lost

I don't feel great; I'm really down and anxious. Usually writing helps, I think it's because I'm a perfectionist. Being able to organise my thoughts by controlling how I portray them is calming. Maybe because there is nothing neat and tidy about how I feel. I guess that is why the idea of going to a psychiatrist has never appealed to me. I would just blurt out everything and make a bigger mess. If anyone is reading this they probably think I'm a bit strange. I don't care. This is going to be my space. I've written so many journal entries on my laptop but ended but deleting them. I regret that now; it's almost like I went through all that pain for nothing, because there is nothing to show for it, no proof of how I felt. I realise that is why I used to cut; I wanted the outside to reflect the inside. That, and I wanted to feel like I was doing something about things. I could get through the next day if I cut the night before. The idea doesn't appeal to me anymore. I'd be embarrassed to be caught with bandages on my wrists now. While my brain could comprehend that it was unhealthy behaviour, at the time I didn't care. I did what I had to do. Now I actually want to be healthy. But it's hard when my mind is showing me life for what it really is; messy and a lot of effort. The thought of having to get a job and face the banality of everyday life is exhausting. I need to almost prepare myself mentally to go into town once or twice a month, let alone everyday. But this is how the months are passing me by, and I'm doing nothing with my life. I have nothing to show for it. And as time passes, the pressure mounts with the thought that I should be doing something. And I try and ignore that thought. I keep pushing it down so I won't have to deal with it. In the back of my mind I tell myself that I will get it together eventually, but when will that be? To make it worse I have a twin sister who is doing things how they should be done. She graduated nearly top of our class, has won awards for academics and is halfway through a highly competitive and coveted degree. At the same time she has a lot of friends, a busy social life and a boyfriend. While I understand that two lives should not be compared, it is harder for me to escape the glaring differences. We were born to the same parents on the same day. Twenty years later she is successful and well-rounded, and I'm on a self-imposed break from life. To anyone who has read this far, the solution must be obvious: do something. But it's not that easy. I lack motivation to do anything. I can sit here and write about everything she has, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather stay in bed than get up and face the world. I'm bitter too, and it's disgusting, but I'm bitter that my life has been this series of struggles one after the other, sometimes more than one at a time, and hers was pretty much smooth sailing. I'm not saying her life has been perfect; she's had her moments like everyone else. But half of what happened to me didn't happen to her. Now I sound self-pitying. This whole post has been I guess, but I'm not turning back now. I wish I was one of those people who went through troubles and came out the other side stronger because of it. I need to become like that, because if not, what was the point of making it this far? What's the point of living through all of that shit when I have nothing to show for it? That should be my motivation, if nothing else. If I'm making money and appearing like I have it all together, these thoughts would be easier to deal with. I wouldn't have to be ashamed of being idle. But even as I'm writing this, I'm pushing this plan into the distant future; after going on the family holiday, after summer. God I'm hopeless.