In a couple of weeks I'll be in my new home. It's a very old brick house with stained glass windows, a washing machine, a dozen rooms my Mom and I picked colors for, and AC in my bedroom. Mom got me on her health insurance as a dependant. I am looking for a good therapist. We know better than to think a mental health center will have decent therapists, due to their lack of funding.

I feel very bad for all this. Why do I get to have better psychiatric treatment than someone else? Why do I get to have AC when others don't? Why do I get to have health insursance? Why do I get a home?

I feel like if I get better and if I became happy, I am abandoning all beings that suffer right now. I need to keep all our stories in my head, so no one is abandoned and forgotten the way I was. If I do something frivolous like art or watch a movie, I am a bad person for not being the witness of all the suffering in the world.

My Mom and my friend both have told me that I am not the sort of person who'd get better and work as an exec of BP or WalMart and drive an SUV and not recycle. They both assure me that I have always been a fighter and a justice worker, and if good things happen to me, it's OK. I won't be changed. I won't abandon anyone the way I was abandoned.

I guess I feel like if I get better I am denying what happened to me. Part of me thinks that I must save the entire world before I relax. If I stay aware of all the pain out there, then people will care about my pain. Or something illogical.

I know we have to put on our own oxygen mask before we help others get theirs on. It is just hard, I don't see why I deserve this? Mom says I deserve to be treated well for a change, to stop being dumped on, and I know that's true, but why do I get it and someone else cannot? How is that right?

I feel like I am abandoning all beings that have been through what I went through if I become happy and healthy.

Survivor Guilt.