Sinking

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Well basically I've gone back to school this fall after some years away and not doing much in between, VR has helped me get to this point and I've done well in school to a point but keeping it together has taken 100% of my being as well as medication and it's still killing me. I don't eat hardly, part of it is the medication but part of it is stress since I don't eat when I'm like that and lost a lot of weight this semester. I can't motivate myself to cook, to clean, to put anything in my mouth barely. Only time I have an appetite is when I smoke, I don't even know what my weight would be then.

It's just unraveling, things are catching up to me and this cumulative stress triggers me to make mountains out of mole hills where I feel embarrassed to even tell anybody. I put more pressure on myself than anyone, it meant so much to going back to school and in my mind it was kind of my last hope so to come to the realization that I don't think I can do it is pretty devastating because I know that the classes won't always be so favorable to me and if little stupid s**t can trip me up then it is bound to happen. I am starting to feel like high school or middle school again, it just burns me out. How much of a toll on yourself is too much? Like it's so easy for me to get into things but after a while it seems like the same old feelings start to begin again, I just become numb and can't force myself to do things even tho I know I need to and that it will hurt me.

I walked out of class on Thursday, I would say I was thoroughly humiliated the class immediately before so it just started boiling over when things weren't going my way in that class, I wasn't getting the help I wanted and felt I was being treated unfairly and I'm behind on work and just couldn't take it any more. I went to DRS but the message I got from them was basically that I should toughen up or drop, I wouldn't even know how someone could help.

Being around other people like a school kind of makes you start noticing a lot about yourself, your disability in particular and the massive gulf there is between me and the rest of the students. I don't really talk to anyone there, certainly no one I could call a friend. I was friendly with this one kid in my English class but he dropped, nobody has been mean really but it's clear I'm an interloper but maybe not I dunno. Half this stuff is probably imagined in my head, I'm sick. People are just better than me, like at life. I don't know how else to interpret it, if I can't do this or have any fulfillment in life then there isn't much else and I feel pretty lost.

I've told TPTB in my life that I think I would like to try to work, I need money obviously as we all do but I have to know if I actually can do. I thought I could go to school, transfer into bachelor's program at a big school in a nice college town but I know at this point it won't happen. I can't even finish the associates, it's just big a failure. I bite off more than I can chew and then choke, I want to work because I need to know. I think the routine might make things easier but who knows, like I said I have the cumulative stress this f*****g cloud over me so who knows. I don't want to put anything over on anyone, I don't want to be a parasite, I don't want to be a burden. I usually stay quiet about my problems to my family and people around me, I don't want to be a bother and there is already enough drama to go around. There is no time for me, I don't want to make things worse.

Everybody tells me it's okay, that I can do something else, that I put too much pressure on myself but that is the only way I do things and I do feel the pressure. If I can't go to school and there are no jobs I can do then I am pretty screwed because I don't have much hope for the government to bail me out. The opposite of "too big to fail", small enough to ignore. I don't have anything else, I don't have anything at all, I have nothing to show for anything. Effort isn't rewarded in life, it doesn't matter how hard you try if you don't succeed. I don't even know what I want to be honest, I don't know if I can be happy. I can't trust anything, I can barely trust my lying eyes, everybody goes away, anything good is fleeting. There comes a point when you have to take stock of the hole you find yourself in and the reality of your situation, some things you can't change and it's pointless to even try and sometimes you're too far gone. I wish I was born earlier or later, it seems like the worst time to be alive, I wish I had a time machine. Whatever, whatever...

I'm sorry to hear about all of that...I'm surprised that your college was so callous towards your problems and feelings. Are there any support groups you could join? Can you drop any of your classes this school year? It might help you find some time to try and cope with your emotions.

Thanks or responding, this thread was sinking and I appreciate you taking the time. I've looked around at support groups in this area and there seems like there use to be one but not any more, it's kind of a disappointing given how large this metro area is but I guess that kind of fits the character of the state. Everything seems to be focused on kids and parents. They tried to get me to go to some group therapy at this clinic and that got about as far as the lobby before I bailed on that. I am thinking I might be able to find a better therapist with my parents insurance instead medicaid crap but I dunno, being an adult and doing this isn't easy.

I regret wasting a lot of years, I wished I was wiser instead having to experience all this but I guess what good does that thinking do? The genuine lack of opportunity and unfortunate circumstances that have made up my life does make me kind of angry, they just didn't have anything for me and I guess that was the way it went for most people any significant amount of years older than me but its frustrating since the knowledge was there and some people benefited but because your birth it wasn't meant to be.

I'm just trying hard to keep everything together just for this last month at school and then the semester will be over at which point I can reevaluate things. I want to work and I want to see myself in that environment which is much more regimented to see if I can do it because college isn't going to well, then I'd know. If I can't then there really isn't any other options besides SSI which a)isn't what I want in life and b)is something you have to fight for basically which I think naturally makes you less willing to give that pittance up for risk nothing at all. I need the money, if i can get the A+ then I figure there has to be something VR could do for me as far as finding work goes.

My hope is that a little money in my pocket and being a "productive person" would help my self esteem. It's just hard being who I am struggling with what I do around everyone else at school, I'm so self conscious and just plain neurotic when it comes to my interactions with other students. I have this problem with asking for help, it's honestly probably the worst problem to have since it's so hard to fix but natural inclination in me is to withdraw and to try to not be noticed or to be a bother. Maybe working, having some basic material things every one else has, just experience out in the "real world" would make me feel less inadequate since I feel like I have to hide who I am right now.

I dunno, I should try to continue my schooling since I know under the right circumstances I can get good grades and I know I am capable of learning but the right circumstances to me right now are more like the perfect circumstances since I was just coasting until things started getting bad, I am not a great student even tho I may get good grades because I am an undisciplined one who struggles mightily with procrastination. I know I should do it but I just don't, sometimes I just can't, I know what I am doing is hurting me but I do it anyways. I could focus on anything else just not what I am suppose to, I wish I was I had some savant like special ability and interest in something applicable but I can't say that I do. They want me to go somewhere smaller, there are online classes offered at a lot of these schools now which is maybe something I could look into. I just feel like I need something to hold on to, I am just surviving right now and it really is a "wrong planet" vibe to it.

Hopefully the holidays will be enough time to think things thru, the semester isn't that much longer. I've done well, if I can just finish strong then I will have at least accomplished at least one semester as a scholar. I could come back, I'm trying to think forward but realistically. I don't like setting myself up for disappointment and I had this dream of transferring to the big state university a couple hours away from everybody I know which isn't that many people, I know now it wasn't realistic but I've put so much importance on this degree so it really hurts to maybe fail at this but all along I guess I had outs. Getting this A+ will be my out, if I get that then I will feel like I haven't totally wasted my time and it will be at least something to my name.

I was never a great student, and was a great procrastinator, too.

But I did finish college--after eight years! With a 3.8 GPA.

You're only like 23-24. I was 45 when I got my degree.

Things aren't as hopeless as you feel they are. Really they're not.

You, yourself, said you are capable of learning under the "right circumstances."

No problem. I wish I could be more helpful

Appreciate the response as well

I don't know what is in store for me. I really do not like school or feel like I belong there, all it causes me is anxiety and depression and I feel as if I've kind of walked the tight rope until now, I don't think I can complete the degree at least not right now with how I am even with the supports. I don't know, like I said I would like to try to work because maybe I would like the routine of it plus you get paid obviously. I don't know how realistic that is, I don't know how realistic anything is. I just don't have anybody at school, there really hasn't been anybody that has really been friendly with me besides like one person who dropped. I don't talk to anyone, I don't do anything, it's just being there. It pains me, just seeing firsthand the disability. I've spent a lot of year avoiding, withdrawing, basically hiding so this was basically my venture back into the real world and I suck at it.

People say I'm too hard on myself but I don't know how to be any other way, maybe they just don't know how important this is to me or how desperate I feel my situation is. I really do feel like time is running out, like already compared to my peer group I am so pathetically behind that I don't even feel comfortable talking with them so this problem is only compounding itself the longer it goes on. I don't think I have a constitution to take another 50 or 60 years of this, it will get better or it will end because wallowing is waste of everybody's time. Medicine doesn't cure anything, it barely helps really beyond putting me in the room. Most of the time I just don't say anything, I've been like that my whole "schooling" career almost and things haven't changed it seems in the years in between. I had a lot of trouble in high school, I went to college once prior before dropping out, now a second time? A lot of failure, that seems the be one the one unchanging thing for me.

I just need to figure something out socially, I need something in my life beyond just staring at computer screen and not much else. It just seems way harder now, I wish I was a teen again since things seem like they would of been a lot easier then. Now I feel like I am in an impossible, hopeless situation, a hole I can't dig myself out of, the social capital is extinguished, there is no coming back but not like there was anywhere to come back from. It's just a lonely isolated place I find myself in, I don't even know how to change it. Trying to change it just makes me feel worse, I am a person that can't deal with rejection and I am so paranoid about every interaction I have with other people. Of course, I am always filled with self-doubt and loathing since I always feel like I am being a baby and that I am not worthy of help. I feel very judged, low, how could anybody have self esteem in my situation?