Where you are is between the rock and the hard place. Don't be embarrassed to admit that you are having trouble handling the things in your life. Would you be embarrassed about being rear ended in your car and breaking your leg? There really isn't much difference between a physical injury and an emotional one. Its just a matter of where the injury is. True, our society can be a bit unforgiving about emotional problems. Mainly because they make people uncomfortable. Sort of like STDs. Having one doesn't mean its your fault or you are engaged in dangerous intimate practices, but society isn't comfortable with that either.

Do any of your friends know what is going on with you? Even just one good friend can really help. Sometimes just being able to have someone sit with you during a really down time can be helpful. Nothing has to be said.

Being self destructive doesn't really help with your emotional pain. It just seems that way for a while. Ultimately though, you wind up with scars you don't want, feelings of guilt or shame, and sometimes the loss of a limb. I think those of us who are self destructive go for it because it is an immediate relief and we feel somehow vindicated having punished ourselves. The problem is that it is very temporary and we don't deserve the punishment.

The fact that you care enough about others to ask them how they are doing tells me that you are a good person. Sensitive, in a good way, and haven't given up. Finding someone who knows you well enough to ask how you are doing, not just because its polite, but because they really care is a real gift. You only need one of those. They are the ones that stay with you regardless of what happens.

I can remember years of making myself invisible to avoid the mockery of being "weird" and too quiet. There could be fifty people in the room and not one would come near me. I think that when we are depressed, we send off some sort of aura. Its a sort of palpable barrier if you will. Other people pick up on it and stay away. Sometimes I think I put one up because i really don't want people to come around me. As humans, I think we all want some human contact, but sometimes it just seems to dangerous to our psyche. Emotional pain can be as bad if not worse than physical pain, and often times we will attack our bodies to protect our emotions. Its as if our emotional self, if injured badly, would kill us.

You aren't a bad person. You hurt. Alot. That doesn't make you wierd or stupid or worthless. What it does make you is miserable. During those periods of invisibility, you have probably picked up more about human body language and behavior than many people do in an entire lifetime. There may come a time when that talent will take you down a good road that you never saw coming.

Sam2