I keep apart from people because it’s difficult for me to maintain healthy relationships. My mind being what it is, I remember pain and misery more readily than the good times. The unhealthy solution has always been simple: isolate. Remain apart from new reasons to hate myself.
The isolation has become its own source of misery. I view it as a failure, as a reminder that I am not right. It’s hard to counter this notion. Even hearing counterarguments from people is an exercise in futility.
My mind isn’t a place where I’m allowed to be me. On good days, I remind myself that I’m just a state of decaying matter. Bad days bring about reminders that I can make the process go faster. I can’t just exist.
Isolation is such a necessary thing for me that I can only bring myself to physically tap keys and communicate with a thing which cannot say anything back. It’s an empty gesture that carries meaning, the only indulgence I’m allowed that might be mistaken for self-help. On some level, I recognize solitude will not save me, but being around people will not make me feel safe.
Amusing Nonsense 
Oh wow. Me too. The inner critic tells me I’m bad, which makes me want to isolate, and so my isolation becomes yet more evidence for it to argue that I am bad.
Your church committed a crime against you. Children should be trained to love themselves and see their value, because otherwise adults are far less effective.
Be gentle with yourself.
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Just because there are no people around you, doesn’t mean you are lonely. Being alone is a fine state. Being lonely is, too. Not liking one or the other and not doing anything about it, well, that’s when you need to have a stern talk with yourself.
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That sounds pretty rough. There is a deserving and wonderful person somewhere inside of you, even if you can’t find it right now. I know a few people who are struggling with the same perceptions. Your courage in sharing your experience is commendable.
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I don’t know what to say, but I’ll go ahead and roll the dice in hopes that if I’m not helpful, at the very least you’ll know that you’re seen.
The great thing about life is that we have so many opportunities to change course, if we feel like we are at a place / headed toward a place we don’t want to be. In that sense a “failure” is not a place that you are stuck forever, it’s a sign that something has to change. The feeling of “failure” is awful, so not trying to dismiss that, but it doesn’t have to last forever.
Am not surprised that isolation has landed you in this spot, because it’s not good for humans to be that way. I don’t want to be patronizing and tell you that it’s somehow “easy” to just not be isolated. (Like the cartoon about depression: “Have you tried, just, like, not being sad?” Yeah.) I don’t know what all you’ve tried or what drove you to the place you are.
But you are here, and you’re talking to us, and we’re talking back to you, and we care about you. (I know I’m being presumptuous saying “we” care, but I don’t think I’m wrong.) Does that help at all?
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