Ugh. I live with my brother. Back story: My brother has always made me incredibly anxious. I can hardly ever touch anything he's touched, I can't sit where he sits, sometimes I can't walk in bare feet in the house because I know he has. I isolate myself in my room because it's the only "clean" place in the house. The plus side is that I don't pay to live here--that was the deal; he makes more money than he knows what to do with so he was going to get a big apartment anyway, and living with him would mean I get to go to the school I wanted to go to here. But honestly--I'd rather be working my ass off to live somewhere on my own than live here anymore. I have this problem specifically with my brother. It's always been this way and it's not this way with anyone else. I thought I could deal with it because I really wanted to go to school here but it turns out it's just gotten much, much worse. I really think I'm developing mild OCD and it's making me miserable. I have a major freak out essentially any time I come home and see how disgusting he's gotten the kitchen, and now I'm making it disgusting because I can't bear the thought of being in there long enough to even clean my own dishes and our fucking dishwasher sucks and he fucking stains the countertop every fucking day and I seriously could burn this whole fucking place down. So I create this little single-person utopia in my bedroom where everything is clean and nothing is out of place; I make my bed in extravagant ways, numerous blankets folded carefully in meticulous order; all my records, books, ordered by the right sizes, all of my soaps are lined up by size and the order in which I use them. And I use my many soaps in a special order. And when I'm actually OUT of the apartment, that's a whole different story. If I touch the staircase handles I'm okay but if I touch the escalator handles I hit my hands and shake them off trying to make it better and if the skin on my legs touches the seats of the bus or train I'm convinced I'm going to get a disease. So I walk to class, hitting my hands, shaking them off, feeling like a total lunatic. What fun.

So I isolate. I spend entire days in this room, just trying to calm myself down. It doesn't help when I'm trying to eat normally that I'm afraid of the kitchen. I wake up in the morning and I am so physically anxious that I'm in more pain than I can bear and I stay home from school way too often because of it.This isn't so bad, comparatively, I mean I know it could be much worse. But I need to leave here before it gets that bad, because I know my inability to go to school some days will ultimately affect my grades negatively. I barely have any friends here (and by that I mean I have ONE friend here) because I can't even do anything after school for fear of... well, everything. I'd always like to come back to this room, the only safe, clean place.

Today I told my mom I wanted to leave. I can't tell  her all of this because I'm afraid she'll try and make me come home. And I don't want to come home, I just want to live closer to school, I just don't want to live with my brother anymore. I really, really don't know how to deal. I'm fucking miserable. I should be happy and I'm fucking miserable. I'm trying to eat. I'm trying not to cut. I'm trying not to binge or purge. I'm trying to push away the thoughts of suicide that are subtly popping back up. And I have literally no one to talk to about this, because I don't know how to tell anyone about it. So I guess I have to figure it out myself. First of all, I need to get a fucking job. I was giving myself a "break" this semester but, break's over. Since I don't have a car and fucking hate using the train/bus I'm going to have to apply to every fucking store within walking distance, which, luckily includes a bunch of grocery stores and restaurants, like there are 3 full shopping centers that I can walk to. So that's keeping me hopeful. This weekend I have a ton of studying to do but I think I'll go to one each day after school next week. So I'll get a job, start making some money, saving as much of it as humanly possible, work my ass off in school to keep my straight A's, actually GO to school, basically keep myself so busy I don't have time to think about germs and diseases and mold and filth. In the meantime I'm saving up money which could secure an apartment, trying to figure out cheap, safe places to live nearer to school, in places that also have places I could work within walking distance.

But this will have to occur in secret because I can't really tell anyone why I'm doing it. I just have to make it happen.