My autophobia and the will to die Part 1

I can’t sleep. Every night I cannot sleep. I am awake until very late, constantly wake up during the night time and get up early. I am restless, so to say, because whenever I close my eyes I see myself how I die in various ways ranging from getting hit by a truck to being butchered, everything from suicide to homicide. When I am awake however, nothing changes. I still feel like dying, and it has been like this for years now. I hate myself and hate every bit of me and I am fairly certain that more than tolerating me isn’t possible.

I hate having to see my reflection in a mirror, I can’t stand it. And I dislike being touched; I’m not used to having physical contact with people and immediately want to pull away once anybody comes close to me. Nevertheless, when meeting new people I really do try to not show it and act like everyone else, when in reality I just want to cease to exist.

My malfunction contains elements of autophobia (the fear of being alone or being left for good by someone else [especially a spouse or a family member], accompanied by anxiety, while feeling the need to keep people out of one’s business) tied up with self-hate, obviously. Neither is curable up to this day, really, though symptoms can be dampened through emotional bonding. But what are the causes for this state of mind, at least in my case?

Generally speaking I could roll out a large list of causes and traumata that may or may not have led to this: Like, being a mixed child I had severe problems fitting in both the German and especially the Philippine community, where grown-ups even felt the need to constantly insult me. I just wanted to fit in, at least look like everyone else did. As a counter-measure I devoted large portions of my time fastidiously studying the Filipno history and culture to make up for my shortcoming.

Or I could argue with my Catholic school education, rituals like the Confiteor, where you constantly keep on saying  you have failed “in [your] thoughts and in [your] words, in what [you] have done and in what [you] have failed to do”. The icing of the cake is of course you constantly having to say “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault”. Catholicism is a religion of guilt, and going to school in an extremely Catholic school you’re being taught that you’re just not good enough, no matter what you do.

But both of those reasons are, if ever, childhood traumas, they can easily be overcome by looking at things rationally, and people do really. But as Hitler has said in his 1938 speech in Reichenberg about teaching German children about being proper Nazis “[…] they will never be free their entire life!” (sie werden nicht mehr frei ihr ganzes Leben!), Catholicism, if you grew up with it, is pretty hard to get out of your system.
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