exhausted.

Sometimes my life makes me just want to scream at the top of my lungs at everyone. I thought I would be lucky enough never to be in a situation that nobody around me understood, but I am. I've explained it what seems like thousands of times that, although I am working on it, I'm still sick and I still have anxiety about going out. Usually the person I'm talking to acts like they understand; they acknowledge it and tell me to feel better. I even try to convince myself that they get it. It's not until I get a text message or e-mail inviting me out for dinner or shopping or whatever it may be that I realize... nobody understands.

Nobody understands that I can't just hop in my car and go somewhere I'm not comfortable with - my anxiety has made it so that even going places I'm comfortable with is a challenge. Nobody understands that the places I do go - my boyfriend's house, to see my aunt or cousin - are situations in which I can just barely pull myself together to go out. And because nobody understands, I worry that everyone dismisses it. I will admit that I have a tendency to be a bit paranoid about what people think about me, but sometimes I feel that I'm actually hitting the nail on the head about things nobody wants to say. I'm just scared of what everybody is thinking about my situation and the decisions I make.

It's difficult to decide what I'm supposed to do. If I don't at least try to make plans, my friendships are going to fade away. I feel too greedy always asking to meet at my house, since my friends live far. So, I make plans to go out. And then I break them. Somewhere in my mind, broken plans are better than not having any to begin with. At the same time, every time I do break plans, it makes me depressed. I usually spend hours feeling terrible about myself, angry that I couldn't just suck it up and go somewhere. I worry about my reputation for being a flake, for becoming that person who doesn't answer texts and ditches her friends. Sure, they know I'm sick, but I can't help wonder what they think when I say that, yet again, I can't make it. Just the fact that the meet-ups are planned anywhere but my house show me that they don't truly understand what it is I'm going through.

All of this frustrates me to a point I can't even communicate properly. I'm coming up on being sick for a year now and I don't even know which direction to go in first to fix it. Do I work on my anxiety? Do I go on strict diets and hope it helps my stomach? Or do I try to tackle both? These questions, this entire dilemma, weighs on my mind day in and day out, because it's unavoidable. It has infiltrated every aspect of my life. The only days that are okay are ones when I don't leave this house, and that's no way to live.

I have spent the past couple of months now feeling this way and it's getting tiresome. The holidays have been a distraction, but that's all they've been, seeing as it's all rushing back in now. I've spent countless nights crying myself to sleep, pleading with God that I get better, composing apologetic and explanatory letters to friends in my mind that I never send. During the day I try to trick myself into feeling surrounded by my friends. I e-mail and tweet them, post Facebook wall messages and speak noncommittally about getting together "sometime soon." Even by doing my Christmas shopping, by thinking about and picking out gifts for each of them, I've pretended they're closer than they really are.

I know I have amazing friends. They have made it clear that they are here for me. But I've trapped myself into the thought process that they're too busy and my problems are just too big, and thrown in a little bit of "I don't like to bother people so I don't ask for help." I've let my paranoid imagination convince me, at times, that nobody really cares because nobody's here to help me. The truth is, I have never felt more alone in my entire life.

And I have no idea what I'm supposed to do to make any of this better.