YOU. BREAK.

I'm posting this today not because I think any long term change will come, I only hope that finally admitting somewhere - even when no one's reading - that everything isn't ok will give me some sort of cathartic relief. I've never really told anyone the full extent of my emotions, not my "best friends" or family are aware of this, even just writing this post is hard and I hate that it almost resembles too much of an act of an attention seeker for me. I don't know why I feel this way - as far as I can tell, compared to many other people, I have many opportunities and am very privileged which only makes me feel worse. I hesitate to even call myself depressed because I'm sure that there are many people out there who have it far worse... I have erratic mood swings that will make me feel great one moment and then terrible the next. The only thing that prevents me from feeling like shit is having friends around me (close friends or not, doesn't really matter to me). I hate being alone - whenever there's nothing to distract me from my own thoughts, I resort to thinking about how much I hate where I am right now and how much of a let down I must be to people that care about me. I feel like a lifeless body that by chance has just been set down a certain track which I don't even know if I want. It is hard for me to know what I want - even if my well-designed "social mask" would disagree with me: making decision is in fact, a hard task for me, even down to the smallest things. Peer pressure would usually lead me to just arbitrarily pick something. Most of the time, before I lie in bed and try to make myself go to sleep, I wish that I can just evaporate and disappear. Sometimes I can't help but respect the strength that it took for someone to kill themselves. Suicide is a thought that passes through my mind on a regular basis, multiple times a day, but I admit that I will never be brave enough to actually face death. I just wish there was some easy way out, an escape. This feeling didn't start recently either - I remember feeling this way all the way back to when I was in 7th grade. I have a vivid memory of bravely trying to vaguely bring up the topic of me possibly being romantically interested in the same gender in a form of my handwritten poems to my dad, but his reaction back then was that of a person who's dismissive and wasn't willing to prolong the conversation. My mother on the contrary, observed my daily behavior and questioned my soon-to-be-a-doctor-golden-boy-brother, if I might have a mental disease for having mood swings and was always unable to manage my anger from time to time. But, she would be so disgusted at the thought of having a black sheep in the family, that resulted in her also being dismissive, advising me to stop bitching about life and that if I really felt miserable I should rethink just how privileged our family is compared to others. I know my parents love me very much, but being Asian I feel like the subject of LGBT and mental issue are always taboo and that my parents would rather not admit that there might be something wrong. As a result I've always been adverse to telling other people because I'm terrified because a retort like "just man up and stop bitching" would absolutely crush me... because it's true. I don't know why I feel this way, just that I often feel like crying and it takes so much to try not to break down in front of everyone and just look psychotic. Over the years, I've resorted to smoking pot and cigarettes to help me feel better. The worst though is that I don't even believe that I need help myself. Whenever I convince myself that I should go seek some sort of help, the emotional highs I get convince me that what I'm experience is just a regular change in feelings and that if I wait long enough maybe it'll go away. But I've been waiting and it hasn't been getting better, only worse. Everything irritates me now, I feel paralyzed now whenever I have to do stuff, or meet people, but the fear of being alone haunts me like a parasite and I just have to FUNCTION.