I feel horrible, the worst I've ever felt. I don't even really know what's going on.

I tell myself it's because of this or that, but I know that it hasn't got that much to do with reality. Reality is a different sort of place. In reality things are never so extreme, never as bad as they seem.

In my mind things can be bad, just absolutely totally black.

I moved into a new apartment a month ago, without realizing that the neighborhood is quite sketchy. But who cares, right? I'm only there for 11 more months, the apartment is decent, the area is fairly close to my school. My next-door neighbor, as well as the people above me, seem to be decent people. Sure there are idiots and weirdos all over my street, but I don't need to pay attention to them.

I'm falling into a slump. It's like a feedback loop: I don't take care of myself, I don't eat properly or exercise, I don't allow myself to have fun, and so I get really unhappy and only focus on the negative in life. There's negative and positive.

There's more than one perspective. The perspective changes how you see everything. And yet it hasn't got much to do with your circumstances, but a lot to do with your mental state.

Before I moved I also felt like crap, but there wasn't any shape to it, I didn't associate it with my circumstances, I just felt this horrible sense of dread/fear/stress, combined with shame, guilt, self-hate, etc.

I feel so sad and stressed out that I just want to cry. I wish I would let myself :(

I feel so lonely and alienated now. I need friends, I need to trust someone.

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I've had a crush on this one girl for quite some time now... Today, as luck would have it, I saw her for the first time in a few weeks. She seemed happy to see me again, and we got into a conversation. I was quite nervous, though I think I kept my composure. As the conversation started winding down, I figured it was now or never. A wave of anxiety passed over me as I asked her out. She said yes.

I'm worried now, about various things.

When she inquires about my social life, what am I supposed to tell her? That's the main issue really. What are the odds that she'll ask a question like that? What would be an acceptable answer, which isn't off-putting or unsettling?

I find her really attractive, and I enjoy talking to her. I think dating her is worth a shot. Also, it's just been so long (over a year) since I've had any romantic or intimate contact with a woman that I think I'll go crazy. I suppose I should take it easy, try and be casual and avoid overly high expectations. The less seriously I take it, the more enjoyable I think it will be.

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I purchased a battery off eBay, to replace the one in my aging laptop. I asked that it be shipped to my dad's apartment, since he's nearly always home. Well UPS tried to deliver it - THREE times! And for one reason or another, my dad missed it. One day, he was taking his car to a garage. Another day, he said, he was taking a nap (he wears ear plugs when he sleeps).

Well, attempt 3 was the final attempt. I can't get in touch with UPS today, it being a Saturday. I checked their website, and it seems they tried to deliver on Wednesday, Thursday AND Friday! Why the hell did my dad not tell me sooner?! It also says that they're going to return it to the sender. I'm so frustrated, angered and scared by this. I was really looking forward to that battery! And it didn't exactly come cheap.

Anyone experience this before? Anyone know what to do? 

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It had been several weeks since I had last spoken with E. Things began awkwardly. I didn't know where to begin, or how to express myself. I froze up, I wasn't able to communicate with her. I certainly tried. But I didn't succeed, and I didn't manage to change her notions of me.

I tried to tell her that "insecurity", "unconfidence" and "anxiety" were just words, that they really didn't reflect my experience. I tried to explain that I knew what they were, what they meant, and that it was something utterly different from the feelings I struggle with nowadays.

The key feeling is a complete lack of security, in the broadest sense. Everyone and everything can be misconstrued as a threat. I look at the world through a lens which transforms oridnary, mundane things into hazards. It isn't rational, and upon closer inspection one sees that a threat doesn't really exist. However, it is possible to trace the emotional, physical response to an underlying grouping of thoughts and beliefs.

This part was annoying. She asked me about medication: was I still taking any? Had it had an effect? No and No. The constant worry sounded, to her, like something resulting from a chemical inbalance. I disagreed completely. She was quite surprised that medication had done little for me. I told her that it couldn't change the way I thought, and that my thinking was the problem.

She still didn't seem to get it, which was frustrating. We didn't get anywhere. It probably wasn't worth getting up at 7:30am to make it to the session. I'm desperate for an explanation once again. I've got to know why I respond the way I do. Goddamnit, I'm tired of being a freak. I just wish somebody would understand.

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I had a period of over a year during which I was fixated with applying a diagnosis to myself. It was a desperate search for an easy explanation and a clear solution. Finding an explanation would, in itself, relieve much of the shame, guilt, insecurity and confusion that comes with a nebulous complex like mine. A diagnosis would allow for a compartmentalization of my problems, separating them from my 'self'. From an aberrant individual, I'd become a normal individual who happens to have a "problem".

In the past several months, however, I think my search was on hiatus. My current therapist influenced me in this, suggesting that I carefully study the nuances and subtleties of my problems rather than affix a label to them. It seemed like a good idea. I've been digging concertedly since September, making steady progress at a gradual deconstruction of my entire complex. My method had been to start with a single symptom, something easy to see, and follow the course of causation until I came to a wall. I've come to a number of conclusions, which I'll summarize at some point in the future.

However there's one glaring black box at the center of everything, something which may need a different approach to understanding. Simply put, it's the extreme power of the emotions which drive my complex. What I've labeled "anxiety" out of convenience is better described as extremely acute insecurity. It's chronic, only vaguely correlated to external conditions. I think it may be based, simply, on the transplanting of a series of thoughts, feelings and behaviors into a situation where they don't belong. In that sense, it sounds very much like post-traumatic stress disorder. In response to a "trauma", you take mundane situations to be matters of life or death. Maybe I'm oversimplifying.

I've used words like diffidence, anxiety and insecurity. They're very crude approximations to the my real feelings however. It isn't mundane, commonplace feelings which make every moment of my life feel like agony. I feel endangered. It feels like my very physical/psychological integrity is under constant and sustained threat. I don't rationally analyze the risk in anything. I just feel like I'm walking the razor's edge every second. I don't know what the threat even is exactly, which makes it that much scarier. Few things in life are able to inspire that level of dread. The powerful feelings I experience have few correlates in my own normal emotional functioning. They're far removed from the designations which I normally apply to them. I desire approval not because I care about approval intrinsically. It's simply a way to reassure myself and suspend the powerful piercing negative emotions which are constitutively active.

I dislike labels in psychology. They're confining. It feels like I become defined by them. They have the potential to become like self-fulfilling prophecies. I act out the diagnosis, maybe in an effort to make it applicable. There's a depressing fatalism to labels as well. But in fact, if I am afflicted by something which could be classed as a specific disorder, it doesn't matter whether I diagnose myself. It makes no difference if I internalize the label or not. The original problem remains unchanged, unaffected. The word "diagnosis" itself carries a connotation of fatalism and absoluteness. Forget that. Don't be quick to diagnose, but if the description fits, in a meaningful way, then you can use it to help you understand. Understanding is half the battle.

After that long preamble, I'll move on to the punchline. A quick look at Wikipedia suggests that my core issue may correspond to complex post-traumatic stress disorder. The feelings that I feel are certainly not normal, after all, and I'm well aware of this. They have to come from somewhere, from some thing.

The following are the symptoms as seen on Wikipedia:

Difficulties regulating emotions, including symptoms such as persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or covert anger, which is characteristic of passive-aggressive behavior

My emotions tend to be extremely inhibited. Covert anger is a major problem, as occasional explosive anger.

Variations in consciousness, such as forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes of dissociation (during which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body)

I feel as though I modify my memories, my past, in some way. I rarely think about it directly. I've mostly dissociated myself from my past, and my former self. I don't feel I'm the same person. I don't feel there's consistency, stability, or an unbroken narrative to my identity. I very rarely relive traumatic events. I repress them, I think, instead facing them, which makes things worse. It makes it easier to see them irrationally and non-analytically.

Changes in self-perception, such as a sense of helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings

Absolutely dead on. These feelings haunt me for most of my waking hours. Very pervasive.

Varied changes in the perception of the perpetrator, such as attributing total power to the perpetrator or becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, including a preoccupation with revenge

Yes. Most of the time I attribute total power to the perpetrator. That's when I feel the above feelings. Sometimes I do feel great indignation and indulge in revenge fantasies.

Alterations in relations with others, including isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer

Isolation, check. Distrust, check. Search for a rescuer, always. I search for a rescuer in the form of a friend, and especially in the form of a girlfriend. For some reason, having a SO would be very reassuring. It would allow me to relax, if I knew that somebody liked me.

Loss of, or changes in, one's system of meanings, which may include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair

Hmm, tough one. My system of meanings is very skewed. In general I always have some kind of hope... is it hope, exactly? Sustaining faith might be a better word. What sustains me is a belief that my effort, struggle, journey will bear fruit. Maybe.

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Three of my mother's friends have called me in the past four days. None of them had ever called me before. C called me at work on Friday. It seemed innocuous enough. He mostly talked about a friend of his, an experienced biologist, whom he suggested I speak to when I go home during my break.

V, my mom's best friend called yesterday, and cut straight to the point. She wanted to discuss "the past", i.e. the time when my mother and I were living with my abusive step-father. Uncomfortable to the extreme. She ended the conversation saying that I could always call her if I wanted to "talk". Ugh.

Just now, my mom's current boyfriend called and left a message. He made an effort to sound casual, suggesting we discuss some pedestrian topics and said he'd call back later. Again, he'd never called me before, and it isn't really worth calling long-distance unless you've got something important to talk about.

I'm certain they're all calling me because my mother suggested they do so. There's no way they could've gotten my phone number otherwise. And it's an impossible coincidence at any rate.

My mother left the the country last weekend to visit Bulgaria for a little while. She called me before leaving, and I happened to be in a rotten mood. As usual, she got worried and pried and pried until I started ranting about "the past" again, getting very upset with her. She was in shock, and became extremely worried (something I absolutely despise). She even suggested she cancel her trip and visit me instead. Fat lot of good that would do, she's half the problem! So before leaving she presumably called all her buddies and said "Nicky's in a crisis, he needs your help!". Fuck. The akward phonecalls and all the goddamn attention are making things so much worse. I'm a private person, and I'd rather not share my problems with people I barely know. I certainly don't want them broadcast to my mom's entire social sphere.

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I've been pretty down lately, it being February and my midterms exams approaching. Down isn't really the word either. Neurotic and irrational might be a better way to describe it. The persistent worry that used to haunt me last semester is back, but I'm no longer able to endure it the way I once did. I might go into more detail later on, but for now I'd like to emphasize some positive developments in life.

Thursday night I spoke to T, the professor whose lab I work for. I wanted to apply for a government award, something like a grant, for a 16-week research project during the summer. I asked T if she would be my supervisor, and she said yes. My chances of getting the award aren't that high, to be fair. But T is clearly a saint, because she said I could keep doing paid work there during the summer, on the same project, even if I didn't get the award! Right, so that means I'm guaranteed a summer job :D

Then the following day, things worked out quite well on my project. My mentor H and I had been racking our brains for weeks trying to figure out what was going wrong with most of my PCR experiments. I designed a strange test, modifying a few variables here and there to see what worked. On a whim, I also tacked on a wacky reaction mixture which couldn't possibly work, but seemed like it was worth a try. Well, and to my enormous relief, it worked! It worked brilliantly and perfectly and H congratulated me on the idea. With that roadblock out of the way, the project can really get moving now :D

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Today they did it again. My neighbors, living below me, blasted their annoying hip-hop music to dance club levels before I was even out of bed. It usually happens at least once a day, and annoys the hell outta me!

What did I do about it? I went down and knocked on their door, not for the first time. And not for the first time, they didn't answer. They turned down their music, which was nice, but they didn't answer the damn door.

Then what did I do? Something I'd been planning on for a while: I wrote them a letter. Typed, in 16pt font and in two languages, so there'd be no way they could misunderstand what I wrote. I kept it civil and polite, and avoided any threats. Having done that, I feel good. Maybe, just maybe, they'll even keep their music down!

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