, not one quality that I love or even respect about myself. In everyone else, even those I intensely dislike, there is at least one redeeming quality, yet I can't find it anywhere on my person.
And yet I've had friends that have stuck by me for years when I've begun to drift away from them, when I've begun to attempt to push myself away a couple of times over the past year because I've been so hell bent on suicide, yet I couldn't let myself hurt anyone. That's the only reason I'm not dead already; I've tried, but haven't managed to make people hate me, and I feel guilty. I've written about last August, collapsing and sobbing one Monday afternoon on the platform because I couldn't manage to bring myself to hurt all the people I would hurt. At the moment I'm regretting it a lot, because of the introduction of people into my life since then that would be even more deeply affected if I did.
Somehow two people have fallen for me, neither of which I can believe, one I didn't even know until our breakup, and one that's making me feel like perhaps there is some form of light, no matter how dim, in between the diving tunnels of depression.
 Last year, as a sort of joke, I said to people "The only thing I like about myself is that I'm an individual, but I don't even admire the factors that contribute to me being one."
It isn't a joke anymore.

I want to return the the blissful ignorance of a child. The last time I was happy for more than a week was when I was about seven. Now happiness is something I might experience once a week, for maybe three hours, and it's something I rely on one person to give, which probably isn't a good thing.
I don't know why I'm so negative towards myself. Over the years I've just come to disregard myself as a friend and more as an enemy who is trying to sabotage everything good in my life.

I've spoken to people. There's nothing about me that they can pinpoint that they like. So I find it hard to believe they like anything, and are only friends with me out of sympathy or some sort of sadistic desire. For a few months a couple of years back I believed myself to be living in a Truman Show-esque world; not as elaborate, but as in my existence was purely for the entertainment of others, and all friends I had would be malicious and spread what I told. Luckily, I'm not under that sort of irrational influence anymore, but the paranoia that enabled me to imagine it is still a strong force in my mind.

I don't blame anyone else for my circumstances, I don't blame anyone else for my depression, I don't even blame my circumstances for depression. I blame myself, because really, what's to be blamed other than my interpretation, analysis, and viewpoint on the ideas and events and people I'm subjected to. My life is fine, my life is good even. I'm perfectly happy with my life, aside from the fact that I'm in it.

I'm perfectly willing to put in the hard yards, but if putting in the hard yards is something I'm going to have to do all my life to keep myself even at mediocre levels of emotion, then it's something I don't want to do. I want to get better, but I want to be able to stay at the level of okayness that is required for an honest response to "How are you" that won't make them worry, without taking into account struggling through all the other circumstances in my life that will give me trouble on top of depression. I'm not even asking to be happy at all, I don't care if all my happiness is taken away as long as I'm not sinking into bouts of severe, crippling depression every couple of years. But that's something medication or counselling won't give me, it'll help me hover at the nearest reaches to depression most experience, but I want to at least be more than that. And I'm not relying on something that's going to be either a hindrance to either my financial supplies or take away my responsibility to myself. I have a responsibility to myself to keep me at levels of stable emotion, if I can't even do that then what sort of person am I?
Learned helplessness is something that I've looked into; it seems to be something caused by circumstances rather than anything else, and my circumstances have not made me, I have. Of course, they've contributed, but it's my reaction to the circumstances that have made me as a person. The only thing I could perhaps think to relate it to is that maybe I've experienced depression enough times that I've learned to be defeatist over my circumstances, I've learned to accept that this is what it will be all my life. And that's not quite relatable, because that's true, I'm not leading myself to misconceptions.

This blog is one of the only things nowadays  that isn't a cry for attention, is a simple expression of my feelings escaping the craving I have to be surrounded and filled with noise, colour, laughter and light. Now my thoughts have turned towards this again, it's invaded. And the worst thing is, I don't seem to mind.

Brittany.