Hello blog,

I have had a lot of things on my mind lately even if it seems like there is not really much different day to day.  It is hard for me to gauge that though as living with chronic depression means that each day really feels like an endless stream of hopelessness and why bother and each day is only a checkmark on a calendar.

I literally would be hard pressed to think of anything I am looking forward to and really have been battling the constant self harm voices that seem so ever present.   Even the cutting sessions that I have seem pointless and not really make me feel any different either way.

After alot of advice, I have started to consider again ketamine therapy treatments as a possible path to move me from the stuck hole of depression I seem to wallow within.  I have been told this will help reframe my thinking and change my thoughts as this big term neuroplasticity keeps being thrown out to me.

I feel rather hopeless and skeptical of this changing anything, but feel like I don't have a choice in it.  I have researched and visited three facilities prior and think this will be last opportunity for it for me. 

I'm really scared of it but my therapist says that this is really fear of change.  I have so much self-hate and self-loathing of myself regardless of the gender and worried that this will just magnify those feelings. I have been feeling vey suicidal and thinking about those things and worry this may override any self-preservation that has been keeping me around.  Maybe that's a good thing.  Regardless, I feel that my spouse and therapists are pushing and I have no choice but to go through with it.  My thoughts and feelings are usually opposite of reality so I am going to have to give this a chance I believe.

I know I don't want to go on like this but I don't know if I want to change.   My life is all fucked up and I guess that is why I use this to escape.  I just wish I had some idea of what going forward would look like and had had any idea what to do.

Hello blog.

I sitting here feeling small and sad today.  It is quiet, dark and I am all alone with just a keyboard and my tears. I have been writing and living in this virtual world for a really long time and I feel that this is all I will ever be.  I see some many other people out there in the real world that have strength and courage to follow their dreams and hopes and I am so happy for them.  

I wish it could be me, I wish I could have others encouraging me and have the strength to live and be what I feel inside but I can't.  I don't know why and can't but the explanation into words but I feel shameful and helpless and trapped.

Instead of the virtual persona that I pretend here,  I feel like a fraud a fake a pathetic person sitting alone in the dark typing. I am so miserable and so depressed and each day brings more of the same unfulfilled shitty day as the last.

I am so so sad and can't stop crying to myself. I hate myself for being me.

Hello I'm Jaclyn and I am a vulnerable person.

That may seem like a very simple and frivolous statement but there is a deeper meaning behind this for me.

This past week I have been spending time realizing how I am a scared person and have so many fears, and how all these fears are handcuffing my life.  Being someone that analyzes everything to death, I started by listing out all my fears and then organizing them into categories.

For instance, I created a group of fears related to my family which included my fear of causing them shame and embarrassment, fear of disappointing them and ultimately the huge fear of hurting them irrevocably by being selfish with any possible action I could take.

I have another group of fears that I grouped with society which include never being accepted, fear of being open/making friends with someone as I have nothing to offer, as being treated as a disgusting freak or being manipulated/lied to in order to fit social norms or someone else's agenda. 

From my past medical traumas, I have also fostered another set of fears towards people that may be wanting to help me as well.  This includes a fear towards trusting any one in the medical/therapeutic field and a fear of being told that I am hopelessly flawed and unfixable and worthless.  Yes I truly cannot trust anyone.

You probably see the point that I could keep going on listing fears including the fear that my ideas/perceptions are all wrong, fear that to trust others means that I need to give up some tiny bit of being in control and any change will be far worse than not doing anything and languishing in my fears.

As I list all of these down on a piece of paper, there is really one big hairy fear that they all tie into which is probably my ultimate fear.  This is the fear of me, the fear of trusting myself, the fear that allowing myself anything or acceptance will only lead to loss of everything and everyone and leave me completely empty and alone.

That is the fear this all leads to and the fear that drives me everyday to do or not do anything to change. I (aging myself here) harken back to The Wall by Pink Floyd as symbolic of my life.  Each day, all I do is put another brick on the layer that I use to hide away from the world and spend my time being depressed and alone in the entrapment I have built.  Whenever one of my fears comes up (queue the situation), this is my safety net that I run like hell back to isolate and cry.

I have been lying awake at night thinking why I get so traumatized by looking into a mirror or seeing myself in a photo.  My self body image is so intense that I spend several hours each day obsessing and hating myself with so much disgust that I can't capture in words.  I believe that these feelings may be manifestation of my personal fear.  It is my fear of peering over the edge of the bricks I have built around me that I thought were for protection but really have been a prison. 

I hate and I am disgusted of myself because I am afraid of myself.

That brings me back to my opening proclamation to be vulnerable.  Again it mean seem like something that comes from being self accepting or trusting others but just telling myself that I am vulnerable to others at this moment in my life is really a huge thing to me.  This means that I am giving up at least the tiniest bit of control or protection at open up to others.  It means that I have to suspend all my fears, all my self-judgements, all those voices in my head that tell me to hid and build my wall higher and higher.   To someone it may seem like a very tiny step but for me this seems like an impossible one nonetheless.

Which is why I am starting to take this step today, right now, right here in the anonymous and protected virtual world.  I still do not feel like I can transfer this vulnerability to the real world as my fears are still too strong against me.  I know that out in the world there are so many people sharing and trusting and being vulnerable and living, but I just don't feel capable of that at this moment.   All I can do is to write about this and talk to myself here and I just need to practice within my walls before I can remove the first brick.

Maybe one day I will be lying awake in the middle of the night not thinking about all my fears but feeling like I actually did something instead of run away from them.  For today, my bravery is just going to be trying to trust and open myself up in writing here and be vulnerable just in a tiny bit.  This all I can be today.