So now it's TMI time? Watch out--this is long.
I don't have any officially diagnosed disorders. I have not had the fortune to be in a position to see a psychologist/psychiatrist. I do, however, suffer from severe loneliness, habitual self-isolation, abandonment-, intimacy-, and commitment issues. I have a history of panic attacks, a family history of mental health (depression and anxiety), and there is a possibility that I have Asperger's (my mother told me that I had been tested when I was 4-6 years old, but was unclear whether I was officially diagnosed and then not treated, or she diagnosed me).
My home life growing up was fairly unstable. There was a lot of fighting, both between my parents (who did love each other--the fighting just seemed to be an extension of passion) and between my parents and my older sister. At some point (maybe when I was 7 or 8), my mother took me and my sister and left my dad. He was cheating on her with a woman who hung out at a neighborhood bar. They reconciled, however, and I went back to living with him after a few months. My father was an alcoholic. He died when I was 14. My mother had a brief period of depression after his death, and jumped on the first promotion she could find at work to support both of her children. Her job was a soul-suck, and I didn't see a lot of her for the next three years. Two years after my dad's death, my sister (who is two years older than me and had become a bit of a surrogate parent) went to college and the friends I had made at school started to turn on me and isolate me within our group. My mom started dating a new guy at the same time. This was when I really started to feel abandoned, particularly by my mother, who would spend all of her free time with her new boyfriend, doing domestic things with him and his daughter (who is four years older than me).
I had few after-school activities. The only thing I really loved doing was art (tried to get into the local art high school when I was looking for schools, but my parents dissuaded me from turning in a portfolio) and around this time I gave it up. I'd had a particularly volatile art teacher who would tell me that my art was "crap" if it didn't meet my potential, and had made me cry in class on two different occasions.
During my sophomore year, after a long period of feeling next to nothing and thoughts of self-harm, I told my mom that I thought I might have depression and I wanted to see someone. She told me she would look for psychologists through the hospital she worked for and did, as far as I know, nothing. The next year, after a series of panic attacks, I went to a school counselor and broke down and told him what I had been going through over the past three years--the depression, the thoughts of self-harm, the attempts at bulimia, the feelings of abandonment, what my mom did/didn't do--and he told me he would get help. However, he needed my mother's approval. Even though I told him she wasn't going to agree to anything, he told me that there wasn't much else he could do--call my mother and risk not getting help, or not calling my mother and absolutely not getting help. So he called, I went home, and had a short and awkward conversation with my mother. She asked if I wanted to see a therapist. I said I would. She still didn't do anything. I started looking for colleges out of the country. In the end, I went to college at a small liberal arts school in the same state that I was raised in, where I first started seeing therapists. I had a hard time making friends or keeping room mates. I worked hard and was patient and planned a study year abroad in my Junior year (which I am currently on).
This past summer, my sister tried to kill herself. She now lives with my mother, goes to therapy, and treats me like a child. My mother has a new boyfriend. This is a point of contention between my sister and my mother--a relationship that is already pretty emotionally volatile and just completely not healthy, and one that I am very firmly in the middle of. My sister thinks my mother is a selfish whore. My mother thinks my sister is over-stepping her boundaries and bitter. When I was last home, over Christmas, my mother left the night I came back to spend the night at her new boyfriend's house. This pissed my sister off because she thought this was disrespectful to me (not denying it wasn't, that was a total douche move) and because, technically, my mother was still in a relationship. One that ended very soon after I got there. Between work and new boyfriend, my mother was not there for most of the three weeks I was home. At the same time, my sister was using me as a puppet for her own anger with our mother. When my mom left to hang-out with her boyfriend during the last few days I was home, my sister framed a dressing-down of my mother around how it was disrespectful to me and made it seem very much like I had said I felt rejected. She told me multiple times how she hated our mother, had no respect for her, thought she was a selfish bitch, etc. etc., and listened and tried to understand even when she was being cruel. When I tried to tell my sister how I feel more like a pet than a daughter--I'm a nice, pretty thing for our mother to brag about, but there is no genuine respect or sense of equality in that relationship--she told me that I was wrong, that I was the golden child, that she was the hated one, that, basically, I was wrong.
TL;DR...
The only consistent things in my life are TV, school, and books. I have trouble making friends because I think everyone will, in the end, leave me/resent me/hate me/use me, so what's the point? If it weren't for my classes, I wouldn't speak. My family is in tatters. I feel unanchored and homeless. I hate America. I don't want to go back, but I can't afford to stay in England. I feel like I can make a life here for myself, but that will have to be put on hold for another year while I finish my degree in the US.
The Podcast has been a boon during a difficult time by giving me examples of successful people who are victims, strugglers, and survivors and who manage to stay relatively positive about their lives and situations. I don't know what I would do without it.
