I was diagnosed with depression when I was around 8 years old. I’m 27 now.
I was abused and mostly ignored growing up. I didn’t have many friends and spent a lot of time at home playing video games because real life always felt painful.
From a very young age, I started noticing how much appearance seemed to matter. I watched other guys my age get attention from girls, be treated better socially, and even seem to get more positive attention from teachers, while I mostly felt invisible. It didn’t help that I was extremely shy and skinny.
I remember often coming home from school, putting a chair in front of the mirror, and just sitting there looking at myself. I genuinely believed that if I had simply been born better-looking, everything would have been easier — making friends, being treated like a normal human being, getting attention from girls, feeling wanted.
This was long before all the current internet obsession with looks became mainstream.
At some point, I made it my mission to become more attractive. I got heavily into fitness, not because I loved training or cared about the sport itself, but purely for cosmetic reasons.
And the fucked-up part is: it worked.
For the first time, I started getting some attention, respect, compliments, and admiration. Nothing else I had done before seemed to change how people treated me as much as something as stupid and superficial as building a better body.
It wasn’t anything crazy. I didn’t suddenly become popular or desirable to everyone. It was more like going from complete invisibility to finally getting a little bit of attention.
And over the years, I kept seeing things that reinforced this belief.
You meet some guy who is 6’4”, handsome, tattooed, confident, and suddenly he seems to have friends, women, attention, admiration — all the things I desperately wanted. I would hear people talk about attractive people in exactly the way I wished someone would talk about me.
I wanted that admiration. I wanted to feel chosen. I wanted to feel like I was finally enough.
And it never really stopped.
I’m still obsessed with appearance. It makes me jealous and miserable, but in a strange way it also gives me hope. Because part of me keeps thinking: if I can somehow reach a certain level of attractiveness, maybe then I’ll finally be enough. Maybe then I’ll finally be chosen. Maybe then someone will actually love me.
Obviously I know personality matters too. But sometimes I wonder: how are you supposed to develop this healthy, confident, lovable personality when your entire foundation was neglect, rejection, insecurity, and constantly feeling like you weren’t enough?
I feel like people carry their childhood with them for their entire lives. I’ve met people who are 50, 60, 70 years old and you can still see how much of their personality was built around things that happened to them when they were young.
Maybe that’s what scares me the most.
That I can change my body, my hair, my clothes, my face, my career, my social skills — everything on the outside — and still have that same kid sitting in front of the mirror somewhere inside me, wondering what he has to change before someone finally thinks he’s worth choosing.
Sorry for the ramble. I just needed to get this off my chest.