I would say "I think I have a lot of problems," but that just sounds melodramatic and so stereotypically teenage that it disgusts me. I guess what I want to say is something more like "I think I have a lot of mental problems," but I don't really know what they are. Or maybe not. I don't even know... but I think that I'm a lot more bizarre than everyone else seems to be. Or maybe I'm just being selfish and ignoring everyone else's problems for my own... but there's a lot of stuff that I've been keeping bottled up so I guess now would be the time to get it all out. This might end up pretty long, so feel free to ignore it.

For starters, I don't think I have a best friend anymore. I have my online best friend and she's great, but I don't think I have a best friend in real life. I mean, I used to think I had one, but she seems so much closer to everyone else than she is to me and... I always feel like I'm the odd man out in my group of friends. They seem to hang out a lot after school or whatever and exclude me... maybe not as much as I think they do, but it still bothers me. I always believed that I would prefer to have a few close friends than many acquaintances, but at this point, I don't really think I have either. I've never been an incredibly social person and I don't like going out much, but I would kind of like to hang out with people more than I do now... they just don't seem to want to hang out with me unless it's in a big group. Then again, I'm pretty boring. I /did/ have the greatest best friend in the world, but we went to different high schools and it was a very difficult decision for me to make to go to the private school instead of the public school all of my old friends went to. We promised that we'd hang out every weekend just like we did at the time, but now I'm lucky if I talk to her once every couple of months for a few comments on myspace. This really, really bothers me... but I don't think it bothers her as much. And when I see pictures of my old friends together, my stomach lurches and I get really depressed because I feel like they've completely replaced me and I can't seem to forget them. But honestly, that's probably the least of my concerns right now.

I'm also kind of overweight, which really bothers me. I suppose I wouldn't consider myself obese, but I'm definitely heavy set... a lot more than I want to be, and my mom gives me a lot of hell for it. She told me that I act like I'm too good for her family, but to be honest, I'm scared of being around her family because she always makes me feel like I'm not good enough for them. A lot of my cousins are gorgeous and thin and models with great boyfriends and basically the complete opposite of me. I'm fairly overweight without being plus size, unattractive, and I don't care to make myself look physically attractive even with my weight... most of the time, I feel like no matter what I do, I'll look hideous, so I just try to hide myself in layers of baggy clothing. I know it's not flattering, but I don't want people to be able to see what I look like. I don't even like getting hugs or being touched or anything of the sort... it just makes me feel like whoever is touching me in whatever form is going to be disgusted by me. I also get the feeling that I constantly smell or something, but I think I practice proper hygiene. I'm not going to sugarcoat it... I definitely have low self-esteem about my physical appearance and I need help losing weight. I'm on these diet pills my mom gave me... she said they're natural, but I think they really mess with my hormones or something because I've felt so much more emotional since I started them. I think it's a good sacrifice to make if it'll help me lose weight, though, because I'm having a very hard time with this. The pills say not to give them to people under 18, but I think I've stopped growing or whatever as much as any eighteen year old so I'm not too concerned about that. I also kind of wish I knew how to dress myself to make myself look decent if I wanted to.

Overall, I really don't think I'm good at anything.. other than I know I'm smart enough to get by but not as smart as I wish I could be. I constantly feel like I'm in my brother's shadow... all he ever does is smoke weed and drink and party, but he's also incredibly smart and an amazing person. I wish I could be like him -- he used to be thin, but now he's decently muscular, he's good looking and knows how to dress himself (and I don't mean that incestuously, honestly), he's really funny and talented, he's got a great musical ear, and I have no doubt in my mind that he is the most intelligent person I have ever met. Yes, I think I'm smart, but my work ethic is terrible and I don't think I'm good at anything... I love to sing, it's my passion, but I don't think I have a nice voice. Two of my friends in Chorus sit on either side of me and I get really embarrassed because they have these beautiful singing voices and I just feel like mine is like nails on a chalk board and I don't want them to hear it, but I know they can so I try to sing quieter... but I know I at least know the notes, so I try to sing louder to help other people and I don't know what to do. I also want to do the school plays and stuff, but I'm terrified to audition... I know I'm no good at acting and I'm afraid of auditioning for the musical -- it's a singing audition in front of everyone and I don't want them to hear my voice. Writing is my other passion, but I'll never show my writing to anyone -- I'm too scared. If I want someone to read something I wrote, I'll tell them my friend wrote it or something and give them the link (partially because honestly, I just want an honest opinion. No one ever gives those anymore.)

I play myself out to be this confident person and I try to make it seem like I know exactly what I'm doing and where I'm going in life, but I have no idea and I always feel so lost and scared. I wish that I knew how to do something, but I really don't.

One of my biggest problems is that I lie... a lot. I've never really told anyone else about this, so it's hard to get out.. I've vented the rest of it to people in parts. Here, I'll try to explain... it's sort of complicated.

I have (had) an online friend and we were really, really close best friends -- we shared almost everything. Well, I'm an online roleplayer (that's how I met her) and we were in this roleplay that... I guess you could say had a pretty big influence on us. We started playing this online game called Cry Wolf and we would roleplay as our characters on there... well, eventually this one girl realized we were roleplaying and the three of us became friends. Eventually, she asked us what our real names were and... my friend also had a lot of insecurities, mind you, so we decided we were going to take a typical internet route and be "fake." I've done this before; it helps me to immerse myself in an alternate identity's problems to forget my own and I feel so much more comfortable in other people's skin than in my own, but it never quite went to this extent. We also pretended to be male; I'm don't think I'm a esbian, but I have a pretty masculine mindset, I think, because my brothers and dad were such major influences in my life and while I wouldn't consider myself a transexual, I've always felt like I was supposed to be male or like I'd be happier as a male. Eventually, this girl and my friend and I became very, very close -- especially me and the girl, where I was under the guise of a male and eventually, well, I became so involved with this facade that he almost became an entity of his own from my brain, with his own thoughts and feelings and he and this girl basically fell in love. I wasn't in love with her, but my male alterego was... and when I talked to her, I truly felt like I wasn't myself but I was this boy and that I (he) loved her. Of course, this scared me a bit and I told my friend that we had to tell the girl the truth... she was upset but accepted it and she is now the online best friend that I previously mentioned. I think she's still kind of in love with my male alterego though -- I know she has dreams about him and sometimes cries over him and stuff. It really upsets me -- I never meant to hurt her. I care about her a lot, really, I do. However, sometimes I still regret this decision.. I miss my alterego, I miss being him, I miss being a boy, I miss formulating reasons for my problems that had become his.

But my horrible lying spree doesn't end there. I have many, many online friends and I like to embelish my life to them... part of why I like talking to my online friends so much. This part is certainly the most difficult to explain, as it doesn't even make sense to me so I don't know how to explain it so that it might make sense to someone else, but I'm just going to wing it.

Basically, with the people around me, I have created a sort of 'hierarchy.' This probably isn't normal, so let's see if I can explain it. It's not so much by grade-level, per se, but I put myself at the very, very bottom of this hierarchy. Then other people fall into varying ranks -- many of which I have no interest in becoming acquainted with, while others are my friends, and those that I would like to get to know but don't wish to become particularly close to. Fairly basic stuff. Then it gets more complicated -- and this part, I suppose, involves grades to an extent. There are certain people that, for whatever reason, I regard almost as gods -- demi-gods, even, if you will, usually composed of seniors and juniors (both when I was a freshman and a sophomore) that I have extreme respect for. It's not really the so-called "popular" people and I don't wish to be friends with these people because of their social circles -- they are more so the people that I observe on a daily basis and wish to be more like. For example, there was one senior last year who was an incredibly gifted actor. He also had a very eccentric personality that amused me and I thought that I would have gotten along well with him... but I did not think I was good enough to even approach him in the slightest, like I was not worthy of his presence and I merely sort of observed him and his antics (it wasn't really stalking, I swear.) There were two other seniors like this last year -- both of which were this first senior's close friends. One was in chorus with me and had perhaps the most beautiful singing voice I'd ever heard while being nothing short of hilarious and outgoing. The third was the drama stage manager and he was flamboyantly gay in the 'bitchy' sort of way that I absolutely adored and I adored him -- he was the assistant to my drama class and I loved him. I got along with the two that I actually came into contact with, but beyond that, we weren't exactly friends. Oh, before I go on, let me explain that, for some reason completely unknown to me, I have an odd sort of fascination with gay men... I don't know why, they just always seem so much more interesting to me than straight men and I'm a bit misogynistic (though not to an extreme.) I sometimes wish we lived in an all-male society and such. Finally, there's a fourth senior, who I did not meet until the very end of my freshman year and I only spoke to him once but I'd seen him around campus throughout the entire year (I'd always known he was gay although he was not flamboyant in the slightest - my friends say I have a fine-tuned 'gaydar.') I was amazed when I saw him perform his HI piece after I auditioned for the debate team, but that's basically the extent of that... nevertheless, I'd always thought he was adorable (I wasn't attracted to him -- like I said, it's the gay thing) and interesting, as I also knew he had one of those more eccentric personalities that I loved.

For some reason... I'm not quite sure how it happened, but it did ... I would go online and tell my online friends about these FANTASTIC people that I adored and it eventually evolved into me taking situations from my life and modifying them in my own mind, twisting them into a sort of parallel universe and suddenly, I was telling all of my online friends that those first three seniors were my BEST friends, that I was at their house, that I knew them well because I thought they were so amazing and I really wanted to be friends with them ... but I appreciated just being able to be around them and sort of watch what I felt to be their amazingness. I'm a skilled liar, you know -- I never took it too far over the top and I would take actual events and warp them so it didn't seem to bizarre, but it got to a point where I didn't know which story was real and which was fake.

This problem progressed. When I went to debate camp, that fourth senior was one of my counselors and it was there that I was able to confirm his homosexuality. At camp, I was able to befriend some of those people that I had ranked high (though not quite as high) on my personal hierarchy. The camp counselors were these amazing college students that were brilliant and talented and hilarious ... my friend divulged that she, too, wanted terribly to befriend them, to spend time with them, but that it would be awkward and what did I do? I went online and told this tale of how I became friends with these fantastic counselors, one of which had just graduated from my school, whom I purely adored... and while I was at camp, I would pretend that I was with them when I wasn't, make up scenarios that had happened that were alterations of the truth. I'd spend the majority of the day warping these scenes and figuring out how I could make them funnier, cuter, how I could involve myself in them while still making them believable. I like to think -- hope -- that part of this is because I'm a writer.

Finally, there's this year. I've breached some of the hierarchy, like I said, and become very good friends with a majority of the people that I had once thought I was not even worthy to be in the presence of ... but in a sense, my lying has gotten inexplicably terrible. There's this one senior that I have a strange near-obsession with. He's the captain of my event in debate and he's ... hilarious, freakishly tall, eccentric and spastic, amazing, talented, cute in a I-constantly-want-to-pet-him way... and I could go on. He and I are decent friends because we spend so much time together after school, so I have no problems taking pictures or making videos of him on my camera phone, I don't feel too terribly awkward when I pat him on the head or give him a hug or when I tell him that I love him (completely platonically.) ... And, of course, he's gay, by the way.

But for some reason, when I go home, I pretend he's with me, I act like we're best friends and I say that he's sleeping over because I never want him to leave, even if it's just my mind. I still twist my day, create things he does, even though I see him often during the school day and after school -- I make us seem so much closer than we are, like inseparable best friends, perhaps to make up for the true lack of a best friend I have.

This doesn't even cover the extent of it and there's more, but I realize that this is tediously and painfully long and no one's going to read it... but if there's anything anyone can make of this, please reply. Please. I think I've covered what's important, or at least included enough of how I feel... why I think there's something wrong with me. I need help.

edit: oh wow this is so much longer than I thought it was going to be. blahhh. I just wanted to add that -- would the fact that I really, truly love writing and am constantly formulating stories (even if they're not these lies and I never tell them) have anything to do with this? Maybe? I'm just hoping I'm not as pathetic or insane as I worry I may be...

Post edited at 6:13 pm on Oct. 23, 2008 by Anonymous

a non SL read your post and had some things to say!

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Do not abandon yourselves to despair.
We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

Pope John Paul II