Welcome to Gaia! ::

The last time I was here was probably the spring...I stopped coming when life threw a rather large compost heap at me, that I'm still trying to dig myself out of. But I can't, because more and more keeps getting dumped on me. So I suppose since this is the advice section, I'd best be bitching about my problems and seeking some sort of assistance. Here goes: on April 20th, my father's birthday, my brother was leaving work. He sped through a red light and killed another driver. A girl his age, 20 years old. She was supposed to get married two weeks later. She survived for about three days, before finally succumbing to her injuries. He had to have sped through that light because he hit her with such force that her back was completely shattered. Had she lived she would've been crippled for life. I found out about three weeks later. My family was trying to keep it from me, but my step-mother ended up telling me. A few days prior, I had found out I had been accepted to college, which had me bouncing off the walls and posting to this social network and that. My step-mother was a bit of a snoop and said something to my father, and of course, being only 18 and not always in control of my tongue, I bitched her out on Twitter. Which is why she told me my brother had killed this poor girl. So I immediately began telling my friends, because I needed their support...in particular I needed the support of one friend who stopped showing up online. Him and I used to talk every single day for a year. He lived in Vancouver, me outside New York City. He asked for my phone number a bunch of times and I finally gave it to him on New Years. He texted me every single day until the end of March when he started texting maybe four times a week. My birthday, April 5th rolls around. At that point he's texting twice a week. Fails to say happy birthday to me until Facebook reminds him, fine whatever. So anyway, he finally shows up online, on the forum we know each other from. "Noelle, look! I posted new cat pictures!" "Grant please I just got the worst news in my life." "But just go look! New pics!" "Grant I just got the worst ******** news in my life okay?! I don't want to look at pictures of your ******** cat. I don't ******** want to do anything right now, okay?" "ok" Yeah. "ok" was all he said. I flipped a s**t. He finally gets on MSN for once, and I tell him what happened with my brother. He talks to me every day for about two weeks. I even tell him how I was told, and he says to me "If it gets too crazy at your house, I can clear a room out and let you stay here." No one else offered me that. No one. He helped me through those first stages and that meant the world to me, just knowing he was there supporting me. After two or three weeks, I finally tell him how I feel about him, after keeping it in for almost a year. He repeatedly asks if I want him to go away, and I keep telling him no..and that I knew he didn't return those feelings. I tell him I need a few days' alone time and he backs off me for a bit. I start getting antsy when he doesn't talk to me for what I feel like is too long, so I ask my friend to poke him a bit. He does so, we talk for a few days...then he disappears again. I tell him nicely that I don't want him disappearing like that, and he apologizes and all that junk. Rinse repeat this for two months. Eventually I start getting annoyed that he keeps saying he'll talk to me, that he'll listen to me when I tell him things (he had a bad habit of ignoring me whenever I said something, for the entire duration of our friendship, as evidenced by the ******** cat thing above). After one night of me repeatedly saying the same thing to him and him ignoring it (he had sad something mildly racist, that as a hispanic, I took offense to) and he said "okay I need to go to work, I'll text you on break." I wait. The next day comes. Then the next. And the next and the next. Five days I waited. Now I'm freaking out. What if something happened to him? I didn't want to freak out on him if something had happened, so I just sent "..." and he sends this long reply about how he didn't want to talk to me ever again and that: "I just assumed you knew I didn't want to talk to you anymore." How was I supposed to know that when you said you were going to talk to me in a few hours..? So that happened back in July. It's late October now, and I'm failing nearly every single class. I think about him every day, for hours. I think about my brother, who I've cut contact off with, every single day. ******** Grant, I miss you so much..even if you treated me like s**t and having you back would destroy me. I've slept through my early morning class three times already. I can't sleep at night. My sleep ranges from five hours (I need at least eight) to none at all. During August I had nightmares at least twice a week (and for someone who dreams once every month or two, that's a pretty significant change) and at least twice a week I was up for 36 hours straight. I still have nightmares and they're not as frequent, but they're a lot more intense. If I keep going down the path I'm going, I'm going to fail out of school. I can't go back home because the environment there will make everything worse and I don't want my father noticing how bad I've gotten, but at the same time I have no one up here, no support, no one I'm close to, and I am currently failing. If my next semester is like this I get thrown out of school. I don't feel like I'm getting any better. Some days I feel "okay" and others I feel like complete garbage...it's a struggle to roll out of bed much less pay attention in class. I can't remember anything because I'm always in a daze. Every time something goes okay, something else pops up to ruin it. I can't make friends because I have OCD/social anxiety issues so talking to people is difficult and I obsess over stupid s**t. I'm tired of feeling like s**t, but I'm also afraid to feel anything else. Since I can't really feel joy anymore, or even have empathy for other people, if I feel something else, it's bound to be negative..I'm so ******** lost.

To be honest..I don't think anyone can help me. I can't bring myself to see a professional, even someone at the school who could get some of my missing assignments forgiven, because I know I would end up breaking down and crying right then and there, assuming of course that I could even get any of this out. Telling random strangers you don't know on the internet is easier because there's no face-to-face interaction..

I agree with Drizz, it may be good for you to have a good long cry.

Make friends with the shrink, tell him/ her about the little things that get on your nerves, slowly building to bigger things over time. It's not meant to be a one off thing.

I really wish I could find a way to help...

because I really know what it feels like to have everything fall apart and have no one to talk to or lean on.

I know the same thing that helped me doesn't work for everyone. but if you want someone to talk to, you have me

meditation helped me...

when all my problems reached their peak, I ran to the library and broke down.
but all at once, I noticed how quiet and peaceful it was in there. I stopped crying and closed my eyes and it was like all of my problems disappeared within the silence.

Update I guess, for anyone who cares. Finally pushed myself to see someone, going to set up an appointment with my university's health services today. Made sure my friend is forcing me to go, and in turn I'm forcing him to go, so this will be good for both of us, I hope. I've also begun writing a letter to "him" that I have no intention of ever sending. I figured I might as well write it to get my thoughts and feelings out, instead of just bitching to my friends, it might be more helpful to me if I get my thoughts out to him directly, even if it's in a way he'll never see. I try to write a little bit every day.