**Background**: I'm alone. Have been for most of my life. I don't have a friend circle, no best friend that I can talk to. Of course there have been attempts to connect with people over the years. And eventually either they'll leave me, or I'll leave them. And subsequently, I never developed the maturity, social experience, nor do I have a healthy sense of personality and boundaries. And then there's my flip-flop between delusional narcissism and self-loathing in regards to, well, everything about me, both emotionally and physically. And then there's the fear. Both self preservative fear, and fear of rejection/abandonment.

(And if anyone reading this replies "Hey, it's okay, I'll be your friend." well, think again. Because I'll eventually sabotage our relationship. I'll judge you just as harshly as I judge myself. I'll put you on a pedestal and look up to you, or put myself on a pedestal and look down at you. I'll push you away and pull you back.)

And I'm not young. Over the years I've been to inpatient/outpatient programs, benefited from DBT, CBT, have been on/off medication, have brief periods of upswing... only to crash back down again and again. At some point I have to wonder if it'll ever end, or if I'm even worth it at this point. If I didn't have a son, I probably would've gone through with plans of self destruction in these last few years. Even now, with him depending on me, it still gets very dark. Of course, being alone would be easier if I actually loved myself. And self love would eventually lead to the capacity to love others. Which would lead to healthy relationships. But, I don't have that now.

**Last night**, I had one of my episodes. An escalated argument with someone lead to me bashing my head with my own hands 20-30 times. Once I get that carried away, I don't want to stop. There have also been additional episodes of self harm in the last couple weeks. After last nights episode, I realized afterwards how alone I was in my life. And that's a very painful feeling to feel. Combined with my difficulty in maintaining a stable mind and life, it seemed the only place I belong is a mental institute. But even then, being institutionalized costs money. Other people would have to pay for me to exist. And I'm too prideful, too self centered to accept that. Yet, I depend on others so severely for validation. I constantly seek and yearn for a compass to guide me. But then, I'm inconsistent. I can't maintain a direction for long. And so I drift between depending on others for my own sense of stability. Which, again, circles back around to the question of whether I really should exist in this world. Why should someone so self-absorbed even be on this planet? And even if was somehow okay for someone like me to exist, there's still the anguish from barely existing inside my own brain. So back to the idea of self destruction.

I don't know. I don't know why my mind is wired so that the only conclusion to my situation is that I shouldn't exist. I'm sure I'm missing a lot of counters to that point of view. But I can't deny the reality that here I am, at this point in my life, still lost, still in pain every day, and worse, still causing others pain. And it gets very dark sometimes. I'm sure most of you reading this go through this same darkness also. So many threads here I can relate to. But doesn't seem to help with the pain. Doesn't help with the void inside. Posting...