This is just me talking out how I feel. This isn�t anything but how I feel. How do I feel? I feel trapped. I have felt trapped for a long time. I think have felt like this all my life, but in varying degrees. I think when I was younger when I was going through my problems in junior high and high school I was able to label my problem with a specific name. That problem was Lynn. While Lynn wasn�t real, I relied on her to make my problems not mine anymore. They were her problems, and I was here for her to work through them with. While those problems never got worked out, and I ended up harming myself in many different ways, I never forgot the name in which my problems were.

While I was being treated, I did everything the doctor and therapist said to do. But then again, I lied. I lied to them about how well I was doing; I have lied to myself about how well I was doing. So from the year or so I spent working with Tom, who was the therapist at the hospital, I gained new insight into what was really bothering me, and the answer to that is� me. I am the root of my problems. I don�t know how I grew my problems, and I don�t know why. It couldn�t be for attention for the fact that I withdrew greatly from everything around me. It couldn�t have been for fun since I ended up with scars and fears that I still have today.

There are times these days in which I wish I would have gotten help earlier and more completely, but those days are long gone. Now I am stuck again, rather still. I am stuck in my feelings of unhappiness and inadequacy. I feel as if I am striving for something that I know I will be able to obtain, but I feel as if I am holding myself back from my potential. I�m holding myself back by being miserable. I feel that if I am able to become a clinical psychologist my problems will be forever gone. But I know that they won�t. In fact they will remain unchanged and still growing into new holes within me.

I am getting the satisfaction of helping people currently at my work. When I help someone find a person a gift, of if I help someone who opens up and lets me into even a small bit of their lives I feel good. It makes me feel as if I have made a mark on someone�s life. But then after that moment has passed, I feel the emptiness that was there before. While the emptiness isn�t what is bothering me, it is the effect that the emptiness is having on my thoughts and feelings. I have always been empty. That hole in me can�t be filled without me changing, but I can�t change because of the hole�s effect on everything else.

Instead of the luxury of having Lynn as the face of everything, I�m left with a force behind a void. Lynn was great; I loved her dearly because she made me feel good. Though that good wasn�t health or productive, it still was good. She gave me someone to love when I was alone. She was always there. She never left me ever. I knew I was crazy and I was crazy for hiding her from everyone else. No one knew the truth, but they probably did, but didn�t want to tell me.

While I have moved onto real love, I still miss the feeling of her taking my problems away from me. It has been a few years since I have last had any contact with her. And I know it probably won�t ever happen again. I learned to fight so hard to get her to leave that even talking about my past opens up problems with her. I�m afraid that if I think too much about her, or talk about what happened to me, that I will spiral downward again. I can�t do that again. I have too much to lose this time around.

But I�m still doing stuff like naming my problems. For example, the light in the kitchen flickers. It doesn�t affect me much, but I�m focusing all my emptiness onto that and making that the source of my problem. I know for a fact that once the light is fixed, I will find something new to make into the source. The fridge is another example. It has been working correctly for a few weeks now, but still it is a focus on my problems. I know that when I find it not working, and then the result, getting a new fridge, I still will find new sources. I will never run out of sources.

Even when I�m starting to see my life turn upwards, I will have to find sources. I�m just afraid of bringing everything good into the hole that is in me. I know that I could go get help to have this fixed, but it costs too much money. I am so low of money that I�m afraid I�m not going to be able to live, and would have to borrow it from my parents. In reality, if I work the 24 hours a week in which I think I will be, I will be fine. But I will make up more problems then again. I know how I am hurting myself by having bad thoughts, but I don�t know how to fix them. I know I should get out and go exercise, but there�s something inside me that keeps me planted in this chair and this computer. I know I should be going out and exploring the city, but still I do not move from this chair. It has been a week since I got my first pay check but I have not gone to the bank. I will go tomorrow when I go to work, but I should have gone last week. I live one block away from the fucking bank. I should have gone grocery shopping, and gone to Costco. But then again, I haven�t. My to do list grows, but I still do nothing. I just ordered my books which I was going to do over three weeks ago when I put them on my amazon.com list.

I go to bed at 12-1am every night and expect to be up at 7:30. I get bad sleep. It isn�t that I�m not comfortable, but it is just that I can�t do it. I get up at 10am, which ruins my morning because I have to shower, and get dressed, which takes me about one hour since it is hard for me to just even do that. I really should be going to bed by 11 and getting up at 7:30 every day, no matter what. But I don�t, and then I get angry with myself. Sometimes I get angry and just lie in bed and try to go back to sleep which pushes me getting up later and later. I�m supposed to be old enough to realize that I should be in bed and getting up on time.

I�m going to be 23 in 18 days, and I haven�t made much progress with myself in the 10 years I started feeling like this. I mean I have had good times within those 10 years, but something seems to always fuck it up. This moving to Seattle hasn�t helped my life one bit yet. In fact it has pushed me deeper and deeper. While getting a job has helped a little. It isn�t enough. Fuck, I could win the lottery, buy a house and I still will be miserable. I need my Suji, I need Andrew, I need to be around the people I really care about. I need to have someone to grab me and pull me forward.

Andrew has been in my life since I was like 5. There were a few bad times, but we always stuck by each other. He�s moving on with his life, and I�m trying to move on to. I understand this, but it isn�t easy to allow it. Suji is the one I love. She will be here in little more than a year probably. But that time is going to be incredibly hard to deal with. I understand why she can�t come now, and it has to be that way. In order to make the future come true and last, you first need to make yourself good. And she is doing that, she�s making her self good by finishing school. That is why I�m here� I�m here to make myself good. But there is that part that wants me to crash and burn. There�s that part that tells me that I�m meant to stay at Yankee Candle and work there the rest of my life. There are parts of me that tells me that I�m going to be like Richard, a dirty old man.