Sometimes I get to thinking about how long I’ve lived in this apartment building, I didn’t see this as a place that I‘d be stopping over in for long. I have lived in two different suites but it isn’t like that changed the day to day happenings of the residence.

When I moved in here, I was only 22 and already had so much furniture the place almost didn’t fit it all. The landlady was old and creepy, already in her 70s. She’s still alive, but barely, she isn’t the landlady anymore and she needed to be put in a home ages ago but she wasn’t, she still lives next door. She falls a lot, I helped get keys one day when she was trapped in her place. I thought she was going to pass over Christmas; they had to bust her door down to rush her to the hospital. When I got back from Bali at the end of last month, she was still going.

We’ve had the strangest relationship, myself and Mrs. E. We went from despising each other to the point that I used to write hilarious blog posts about her, to realizing that I’m actually closer to this woman than I have ever been [was] to any of my grandmothers. I see how sad that is; it isn’t like we’re all Tuesdays with Morrie close, but when you consider the fact that I have lived in this building for twelve years, longer than I have lived anywhere in my entire life and have spent little time with any of my family outside of my parents, to me, it makes perfect sense.

I can hear loud, strange sounds and coughing coming from her place, nights are the worst, listening to someone slowly dying. I don’t know what normal numbers would be but a number of residents have died since I’ve lived in here including one Gus Greeper and another of them being Mrs. E’s husband. He used to smoke out near the hallway, tucked away in the stairwell, where the smoke would billow, it couldn’t escape properly and it would hang in the air and seep under my door. Many tenants tried to have it stopped over the years but you just didn’t mess with Mrs. E when she was landlady, oddly you still don’t mess with her and she hasn’t been the landlady for a couple of years. Sometimes the smell of cigarette smoke will wake me up out of a dead sleep and I will swear it’s his ghost. Sure, my bed is directly under the window but I smell it when I’m awake in other parts of the apartment at random times as well.

This is a woman who came into my locked apartment when I was literally naked from the waist up, uninvited, and WOULD NOT LEAVE and now I’m SAD she’s dying. I would say that her NOT having keys to the suites anymore with her retirement has strengthened our relationship. I don’t think I will ever understand the majority of her behaviour but the life progression that she has seen me make from 22 to almost 35, well shit, I’ve gone from cops at my door to so calm it can be creepy. Let’s not fool ourselves of course I still have a temper. I remember one day years ago after we’d had a row, her muttering under her breath, “not a nice girl, not a nice girl.” That is a post for a different day, but even little things like that, when at the time she was just as evil, make me sit back and actually take a moment to be proud of myself.

I’m not even the longest standing occupant, there is a dude down the hall who lives next door to my old suite and I know for sure he has been in here longer than me, he gave me a book on farts one time, and my neighbours on the other side of the suite I’m in now out resident me as well; their bed hits my bedroom wall while they’re having sex. There might be one tenant on the first floor as well but I’m not 100% sure. A few people have come and gone that I’m still in contact with but for the most part, as with almost everything else in life, I keep to myself.

Of course I don’t know whether Mrs. E will die alone in her apartment or whether someone will put her in a home, where I suppose she could also die alone. There is no happy ending there. But I remember being upset in Bali that I might not get to say goodbye. I’ve gone through so much living in this building that my shrink doesn’t even think living in here is healthy for me and even though Adam and I outgrew this suite before we even became an Adam and I, I’ll always have devastatingly fond memories of my extended stay in The Mansion.

We just got a rent increase, it’s balls.

Doesn’t so much matter what happened but for the first time ever on Friday evening I admitted on Twitter that not only had Adam and I had a fight but that he wouldn’t be coming home that night. Many people were very quickly very supportive and I can’t thank you enough we are both very lucky to have the friends we do. Sometimes I just get to a point where I don’t care, if people want to pretend their marriages and relationships are perfect fine so be it that works for them but I think it is unrealistic to think that an eight year relationship / [almost] five year marriage wouldn’t have a few hick-ups. Since last July, we’ve been going through the first real rough patch in our marriage and I’m quite frankly tired of pretending everything is fine. I don’t feel the need to elaborate further but I do feeI that I needed to be honest with myself about it. At this point all that really matters is that we want our marriage to work.

Friday evening also brought the horrible news that a friend had again tried to take his life. This is a friend who I’ve visited in hospital before, someone we both care for deeply, but for me when they get to the point of hospitalization there is a part of me that sometimes shuts down, I simply cannot handle it and I feel physically ill. When you are dealing with friends who suffer from depression and you yourself suffer from depression and have tried to take your own life on multiple occasions, in some cases you have no choice but to protect yourself first and immediately pull down the oxygen mask, but in others you have to put the triggers and nausea aside and step up to the plate walk into the fucking ward and visit or in this case you and your husband who you’re not really talking to spend the day following day with them.

It took a few hours for my body to relax on Saturday, for me when I hear someone say something to the affect of “a few people would’ve missed me, some I’d really hurt, most not.” I can’t deal because already losing someone to suicide was by far the worst pain I have to this day ever felt in my life, I know for a fact that any variation of that statement is bullshit. And from the most selfish place in me I won’t lose another person that way, I fucking won’t. But I also won’t not be friends with someone or abandon them because they suffer from something outside of their control.

And so today I’m freaking out a tad and feeling yet again unaccepted for my depression because I tweeted my feelings today and was instantly unfollowed by someone I’ve met so yes, I take it personally. Now, let me be clear, if someone doesn’t want to follow me on Twitter I’m fine with that, long gone are the days I’d freak out, I didn’t even understand social media back then, but fuck it, whatever, that was until today because you know what? If you know the person, even if you don’t like the person show some fucking tact, wait a few hours, don’t make it so glaringly obvious how big of an asshole you are. I get it, not everyone wants to see people who suffer from depression talk about their depression but that’s actually kinda funny too, because most people will keep following the person who suffers from Cancer and support their battle but unfollow the person struggling with depression. I’m trying to calm down and relax I obviously know I’m not in this bad of a rant mood over Twitter, I’m honestly sort of amazed I cracked this soon, normally I can hold shit it and make it a fuck lot worse before I explode so I guess I’ll call that a baby step in the right direction of feeling the feelings.

I have had a really shitty few months. I was hoping that after I quit my job that things would level off but as it turns out that is not to be as Gus is in her last couple / few weeks here. It sort of puts into perspective how ridiculous everything has been but it is also just a distraction. I can blame being depressed on the fact that Gus is dying for reals now. But I’m still depressed, I was before we got the news that she was taking her final turn on Monday.

I’ve been thinking so much concentrating on any one thing for more than a minute is futile. There are things I’m accepting about myself. And I say accepting because I’m attempting not to feel guilty about them which would mean that instead of feeling guilty all the time, I’m basically saying take it or leave it.

I’m accepting that I am never going to be easy to be friends with, or become friends with. I over share, I open up to fast, I wear my heart on my sleeve and in my twenties when I was dating and building friendships I never hid who I was, how messed up, self centered and selfish I was, I just was. I’ve always talked a lot, I’ve always been a story teller and if people didn’t like it I was in most cases able to have it roll right off me. I was young what did I really care if so and so didn’t like me. When a guy would dump me I remember I would try and help myself get over it by picturing their age if they were older and thinking how at their age I’d just be a notch on a board and they’d be a fleeting memory. But over the last few months I don’t think it is that wearing my heart on my sleeve isn’t working for me anymore it’s that my asshole meter and I keep trying to become friends with these already fucked up narcissists who just end up stomping my heart into a million little pieces. It is my fault as well, why not open up to friends I already have why do I need new ones, granted I figured that was healthy given I’m trying to work on getting out more and being more social. But I also feel like I’m getting older and that if people don’t like me, for who I am, then who am I? It feels lonelier than normal and I don’t want to change.

I wish I believed I deserved good things and good people in my life, I do have many but question why with how much and how badly I fuck up and I’m starting to feel too old to fuck up with the regularity that I do. It isn’t like I don’t know that people love me I just need resolution and when I can’t have it I go a bit insane or it is one of the things that sends me reeling.

Sometimes I think I’m a really shitty friend but then I also know that whenever someone really needs me I’m fucking there. I have always been a pretty recluse person and as I get older it only gets worse. I know that I’m hard, my walls are steep even with the extensive prologue I provide, but I know that I’m worth the extra effort. Life in general just doesn’t make it easy to remember that at times.

Regardless of how bad it is, and it’s really fucking bad, it is refreshing to be able to finally say, yes, Adam and I have problems, we’re normal. Of course people know we do, but I get sick of the online facade. Sure we have a fantastic relationship but we are, hands down, going through a tough time right now. Why hide it, when it is affecting so many areas of my life?

A week or two ago I tweeted a line from one of my old poems “how can I feel so alone when you’re sitting right next to me”. This facet of my personality leaves me an excruciatingly lonely person at times. Wanting to reach out so incredibly badly, feeling frozen and not being able to do it.

It is no one’s fault. Neither of my parents grew up in demonstrative families and that wasn’t their fault either. My parents always told me they loved me but until I left home three months after turning nineteen I had never said it back.

In small ways as a teenager I was able to open up physically but back then the problems I had with affection I deemed for the most part normal adolescence stuff. And because of general teenage angst and insecurity I was able to fake being more affectionate than I really was. How I don’t know or remember, because I can’t fake it anymore as an adult, even craving every single person I meet to like me it is still more common for me to use snail mail [you should see my stationary collection] or my fingers on a key board to express affection, to reassure people I care.

I know it is difficult for people first getting to know me to understand how I can open my heart so freely in writing and then presumably close it off in person. I’m not a particularly closed off person, but if you don’t know me, let’s just say I [can] take a while to grow on people. I have friends who ask if it is okay before they hug me and some who just do it. I’ve had friends convinced they could break whatever it was holding me back and would try to force affection on me, mind you, in a caring way; but still not for me.

This runs a lot deeper for me than simply tensing up when someone hugs me. For years I couldn’t look people in the eye when I spoke to them, I know that to most it comes off as being rude, for me it was from feeling insecurity and fear.

Although it was something that always bothered me about myself, when it would come to my girlfriends, I always wanted to be able to be affectionate with them when we’d have sleep overs and give hugs without a back pat or loose arms but for the most part I couldn’t. I’d send them an affectionate note saying how much the weekend meant to me instead.

I think the best of example of just how bad it is would be how I used to treat my cat. In 1999, there was an incident that made me realize that I had an actual problem, I wasn’t just a cold bitch on the outside. Gus has always been a needy cat, she was the runt of the litter and she is spoiled rotten. But she never used to be. When Gus would jump in bed with me and try to snuggle with me I’d push her away, I’ve always been a non cuddle sleeper period, and mostly a non cuddle person in general, so having a cat putting her paws in my eyes and mouth was all fun and games during the day but when I was trying to sleep or read and she’d sit down right in the middle of whatever book I’d be reading, I never really thought anything of it; just pushing her off. I thought she’s a cat they’re supposed be independent why does she even want so much attention.

I was living with someone who also had a cat, this cat hated Gus, this cat wasn’t so much mean as she was just a total fucking terror on four legs. We never got along, myself and that cat, but she had a close relationship with her owner. It wasn’t until I saw how affectionate he was with his cat and how affectionate he was with Gus that I realized that I was depriving my cat of affection. I ignored it at first, it wasn’t as if, except for pushing her off the bed, that I was mean to her. It was years ago so I don’t remember exactly how it happened but Gus must have been trying to get some affection out of me and I wasn’t having it and this person basically yelled at me “Corinna, pet your fucking cat!”.

It didn’t happen overnight but just opening up to my bloody cat changed me, actually letting her jump up on me when I’m upset and comfort me, letting her sleep with me and not tossing her off the bed when she was ready for me to be up and walking all over me. How did I live without that before? With it being eleven years later, I’m glad I changed this behaviour towards her when I did. But then again how do I live with so little human to human contact? I have found being a good three years into my thirties now that it’s something that bothers me, a lot. And it is something that I have for a few months now been working on because I want to learn how to get over this before it’s too late, before people are gone from my life forever and I never got to give them one of those hugs that I’m starting to get better at giving, the ones where I will actually pull you in tight to me. And so far it has felt good every time I have been able to do it.

Shit happens and all but it was so EXTREME.

And for someone who is used to disclosing everything on my blog it has been a trip not being able to write exactly what happened.

We didn’t really talk most of the weekend, Adam was still pretty distant and I was still pretty sick, I didn’t eat solid food until Tuesday. I was on my liquid I have killer anxiety diet. I’ve probably lost another five pounds but I’ll gain it back, I always do.

I scared a lot of my friends and I feel like a total cunt for that, I haven’t felt that suicidal since my last actual breakdown which I looked up with my search bar, it was at the end of February 2008. But through seeing my psychiatrist for a few extra appointments, I’m doing my best, which at times throughout the week my best hasn’t been my best, or good enough, but late Monday night Adam started to talk to me again and I’ve started to process what happened from a much clearer place with eyes wide open, hindsight and awareness of red flags I missed.

I hate it when the most cliché sayings in life turn out to be true but sometimes you really do have to [almost] lose it all to see what is staring you right in the face.

when there’s nothing left to keep you here, when you’re falling behind in this big blue world

will not stop running through my mind. That song was on our wedding CD and it took me years to realize exactly why Adam had put it on there. It wasn’t as obvious as his other Waits pick, Blind Love.

There are obviously things that I have for the most part chosen to not get into on my blog. Mainly my marriage but I fucked up really bad. I did something horrible. I more than hate myself right now. I’ve been granted forgiveness from Adam but forgiving myself and the other person isn’t coming so easily.

We are just like any other couple, we aren’t perfect. I love Adam more than anything on earth. I can’t even picture my life without him, we’re talking about a man who in 2003 picked me up from my psychiatrist’s office for our second date. But we still have some serious issues.

I met Adam after a year of events so fucked up I was still recovering but I was doing fine in general and I wasn’t suffering from any post traumatic stress anymore and I also wasn’t looking for love and so when we started to walk past each other on our way to work. Things happened to put us where we were at the times we were, it was just one of those things I guess. And I remember that I trusted him almost right away and I honestly can not say there are very many people I trust, period. I never worried if he would call me, I never doubted if he was into me I never had any anxiety I just knew.

This has already been a whirlwind of a year, we’ve been working hard on keeping it together financially and I was happy or as happy as I ever can be, for a while, for longer than I ever remember being before. When I was in Bali last September I felt better about myself than I think I ever have, I missed Adam like mad, but there are things that happened there that reassured me that the odd feeling I was having was indeed a form of happiness. Sure my temper still reared and rears its ugly head at times but I have had so much peace come into my life in that last few months that I never saw coming, situations I thought were never going to end, resolutions were found, because that is who I am, I am forgiving almost to a fault.

I’ve been able to keep pretty happy, until now. And instead of doing what I always do which is fucking talk about it, or write about it, I let it allow me to do something that isn’t me, that isn’t who I have ever been. I told Adam everything that happened because I have always told him everything. We haven’t been married seven years but we’ve been together for seven years and a lot of shit happens in seven years and with the combination of our pasts we’ve ended up in a tough spot and I handled it in a way I never saw coming.

I am so lucky to have a man who stays with me when I am so damaged. When I fight suicidal thoughts almost daily, I fight them fucking hard, I talk about it, because the tattoo for the friend I lost is on my fucking arm and there is a fighter in there somewhere who does not want to die but my brain won’t shut the mother fuck up. And having lost someone to suicide I need to be able to say “I can’t stop thinking about just renting a car and driving away and doing what PH did” and you don’t even want to know about the other demons haunting my head. Adam is always there for me, I don’t even know why, I don’t. He has seen me almost unconscious and put into an ambulance and I could have once again died because I’m a fucked up freak.

I knew that I was in a weak place re: my last post and what happened which was not an internet bully situation left me pretty upset, I have been told by more than just my psychiatrist that the way I was treated would mess up someone who suffers from no mental illness. I allowed myself to be vulnerable where I generally never ever allow myself to be and the fallout from the biggest mistake I have ever made – and I guess I should at least say that NO I did not sleep with anyone, I know this is a cryptic post but more than just my feelings and emotions have been affected by what happened.

And then I made it worse in the most idiotic moment of insecurity I ended up making myself look like someone that is so far from who I am that I’m having trouble even processing some of the cruelty that was tossed my way today. Shit happens in life it is what you do to fix it that really matters and when the other person refuses to take responsibility for their actions and puts it all on me I’m not going to fucking take it. It takes two to tango and I’m quite frankly sickened by the attitude of the person. I say really stupid shit when I’m hurt and upset and I was hurt and upset and confused and that lead to me being called so many things I again just don’t believe I’m needed here. I’m horrible, I hurt my husband. But I resent people who will not take responsibility for their actions it drives me insane. Of course I know I can’t make anyone do anything, people do what they want to do when they want to do it, I learned that lesson years ago. But it doesn’t make it any easier. The things that were said to me today I may have deserved at the time but it was the first time I think maybe ever where I felt helpless in the sense that someone, anyone, thinks that I am a terrible, horrible person. I hate myself enough I just don’t need it. I thought I was making a new friend, I thought no matter what happened that this person was at least my friend, although a new friend, still a friend.

I fucked up, bad, in a lot of ways. I’m really struggling, I’ve been hiding it, I was afraid to admit I was starting to slip emotionally because I have been able to handle everything that has been thrown my way better than I ever have before and there have been genuine moments when I’ve been proud of myself, and I just took a million steps back and I hurt, Adam hurts and I know we will get through this, that has already been discussed and as I’ve mentioned before nothing is posted on this blog that Adam doesn’t read or edits before it goes up. I will learn a lot from this, I believe very strongly that whether it is a positive or negative situation that comes into my life that it holds lessons that I must find. Every person I meet is a teacher of sorts. Some are seriously shitty ones, but man do I learn a lot from the douche bags and bitches. Thankfully there are no bitches in my life at present.

I was already being eaten alive by my anxiety because of the bullying trigger and I fucking hate myself for showing weakness in a place that I’ve never shown it before. I’m just sorry, sorry I did what I did, sorry I’m being so misunderstood, sorry I’m alive. I know I have it good but the smorgasbord of triggers I’ve had is bowling me over. I’m hanging on for dear life right now. I see my shrink again on Monday because I’m on a suicide watch of sorts which is even MORE fun for Adam. yeah worst fucking wife in the world award.

So, I guess, go a head, let me have it, I deserve it.

People have always called me a paranoid person.

No matter how well I am doing, of all the variables I face dealing with chronic depression I have some of the most trouble dealing with paranoia. With years of therapy I know that paranoia is actually nothing more than having a negative attentional bias towards something, not allowing myself the observation of any positive feelings to help convince myself that no, everyone does NOT hate me or think I’m stupid or useless and that I shouldn’t even be entertaining these negative thoughts and overwhelming feelings.

It doesn’t matter how much medication I’m on or not on. There is no medication that helps me with this. This is something that to different degrees I have always dealt with, but when you add anxiety into the mix, I feel like my innards are being blown up and twisted into balloon animals and not even cool ones at that. I’m allowed to take an extra clonazepam on really bad days to curb my anxiety but that still leaves me unable to eat because when I’m hit with paranoid anxiety attacks just because I can get my stomach out of the knots with the clonazepam I still can’t force myself to eat as I still feel like I am going to barf all over everything.

Recently something happened where I was bullied, badly, yet again in my life, being a few years into my thirties now just adds to my utter disappointment in myself. And it has unfortunately triggered my negative attentional bias and my anxiety to off the chart levels. Not to mention I’ve had two idiots totally fucking with me on Twitter which hasn’t helped matters.

The last two weeks have had me feeling like there is no reason for me to be here. I despise feeling like this. What happened just reminds me that no matter how much I work on myself, no matter how hard I try to work on my posture and stand up straight, no matter how many people tell me that what happened was not my fault, that it obviously is, there is obviously still something very wrong with me, after now eight years under the same psychiatrist’s care it blows my mind that I am still a target for bullies. It makes me angry it makes me feel like everything my father has ever said about me is true and that I don’t deserve good things. It brings me back to having to have exchange students, who were staying with us when I was in high school, come and get me to keep me from getting beat up. I just don’t want to deal with this anymore.

It hurts really bad.

And speaking of my father, it also makes me resent even more how far away my parents are, I deduce that no one understands my relationship with them, not Adam, not even me, but last week I needed to be able to pick up the phone so badly and just unload to my parents and I couldn’t. They are too secluded for Skype. Getting and holding a clear phone connection is a challenge, not cheap and with the time difference we are up at the same time for a very short period of time. I even know I probably would have just ended up more upset talking to them if I didn’t hear what I needed, but simply not even being able to take the chance just reminded me again yet again that they left me here, that retiring to Asia was more important than their only child and fuck it, everything hurts. I don’t know why I can’t let this illusion of my parents suddenly being ideal parents go, they did the best they could with a problem child.

This will of course pass, just not soon enough, it is hard enough to deal with these two facets of my depression but when they nail me at once I have to hang on for dear life I know that I’m not headed for break down mode, what happened is only going to make me stronger. But it sucks feeling like a loser, that is never good. Worrying constantly that people are out to destroy my reputation, worrying that some people are NEVER going to give me a second chance, worrying that people don’t want me around – what have you – is all petty and idiotic and I wish I could have a new brain.