How to keep people at arm's length

How to stay paralyzed by fear of abandonment
How to defer to men in solvable predicaments
How to control someone to be a carbon copy of you
How to have that not work and have them run away from you

How to keep people at arms length and never get too close
How to mistrust the ones who supposedly love the most
How to pretend you're fine and don't need help from anyone
How to feel worthless unless you're serving or helping someone

...

How to hate women when you're supposed to be a feminist
How to play all pious when you're really a hypocrite
How to hate god when you're a player and a spiritualist
How to sabotage your fantasies by fears of success

...

How to lie to yourself and thereby to everyone else
How to keep smiling when you're thinking of killing yourself
How to numb a la holic to avoid going within
How to stay stuck in blue by blaming them for everything

--Alanis Morissette, Eight Easy Steps

Today, I feel as though I want to isolate myself even farther from those I am able to come close to calling "friends". I don't want to associate with them. Not that I want to turn my nose up at being around them because I see myself as better than them, rather, I see myself as a burdensome presence. A drag on the community. I can put on a wonderful facade of a semi-normal face, a look that gets me to pass for "okay" on most people's internal sensors as they scan a room. But when I communicate online, all there is to hide myself is my words. I cannot hide behind my thoughts, as my thoughts betray me at every opportunity. A problem arises...

The further I isolate myself, the more depressed I will become. It's as if I can watch this great beast as it eats slowly at my mind and heart. Perhaps I should be in a psychiatric ward, forced into contact with other people. But what could that really accomplish? Just the thought of it brings tears unbidden to my eyes.

I have two sides to my personality warring with each other. One side wants desperately to reach out for contact. Any kind of contact. The other side wants to be left alone by everybody, even those I love and care deeply for. The latter is winning. The more the people I love push to be close to me, the more I push them away.

It's becoming harder for me to keep my mind occupied as well. Suicidal ideation is not at the forefront of my mind, but it lurks deep in my thoughts, waiting for a weak spot, an argument, a moment of hopelessness to overwhelm me, so that it can come forward and show me it's frightening head. A knife to the wrist, a bottle of pills, or any number of things too gruesome to mention.

I find it hard to even appreciate the fact that I have not coughed up blood for three months, knowing that going by the pattern of the last year, I will probably do so again in another three months. Is that what I have to look forward to in life?

How long must this battle be fought? Why must I continuously fight it, year after year? Why can't I simply say "Enough is enough, I'm tired now"?

Only God knows.