struggling

Well, I find myself on DS again and reading old journals. When I came here several years ago I was struggling with a lot of intense feelings. I was using sex, pot and food to cope and I was working on changing these habits. It's discouraging to come back here years later, because am struggling to cope and using sex, pot and food to make myself feel better. I'd make a lot of progress the last time I was here, and now, I seem to have lost that progress. Slipped right back into old coping mechanisms, regressed into these old feelings and ways of thinking. 

In some ways I am better off now (dealing with something less intense), but in other ways I am worse off. I used to have faith and it is diminished. I felt optimistic and capable before; now I feel more defeated and hopeless. At least in terms of real love and satisfying romantic relationships go... I feel like men can't be trusted, or only to an extent. I feel like my body and my ability to satisfy a man sexually is more important to men than anything else. Intellectually, I'm sure that cannot be true, but emotionally this belief is very deeply rooted. I was fucked up to begin with, because my dad only saw me as a sexual object, and now someone I trusted has really reinforced that feeling. 

I want attention, to feel loved, to feel secure, for someone to care, and I'm really, very alone. I'm without my parents, my closest friends aren't so close... I have many acquaintances, but not very much real intimacy and companionship. I need to fix this somehow... I just get introverted and withdrawn and I have a hard time building and maintaining friendships. I typically just bond with one person, but that person raped me and betrayed me, among other fucked up shit, so I don’t really have anyone.

I’m just trying to get back to where I was before I ever got together with him. I was doing so much better than I am now. I’ve really been struggling simply trying to be still and feel. I need to be busy or medicating myself somehow, otherwise I’m uncomfortable. I wish I could just feel content and a peace with the world. I have a lot to be grateful for, and unlimited potential if I could just direct my energy correctly, but I’m an emotional wreck. I feel alone, scared, unloved. I feel like a seven-year-old child who has been abandoned in hell. I’m not, things are much better now, but I feel that little girl. She is scared and lonely and really just needs to feel and be loved.

But there is no knight in shinning armor who is going to come to my rescue and heal my wounds. I’m going to have to pick myself up and do this on my own.