Sleep Deprivation

It is 8:20am on January 13th, a Tuesday. I have been awake for 43 hours since 12am, Monday. Why am I still awake? I want to sleep so badly.

I think that the only solution to the question I've been asking myself is that I'm upset. Something - somewhere, deep within the estranged and twisted collision of thoughts in my head which I call my concious is bothering me tremendously. As the sun rose, I finished watching a movie about a man committing adultery within marriage and trying to save the sacred bond itself all at the same time. It made me think about myself and where I am as of today.. where I've been the past couple of weeks and months, and what I know about myself. Maybe, frighteningly, if I know myself and what I, as a person, want and need.

"It's impossible to love anyone unless you love yourself first."

A question burns in my mind, a question so huge that it is overwhelming me. I think that this question is what is causing me to lose sleep and to stress out, lose my apetite, and begin to show reclusive behavior at work and home. Do I love myself? For years I've avoided this question. The more you avoid things, the easier it is to inhabit a safe, secure net of denial that is intangible to your mind, and more importantly, yourself.

I was always upset by this. I have fallen in love, I have felt the pain that is above and beyond any relationship that a teenager my age would feel. I have been treated as a peer and equal, loved as one, had to take care of myself and another in times of need. Why do I still ask myself this nagging question? This question that eats away at my brain in the back of my head while I ignore it and decide that to keep yourself busy is way more important than to face yourself.

I guess I can say that after these past few days, I've become tired of running. If I have loved before, than this phrase is useless, because I don't think I have loved myself. I think I've neglected my feelings to mold into someone elses perfect image. I have spent too much time catering to one, two, three people that I care about the most when I really should have been molding an image for the one person who matters even more than the rest - myself.

At this delicate, yet intricate and defining point of my life I need to focus on myself more than other people. What I really need to do is to stop being codependent on another to make myself feel more complete or soothed. Since I have recently moved out of the town I lived in for so long, I have been able to keep a job and care for myself in a more healthy environment to be sucessful. So I have flourished, somewhat, and shown to myself that it is not beyond my abilities to remain stable. Despite this, I still feel empty....

I need to figure out why.

Someone... anyone.
Help me understand.