You know if there is anything that makes me more miserable than my existence as it is currently, it's what my friends say when they try to "help" me by saying things to me like "You're sick."

Well, first of all, it's not like I haven't noticed. A variety of mental illnesses run in the family and when you add into all the childhood trauma (the cancer, treatments, living with an insane alcoholic), it's kind of hard to imagine that I would emerge completely unscathed. I know I'm not well mentally-that's why I've been in therapy for 11 years and on and off medication for both depression and panic disorder. But thanks, thanks for your very sophisticated diagnosis. I wasn't feeling so good before but now that I know that my friends think that I'm seriously fucked up I feel so much better.

This coming from a person who calls her 22 pound MALE cat by a female name and has to speak to her live in boyfriend eight or nine times a day.

And then of course, the blame. It's my fault that I'm so miserable because I crochet in bars because I've given up because I don't go out and do "other things". Ignoring that I've done speed dating, cyber dating, I used to belong to gym, I volunteered for about every charity event I could think of, I went to all kinds of events listed in Time Out New York, and that's just the beginning of the fucking list. And you know what I'm tired. It's been five fucking years already. Five. And the only men I meet are men already in relationships and men who just got out of one and are so totally scarred that they can't even think the word relationship without potentially risking a grand mal seizure.

And of course, they claim I'm always surrounded by men. Even if that was true, which it isn't, where the fuck are they? why don't they ever call? I'm not picky when a guy calls to go out. I've been known to date men for weeks that I barely like just to give them every opportunity to become someone I might be attracted to.

So I'm crazy and miserable because of my own apparent idiocy.

You know what, don't think we're that close. Don't think that I love you enough that you can say these things to me. Do me a favor and pretend that I'm someone you kind of know but not enough that you can bitchslap me with the truth whenever you feel like it. Pretend that I'm someone that you have to be nice to because that's what I do with you. When I get asked for advice about say alcoholic boyfriends with anger management problems I don't say what I want to say, I don't say "Leave him because I've seen what this kind of relationship can do a person." I try to give the advice that A I know the person wants to hear and B is somewhat constructive like "Go to a counselor together."

Because if this is what you think love is, I don't want any part of it.