I find more and more as the days go by that the only thing I really enjoy anymore is sleep. Watching television or reading can set off uneasy thoughts of how worthless I am, or how stupid. I can't watch someone on television get humiliated without feeling humiliated myself. When I sleep, I don't dream, and no one wakes me up to bother me, so I'm relatively safe.

It just seems that I'm always wrong now. I can't seem to do anything right. It sets me up for an entire day of questioning my worth and value if I answer a question incorrectly out loud. As a consequence of this, I speak less in class to avoid sounding so stupid, and as a consequence of that, I get even less right. I isolate myself from my friends, because they're all fairly smart and correct me frequently. I feel as though they are purposely sabotaging my self esteem— but they are good people, and I know it's just me. But I can't help but think this way.

I find myself treading the border to paranoia as well— when someone corrects my wrong answer, I feel this intense, burning anger... as though they're correcting me in order to thwart me, in order to prove their own self worth. I know this is wrong. I know people aren't correcting my because they like to make me feel bad— but I can't help these feelings. I really don't know how to get rid of or deal with this anxiety.

I'm not very pretty. I've never been pretty. I'm not very talented at anything. I don't play any sport, I've never won an award, and my grades are average. I'm mediocre. My intelligence has always been the thing that sets me apart, makes me feel good about being me. Now... I don't even have that.

I don't cry easily, so my problems pass by unnoticed. I try not to create more tension than necessary, except when I lose control. At the end of the day, I'm weakest, and most likely to yell at someone for correcting me or arguing. I don't do well in arguments; I'm easily swayed by the other people's point of view.

I frequently think about suicide, but don't have the courage to go through with it. I have attempted cutting, but it doesn't make me feel any better... only more stupid.

I feel as though I have nothing to live for. I don't get great grades. I don't think the colleges that have accepted me want me, and my father is a high-class alcoholic who likes to call me up at 8:30PM and rant about how the US is going to collapse. It has become a constant fear, that the US is going to end and I'll have to change my routine with no notice. My mother is an unemployed mortgage-writer (who needs one of those nowadays?) and our rent is overdue by three months. We've been evicted once, and I fear it happening again. I fear a lot of things.

I want to sleep.

Today when I came home from school, I wanted to go to bed. It has been an exceptionally bad day. I was corrected many times, and to top it off, the newspaper came out today, and there is a colossal mistake in it. As a copy-editor, it's my job to fix that, and I failed. The other copy-editor, while reading through a silly article (the article complained about how seniors have so many problems, like prom and dates and tuxes and limos, without mentioning any REAL problems like college or scholarships or financial aid) and left little sarcastic comments within the article which I knew about and did nothing. The layout editor berated me for this failure, and I don't want to go to school tomorrow and face the class. I contemplate killing myself, but it would be too melodramatic. I just don't want to deal with them, even though I'm at fault.

I wish there was some way to stop being driven by these feelings. I don't know how to deal with them or control them. I have sought psychiatric help, but my mother does nothing about it. I cannot drive and do not own a car, and I live in a rural area. I have already had one severe breakdown, which my mother refuses to recognize, and I don't want to have another one. I need help. I need help. I need help.