I can't keep doing this.

Hey guys, it's me. You know, that kid with the smiling toast icon? No? Never mind.

Anyway, it's been a while since I started questioning my sexuality. Over one and a half years, actually. I think I'm finally beginning to see the end of the line-to get to the point where I can finally start to understand who I am. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just figuring it out any more.

You see, I hate myself. Quite literally. This may sound really fucking stupid and emo-y, but it's true. I can't remember the last time I ever felt good or happy about myself, and in the times I have felt happy recently, it's been brief, and swallowed up with bigger, darker emotions. I don't know all the reasons why I'm so unhappy, but I can pinpoint a few.

Firstly, what's been happening with me and who I like and why-I hate it. Everytime I think about it or experience any attraction to someone I'm not supposed to, I feet sick inside. I'm terrified constantly-that people will find out and hate me, or I'll finally have to face it. On the outside, I know what is happening isn't wrong and I shouldn't be so scared and ashamed, but on the inside I feel truly sickened by myself, and it aches. I hate to admit it to a forum full of queer people, but I'm a victim of my own homophobia.

But I'm not the only one who's been affected. My own fear has gotten out, and it's spread. I've become more and more angry, I swear a lot, and I've started deliberately causing trouble with other people just for the hell of it. In fact, I've become somewhat of a bully- about a year ago, I began deliberately cutting the only other queer girl I know out of my life, the first person I ever came out to. She's a bit weird in the eyes of conventional society anyway, and I developed a paranoia that somehow being around her would make other people respect me less. I became gradually colder and colder towards her, and when she was outed and subsequently ridiculed and rejected by the whole student body at my school, I stopped speaking to her altogether, and began actively bitching about her with my friends, who were more than happy to join in. In a way, it was a method of releasing my own anger at myself, but it was also the only time my own internalized homophobia had ever manifested against someone else. By picking on someone weaker, someone who openly displayed the faults I kept so closely guarded, I managed to make myself feel better inside, and also along the way managed to convince myself that I was over-exaggerating a brief phase, that I had made the whole thing up as some sort of ridiculous attempt at making myself anything other than some mediocre rich white girl who would never do anything interesting in her whole damn life.

Of course, this didn't help for long, and soon the fear began to make me question relationships with my other friends. Maybe secretly they all hated me-maybe they were laughing behind my back the same way I had laughed at the person I came out to via iPhone on a crowded school bus. Maybe they knew about me, and were ridiculing me for it, using me the way I used anyone who wouldn't stand up against me. I began to feel tired and sick all the time, holing myself up in my room, and snapping at my parents. I spent half my time looking up queer related things on the internet, and half my time punishing myself for it. I also began to diet and exercise, as I'm not naturally pretty, and I longed to get a boyfriend if only to prove to everyone I knew in some way that I like dick.

Every day, on the bus to school, I would sit in silence next to the only other person I had ever come out to, when I was still naive of the way the world would treat people like I might be, longing for her to ask. To ask if I was okay. To ask if I was still scared, worried, confused, sad. But she never did, and we began to drift apart, any meaningful connections between us severed by my own willingness to forget about that day I told her everything.

My parents finally confronted me about my behaviour one afternoon, and sat me down for what would be over two hours of silence on my part, then crying, and finally confession as my mum told me that if I didn't admit what she already knew, she would tell my dad herself. I told them in tears that I thought I might be...gay, and even though they hugged me and told me they didn't care, it felt like I had dragged barbed wire through my chest. I wasn't ready for them to know. I'm still not, and I think I hate them a little for making me tell even now. Whats more, since directly after the confession, they have both proceeded to completely act as if it never happened and have not brought it up again, apart from once when my mum was drunk and asked me if I was still worried about 'that gay thing'. I point blank walked out of the room, into my bedroom, and didn't speak to them for the rest of the evening.

Recently, they've both been having marital problems, and I've managed to get caught in their crossfire twice. It's been horrible, and it's made things worse. I barely speak to either of them and I can't sleep at night. I'm not even angry anymore. I just feel as if a great weight is pressing down on my chest and I can't quite carry it anymore. I've resorted to cutting more than usual, binging on food and throwing it up again, even drinking a little-just to make myself feel something. But it doesn't work. I can't even cry anymore. Everything's turned to shit, and I don't know how to make it right.

I'm angry because I'm sad. I'm sad because I'm an ugly bitch and a fucking dyke and I can't tell anyone. It's so stupid and yet I'm helpless, trapped by my own egotistical paranoia and fear.

I don't even mind if nobody responds to it, I just needed to write it down so it was real and not just in my head anymore. I don't know if you can help, really, but this feels like the end of the line, and I'm not sure I want to go there just yet.

I just want to say thanks, guys. You were there for me, and you tried your best. But I've screwed up, just like I always do, and I need you to tell me how to fix it, if you can. Thank you.

-Lark.