...and have nowhere to turn.

Someone in the depression group suggested I come to the PTSD group and post my last post here.

...don't know where to turn.

I have tried for years to make my life better and took greater measures to do so this year only to make it worse. I have woken up every day this year crying and with an aching in my chest. I cry everywhere. I used to want to live forever and I find myself envying those who have left this world. I used to be the happiest person when I had nothing but some savings and was traveling around. I have noone. I wrote this blog the other day:

Mom, can I go play with my new friend?! I asked zealously.

Whats this new friends name? she inquired.

Buttface, I told her.

I suppose it didnt occur to me, not having yet been exposed to some of the harsher realities of being here, that the boy was, in fact, calling me buttface.

Similarly, I remember the excitement of somebody giving me their phone number for the first time. For the longest time, I kneeled backwards on a kitchen chair tracing my fingers over the brick wall, as the phone rang and rang and rang and rangand rang. I imagined she must have lived in a REALLY big house, or even a castle, and must have been running down several flights of stairs to answer that phone.

Last summer, I fell in love with a girl who still has that beautiful quality remaining in her: she approaches the world and people like they will embrace her and love her.

Yesterday, I turned 32.

I spent the morning sobbing in my cold car. Then I cried quietly in the library before my only friend took me to a restaurant and I sucked down beers with a 10% alcohol content to numb the weight in my chest and ramble around the misery of it, as I know it is becoming a burden to her. I spoke earlier of how thankful I was that she was taking me out, how thankful I was of a thoughtful video of a girl had sent me all the way from Germany, how the girl I had fallen for last year had inquired if Id be doing anything.

My mother said, Well Im your mother. So I was there the morning of my birthday while my brother urged her to get up as she was doped up on pills, mumbling and slurring into the back of the couch. Get up and celebrate with her! Its her birthday, he said. She slurred into the couch, Im celebrating. Its an awful sight, really - people who have just given up on life, who cant bring themselves to bathe or get dressed, whose lives revolve around the Kardashians, who cant afford to feed their dog, who wipe their asses with old socks when they shit, who do their dishes a few times with vinegar because their food card will get that, who send their son with a head injury in the parking lot to search for cigarette butts. She wants me there for my phone, for my car, for things that I can not carry when I can not currently carry my own existence.

Meanwhile, the man who raised me from the time I was a baby, told me he loves me no less than his biological child, said he planned to adopt me, but took my brother when I was a teenager and left me behind, wished a happy birthday to the bestest daughter ever with several kiss emojis. I havent seen or heard from him in fifteen years. Against my greatest wishing, I have not been anyone's daughter.

My biological father was in prison my whole life. My little brother ended up with his dad out of biology, by older brother ended up with my mother out of dependency and I ended up alone.

It makes sense, I suppose, that I am absolutely ridden with feelings of being defected, flawed, unlovable. It is said that people with those feelings attract abusive relationships. That happened, too. Somehow, though, I went into that relationship bright spirited and happy. I overcame my school years of being bullied brutally - of being called names, of being slapped, of having rocks thrown at me and a desk pushed into my stomach, of a boy wrapping a chain around his fist and punching me in the chest so hard I fell and lost my breath, of being tripped, of being publicly shamed, of lunch hour after lunch hour hiding in the bathroom stalls.

Why dont you stick up for yourself? people would ask me.

I cant. I dont want to hurt anyones feelings, Id say. While my mother says she cant believe it, as I have a scrapper mother who will punch anyone in the face. I overcame that, too - those moments shed punch someone in the face. Including my friends I would have over. The moments shed beat my ass, drag me by my hair down the hallway, punch on me, tell me she hates me. Watching her bring in boyfriends, hearing her have sex, walking in on her having sex, her sleeping with someone I called my boyfriend at some point, slapping me for crying at 12 when I walked into the living room at night to see my biological cousin banging a 16-year old on the couch. Her stealing my instruments and selling them to support her own habits, her having seizures and laying in my arms soaking my clothing with blood as I scream thinking she is dead. Her sending me on her drug runs. Her sending me to take my brother to food lines.

Truly not the half of it, but I became a master at talking my way through things, developing a keen proficiency at changing my perspective, changing my mind. I knew she was struggling and trying to survive in whatever way she knew how. I saw that the only way she could hate others is by hating herself. I knew that we did not choose each other.

I got married too young to a man who I loved for his beautiful, kind heart. I got rejected for financial aid for school as a result. I spent six years in a kind of silent meditation, not knowing where it had gone. I had people telling me I should be teaching. I had people telling me my writing was incredible and made them want a life change. I had people telling me they were sure I would have been a famous artist had I not grown up in the environment I grew up in. I had people asking why I wasnt modeling or acting. I didnt know how to do any of it. I had known I wanted something other than my mothers life since I could remember, but it was never modeled to me. And all I had in the world was my ex-husband, a man who worked a mediocre job from morning until night six days a week for nothing. A man who I ended up coming out to as gay when I was 24.

I went on a travel stint, which proved to be the most amazing time of my life, despite any hardship. People would write to me and tell me they wished they could do it. They would tell me I seemed to live years in a day. They would tell me not to steer course. They would tell me their lives are boring and they admire my audacity. I had people tell me knowing me this way changed their lives and how they see things. I actually had people follow me just to tell me I have an amazing energy. I was unafraid of most things except the structures of society, repetition, the constructs that bind. I was full of joy because I was experiencing a kind of freedom that so many are afraid to dive into and I saw that that was where life was. Not mere existence. I saw beauty in everything and had no problem speaking to others.

And when I found out I was divorced by default after my then ex-husband had left me married for a year without knowing where he was, I took the steps to finally get into school. I would be the first in my family.

The woman I was in a relationship with for three years mangled me. We chose each other and, for some reason, she chose me to hurt. She chose me to shake, to call names, to accuse, to bring in and lock out, to play wicked and to take every vulnerability I ever had and use them to break my core down and recreate something unrecognizable. She was charming and funny and outgoing and adorable. She was a beloved professor and a great mother and it played out like a psycho thriller because nobody would believe me. It seemed as though, when I was thrown off balance and reached out, sometimes unabashedly and in desperate ways because I had never experienced such a thing, it seemed to play well into her hands. People began to fall away and I became more isolated. Sure she couldnt tell me she was going to give me a massage and pound up and down my back, laughing hysterically. Sure she couldnt tell me people stare at me weird and get uncomfortable when I point out sweet details in them I thought they would once smile about and beam that nobody notices such things. Sure she didnt take my ability to pick up and travel and my daydreams of passionate love and tell me it was a nasty facade. Sure she didnt take bits of my life, life being married to a man, and show me convincingly that I had done ugly things. Sure she didnt tell me, Youre not conscious of what you do. Sure she didnt dump me and lock me out again and again, only to come around with grad promises and in depth apologies, only to later take them back. Sure she didnt talk behind peoples backs to me and act like their best friend to their faces. Sure she didnt push me to have sex with her when I told her I didnt trust her. Sure she didnt use her children as an excuse to know what was in my bank account. Sure she didnt threaten my life and my education if I talked to anyone. She was the outgoing professor. I was the introverted student starting my life late. It took a long time to realize a starving heart can hallucinate things not there before I finally left.

It took another relationship with someone who needed a bandaid for her achy heart to chew me up and spit me back out for me to finally crack and see what had been so mangled. All my fears and my sensitivities became heightened. Too much noise and too much contact drained me. In any given place, I could hear ever whisper, every conversation, ever clank and clatter of keys and coins, ever creak, every drawereverythingand I would freeze. Any conversation with anyone, I had paranoid questions circling through my head - am I saying anything wrong? Are they interpreting something that I am not intending? Are they seeing something in me that grosses them out? What if it was me? Because everything I had once seen as beautiful within me had become ugly.

I was single for over a year, deciding to finish school and write a book. Things happen, however, and I found the sweetest girl and ended up in what I thought to be a near perfect relationship. I graduated with highest honors with a Bachelors degree in English and Creative Writing. I have also finished my book. It seems like a flop. Anyway, I could not find a job. No responses, rejection letters, closed doorsthey kept coming. My friends kept telling me I need a car. I would tell them I need to wait for an income or to see if my book succeeds. However, I fell for Lyft and Uber ads claiming drivers make $1500 a week and, as North Hollywood Toyota told me to fake a letter of employment, I financed a new Prius C. And very soon, despite being $30,000 in debt, found that those ads were nowhere near true. I had once sat in that car for three hours and made $7. Meanwhile, the girl I fell in love with and would have given anything for, let me know that I had made her the happiest anyone had, was the best lover she had ever had, had been her best friend, and was the sweetest person she had ever metbut she didnt think I was who she would marry and it didnt seem fair to hang on. And I looked at the course of our time together, which was often nothing short of magical, and began questioning myself more. I wondered about the unsaid, that maybe she was just too kind, and what she saw in me not worth keeping. I figured if I lost her I would just lose anyone. So I decided that I would remain alone. And everything over the course of my life hit me again in one quick sweep.

Now, I am a 32 year old loser. I am terrified of talking to people or meeting anyone. I have battled for years with intermittent homelessness. I am homeless. I have no idea what it is like to have my own bed. I am trying to work up the courage to apply for Masters programs, dont know if I will be able to afford applying and cant seem to secure every letter of recommendation that I need because the world isnt built for highly sensitive introverts. Beyond that, I cant take another door shut or another disappointment. I do not belong in the town I am in, where everyone is interconnected and I cant move without reminders of the trauma. I am drowning in an enormous amount of expenses and have knocked and knocked and knocked and knocked on doors only to have them shut in my face. My clothes fit in a duffle bag and are all ragged and several years old. I owe $1500 this week and feel like I am going to lose everything. My days are silent and I have no support system. Youre so beautiful and intelligent, people will tell me, You should be able to take life by the balls. But I am learning fast that nobody cares about your degree or your looks or even your persistence. It is who you know and who youre from.

This is existence. Its not life. And I am just so tired.
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Yesterday, everything came to a head and I lost it like I never have before. I beat my head against a wall. I always thought people who did such things were absolutely nuts and now I understand the need to just release the pain and frustration of everything. I took off driving with nowhere to go, drove right into a car. I am in such an awful crisis. I have tried to get a job everywhere with no luck. It's a cycle - you have no clothes to look decent, you are not hireable. You tend to need a car and phone to find anything but I'm on the brink of losing those, too. I had to cancel my insurance as a first step, which will probably result in a repo. You need an address for a job and a job for an address and I don't have those. I don't have friends or family. People ignore you because they can't take the "negativity." I used to be bright and happy and that's when people were around. It's an eye opener who is genuine when you are going through a crisis and it's an awful discovery. I seriously can not take it anymore. I figure I could do awesome things if my life was not in a constant state of survival mode and people have told me the same thing. I don't want to be a part of this world anymore. It's too much to carry alone.