I would describe myself as a pessimistic person…A pessimist with not much faith in the rest of humanity, a pessimist who finds it very difficult to relate to anybody else and a pessimist who just can’t see good in most people…

I can’t help it, I just tend to see the worst in people. I focus too much on what I hate most about somebody else’s personality. I hate brewing up these intense negative feelings about other people – it becomes an obsession. It’s a temporary relief to find the next person to secretly dislike but then the cycle only starts over again.

Sometimes I meet people and if I perceive them to have qualities about their personality that I really dislike, my opinion of that person instantly drops – “Ugh, that person is so ignorant…Ugh, that person is so up their own arse…Ugh, that person is so shallow…That person is a bully…That person is prejudiced…That person is so judgmental…Bla bla bla…” And my opinion is capable of changing pretty quickly. I am aware of the possibility that this may be a sign of borderline personality disorder – I’m not trying to diagnose myself but I’ve been aware of BPD for the past few years, reading up on it and I am pretty sure I have a lot of the signs of this personality disorder.

I feel guilty for harboring these bad feelings, I feel like I’m the worst person ever.

These intense dark feelings – I just let them consume me. Resistance is futile. I become one with this “vile creature” and I just carry on dwelling on these bad feelings. But the scary thing is I feel okay about it.

I wasn’t always like this.

Okay, I had a cynical outlook thanks to my formative years at school – I was overweight, bullied, painfully shy, stress caused some of my hair to fall out, I hated most people at school, I tried my absolute best to be as sarcastic and obnoxious to them in my last year…The few “friends” I had just buggered off and fell by the wayside. I was miserable for my first year at sixth form college – I felt so lonely and abandoned.

But I was suddenly happy when I turned 18 – I became filled with wonder, optimism, even naivete… I was reading a lot on spirituality and Buddhism… I was listening to a lot of great music (I was really happy despite the fact I still had very little friends)…I felt like I could at least try to connect with other people…I even lost weight and changed colleges where nobody knew me…I felt like I had became this completely different person than the loser I thought I used to be…

I was still living under my parents roof, therefore under their rules but I rebelled…Maybe I thought it was their fault that I was such a loser for all of those years because they put too much emphasis on the fact I had to do well at school, I had to be polite and put other people first and that I should be feeling guilty if I am having fun. That was my rebellious phase – swearing, tattoos, piercings, purple hair, smoking, excessive drinking, staying out late, hanging around with people they disapproved of…Despite my resentment towards my parents, I was still really happy back then.

I moved out into student hall accommodation when I got accepted into university. First year was great as well – I finally made friends and met my kind of people, I had the confidence to tell people to back off and tell them where they can shove it, I was finally going to parties…

I was a far-cry from the person I was back at school. Suddenly I was reaquainted with some of my old school friends who had not stayed in touch afterwards, even some of the people who constantly mocked me…I got a huge sense of accomplishment when they kept telling me how much I had changed, and how cool I was now. But it seemed like they hadn’t changed at all – they kept making more promises to meet up and talk, but they would bail at the last minute and not bother replying to my messages.

I was also really reckless with money, spending when I got bored…I was a chainsmoker back then and I drunk heavily nearly every week…After a while, I had put on the weight that I had lost again…

I guess it went downhill since then…I also fell in with a bad crowd and ended up living in a private house with who I thought was my friend at uni and his two friends. For a while it was fun but they were heavy stoners and into other drugs as well…I tried it for a while just to fit in but I was extremely foolish – I didn’t feel high, I just felt paranoid and sick. I was convinced that my housemates were just constantly taking the piss out of me all the time and so was everybody else. I was also convinced I was going crazy and delusional (it took months before I managed to find out the only thing making me crazy was myself convincing myself I was going crazy and that this kind of thing is common with some people who have done weed). But that year was the worst of my life…

There have been a few good things that have happened since – I graduated, I did a bit of travelling in Spain but most of the time since I have been unemployed and bored out of my skull. Sometimes I wish I didn’t even go to university because it hasn’t really got me anywhere so far, it’s only landed me £20k or so in student debt and that time in my second year at uni destroyed most of my joy for life.

I also have to put up with certain other peoples expectations, namely about why I am not in a relationship, am I going to get married and have kids…I don’t believe in marriage, I don’t want kids because I don’t have the patience to put up with children…I don’t want to be in a relationship because I really don’t want to deal with somebody else’s problems, I don’t want to add to their problems with my problems and like I have mentioned before, I just can’t relate to most of humanity…One one hand – I’m comfortable being single, I can do whatever the hell I want…I don’t feel inclined to be in a relationship…I’m just not the romantic kind …I know this is extremely selfish of me for not wanting these things…On the other end of the scale, I’m made to feel like some kind of failure for not pursuing romantic goals…There’s this almost unwritten expectation that everybody has to live out this Walt Disney fantasy of finding their true love, marrying, having kids and living like princes and princesses. I have other ideas for my life and I don’t want this – my career and my art is my number one priority. When I worked in Spain, I got sick to death of the other people from my university on the work scheme telling me that I was sad for not being in a relationship and for a while I even started to believe again that I was a sad loser.

Being unemployed for most of this time has made me feel stuck and passive. Back to the idea of not having faith in the rest of humanity – I feel let down by the system. I got rejected from many job interviews and applications despite the fact I was capable of fulfilling the vacancy. The job centre were unhelpful – they sent me on this retail training scheme with the promise of a guaranteed job interview for a vacancy at a clothes shop, but at the end they were like “We feel like you wouldn’t like to work in that clothes shop so we’re going to help you find some admin/data entry work…” Did they fulfill their promise to help me afterwards? Did they heck.

It seems like everybody else are doing really well for themselves – it seems to me like they can acquire jobs with seemingly no effort on their part, and that they are living happy lives and having a whale of a time.

Most of the time I’m too anxious to even walk down the street – in the town where I live, people in cars think it is okay to beep their horns and scream obscenities at me as they drive by. I even feel intimidated by kids who ride past on bikes or congregate in large crowds…Sometimes groups of younger kids shout and swear at me (believe me, there are lots of foul-mouthed children where I am from…)…I keep wondering, do people really hate me so much? Is everybody just out to completely screw me over? Why do random people just target me for abuse in the street when I don’t know anybody and haven’t done anything to them?

Am I attracting bad things because of my negativity?Do other people pick up on my negativity and that’s why

Why does it feel like very few good things happen in my life before they are taken away/are over and then long periods when nothing else happens?

I just have an intense dislike for most of humanity – I keep mulling over other people’s bad points all the time.

I’ve tried reading about the things I used to read back when I was 18 on spirituality, but now I feel nothing whatsoever. I used to be full of wonder and curiosity but I don’t feel that anymore. The world just seems dull and grey and pointless to me now and nothing feels new and exciting anymore. I have no joy in my life whatsoever.

Could it be that I am full of self-loathing and I subconsciously seek out other people with the same qualities I hate about myself to project this onto them?

Am I really so consumed with bitterness, cynicism and hatred that it’s completely clouding my perception and outlook on life and other people?

Most of the time I feel unfulfilled. I will be 24 next month and I feel as though I have wasted most of my life so far being miserable.

Will I ever feel the same level of happiness and optimism that I felt when I was younger (even if it was short-lived)? How can I feel as great as I did back then?

I really don’t want to keep thinking the worst in people but it’s really hard…