There are days when it's hard and I'm in an emotional sandpit. There are still days where I feel like I'm not all I should be and, in some way, I'm letting everyone around me down. There are days when I can't get myself out of bed because I don't know what the point would be.

But today I'm grateful, because I have so much to be grateful for.

I'm grateful to have a job that lets me to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I'm grateful that I am able to be and live independently. I'm grateful that I will be able to see my family both on Thanksgiving and Christmas day, even if I may have to get a little creative with the driving.

I know that there are still going to be days when I can't see and appreciate these things as much as I should, but today I am so incredibly grateful for all the things that I do have that I'm to busy to think about what I don't.

I thought things were getting better for a while. I really did.

I mean, he said sorry and I thought it would be the beginning of getting back to where we were. I thought that slowly I would be able to tell him my feelings, to trust him with them again, but it's not getting better.

We talk, but about stupid shit. We talk when other people are around. We shared stupid pleasantries the other morning and for a minute it felt like things were normal between us again. I wanted so badly to believe that they were.

But all these feelings are still here. I don't feel any better. If anything I feel worse. Because when it comes down to it I still don't trust him. It's like I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall, waiting for the next time he leaves me out or goes behind my back and it's killing me. I find that I can't even trust when he says he's sorry because his actions don't match up with his words. He isn't doing anything to make the situation better, and I'm getting tired of being the only one who is trying.

And that's what it's coming down to. I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling like shit over this and missing my best friend. I'm tired of trying to be the bigger person to make it easier on everyone else. I'm tired of trying to make things better by myself. And honestly, I'm tired of fighting so hard to hang on to someone I'm not even sure wants to be there anymore. Everything from this summer has been tearing me apart inside and when we talk it's like he's already forgotten it. And maybe he has. Maybe this isn't a big deal for him, but for someone who claims to be so empathetic and care about other people's feelings, he's just leaving me to feel like crap about everything.

He knows I'm upset. I told him as much when this all started. Sometimes I wonder if he's just giving me space, but he knows how dangerous that is for me. That's something else I've told him. When I'm alone with my own thoughts, I turn against myself. I start looking at all the ways that it's my fault, that I don't do enough, that I make it worse.

It's stupid to hope that he would see how much this hurts and that he would make the move to try and fix it. He probably thinks that I should just get over it. That I'm being oversensitive to things that don't even really matter. I'm sure there's a whole list of things I'm being that is far from rational. And that's dangerous too. Even I'm beginning to stop validating my own feelings and it feels like I'm going numb. There are moments when I'm happy, but they're infrequent. For most of the time I'm trying to force myself to move forward and struggling with just feeling stuck.

I just want things to get better, or at least to try. I want a sign that he still cares. And I'm beginning to lose hope in that.

It's been a rough couple of days.

I feel like a sham after that post about trying to get myself to a better place, because I'm back in a valley and am not really feeling that things will turn around. Currently we're just persevering and hoping for best because, hey, what else can you do?

I've made a new revelation about why I can't get over this thing with my roommate/friend. I was doing some self-reflection the other day while wanting to avoid the company of everyone who currently inhabits my apartment and I think I hit on why I'm so hurt over this. Why I feel hurt to the point that I can't get over it. It may also be why the last few days have been so rough.

I have a lot of negative self-talk, both subtle and not so subtle. I tend to play it off as a joke, but I say it. Because if I say it then no one else can and it's my way of protecting myself from others. I think it's something that I developed in middle school. But I already have all these negative feelings about myself: that I'm not good enough, that I'm not worthy of this, that, and the other, that soon those around me will realize these things about me and move on to someone less damaged. I have these thoughts circulating in my head almost constantly, and some days they're louder than others.

The other day I realized that I'm so inexplicably hurt by my friend's actions because, in a way, his actions just confirmed every crappy thing that I've ever thought about myself. My feelings and input don't matter, not even enough to ask if he and I could trade rooms. I'm not worth the time to tell that he took my room. And I mean, your friends should be the last people who reinforce those thoughts. I would hope they would never do anything like that. And in the way he ignored me for most of the summer and then did all this shit without telling me just makes me believe all these crappy things about myself are true.

So, I guess dealing with that is my next move. I'll have to give it until I'm out of this hole I'm currently occupying.  

Today's been a pretty low day, which is stupid because it started off really good.

I've mentioned in previous posts that someone I considered to be one of my best friends really hurt me with some of his actions over the summer. I have been trying to work through my feelings surrounding the situation and moving on, because what else is there to do? The problem is that I'm still really hurt, and this isn't the first time someone close to me has hurt me and made me feel like I couldn't trust them.

As I think about it I think that a portion of the problem stems from the fact that it seems that everyone I let myself trust and get close to ends up hurting me in the end. The last time I heard from my friend that I was super close to almost from the start of college? Graduation. Another person I trusted with my flaws? Completely ignored me as I had an emotional breakdown in his room and then sent me on my way, only to later tell others that I had been a shitty friend. Girl I gave my heart to? Just wanted to be friends, and stopped talking to me when I told her how hurt I was. Girl I gave it to when I had put it back together? Constantly talked about how bad she wanted to sleep with another guy she knew despite knowing how I felt about her.

I'm the kind of person who commits one hundred percent of who they are to something. In my friendships I always want people to be happy, comfortable, I go out of my way to make these things happen. But I feel like when the time comes and I need them to be there for me, I'm all alone. It's getting harder to trust people with myself and my heart because it's been stepped on so many times before. With him, I forced that feeling down and told myself this time would be different. I wanted so badly for this time to be different.

Now I'm in the same fucked up place that I always find myself. And it's becoming exhausting. It's exhausting to keep trusting people, putting myself out there, and trying to give all I have to the relationships in my life when it is becoming the pattern that it's just going to get thrown back in my face.

I have to think that things will be better tomorrow, but i wee all these people around me with these friendships that have endured for years and thus far that longest I have had being friends with someone before they have left or done something shitty is a year and a half. The whole thing is becoming frustrating and upsetting and makes me not even want to try anymore.

'Til next time I suppose, hopefully things will be going a little better then.

I thought about self-harming today.

This is a big deal for me, because it's been almost two years since the last time that I self-harmed. And honestly it was that thought that kept me from doing so.

But even though I have been feeling like crap lately, I had so much fun at work tonight and am so thankful that I have a job. I'm thankful for the amazing people that I work with and that I'm able to be there with them. And after driving home with the windows down and blasting the radio, I realized that I want to be happy.

Not happy like all smiles and good times, or the false bravado that got me through my adolescent years. I want to be happy with myself, happy in my skin, and content in where I am and what I'm doing.

So I'm taking that step with myself tonight. I'm taking the steps to remind myself that even when people hurt me or things don't go the way that I want them to, that that isn't a reflection on me. That doesn't mean that when I wake up tomorrow things won't be better. I'm going to remind myself to look at all the amazing things I have in my life, rather than all the bad.

None of this is going to be easy. It's a roller costar, and a battle that I'm going to have to fight against a habituated thought process. But that's okay. Getting there is the process that will help make permanent changes for the future.

So starting today I am strong.

I am beautiful.

And most importantly: I am enough.

I think I've finally managed to puzzle my way to the heart of what I've been feeling.

A week or so before I moved back down to my college town (I'm graduated, but many of my friends are not so I thought it would be a good alternative to living at home) I got a text from my roommate saying that there would be a fourth person living with us. This was the very person I did not want to live with for various personal reasons. Names have been omitted, but this is the text that I received:

"So ***** is going to be sharing a room with ***. I moved into your old room, so ***** room is yours."

I text him back asking why he didn't move into the other room, since he was in the double already and would be the one who would have to move. He responded by telling me that he moved into my old room a while ago and just forgot to tell me about it.

I think I'm coming closer to why this still bothers me. The anger and shock have faded. I've come to terms with the fact that the other person is here and there isn't anything I can do about it. The issue I think, the feeling that lingers in my chest whenever I think about it, is hurt.

I was hurt by this. This callous way of informing me that I had been shuffled. That the room that I had previously occupied, that I believed to be mine, had been taken without so much as a heads up.

I am still hurt because this person, someone who I consider a close friend, treated me like a stranger moving in. That hurts. It hurts to feel like I'm an afterthought. Like getting a 'better room' was more important. I can't imagine ever doing something like this to someone and so that it came from someone who is very important to me cuts deep.

It makes me feel like I'm worthless, not even worth the time to shoot a text too until long after the situation. To be shuffled around like unwanted luggage. To have someone blow me off with a litany of "I'm sorry's" while doing nothing to fix the situation or understand why I'm so upset.

I feel hurt and betrayed. And I'm having a hard time moving beyond those feelings.

I recently downloaded a dating app for queer women.

Now that I've done it and have had a few days to see it staring up at me from my screen, I find that I may be too chicken shit to actually use it.

I figured, since I've been such a shut-in recently, maybe human interaction would help and despite my constant joking that I'm preparing to be a spinster for the rest of my life, there is a part of me that crave connection with another human being. I fear this feeling however, since the last two people I chose to give my heart to returned it to me in a thousand pieces.

I don't know. Maybe this app will be good for me. Maybe I'll start getting over this fear of letting people in. Or maybe it won't. I guess we'll just have to see.