Thanks to all of you who have read, hugged, commented. It has seriously been such a relief to be able to say these things here and know that other people understand. I mean...I said things in my very first post here that I've never told another person on earth before. Can't we all just form our own country on an island somewhere?

These posts and responses have been the first times in so long that I felt like I was genuinely talking to people. Even with friends I feel like everything I say goes through a filter first to make sure I don't say anything too dark or negative or upsetting...and I know they are using their own filter to make sure they are coming across as the person they want me to see them as. It all just seems to fake. I know I'm sounding like an angsty high schooler when I say this, but it's true. I just wish that in our daily existence everyone could be genuine...I'm just imagining how much different life would be if we lived in a world where instead of feeling like we have to smile and say, "i'm good!" we could just tell the person about all the things making us want to curl up in the corner. I would be totally ok with a cashier at the drug store who I've never met before bawling their eyes out and telling me about the car payment they can't make, the student loan they can't afford, the divorce they are in the middle of, etc. I wonder how much bottled up anger, sadness, hate, fear, etc every person we encounter in life is pushing deeper down inside them when they smile and say they're fine.

I've been really trying my best to stop judging people who do mean, bad, inconsiderate things...even really, really horrible things because I think to myself, "wow...if that person is capable of doing something THAT terrible to me, they must be dealing with something REALLY horrible." I remember walking along the street one day and noticing that my shoe was untied and I just got down to tie it and started fighting back tears harder than I ever had before in my life. I just kneeled down there and did nothing for I don't know how long...just trying not to cry in public at my shoe. This was a busy street in a busy city and I'm sure that everyone who passed by was thinking I was the world's biggest a-hole for just sitting there on the sidewalk making it harder for them to get where they needed to go. Of course, they had no idea about the personal hell I had created for myself and all the things that led up to that shoelace being the last straw I needed to finally break me. I try to remind myself of that shoelace and that street every time I can't believe how unbelievably rude/stupid/inconsiderate somebody is acting...just trying to remind myself that a whole lifetime of pain can manifest itself in a single moment that you have no control over.