So, well, I'm still around. Have been spending a fair amount of time wishing I wasn't, but whatever. I saw the on-call counsellor on Monday, and I'm talking to my own psychologist tomorrow, so I suppose I'll be okay at least until then. Or something. He's probably just going to hate me for wasting his time when I already saw someone on Monday, but I don't fucking care anymore. Even if he does, it's not like I don't deserve it, in my own mind at least. I am self-centered lately and think that my own horrible opinions of myself and my life are gospel, and everything else is a lie.

I have come to the realization, via the observations of a friend, that I am not actually in any sort of "real" recovery and probably never was. I just spent the better part of two years hiding and masking and creating more layers so that I could "cope" and "live a normal life". Turns out that when I get super stressed, and then maybe don't engage in as many behaviors as I had been doing before, all those layers start twisting and turning and pulling off. I start becoming that thing I never wanted to be -- the thing I tried to remake myself NOT to be. Emotional, with innumerable mood swings; alternatively terrified, lethargic, and self-destructive; and always, always needing more than anyone could possibly give me.

The biggest problem, though, is that as time has gone on, I've become very jaded about recovery in general. I don't think I can ever live the kind of life I actually want, or ever receive the kind of attention from other people that, at my innermost self, I feel that I desperately need. So clinging to behaviors seems not like any sort of childish or manipulative or even destructive thing to do, but rather the only way I actually CAN live in this world the way people seem to want me to. As a part of it, contributing, acting and seeming normal. As a nice person, a good friend, a stable daughter, a sister who doesn't echo the crazy you are trying to get over within your own self.

But the facade is slowly starting to come apart. And, predictably, so am I. (I just wish real predictions were as good as retroactive ones.)

I have no idea where this is going, or even where it can go. It could continue by keeping me in a downward spiral, leading to lots of horrible things. Or maybe it could be some sort of road that leads me into actual, true healing of some kind. But even as I write that second possibility I don't think that can actually happen. I am too broken, and I've been broken for too long, for it to be able to be fixed. It's starting to all work itself into the way my personality, my whole self is shaped, rather than being something abnormal that is controlling me and making me crazy. It seems to be trying to work its way from parasite to symbiote. And I'm letting it. I find it comforting. I like having this one avenue towards fire and chaos that other people can't take away from me, no matter what they do to me. In fact, negativity would probably just feed into it, rather than taking it away. I like having something that not even stubborn insensitive parents and well-meaning friends and poverty and being a total fucking failure can take away from me. I could get to the bottom of the deepest barrel and still have it. At the bottom of that barrel, I would be able to sit there and think, "At least I can still be good at one thing." In some strange, fucked-up way, I would win.

Shields.

Sometimes I also wonder if I want to recover at all, which may or may not be another reason that I never truly did. At one point I really think I wanted to recover, and even had some hope that this could happen. Again, I've gotten rather jaded since then. So many psychologists, so many different people and treatments, and here I sit, still like this, still the same as ever. They say it's insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I don't even WANT to keep doing it.

I am tired of all of it. Physically, mentally, emotionally -- I'm tired. I'm tired of therapy, of school, of my family, even of my friends sometimes. Really, really motherfucking tired.

I don't know how to deal with this anymore. I wish someone could just come scoop me up and magically make all this stupid shit that is my life go away -- change it all into something that's actually liveable, that is worth living through. I can't think of another way to make anything liveable. Which means I'm running out of options.

One way or another, something is going to have to change, and soon.