Feeling Insane Again and People Calling Me Insane

The first guy I was ever with, who I was basically in a relationship with for about a year and a half, he basically ****ed me over and left me for another girl, and his reason was because I was depressed. When I was with him and when I talked to him I usually did not seem depressed at all, I was very fun and happy and not a drag at all, but I got upset sometimes with us being long distance for a lot of our relationship and with him talking about not wanting to be with me, and every now and then I became disclosive and talked about things like my eating disorder, and derealization, etc. His little brother is very depressed and I think he was scared to be with me, because I was depressed, even though he basically WAS with me. I loved him a lot. We fit so well together. I've never fit so well with anyone in my life ever or felt so close to anyone the way I felt with him and I loved him so much and my derealization completely went away whenever I was with him.

I wrote him a letter, a couple months ago. I talked about how I'm doing. He is always very receptive to my communications, and good about responding when I want him to and not responding when I don't want him to. I'm doing a lot better than I had been, and I told him this. I said that the reason he left me is nonexistent now, because I'm not depressed anymore, I'm doing better. But I did say a couple things that I'm struggling with. And it seems like all he focused on is the things I'm struggling with and still thinks I'm ****ed up and even though I'm a lot better I'm still too depressed for him, I'm still too ****ed up for him. It is so upsetting because I want to be good enough for him because I guess I feel like if I'm good enough for him then maybe I can possibly be just good enough, period. But I feel like I'll never be good enough for him. I feel like there is a limit to how much better I can get, and it would never be enough for him. I miss him a lot and I love him more than anything and he's engaged to the girl he left me for so I know we won't ever be together... But I want to feel like I'm good enough for him. Like if the girl he left me for wasn't in the picture, he'd be interested in me. Like if I'd gotten to this level of feeling better before he left me, he wouldn't have left me at all.

People call me crazy sometimes. I'm a good writer and in my fiction workshops when people comment on my stories (which are nonfiction, even though it's for a fiction class, but people don't know it's nonfiction), they say that the narrator seems crazy. When I was feeling really bad a couple of years ago over half the class said they thought the narrator was crazy. This year only three people said it. But it still sucks to be called crazy at all.

And there was this guy who I'd known for a year and a half and regularly texted for a year and hung out with a few times and slept with a few times, and he started ignoring me. He'd ignored me for a month and a half straight before and then texted me back and everything was cool, but then after a few months he ignored me again and it was for three months and he never texted me back, so I just told him good bye, after three months of not hearing from him. I didn't know what to think because he'd ignored me for a whole month and a half before and we were still cool, so when he ignored me this time that didn't right away mean that he didn't want to be friends anymore. Plus earlier when we'd been talking for a little while I had him promise me that he would TELL me if he didn't want to be friends anymore instead of just ignoring me and waiting for me to take a hint. And he agreed, he promised. This whole thing with him absolutely tortured me, and I had other stuff going on in my life that sucked, and I said things that I shouldn't have to him, and some of the things I said I said in order to get him mad so he would text me back and yell at me and it would be clear we weren't friends anymore, but he never did that. I said goodbye to him a month ago and got no response, so that's done, but when I was home from college for spring break I had a weak moment where I let my dad in on some of this and he said if he was the guy he would have ignored me too, he would have said "What is with this crazy chick? I don't need this."

Now, the semester is almost over and I have a lot of stuff to do but I am feeling worse and worse. And I feel crazy. There's a guy here at the six-person house I lived in this school year, and we started having sex in September, and in January he never wanted to hang out with me anymore which upset me and I said if he's going to want to be away from me except for like three times a month, then I'd rather he just be consistent and never be around me because it hurts too much and is too confusing when he's not consistent, and a couple weeks ago we talked and now we are hanging out sometimes and not ignoring each other anymore, but I want to hang out more than he does so it hurts me when he doesn't want to, even though I try not to let it show, and then when we do hang out he often acts like he wishes we weren't hanging out, like he won't talk to me and he doesn't like it if I touch him, and it's confusing, and a couple of times I've gotten upset with him because of something he said and usually I don't let him see that I am upset but these past two times I did and I just feel like I am so much trouble and so obnoxious and so dramatic and so not worth it at all. I prefer to not let anyone see any of my vulnerable emotions. But I feel crazy with him, I feel like I'm having too many big negative emotions in regards to him and I feel like if anyone sees this I am going to be perceived as crazy.

There was a big party at our house last night. The night before I was upset because the guy at the house didn't want to be around me and I planned not to go. Then, the day of the party, I talked to my mom and got cheered up and decided to go. But then the guy at the house drove with me to get alcohol and mostly wouldn't talk to me, and I decided I didn't want to go to the party again. Part of it is that I thought no one would talk to me. They all had their friends they brought as guests to the party and I thought they would talk to them, and not me. I had no friends. I didn't really want to talk to those other people who were not the guy from my house, anyway. I wanted to be physically close to the guy at the house and touch him and then I would feel better and then maybe after that I could talk to the other people, but not before then. So what I did was, when we got back with the alcohol, around three pm, I had a Mike's hard lemonade and 3 shots of vodka right in a row, and went up to bed to sleep. Then around 6:45 I did basically the same thing, except with a Mike's and 4 shots. I slept the rest of the night. I feel like this is a blaring signal of "I am not doing okay at all" but no one seems to care. It makes me feel crazy that I did that. I've only been drunk once in my entire life and I'm 24 years old. I hate drinking.

Today the guy at the house, his friends from the party were still around. I went and sat in the same room with them for a while but he didn't really talk to me and when they went outside he didn't invite me to go too and once on his way to the kitchen he poked me and tickled me a little for two seconds but when I tried to reach for him he pulled away, like it's not okay for me to touch him, even though he was just touching me. I hate it when he tickles me or touches me when he can tell that I am unhappy, because he'll do it just enough for me to laugh or smile or be willing to have a jolly voice, but then as soon as I act like everything's okay then he goes right back to not wanting to talk to me and not wanting me to touch him.

And he's a super introvert and part of why I didn't want to go to the party is the rational of "more than half the time when he's here with just me he doesn't want to spend time with me, so why would he want to spend time with me when his friends who he likes better than me are here?" And then when I was in the same room as them today it seemed I was right since he didn't ask me to come with me and didn't talk to me... And it's like he'll engage them in conversation, and he'll laugh like he's having the best time in the world, and after me and him got the alcohol and he wouldn't talk to me he engaged two other people who live in our house in conversation, but not me, and I just don't understand...

But I feel crazy, because of what people have said, and because of how I'm feeling right now that I went and got drunk by myself, and because of how upset I get over the guy in the house and how unreasonable and unacceptable and off-putting that probably is, and how I am so upset I feel like I can't even do my homework and I'm just crying...

I have issues with guys and end up hurt a lot. And I just feel like I'm crazy and it's all my fault, even though it's not all my fault because they've done some really mean things before I even started acting emotional, and I feel like I deserve to be so sad and lonely and I am worthless because anything good about me is crossed out by the bad insane parts of me and I should just save myself and other people the time and the trouble and not try to be friends or anything because it's not worth it to be my friend.

And I feel like I spend my whole life just waiting for people to want me, and thinking of what I could do or who I could be to make them want me. But I can't do anything. Because people just don't.

When I'm not emotional I'm really not that bad. And usually I never let people see me being emotional or vulnerable at all. But even when they don't see it, they still don't want me, and I don't know why. I've hidden the worst things about me and let only the more acceptable stuff be visible and still I'm not worth it.

I sympathize with how you feel but it sounds like you may be selling yourself short and investing too much emotionally in people who are... the wrong people. It all just sounds so casual and situational. Being so lonely and in need of connection that we start seeing something in someone that just really isn't there. I'm not criticizing...most of us have been there.

Hi Coco,

A lot of the issues you raise in your message I've experienced a lot in my life. One thing that I've been trying to do that has made the pain and hurt I feel in intimate relationship less intense is try to focus less on the external and more on the internal. For example, the boy who you say left you because you were depressed may have in fact decided to be with someone else for reasons that you'll never know. But realistically, those reasons had nothing to do with you per se, they were more about him. The other examples you give suggest the same; you don't really know what's going on with the boys you're talking about...

Hugs,

RJ

With the first guy, I have no doubts that there was love involved and we were a super great fit and were super close. With all the other guys after that, it IS very casual and I am well aware that I don't mean much to them and they could leave me at any time. [Though, I do think partly - only partly - why I don't mean much to them is because I go into it feeling like I don't mean much to them, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, kind of]. I think that maybe I feel safer with people who I know don't care about me that much, in a way. Even though I know very well that I don't mean much to these guys, I do have a lot of emotions towards them, I care about them, even if they're mean to me and will hurt me without a second thought I still see the good in them and it makes me happy and warm to see them happy and it makes me tear up when I even only imagine them sad or unhappy. I will put up with people being mean to me and not caring about me if I can spend time with them and not be alone, if I can have sex with them and physical contact with them because that makes everything a thousand times better, and if I can feel towards them. Even if I'm investing too much in them emotionally, and I'm hurting myself by getting really upset, I have a really hard time feeling like I really care about people - it makes me feel so guilty that I can't feel that for my family - but I feel like I care for these guys. It feels horrible and empty to be alone and feel like no one cares for you but it feels just as horrible and empty if you are unable to feel like you care for someone else.

I feel like even if I know the things I'm doing are hurting me, it seems like if I didn't do them things would be even worse. If I tried to make things better I don't really have any idea what direction I could go that would actually work.

Have you tried spending more time with yourself, like through relaxation techniques? This seems to be something that many of us benefit from quite a bit.

RJ