I’m in high school, a senior. College applications are due soon, and every application I attempt makes me realize how bad I am at everything. I stress easily, and although I’ve never been professionally diagnosed, I’m sure I have some form of extreme anxiety. Because of this, I pull my eyelashes out. Literally. I have Trichotillomania, a symptom of stress that causes an individual to pull their hair out to cope. It’s weird, it’s disgusting, and I hate it. I’ve had it for years and tried to stop it, but each attempt ends in a devastating defeat. My bald, swollen eyelids don’t add to my confidence, and the fact that I seem to lack skills in anything doesn’t help either.
The most frustrating part is that I was raised in a safe, stable environment. I never grew up worrying about money or safety. Both my parents are alive, well, and still together. They’re kind and hard-working. I go to school and get decent grades; my current GPA is 3.9. So the fact that I feel as stressed and depressed as I do or cut myself makes me extremely guilty-I shouldn’t be; I have no reason to.
I feel like I’m caught in this maddening limbo, I don’t want to be alive, but I don’t want to end my life either. I’m terrified of the future. I don’t know what I want and what to do. My ability to care gets lower and lower each day. I can’t focus on school anymore, the idea of spending time with friends doesn’t excite me as it did a year ago, and I fake empathy.
I find myself stressing over things I shouldn’t be, like my cat dying one day or how I will have to start my health plan and buy a house one day. These are all typical adult life responsibilities, so the fact that they scare me as much as they do makes me feel pathetic.
I don’t know how to discuss this with others without sounding fake or pathetic. I want help, but I feel guilty feeling this way, so I punish myself and deal with it privately. There’s already so much craziness and struggles in people’s lives. I don’t want to add them worrying about me because I might do something irrational to their load. So, here I am, quietly writing my innermost thoughts instead of going to bed or filling out my time-sensitive college applications.
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Mind I’m up in the middle of the night, so my perception may well be off.
It reminds me of a book I keep thinking about called “The Body Keeps the Score”, and it looks at chronic illness, and establishes the concept that unresolved emotional stress often leads to some deeply painful illnesses
not to demean non physical issues, they can be more debilitating.
but I have this hypothesis, this idea, and if I ever pull myself together enough to do psychology grad school I might write my thesis on it; People experiencing mental symptoms don’t internalize stress the way other people do.
Because like you, I came from a stable background. Everything possible was done to give me the best start possible, but despite ability, so called intellect, and good upbringing, I don’t fit.
I look at my peers who succeeded, and I look at their parents. These are people who don’t talk about how bad things are, even when they are terrible. Quite a lot of my friend’s parents have died young, which is shocking for their socioeconomic bracket.
The point, and this may also be influenced by the years I spent studying native communities; Maybe the pain isn’t the problem. We live in a world that stigmatizes pain, marginalizes it. Pain is going to happen though. The kind of pressure to succeed most people are under….. unavoidable that there wouldn’t be enough seats for some people at the table.
It’s a way my life could have purpose, which exposes my self serving interests that I am predisposed to believe, falsely often, that my efforts are meaningful.
We are the weeping sore, evidence of an infection deeper in. perhaps we are the fever, to an immune system that hasn’t admitted how sick it is.
Of course we do these things, struggle as we do; if we didn’t, who would care?