First off I do apologize this is VERY long, if anyone has the patience to read all of this and understand where I'm coming from it would help understand where I am now. You can also probably just skip through it and read parts and get the gist of it.
Well to fully understand my predicament perhaps a little back story would help.
I am the middle child in a middle class family of 5, one older brother and one younger sister. I am twenty years old and am currently living at home with my family. My grandma died sometime in my teen years, I cannot even remember when, which disturbs me. My grandfather died before I can remember, when I was 5 maybe. My other grandparents on my fathers side died when he was a teenager so I never knew them. My father has always worked and is usually gone most of the day until say 5ish. My mom was home most of my life up until the last few years has she gone back to work. My brother is about 3 years older than me, and he also lives at home. My sister is 16 and she is currently still in high school, it looks like she will be well off after she gets into college. Hopefully she will learn from my mistakes.
I have been raised in a christian household since I can remember. My parents taught youth group up until I was in Junior High, and due to complications with the leaders of our church and other issues they have stopped participating in Youth Group.
Since that time we have not stayed in one church for long. We have been moving around for quite some time and I never felt like I fit into a youth group anywhere I have gone. The first church camp I went to my CD Player was stolen and the other kids threw rocks at me. It has been downhill for me since then. This may seem like I am someone weak who is picked on by others but I dont see that as the case. Others may percieve it as weakness but I know who I am and what I stand for.
Since then I have tried to fit into other youth groups up until now, in college, and everywhere I go its the same story. Every person I meet, every group im in, is full of hypocrites and people who put up this image of perfection at church and are completely different away. This is one major thing that has kept me from trying to become a part of any of these groups, I do not respect them and I despise what they are. They are everything I see and observe in any church I have ever been to. Liars and people who put up false visages. In my heart I know and believe that God is real and he is out there, but I have yet to find anyone who feels the same way. Now I am not saying I am perfect, I am far from it.
I know I sin and I admit it, I do not project a "holier than thou" attitude and I try in everything I do to be as humble as possible. I will be honest about my sins and imperfections, I will act in church as I would anywhere else, and the only way I can think to explain it is, normal. I will not give you the answer you want to hear. So every day I struggle with the question, "What does this mean about my faith; in my 20 years of life I have yet to meet anyone I think truly believes there is a God, that I believe can actually say that they believe it, and are not either indoctrinated into it or just accept it because its easy. I say this because most of my friends and acquaintances do not want to think about it, because they fear they are wrong, so they accept what others tell them. Their blind faith makes me furious.
So that is where I am at spiritually.
Now for my school life, I grew up normal enough did sports hung out with friends. Starting in 4th grade I concentrated on schoolwork and made it a priority. From then on until I graduated from High School I did well academically, very well. I was always incredibly shy in school, not wanting to talk to anyone because I was very very self conscious about myself and it took a long time for me to open up to anyone. I made friends though, it just took a while. I am very nervous about going to new places and doing new things but I work through it, most of the time its stressful but not enough so that I cant do it. Its just not pleasant. I was the type of person who was friends with everyone, had no enemies, never been in a fight. I tried to be as good of a person to everyone as I could because I knew what it felt like to feel like an outcast and to be self conscious. By the end of High school I had a handful of people I would call my close friends, two of which I had known at the time for 5 years. However I will talk about them later.
All during high school i never had to try, I even took college classes and would procrastinate till the very last minute and finish it. Nothing was satisfying and nothing was challenging, it seems I fell into a state of comfort. During the last two years the only thing I was working towards was a scholarship to a college, because that is what I was supposed to do. I had no aspirations to go to college and no idea what to go for. Nearing the end of my senior year I started rock climbing, really enjoying what I was doing. I felt good about myself, I felt worth something and all was good. I even got a girlfriend, which was huge for me, she was the first girl to actually pay attention to me and show me affection. Now i was so emotionally starved at the time I jumped on it. Not knowing what I was doing. I invested everything into this relationship and it turned out to be my downfall, which I will go into detail later. Immediately after HS when I was rock climbing one day I fell from the top of the course and broke my ankle. That ended any physical activity I was going to be able to do. Shortly after that, the relationship I had invested everything in ended abruptly and without any answers. Just one day she said it was over no reason why. This was another catalyst in a downward spiral. By the time college started I was a heart broken, ankle broken lost child who didn't even want to be in college.
College went okay for a while, then I started testing my freedom. I stopped going to classes, started to drink on the weekends and eventually whenever I hung out with one of my friends of at the time 6 years. Then the consequences of me not going to class started to arise, bad grades, dropped courses, and news of this got to my parents. Which brought the wrath down upon me. They stated that I needed to go to class to get a degree and get a good job. My thinking was in what? I had no idea what to go for and I did NOT like the idea of wasting 4 years of my life on a degree I wont use. Or getting stuck in an office job behind a desk all day. I did not want to end up miserable or living a life of just convenience. So i didnt listen to them, I did more of what I wanted, and started experimenting with marijuana and one time shrooms. I do not regret either of those, the timing on them was just not so good. Then the semester ended, I looked back on my life and hated what I saw. I was severely depressed at this point and nothing I did seemed worthwhile. The next semester started and nothing had changed, the only thing different was the fact that I went less to even more classes. I would wake up in the morning, and be so sad about my life that I would just go back to sleep because in my dreams I had no worries, I felt no shame no disgrace, I felt free. This escape helped nothing and I eventually dropped out of the state university and lost my scholarship. I felt incredible failure and was keeping all these feelings bottled up inside. The following year I applied to a local community college, trying to "work" for what I had. This was even worse. At this point I had gained about 30 pounds since HS had no friends that I spoke to and was no different than I was at this time last year. Since nothing had changed I completed the same cycle, didn't go to classes, dropped classes, woke up more and more depressed every day. Every day I woke up I wanted to die, I wanted everything to just go away, the stress and expectations of going to college, getting a job and becoming a productive member of society. When I hated society, I hated its expectations, its rules, its stereotypes, what it made people into. What I saw it making my parents into. I wanted nothing to do with it or life anymore. Several times I contemplated suicide, partly because I wanted to be free from it all, and partly because I was so incredibly lonely this is the only way I felt people would care about me. Every day driving around I would look for something to run into so I could go to the hospital, so I might make it an accident so it wouldn't actually be suicide. I really felt scared deep down that suicide would send me to hell.
So I decided at that point, I needed work ethic, I needed to see what it was like to work a full time job and go to school. When I finally tried it, it was good for a couple months. Then it started completely draining my soul and it ended up being worse than school. I was working 10 hour days with the drive and only having 4 hours a day to myself. At this point I was even more depressed than I had been before. My best friend of 7 years had decided hanging out with his 15 year old gf was more of a priority than hanging out with me, ever. His gf, who had no personality at all and was basically molding clay, who would change herself any way to what fit him the best. Probably the most frustrating part of my life was seeing what was going on yet not being able to do anything about it. Then the farther I drifted away from him, the more I realized that he probably wasnt the best friend for me. I saw how he lied, day in and day out about anything and everything. I was fed up with it, so I cut ties with the last friend I had. I was working full time, going home, playing video games for 2 hours, then falling asleep and doing it all over again. I started waking up depressed again, wanting to die, sleeping in, being late for work and had to quit before I was fired.
That was about 4 months ago. After quitting work I really went through a self discovery period and realized that I had a lot of things wrong with me and no way to deal with them. I then started speaking to someone who had been put in touch with me through family friends because they felt it would help me find myself. It helped for a period of time and he suggested I apply to come to a retreat they hosted. I was torn between the hope that I would finally fix myself and finally find a drive and a will to do anything, and giving college one more change. With the simple fact that this time, I actually want to go. I deliberated for a while, and decided I would put school aside once more and hope that this worked out. I applied to the retreat which lasts about three months. When the time came for them to accept applicants it turns out they leaders felt this was not for me and denied my application. After everything I had talked to him about, after everything my dreams of becoming normal...and happy were gone once again. Along with those dreams, my dreams of going back to college were gone as well. It was too late to go to the college I wanted to so I once again had to settle. Had to settle and go to community college.
So this has been the longest thing I think I may have ever written in one sitting and it may not be coherent, or even applicable but I really felt I needed to get my whole story out there for anyone to really understand. Since I dont talk to anyone about anything...I have a lot to say.
For those who didnt read the whole thing(dont blame you) I believe I have been severly depressed for two years now. I have not been happy in two years. I have been alone for two years. I have been a burden for two years.
I dont want it anymore, I once again am contemplating suicide. I know I could do it, I know it would be easy. Last week in church I realized I could slit my wrists, sit there for an hour, bleed out, and no one would be the wiser until church had ended. I thought "what a wake up call this would be to these people." Those people I despise, who live in their blissfully unaware lives.
I dont know what to do, I have absolutely no clue what to do. I cannot ask my family for help, I have done enough to them. I have no friends to ask for help, they have betrayed me enough.
I am just tired of everything, and I hate who I am, and what I have become. I have been given almost every opportunity to succeed and get a great job. I feel guilty for have been given so much and done so little, like why am I so normal when there are people out there so worse off than I that deserve this more. I know I can do anything I want to, I could be a doctor, a lawyer, a soldier, a teacher, a therapist, a businessman, a missionary, a social worker; but I have no drive or desire to do so. Whats the point, to make money and have a family? No. What a waste of a lifetime, because in the end what will I have really done.
Saving 