who despises themselves the most? and is it really so wrong?

I think I wanted my friends and family to prove that they loved me even though I hated myself but they weren't strong enough or patient enough or something, or they didn't understand and so they couldn't treat me the way you, Manny, would have if you had known me back then.

People who feel that way need to be given just a shred of hope from someone else, and then they can do the rest themselves. They need to feel that they can hate themselves for a while without people thinking they are feeling that way because they are STUPID.

I used to find myself confused a lot between self-improvement thinking and fuck-me-i-suck thinking. It must be a fine line. Degree of wrongness depends.. sometimes its a dark stage, but sometimes people are chronically submerged in their hatred. Is it valid to just say "I am a dangerously moody person. That is my identity. So there." Whenever I express that idea to somebody they just say "Psh, that's ALL of our identities, get over it!"

I went on a big sad upset self- loathing stint because I thought that if I couldn't stand myself I'd be forced to improve, but I kept screwing up and getting mad at people because I was always in such a sad guilty mood and it turned into a vicious cycle. I think I wanted people to tell me I was good, too- not that they loved me because that wasn't the point, but to tell me that i was GOOD. Only they didn't. They told me I was melodramatic and comical. So I told myself "this isn't doing any good" and eventually got out of it.

but everybody has to be a wussie sometime.

keeps the blood red.

When I read back on my behaviours like this I'm disgusted with myself.

Trayce, this rings so true with me it hurts.

Sam, I'm sorry you've been feeling this way. It does, however, sound as though you've been more stable mentally and psychologically, which if true needs to be applauded and celebrated. I do hope that your lows don't get too low, BTW.

(And I don't think anyone could hate me with even remotely nearly the amount of passion that I have when I hate myself. If this makes any sense, I will be pleasantly surprised.)

I understand completely.

yeah dee I've been pretty stable but it seems my engine's always set to idle on the low end. And choke and die every so often.

And it's a hard line to negotiate.

Personally I've had enough of both. Some home truths were told to me (in a friendly but persistent and persuasive way) last weekend, which were blindingly obvious had I bothered to look at them two years ago. That I have to open my eyes properly to see the friends who actually have been there for me all this time, that I have to stop thinking of where I'm living as a "waiting room between one life and the next," that for better or worse this is my HOME now and I have to make much more of an effort to make it a home and to open up my life so that other people will be able to share it.

Consequently I am having friends round on Sunday afternoon. We're going to cook a nice lunch/dinner, put on some music and jaw-jaw until whenever. It's the first time I've had ANYONE come round my place (failed "relationships" excepted) for something like two-and-a-half years. I've imprisoned myself all this time and now think I've punished myself enough for still being alive.

So the answer is: no, I don't despise myself any more, and no, in the long run it isn't worth despising yourself. There's always a way out, but it was up to me to find it, recognise it and use it.

and somehow this has helped so much.

I have to stop feeling guilty about Laura, stop beating myself up about the unfairness of (my?) life, realise that a home's only what you make it. It actually doesn't matter if you don't have Darcy's looks or Beckham's bank balance - if people can come round and see that you've done your best, that you're trying to reach out to them, that you can relax and smile and make them laugh, make them feel at home, then they will be attracted to you. I have to drop the monk-like isolation protection/imprisonment way of thinking - because life only matters when it's acknowledged and shared by others.

Basic, bleeding obvious truths? Maybe. But it took me this long to see them.

It actually doesn't matter if you don't have Darcy's looks or Beckham's bank balance

Let's not get carried away...it does matter a little bit...

I'm watching myself like a hawk these days, and it's so not me, so unhealthy and boring, people can tell. But I do know right from wrong, and the guilt, purest guilt at all the bonehead shit I've been getting away with for so long, is stalling lots of good things I got going for me dead cold, and the horrible thing is, I know I got a lot of good things going for me. December is going to be fucking crucial, I have got to treat myself better or this is going to get real lame, real grim, real fast. Not joking.

Props to Marcello.

Sometimes I like to blame other things, like living in a dull town fifteen miles from Oxford where the only thing to do is wander around the countryside until I get bored. But I lived in Manchester; I lived in America for a year, and I was exactly the same. I'm painfully shy; I always retreat into the corner, or get overwhelmed when there's lots of people around. I'm sick of it, sick of being me, but I can never seem to change. Right now, I'm staying up to 4am every morning, because I can't stand the introspection that comes with trying to get to sleep. But maybe next year will be better.

I don't really feel self-pitying these days. I recognize the things I have going for me and the resources I have available to me. I know despair and that's not really what I'm talking about. It's just a sense of nobody's around, you're sitting next to yourself and sneer, "oh god, you again? Would you get the fuck out of here, you disgust me." That kind of thing.

I'm very aware of what causes me to feel this way and have a general idea of what would be done to change it. But knowing and doing - of feeling capable of doing - are two different things. I feel incapable lately partly due to the paralysisation (sp?) caused by self-rejecton. What a dumb circle.

barms rocks.

Sissy, I'm sorry you're in a such a bad spot. Find someone you can talk to.

Cathy, thank you. :)

What about self loathing that doesn't have to do with relationships or other people?