Another day, another week, another month, another year gone by without any improvement. How do you deal with the frustration of feeling like nothing but a shell? It's as though if I were to be hit hard enough I would crack open and see that there truly is nothing inside. That it's all been one cruel joke and I've been chasing after something that has never existed.

When I look in the mirror I see the reflection of what I know is my body, but it evokes no feeling of recognition in my heart. It's like I'm staring at some stranger that I've seen in passing but have never spoken with. How can I look like that? It doesn't at all match what I would have imagined I'd look like, had I never seen my reflection before. What happened to the real me?

I don't want to answer the phone, or respond to e-mails, or even really talk to anyone at all. The only thing I want from anyone I know is to finally be understood, but it won't happen because everyone has this image in their mind of who I am, and I've always played that role for them. I don't think there even is a real me. At least not enough that could be pieced together to make real person. I feel more like the lingering shadow that a person once cast long ago, but as time goes by the sun gets higher and that shadow shrinks smaller and smaller.

My GP gave me a referral to a psychiatrist a year ago, but there's so much backlog I'm still on the waiting list to get in. How screwed up is everyone that there's a year long line just to see someone who is probably screwed up themselves in their own way, and who will just hand out pills that they probably get kickbacks on? I can't ever imagine being helped by someone I have to pay to act like they care. Yeah, I know that's completely cynical of me to say, and that there are people who have been helped through that route, but what about the people who have never been normal? They can't get fixed. They can only get turned into what everyone else says they should be, which is just another role for me to have to play.

My very earliest memories in life are of telling an abuser no, and to stop. His response was to laugh and do it anyway. Years later when he finally gets hauled into court under charges, the prosecutor, not even the defense, but the one who was supposed to be on my side, tells the judge that it happened a long time ago and the abuser was underage so he didn't think it warranted any jail time? Excuse me? The judge disagreed, but all the abuser ended up with was a little over 2 months, and I was given $4,000 in victim compensation.

Is that what my life is worth? The person I was, the person I was going to be, lost to me. Gone forever. There are no memories to recover, and so no ability to try to get back to a place I don't remember. And all that's worth is 2 months and $4,000? That's the equivalent of someone's summer holidays and a trip to Europe. That's how little I was worth? And to top it all off, because he was underage it wasn't even put on his adult record. It literally doesn't affect him at all for anything he wants to do in life. Whereas I'm expected to scrape together some semblance of a personality - without any help given, mind you - so that I can go out, work, and contribute taxes to pay the salaries of people like that judge or prosecutor who don't even do their jobs. If I do want any help from therapy or counselors, I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. How much help did he get in prison? How often did he get to see therapists? It's like they give more assistance to the person responsible for the crime than the person affected by it. The injustice of it makes me want to scream.

I look at other people and try to figure out how I'm supposed to act. What's supposed to be important to me. Everyone says it's love, family, friends. Okay... so where does that leave someone who doesn't connect with others? Who has never loved anyone? Who can't even handle being in the same room with people without his insides twisting up, heart rate spiking, and feeling like he has to play a role because he doesn't have any kind of real identity inside?

I just want to feel whatever it is that other people feel about themselves, about each other. I want to know who I am, and for my actions to not be reactions to trauma. I want to see my reflection in the mirror and know the person I'm looking at.

This was more of a rant than anything, but PTSD has been kicking my *** for a while now (worse in the past 2 months) and I'm getting so tired of it. I needed to give form to those feelings I've had since waking today.