step 1 - myself

...a muse on myself, how i tend to handle things, ...how i view the world. me being the main factor, or at least translator and receptor, for my one insane episode. i remember being sad from early on, perhaps my whole life, i also remember being happy however. it was not all bad, that growing up thing, though i would never repeat it. (i'll never have to. yay.) i ended up with self-esteem issues and huge amounts of self hatred, stemming from many things which i am not going into at the present. the only blame for my thoughts and actions is leveled on myself, right between the eyes, every thing else was just influence and atmosphere. easy to blame others, and refuse to work on the self. i prefer to work.

so i have problems thinking i am fat, untalented, clumsy, ugly, stupid, useless and pretty much a waste of DNA. all of these things are untrue. i realize this, ...but sometimes knowing something and feeling something are two completely different stigmas.

toward the end of high school i found a group of friends, from another school, and even a boy who found me attractive. i was amazed at my fortune. when i graduated high school and a niche was formed, i began to see things a bit differently. friends and love did not surface from luck or pity, but from people actually liking me. i found i was good at things, very good actually, ...my poetry was well respected, people thought i picked up ballroom dancing quickly and with style, there were many friends and new opportunities opening up all around me. things were happening that i could be proud of, something that i did not feel possible.

however, at this point i still did not like myself very much. this continued through to boston, and after i left there. general dislike of myself, self-loathing, depression, suicidal thoughts. my outside life was amazing, but inside i was still blaming myself for every wrong, beating myself up about everything and anything i could think of.

this is the personal state of the "me" when i encountered everything else, the other factors. before the true insanity began, in the spring of 1998, i started going to the therapist for my depression. something had to be done. something inside of me was broken, and every day i became a bit more sad. that summer i went through therapy once a week and tried various different anti-depressants and such, nothing was working. nothing. and then the other factors started to play...