Dead Inside

Hi. I just randomly came by this site and thought it would be a good place to let some "ish" out into the universe. Hopefully there is not a text limit for I've got a bit of a story to tell that I've never told before so it may get wordy. I read one story from the main page of this group and I have to say it definitely struck a chord with me. I thought that this would be the day I "tell all" so to speak. The crazy thing about my own story is that I was never abused or violated in any way and yet this hate I have for myself is a huge problem and I'm not terribly sure where it comes from.

I used to be a performer of such.. used to love musical theatre, singing and acting and entertaining people. Now I can't even sit down at a keyboard and play from my sheet music and sing  or listen to music like I used to do just about every day. I had a decent amount of friends from a variety of social groups in high school. I had one or two somewhat close friends or what I used to call "best friends" and I use that term loosely because I was always more of a friend to them than they were to me. I had to be the one to call them to plan to do stuff, was the one that drove us there and organized the whole thing. As I got older I got sick of being the one that had to organize everything so I started calling people less and less and would find more and more excuses not to go out and do things to the point now of basically no contact at all.

This distancing myself from people seemed to be a lot more prevalent after the age of seventeen. There was a girl I once knew and used to sing with in competition and as partners that was killed in a car accident at that age. It was one of the biggest shocks in my life I suppose because I'd never really known anyone that had ever died before let alone someone my own age. She was like me, loved to perform but was better at it and prettier and more popular than I was and everyone loved her. We were in elementary school together but she went to a high school of the arts and I just went to our local h.s. I always knew though that I'd see her again because she planned to go to the same university as me when we graduated. The only difference between us was that she was killed in a car accident and I wasn't. Soo many people thought we hated each other because we competed together and against one another but I thought of her as a friend and for some reason her death just hit me soo hard and I even cry about it today and that was 16 years ago this summer. So when she died I couldn't go to her friends to talk about how I was feeling because they thought I was pretending to care and my own friends never knew her or if they did know her they didn't think that her and I were friends at all. My family also didn't understand so I never really had anyone to talk to about it. Over the course of the last 16 years I've told pieces of what happened to me to friends and boyfriends and it helped a little deal with the grief but I feel like I keep using her death as an excuse to not live my own life. I think at times that she'll never know what it is like to do the things that people do as they age, get married, have kids and it saddens me. The other thought I have often is that if she hadn't died that she would have been famous because she was driven and magnetic and such a natural at singing far more than I will ever dream to be. I was often soo jealous of her.

So I went to that university and wished she was there with me but she was not. I got sick a lot and had to leave my program to have my tonsils removed and as a singer that can be murder. Another "best friend" of mine went to that uni as well and when I told her I had to leave school she was all like "well what am I gonna do now..who am I gonna hang out with?" instead of being concerned about how devastated I felt and how sad, alone and messed up I'd been feeling about leaving school etc. I even went to the trouble of introducing her to some of my roommates so she'd have some friends other than her live-in boyfriend to socialize with. I never spoke to her for like 3 or 4 years after I left. I couldn't after what had gone down. I eventually spoke to her again and even went to her wedding to which she asked me to be in the wedding party but then subsequently asked me not to be in it because I wasn't doing anything for her but she never told me what I needed to do and seen as I'd never been in a wedding party before I had no idea what was required of me. After that I basically don't talk to her except the odd comment on her FB and vice versa.

I moved back in with my parents after leaving university which was terribly depressing and frustrating. After a long time my older brother kept nagging me and nagging me about doing something other than working at Wal-Mart and living at home. He told me that his fiancee was a teacher and she makes mad money and that I should go back to school to be a music teacher cuz in 10 years I'd end up making close to 75k a year which I thought was some phat cash so I thought maybe I might go. I didn't really want to go but everyone kept bugging me and he said he'd help me out financially so I agreed to do it. By the time tuition fees were due I went to him to see what kind of "help" he was going to able to give me and he said "you just gotta do what u gotta do" and told me basically to get a job and work every day after school to pay for it after I'd already registered. What a d*ck! I would have lost the $1500 I'd already paid to put towards my app fees, and some classes and felt that I didn't have a choice but to go back to school. I wanted to go back and do Musical Theatre but by the time I was ready to go back they had disbanded my programme at my old school so I went to a diff uni and studied classical voice which I don't like much. 

During school I would rarely go to class, if I did I wouldn't really participate much, or I'd get my friends to grab me assignments or homework and just sleep all day at home and pull a "call in sick" essentially. I never studied and had an excuse for just about everything that I could think of. I was the king at manipulating people and professors. In my private voice lessons I would read what kind of person my prof was and feed them the answers they were looking for and steered them into doing the songs I wanted to do making them think it was their idea. I had a really bad memory during university and I used to be able to remember everything in h.s. but sine this all happened I can't remember what I did yesterday basically so it was very difficult having to memorize 12 pages arias etc. So I just had to pick the songs that I had already known or were really easy to remember so I wouldn't' be discovered as a fraud.

I lived with a roommate at that time that drove me nuts because I never wanted to go out 'cause I never had a bf and at this point had started being quite reclusive and wouldn't really socialize with many people outside of class and yet she never left the apartment either because she was always doing homework or music projects. She was also the cheapest rich person I'd ever met. Her father paid her whole way through school so she didn't have to work meanwhile I had to work 2 jobs just to eat. She'd never spend any money and would often con more generous friends into paying for her when we DID go out to eat or the show claiming to "only have debit" when it came to paying for it, what a joke! When it came to going to class or work and I didn't feel up to going cuz I'd been crying in my room all night by myself I'd just call into work really early in the morning and get the machine and leave an Oscar winning performance of a sick person with the flu/tonsillitis/the runs, you name it. I've perfected the art of calling in sick at this point I could do it and still do btw and they are none the wiser. When this roommate, who had the best of intentions I'm sure, asked me if I wanted to go out or do anything I'd often have a really weak-*** excuse as to why I didn't want to go. I feel badly that I did that to her and countless other of my friends over the course of my life. At this point I can honestly say I only have her as a friend and no one else and I only talk to her maybe once a month or two. Sometimes I FB or Twitter her and that's about it. I don't have a bf and I'm in a job that I'm beginning to care less and less about each day.

I work for a bank in customer relations and I'm supposed to be the problem solver person. I have to be "happy" all day that when I get home to my parent's house, and yes I did move back in with them after I graduated from Teacher's College to help with getting killed by OSAP payments..yaay me(sarcastically speaking), I'm a miserable old b*tch a lot of the time because I pretend I'm happy to everyone all day and I'm just exhausted of being nice and happy when I feel the exact opposite. If I could only win the lotto or have some generous benefactor to pay my 40k student loans then I could afford to move out. As it stands I may be here til I'm eighty paying off the government cheese if I don't off myself b4 then. People at work have no idea how much I hate myself and how depressed I am inside and if I ever said anything to them at this point they'd think I was joking because they always see me laughing or Turing to crack jokes and not the real person inside. I only work there 3 days a week and they have no more hours to give me cuz I have to split the job with one other woman the other 2 days. I also have to beg her to take one of my days if I want vacation because I'm single with no house or kids and she's got 2 kids and she has to move mountains to pull off covering me but when she wants time off everyone assumes I'm going to be available to do it so they don't even ask me. The sad thing is they are right cuz I have no life to speak of to not be available to work the extra days. I've been trying to get a new job recently with the bank in another area because I'm just sick of doing the same thing all the time and with my education background I'd prefer doing something in a training related field so that I don't waste the education I received and put it to use. I've applied for over 30 jobs with an amazing resume package from what I've been told by my interviewers and so far since January I've only gotten 2 interviews for the same position I have but they are only one year mat leave contracts so I'd be unemployed at the end and one recently for a new position and they keep telling me that they are going with someone that is from that area or that has been a Financial Service Rep and I don't ever want to be one of those. I equate them to be the greasy car salesmen of the banking industry. I'm not that kind of person. I don't want to give ppl credit that they qualify for but may mismanage and not be able to feed their kids or themselves because they've gotten themselves in over their heads and I'd not be able to sleep at night knowing I was part of the reason that created their problems.

If I didn't hate myself and actually could feel emotions other than sadness, fear, anxiety, anger, guilt, shame, loneliness, with mild occasions of luke warm happiness and wasn't soo terribly lazy and void of energy I'd be happy performing but I fear that the rejection I'd receive would spiral what little hope I have left down the toilet and that would bring me one step closer to the loony bin or worse. I don't want to be going to audition after audition and hearing negative feedback and I don't want to put in the work to be rockstar awesome because I just can't bring myself to do it cuz of the funk I'm in and the lack of motivation for what I used to love doing. I'm in an abyss right now because I can't move out of my parent's house which is driving me nuts unless I have a good or better steady income, I can't get a new job at the bank because they want me to do or be someone I'm not, I don't know what else I'd be good at to change fields, I looked for teaching jobs but they don't have any need for a music/drama teacher atm and I don't know if I'd really want to do that when I'd rather perform myself and have little or no patience atm, I can't find any bf because I'm too scared and feel unworthy to have one at this point, which makes me sooo depressed because I have no love other than family which makes me soo ridiculously lonely and I feel I'd have nothing to offer them because I have no direction or self worth in my life right now. I'm missing too many pieces of the happiness puzzle right now and it's a terrible cycle/pattern to be stuck in. I think OK, well if I just move then force myself to find a job but then worry because I will have no money to pay for where I live then I'd have to move home again. I just don't want to be 50 living at home trying to pick up guys and say to them "hi. wanna go back to my parents' place?;)" Now if I did move out I would be completely alone because u and I both know I would not go out and would be a total recluse and shut every last person I knew out including family because I often selfishly think that no one cares about me even though I'm sure there has to be one or two of them that do. I know my family does and they are one of the few reasons why I haven't thought of killing myself because I couldn't do that to them because they are the only love I have and know atm. 

When it comes to love, trying to find a bf is really hard because of how I feel about myself, the lack of socializing I do and that I'm really scared of meeting men I've spoken with on-line. I have had bf's in the past before and none of them really worked out. I've only ever truly been in love once but he left me because he was going to uni and he said I was being too needy. He even once said to me that the more things I gave him the more he wanted to resent me. That hurt my feelings soo much because I used to be such a generous romantic person and would often make things or buy things when I thought of him and would be soo creative with our relationship and how I would surprise him with the gifts but then he said this to me and I was devastated. I told him when he broke up with me that I wanted to jump into traffic because I had no reason to live any more. That was awful of me to say and I feel soo badly that I put that on him at such an early age. If I ever had to chance to tell him I would apologize. I've compared every other bf I've ever had to him and a lot of them never measured up and I indelibly got dumped because I just needed a lot of attention back then and was a pain in the *ss. Since school I've had a lot of really sh*tty bfs that weren't too nice to me or others, especially their mothers and I stayed for waay too long because I just never wanted to be alone. My last bf was the worst. It was a long distance relationship and he was mean to his parents and he was just like me but in the male form, didn't want to go out and was terribly unenthusiastic about a lot of things and he didn't care about a lot of things and I was very unhappy. I stayed for 2 years and ended it myself..for the first time ever being the dumper instead of dumpee, because he sucked on some str*pper's u-know-what's on the night of his brother's bachelor party. I might not have been soo upset if he had actually volunteered the info instead of me having to ask him and he didn't think it was a big deal and then I just ended the call and haven't spoken with him since and that has been since the night b4 Valentine's Day this year. Since then I've not even gone on a date or even spoken with any man in person/phone. I don't know if I'll ever find somebody to love that loves me back if I can't even love myself.

My one friend doesn't know anyone that i could go out with and is too focused on herself and her bs career as a wannabe rapper/singer to try to find me a man...believe me when I say she can't sing as I've had over 15 years of training that tells me she sucks. She's always been a composer/piano player and she just wants to be famous so she tries to sing-rap and it's hideous but because she's got phat cash she can live all day in her basement studio while her trust fund money pays the bills and she doesn't have to have a crap job like me. But hey I wouldn't' want to find a friend a man that hardly calls me or hangs out with me and that avoids discussing or supporting my career and that is secretly jealous that she can't quit her job and have the balls enough to try to have a career in music.

I'd love to make some changes in my life but where I live atm is in the middle of butt-F* nowhere and there's nothing to do here, no cute guys to date, no jobs to be had and no one close to my age to be friends with. I'm just terribly confused and Johnny Rotten and don't know what I want or where to go in my life to find some semblance of happiness.  I can't afford therapy and the one time I tried it before when I was in school and they were paying for it, I just manipulated the therapist into signing a form to say that I had to have special accommodations so that they wouldn't flunk me out of Teacher's College. I haven't taken much stock in talking to a therapist because they usually just ask u questions and rarely give u answers. Some days I just feel like letting someone else decide things for me so then it wouldn't be my fault for any mistakes I made because then I could blame them instead of myself for my failures. Why can't I get out of my own way to find happiness?

I don't expect many people to read this whole diatribe, especially in a group where there are sooo many ppl out there just dealing with their "ish" day to day or suffering much like I am or worse. To them I wish them the best and hope they find the hope, that light that sees them through another day and my wishes that they find their own personal happiness and joy. I don't expect either that many people will write back as I am sending this out into cyberspace as a means of un-burdening myself but perhaps a comment or two or a shared experience or so would be nice. It would help me a lot to think that I'm not alone in this. Thank you sooo much for witnessing my journey. Pray for me please thank you :)