This is my first posting on Lit. I have lurked here for quite a while but have never had the courage to post at all yet. Maybe after this first posting I'll feel more comfortable in contributing more. At the very least I wanted to give thanks to Quoll for starting and continuing this thread and to all of the posters that have been brave enough to post in it. Your kind words and cheerful outlook, even while battling with your own demons, helped in some small way with my own. Enough even to pull me back from the edge and make me realize I needed to seek help rather than take my own life.
Many of you have had tragedy, abuse, and loss to deal with that is far greater than my own sufferings. I count myself lucky to have not had much of any external abuses or stressors of that nature in my life and hearing some of your stories put my own problems in some perspective. I admire and envy your courage and strength.
Many of my problems have been echoed in other's postings. I am my own worst enemy, and the blog Quoll recently linked to describes my inner thought process almost perfectly.
I am a painfully shy and quiet person and have had very few friends and I haven't had any kind of romantic relationship yet. The constant beating myself up and the extreme loneliness caused me to slowly slip into the personal hell that is depression. I craved love and intimacy and yet was incapable of finding that for myself.
At one point before I did completely isolate myself, I still held out some hope that I would get out of my own way and be happy. I would have thoughts that maybe I would meet someone nice that day and I would be able to say more than two words to them. Maybe I would build up the courage to finally approach and say hi to a cute girl in one of my classes. The worst that could happen is she isn't interested in me and I'm back at square one right? It sounded so simple in my mind. Just walk over, smile and say hi. Accomplishing that would have felt like a monumental victory. Yet that victory always eluded me. When the moment of truth was upon me, self doubt and my ever reliable negativity and criticisms would beat me back into my shell and some small amount of panic would ensure that I would walk right on by and sit by myself for the umpteenth time. I'm sure my body language was screaming stay away as well in many situations, so I was never really approached either. At the end of the day this would be just one more failure I could berate myself over and the cycle would begin anew the next day. I was surrounded by 30,000 other students, but I had never felt more alone in my life.
That hope and optimism would be a little bit less each day, while the pain and negativity would be a little bit greater. Pretty soon that negativity spread to other aspects of my life. My school performance greatly suffered. I wasn't going to amount to anything so why bother I thought. I wasn't sleeping at night as my own thoughts plagued me. Only when I was absolutely exhausted would blessed sleep finally come. I started sleeping 10, 12, even 14 or 16 hours during the day in fitfull lengths. The world was better off without me and I wanted to escape my own mind. I was no longer doing the activities that did bring me joy and happiness. I stopped eating well and would only eat when I would start to feel weak and nauseated. I shut myself off from the world.
I still craved love and intimacy and human contact though and my hormones were raging at me. I had isolated myself so badly at this point that I rarely ventured from my apartment. In an effort to effect relief of these feelings, I went online. I devoured erotic and romantic stories wishing and fantasizing that they might come true for me one day. I became obsessed with porn. Those were my addictions. They both made me feel something other than hopelessness and despair for a time. Those feelings were artificial and fleeting though and my self given mental beatings and yearning would soon be back in full and ever greater force. So I would soon be back at it, searching for that next story or video that would elicit some high for me.
It gradually got worse and worse until I was thinking about and even planning out my suicide. Researching different methods and what has worked and failed for others in the past and what appealed to me. Contemplating what, if anything I wanted to leave for my parents as a last goodbye. That was the one thought that I believe kept myself alive during those times. I love my parents and my family and I know that they love me. They had no idea the pain and suffering I was going through though, as I would hide it well when I would visit them or talk to them on the phone and I deftly lied about my school work and other aspects of my life for over a year. I know that killing myself would have been devastating for them though and that thought was enough to stay my hand.
I eventually stumbled across the message boards here on lit. At first it was just another avenue to feed my addiction. I was a silent viewer of the kinks and fantasies and experiences of other posters and I attempted to live vicariously through them. I ran across Quoll's thread on depression and followed it for a while. Before that, I didn't know much about depression. I still thought that one day I would magically snap out of it. That I would somehow become a happy and confident person and everything would be right with the world. If only it were that easy. This thread, as well as one by Skye and others, caused me to look more into depressive and anxiety disorders. That knowledge, combined with the hope and encouragement of other posters even while they struggled themselves was the push that made me finally seek help. It was either that or kill myself.
I was put on medication and had regular counseling sessions for a time, and they helped greatly in some areas. Enough so that I was able to get my life mostly back on track with regards to school and again enjoy the activites I once did. It wasn't easy and I had created a big hole for myself, but I was able to persevere and I am now finally close to graduating. I was feeling well and stable enough to go off the meds, and have been for slightly over a year now. It even helped a bit with my social anxiety. It is still very stressful to approach people on my own though or put myself out there and I still avoid doing that. I have accepted that I am more of a loner and that as long as I get out and do the activities I love I do ok. It helped that my brother started college as well and that I am living with him and his girlfriend. Before I was completely on my own. Now I at least have them to interact with.
This time of year is always hard for me though and my loneliness is a little more hard felt. I can feel myself getting a little bit worse each day and slipping into some old, unhealthy habits. I decided to come back here and share my story. I have never so openly talked about many of the things I confessed here, even while I was in therapy, and once I started writing it just seemed to pour out of me. I feel a bit better though after writing this so maybe it was helpful after all.
If you have made it this far, thank you for reading. This sort of self-confessional ended up much longer than I thought it would when I started, but I'll go ahead and post it anyway as it helped a bit in writing it so maybe it will help someone in reading it. And thank you again to all of the people in this thread. I'm not sure what help or advice I might offer in return, but I am a pretty good listener so I'll offer my ear for those that might need it. I am not sure I would be here today without your kind words, even though they were directed at others. I hope everyone is doing well.
Many of you have had tragedy, abuse, and loss to deal with that is far greater than my own sufferings. I count myself lucky to have not had much of any external abuses or stressors of that nature in my life and hearing some of your stories put my own problems in some perspective. I admire and envy your courage and strength.
Many of my problems have been echoed in other's postings. I am my own worst enemy, and the blog Quoll recently linked to describes my inner thought process almost perfectly.
I am still waiting to get to the point where I feel invincibile though!
I am a painfully shy and quiet person and have had very few friends and I haven't had any kind of romantic relationship yet. The constant beating myself up and the extreme loneliness caused me to slowly slip into the personal hell that is depression. I craved love and intimacy and yet was incapable of finding that for myself.
At one point before I did completely isolate myself, I still held out some hope that I would get out of my own way and be happy. I would have thoughts that maybe I would meet someone nice that day and I would be able to say more than two words to them. Maybe I would build up the courage to finally approach and say hi to a cute girl in one of my classes. The worst that could happen is she isn't interested in me and I'm back at square one right? It sounded so simple in my mind. Just walk over, smile and say hi. Accomplishing that would have felt like a monumental victory. Yet that victory always eluded me. When the moment of truth was upon me, self doubt and my ever reliable negativity and criticisms would beat me back into my shell and some small amount of panic would ensure that I would walk right on by and sit by myself for the umpteenth time. I'm sure my body language was screaming stay away as well in many situations, so I was never really approached either. At the end of the day this would be just one more failure I could berate myself over and the cycle would begin anew the next day. I was surrounded by 30,000 other students, but I had never felt more alone in my life.
That hope and optimism would be a little bit less each day, while the pain and negativity would be a little bit greater. Pretty soon that negativity spread to other aspects of my life. My school performance greatly suffered. I wasn't going to amount to anything so why bother I thought. I wasn't sleeping at night as my own thoughts plagued me. Only when I was absolutely exhausted would blessed sleep finally come. I started sleeping 10, 12, even 14 or 16 hours during the day in fitfull lengths. The world was better off without me and I wanted to escape my own mind. I was no longer doing the activities that did bring me joy and happiness. I stopped eating well and would only eat when I would start to feel weak and nauseated. I shut myself off from the world.
I still craved love and intimacy and human contact though and my hormones were raging at me. I had isolated myself so badly at this point that I rarely ventured from my apartment. In an effort to effect relief of these feelings, I went online. I devoured erotic and romantic stories wishing and fantasizing that they might come true for me one day. I became obsessed with porn. Those were my addictions. They both made me feel something other than hopelessness and despair for a time. Those feelings were artificial and fleeting though and my self given mental beatings and yearning would soon be back in full and ever greater force. So I would soon be back at it, searching for that next story or video that would elicit some high for me.
It gradually got worse and worse until I was thinking about and even planning out my suicide. Researching different methods and what has worked and failed for others in the past and what appealed to me. Contemplating what, if anything I wanted to leave for my parents as a last goodbye. That was the one thought that I believe kept myself alive during those times. I love my parents and my family and I know that they love me. They had no idea the pain and suffering I was going through though, as I would hide it well when I would visit them or talk to them on the phone and I deftly lied about my school work and other aspects of my life for over a year. I know that killing myself would have been devastating for them though and that thought was enough to stay my hand.
I eventually stumbled across the message boards here on lit. At first it was just another avenue to feed my addiction. I was a silent viewer of the kinks and fantasies and experiences of other posters and I attempted to live vicariously through them. I ran across Quoll's thread on depression and followed it for a while. Before that, I didn't know much about depression. I still thought that one day I would magically snap out of it. That I would somehow become a happy and confident person and everything would be right with the world. If only it were that easy. This thread, as well as one by Skye and others, caused me to look more into depressive and anxiety disorders. That knowledge, combined with the hope and encouragement of other posters even while they struggled themselves was the push that made me finally seek help. It was either that or kill myself.
I was put on medication and had regular counseling sessions for a time, and they helped greatly in some areas. Enough so that I was able to get my life mostly back on track with regards to school and again enjoy the activites I once did. It wasn't easy and I had created a big hole for myself, but I was able to persevere and I am now finally close to graduating. I was feeling well and stable enough to go off the meds, and have been for slightly over a year now. It even helped a bit with my social anxiety. It is still very stressful to approach people on my own though or put myself out there and I still avoid doing that. I have accepted that I am more of a loner and that as long as I get out and do the activities I love I do ok. It helped that my brother started college as well and that I am living with him and his girlfriend. Before I was completely on my own. Now I at least have them to interact with.
This time of year is always hard for me though and my loneliness is a little more hard felt. I can feel myself getting a little bit worse each day and slipping into some old, unhealthy habits. I decided to come back here and share my story. I have never so openly talked about many of the things I confessed here, even while I was in therapy, and once I started writing it just seemed to pour out of me. I feel a bit better though after writing this so maybe it was helpful after all.
If you have made it this far, thank you for reading. This sort of self-confessional ended up much longer than I thought it would when I started, but I'll go ahead and post it anyway as it helped a bit in writing it so maybe it will help someone in reading it. And thank you again to all of the people in this thread. I'm not sure what help or advice I might offer in return, but I am a pretty good listener so I'll offer my ear for those that might need it. I am not sure I would be here today without your kind words, even though they were directed at others. I hope everyone is doing well.
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