Everyone feels 100% unloved and 100% misunderstood sometimes.

I think most parents give their kids mixed messages. Sounds like yours gave you hard time for not living up to some external standards that were unreasonable. Mine did too but they got over our lack of perfection eventually and I got over trying to punish my mom for wanting me to be so perfect.

I wasn't talking about you having a baby, although I bet you would surprise yourself if you decided to, that you would do a great job-- but I was talking about you parenting yourself.

Upthread you said something which, I can't remember the exact words but if translated, essentially meant you saw no reason to love yourself unconditionally. Like, you haven't earned the right to treat yourself with respect and dignity.

I think you should love yourself unconditionally. Everyone else has placed conditions and strings on whatever affection they have given you. You came into this world an innocent full of potential and you haven't squandered that no matter what your parents have said. You are just on the cusp of adulthood and making your contribution to the world. So love yourself unconditionally. Why should anyone else be loved unconditionally but not you? What makes you so undeserving of unconditional love?

I think the people you choose as friends, the ones who don't love you back, but you choose to give it out to them unrequited-- must have fantastic surface attributes you admire and you are trying to learn from them. I went through a phase where I wanted to be wittier and I chose to hang out with a clique of very sarcastic clever people. The constant sarcastic banter was hilarious and I did learn to be funnier, if that makes sense, but we all took an emotional beating from one another and after a few years, we all dropped the irony and eventually moved on to more meaningful friendships.

You have sought out gay men to date-- but your feminine body type is not attractive to gay men. So you have been rejected and had that reinforced. You mention counseling girls about theater roles-- maybe deep down you want to be an actress in a profession that rejects heavier women? So you are living vicariously. You are getting something from these relationships-- but at what cost to your self-perception?

You want to see yourself as unique and the only person who has suffered in the particular way that you have suffered-- but millions of people have been rejected by their parents, have been rejected in love, have suffered illnesses that have robbed them of their vitality and beauty and strength.

You want to sit on the outside looking in and by doing so you remain lonely, but can reinforce a message that everyone is essentially the same except you. That makes you special, but also lonely.

These are only a sampling of probably thousands of negative messages you are telling yourself all day every day. The truth is, everyone has to struggle towards self-actualization and self-respect.

I wouldn't say these things to you if I didn't reach several little epiphanies over the course of my life that made me understand that the forces culminating MY PERSONAL insecurities were the same forces of everyone elses insecurities. Manifest in various ways, but the same story over and over.

You are not the only person in the world who feels ugly, sick, and unlovable. But you stop reinforcing your parents wrong ideas and start loving yourself unconditionally.

Its just a start -- if it took 25 years of bad parenting to get you to this point of unhappiness, it shouldn't take more than 25 years of positive, self-respecting self-parenting to undo the damage. Probably a lot less than that. But either way, it has got to beat listening to that worn out, old false recording of "not good enough" for the next 25 years of your life. Throw that record out. You're good enough.

I am so sorry about what happened to your voice and your career. But I am jealous too!

Against my parents advice, I wanted to study opera but was rejected from the music school at my college. I tried again to no avail, and so I got a degree in History and eventually became a lawyer. I aged out of American Idol six months before the first round of auditions. And so, I sing to my kids. And it has taken me 15 years to be able to sit in the audience at an opera or choral event or musical and not feel bitter about not being on the stage. Regional volunteer theater has been a lifeline, when I had time for hobbies.

Success is just so narrowly defined in any of the entertainment industries-- especially the most prestigious ones. Please consider seeking out future opportunities--- in love and work and friendship-- that make you feel good about who you already are and don't reinforce the negative messages.

I will keep trying to do that too.

if we wanted to get hit on, we wore our best fitting jeans and a stretchy tight low cut shirt that we called "the boob shirt".

if we didn't want to get hit on, we threw an oversized plaid flannel shirt over the boob shirt.

smells like teen spirit.