Lets see if I can focus long enough to finish this. My name is Andrew, and though it brings me an immense amount of shame to tell my story, here it is. I am 25 years old and suffer from what seems like a veritable smorgasbord of psychological troubles. I guess I'll start with a little backstory, which may sound a bit like a sob story, but from my perspective its all pertinent. I have been an outcast most of my life. I have always struggled with weight and have taken a lot of grief for it. I was diagnosed with ADHD very early in life, though as I look back I realize that that diagnosis may have been either incorrect or at least incomplete. My first depressive that I can remember began almost a decade ago during my Sophomore year following the breakup of what I considered to be my first real romantic relationship. However, I believe my mood problems may go back even farther than that. My real problems began during my senior year though. My mom was diagnosed with cancer that year, and at the time I was being homeschooled. I decided to get a job at that time and soon my schoolwork began to go undone. I missed graduation entirely and in 2006 I decided to dropout and work fulltime. I later got my GED. Mom died in 2008. Six months later my father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. After I was "released" from my job due to my frequency in errors I decided to start taking care of my father fulltime. He passed away in 2010. During this time I developed some serious anxiety issues as well as another depression. My sleeping habits became irratic and when I wasn't taking care of his needs I was engaging in some sort of escapist activity like reading or playing video games. All of these things have carried over into life after my father passed. I got a job an hour from home, leaving me to commute an 40 miles everyday. When I'd come home all I'd want to do is unwind. This turned into entire weekends being devoted to "unwinding". I started out strong, but eventually I lost grasp of everything. My sleeping problems, anxiety and depression became crippling. My home fell into disarray, bills started stacking up, the answering machine went untouched. my entire life went to pieces. In November of last year the entire second floor of my family home was destroyed in a fire. Now I live entirely off of the generosity of others. My fear has become so crippling that there are days I won't leave the RV my neighbor loaned to me to live in. I'm afraid to talk to people out of shame, fear that my character will be judged poorly, and fear that yhat judgement will be entirely justified. I constantly live with feelings of hopelessness and dread, of being a degenerate and a failure. There are days where I feel like such a terrible person and a burden that I have a moral obligation to end my life. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily depending on the perspective, I am still under the influence of the instinctual drive to survive and avoid pain. Which is what I do. Its all I do it seems. Just living for the sake of living.
I don't really know what to do. My work is the only thing which seems to make sense any more. And even that is at risk due to my difficulties sleeping resulting in difficuties waking. I.m late for work sometimes everyday out of the week. I'm alienated from my coworkers because of it. I'm just so damned afraid all the time. Afraid to take responsibility, afraid to talk to people, afraid to take almost any action whatsoever for fear of the ramifications. I have a therapy appointment coming up and that scares the crap out of me for fear of what the judgement might be. I just want my sanity back. I'm not really sure why I'm writing this. Maybe I want some justification, to be told I'm still a good person. Or maybe I just want someone to tell me that there's hope. All I know for certain is that there's something wrong with me.