Reading this thread helped me to to put my own problems in perspective. I have a natural, God-given happiness that comes from within and I feel like I am one of the luckiest people alive in the world.
-I used to have alot of social anxiety but I feel like in the years since I graduated from high school I have completely turned my life around and hardly anyone can intimidate me anymore. Grades 1-12 were a pretty difficult time for me though.
-I suck at skateboarding but I am completely unathletic, and I've always sucked at any kind of physical activity, so I am proud of myself for even being able to do basic tricks and feel stable riding a board.
-I have a beautiful, wonderful girlfriend, however she's got some major issues with men to work out and I'm afraid she might hurt me really badly someday... but that fear would be there with any girl that I would be willing to put my heart on the line for.
-I've been told by a few close but honest friends that I have 'serial killer eyes' and sometimes I can creep people out with them, unintentionally. I have never had any desire to kill myself or anyone else, but I feel like I could just do it no problem if I ever really got the urge. I'm not scary looking, I look like a soft girly nerd but I don't take shit from anyone and I can make bigger and tougher guys back down from fights with me when they see the intensity of the anger that I can display when people fuck with me.
^These aren't so bad. However...
-I have intensely bizarre, bewildering, surreal nightmares almost every night. Usually the dreams revolve around loveless sex, drug abuse and senseless violence in all of their forms. They sometimes frighten me so badly that I wake up but when I fall back to sleep they always resume right where they left off. I have basically gotten used to it and they no longer really bother me or even concern me. I have taken several heavy psychedelic drugs and had frightening experiences in my mind similar to these dreams.
-I did not believe in ghosts for most of my life and for the longest time I had no belief in anything remotely supernatural, I believed that science could explain everything. I declared myself an atheist at age 12, but since I have gotten older I have gone through a sort of spiritual awakening. Now I am starting believe that there is some sort of other side and I have some kind of connection to it. I think now that in my years as a skeptical non-believer I was protecting myself from the idea that the living spirits of the dead seem to take some sort of interest in me and frequently attempt to get me to acknowledge them. Quite a few of my aforementioned nightmares involve ghosts.