I quit my job today. Actually I gave my two weeks notice today. And I'm terrified how my parents will respond. The last conversation I had with my parents about working ended with me not feeling at all supported by them. Basically, I have to either have a job or go to school full time. It's too late in the semester to add another three classes to achieve full-time status, and on February 13th, I will no longer have a job. And although I no longer want to work at my current job, I did not quit because of that. Rather, I was strongly encouraged to resign before corrective action had to be taken and I could no longer get a decent recommendation from them or ever work there again (it's a chain store). I realize that my attendance hasn't been the greatest in recent months.

Since the beginning of last semester (August 2015), I've had two close encounters with suicide attempts. I've resorted to self-harming again, off and on. My anxiety levels range from nothing to full force with very little warning. I can barely talk to my dad without having an anxiety attack, during which I start crying and he doesn't know what to do. And I'm having a harder and harder time talking to my mom because I know that anything I tell her, she will tell dad. I have almost no energy for socializing with the few friends I have. So the only person I really talk to face-to-face is my therapist. I write to my sister every few weeks, but that's not the same.

I am not okay. I won't apologize for not being okay. I can't pretend that I'm okay. I can't muster the energy to care for myself half the time. And the days that I have group or therapy, that's all I can do. Because it is so exhausting for me. Not physically. Just emotionally and mentally. But emotional and mental exhaustion are as debilitating as physical exhaustion. Sometimes more so, because you don't know if they'll be gone when you wake up the next day. So often for me, right now, they aren't.

I couldn't sleep tonight because of the skeletons in my closet. Not literal skeletons of course. But my anxiety likes to take control of my imagination and make those skeletons very real and very likely to come out and attack me. In fact, as I write this, I keep looking over at my shoulder at my closet to make sure nothing has changed. This is despite taking my anxiety medication every day, twice a day, as prescribed. My skin crawls, my throat feels tight, and I have all this tension in my shoulders and lower back and at the base of my skull. My body hurts and I can't stop fidgeting. I feel like I'm going to cry, but the weird thing is that I never cry when I'm alone. Not the tears of anxiety and frustration and fear. Sure I'll cry when I watch a sad movie, but no intensely emotional tears. No tears that relieve stress.

I'll get a thought in my head and obsess over it for hours. Why am I so afraid to disappoint my parents? To fail to meet their expectations? Maybe it's because growing up, their expectations were easy to meet, and now it feels like they expect the world from me. I don't need a kick in the pants. I need a break. The longer I'm in this depression, the more I feel like nobody understands. At the beginning, it was all about taking the time to take care of myself, whatever I felt that meant. Now it feels like everyone just expects me to get on with my life. I can't. I literally do not know how to do that right now. Not with how things stand. I feel like I have this gaping, profusely bleeding wound that everyone can see, but they're all telling me it's just a paper cut and to suck it up. Do they not understand?!