A few years ago I went to a doctor to discuss depression, in which my parents kept asking why are you depressed? what has caused this? In which I thought, maybe they're right, I can't pinpoint a reason. So I basically said okay and we never spoke of it again.

As I have gotten older I have realised there is no 'reason',
I have been this way since childhood and I don't know why, but I definitely know I'm out of place.

I came across a post about Childhood Emotional Neglect that had pointed out that parents who are emotionally unavailable fall under this umbrella of neglect.

This was totally it, how did I not see the shining beacon? I didn't realise that having parents with low emotional intelligence could cause so much pain and difficulty to a child's life. Riiiiight, so this is why I feel confused when someone asks how I am or how my day was... and why I totally don't do hugs, hugs are just horrible haha.

I have always felt that I had 'developed' slower emotionally; as a child I never used to speak to anyone at all. By the time I was in primary school I was speaking like a baby, which I used to be told off by my parents and teacher for doing so, and by secondary I was pissing myself because of social anxiety and again because of this anxiety I used to drink before work all of the time.

I have never had any direction in life and feel like most of my life has been some sort of haze of sadness. I didn't even know exactly what I was going through or if I was going through anything at all because I just totally lacked a sense of self and thought I was being dramatic.

Now I get all confused and blame my parents for my long list of troubles, but how can I blame them..?

I feel terrible because it is not as though they are bad parents, they just don't know how to show emotion. I went back to see a doctor and I didn't know what to tell my parents, how am I supposed to tell them in a nice way it might be because they neglected me?

I mean come on.. neglect? They will be just as confused as I am!

It's like this is all my life is now, being emotional unstable. I don't do relationships because I don't do emotions and attachment, I feel like any friendships I have I don't care about (so now I have none), I drink when I feel anxious (which recently I haven't because I have become unemployed), education I left because of feeling socially pressured and because I have no sense of direction and now I just sit in the house with my mind on loop.

I started taking 10mg of citalopram and my mam found them and googled what they were for. It started again with the why's, so I just said that they were for social anxiety and we just left it at that.

I am due to go back to get 20mg and I know my mam will have to again ask why since she will have to show emotion in this more 'serious' situation.

What do I even say? I don't want them to feel guilt, but I don't even know what's going on with myself right now.

(Just to add on I found out my childhood babysitter was a paedo, wtf!)