My friends and especially my family tend to fall in two camps, and they tend to move from one categroy to the other over time. Since my feelings are almost inevitably hurt by my confusion about boundaries, I think it might help if I write this entry requesting clear, spelled out, and gently put boundaries.

When people get to know me they see that I am good - I am good - and they say, here is a sorrowful young lass, I will be her friend. Over and over and over again, I have lost friends because they and I have not been clear enough about our needs and limits.

I decieve myself that I do not burn bridges or loose friends frequently until I look back at all the relationships that have ended because of me. It is painful for me to look back when I think about my life in these terms.

I even have family members who have cut me out of their lives. The hard thing is that I have played a large part in this. When I am the common denominator, I realize that I am the problem, and it makes me feel unworthy, depressed, humiliated, and in anguish.

So I put on my blinders and pretend I am normal, when in truth I am not. I have a lot of bad habits: anger, using the telephone for therapy, rare violence. My friends and family watch me twist and turn in fits of my own confusion, and this sometimes causes them to retract the kinship that they have for me.

Do I blame these people for giving me the cold shoulder when I feel I need them most? Yes. And no!

When I think about the burden my life puts over the world that is when I fall into the deepest sadness. Life is hard for me, it seems because I am alone in the world. But so too life is hard in your presence. Your flattery helps me boost my mood sometimes. But so frequently my mood seems but a mood. Is a mood a reality or a mood a form of fiction? If I feel I need something or someone is that a fact? Are my feelings true? Or would antianxiety medicines fix all of this? Or antidepressants? Both?

But maybe my mood doesn't need fixed. Sometimes I think: depth is honesty is depth is sadness is the only truth.

Consider all of the sadness in this world: climate change, hunger, poverty, disease, extinctions. Then explain to me why you look so smug all the time? Why do I go around rejoicing bouyancy?