Constant, heavy, weight

For the first time in my life, I am constantly surrounded by people. Living in a household with four other people as compared to just my mother and I is a shock to say the least, but for me it is a welcome change as I am no longer in an unhealthy environment for the majority of my time.

The only problem with this is - despite being surrounded by people, I am lonely. Constantly. I feel like an outsider a lot of the time, like an intruder on the family life of these people. I feel accepted and welcome, of course, but nothing really beats the fact that they are a family and I am not a part of it.

So much is happening in my life, it seems. I know that leaving home was the right decision to make but it's going to take a long time for it to feel like the right decision. For now, I just feel lonely, useless, rejected, and like I'm halfway between two distinct periods of my life. It doesn't help that everyone is expecting me to repair my relationship with my mother, to meet with her and discuss our feelings and work things out so that we can live happily together again.

But I know, from 16 years of experience that this cannot happen. I love my mother, I won't deny that, but I can't stand her. She's manipulating, abusive, irrational, and extraordinarily childish. I'm not perfect, but I'm working on that. She's not perfect, but even though she knows it, she's too proud to anything about it. I can't handle being in this environment and it has been proven that it makes me clinically unhappy, yet she will not accept this. It is unfathomable, the amount of anger, sadness and hopelessness that I feel, yet to no avail. I am so close to giving up, which is a bad move now that things show actual hope of getting better. But this means nothing to me in the depths of despair.

I need something more to keep me going.