When I was a kid, I remember that I was quite extroverted and confident around preschool, but it didn't last long. I was also different, and I knew it. I was chubby, and my mother wasn't allowing me to eat donuts with kids who also ate them. It was ironic because she allowed a lot of sugar in the home, especially tea and corn flakes with milk. This led to my later weight gain.
My father was abusive; he drank a lot, and he had his own demons. My mother had her flaws, but she had worked hard since she was a teenager and never complained. I also had a sister who was the complete opposite of me: confident, self-focused, able to manipulate others, and independent.
To this day, I don't know if my sister ever loved me; she probably thinks she does and was treating me right, but I only remember one or two times when she helped me in a way that didn't make me feel like a weirdo. Other than that, I always felt like a misfit, a fat outcast, and she had to see it, especially in primary school, but it never helped me. Maybe I wasn't showing enough of how much it all affects me. Trying to go through it, I don't know; I guess I was still capable of being carefree and engaged with life.
When I left preschool and entered primary school, everything fell apart. I gained weight and became severely introverted, shy, anxious, neurotic, and humiliated by classmates. Sometimes I was bullied, but it was mostly humiliation based on my low status in school: I was the odd one, the shy and quiet one, and the fat one; I never stood out for myself, and I just accepted it.
I hung out with other people like me of lower status. These people now have wives, kids, travel around the world, have jobs, skills, and money, and live. Everything I don't have. I could only be confident around these friends back then; other than that, I was becoming the silent fat kid.
Vacations were different. They were good periods when I felt carefree: watching cartoons, TV, and movies; playing soccer; and simply living without the constant feeling of being judged. Despite all the movement, I was fat and sweated easily. Going out in the middle of class almost always ended with me being sweaty, ashamed, disgusted, and humiliated.
I grew up wanting to be normal and wanting to have a girlfriend. That never happened. I wanted the kind of life other people seemed to have, but I increasingly felt that something was fundamentally wrong with me.
When I got to middle school, I chose the worst one simply because it would be shorter. I didn't think about my life, and no one else was really thinking about it either. Not even my parents were able to understand why I made that choice. Despite seeing how much I avoided people, felt ugly and disgusting, and was afraid, I didn't think about consequences in the future... Now I'm feeling them very deeply.
I met a few friends there. At some point, it became bearable, of course, after a few weeks or months of humiliation once again, laughing at my severe gynecomastia and my shyness. Once again, I had to suck it up and just go through it. But in the second year, one of my friends left the school, and the rest became quite distant from me. I convinced my parents to let me drop out, and I did.
During this period, I also experienced something strange: I could enjoy life without fear when I was completely removed from the things that made me anxious. I didn't realize how much damage I was doing to myself. I cut connections with friends I had known since I was a kid because I felt I had been treated badly. Eventually, I was left alone.
I started eating myself to death and became heavily addicted to porn and masturbation. At the time, I didn't realize that I was numbing myself with those things or that I was damaging myself.
Sometimes I could feel what I was missing. I would cry, feel that I was wasting my life, and then go straight back to whatever gave me dopamine. I didn't know these terms at the time. I didn't understand how any of it worked. I was living on autopilot, and no one around me seemed to see what was happening.
Because of that, I missed time I could have spent with my grandparents. I avoided leaving home. I missed some of the best parts of life. I was even contemplating not going to a funeral because I felt too ashamed of myself, but I did go.
Looking back, I can see how much of my life was disappearing while I was hiding from it.
At some point, I decided to change my life. I'm talking about 100% commitment: no porn, no masturbation. I was so motivated that I was eating only 800 calories a day. It was a mistake, but it eventually led to me dropping from 142 kg to 67 kg over the course of a year.
I learned that I didn't have to live for food. I thought I was finally going to start living on my own and get away from my father, whom I hated. I thought I had finally done something that would change my life.
But it didn't happen.
No one around me really cared. No one saw my achievement, and my mother even complained that I had lost too much weight. I know she was saying it out of concern, but at the time it was making me doubt everything I was doing. I had also done it partly for them, so that people in the neighborhood wouldn't laugh that they had raised such a loser like me, a crippled social retard.
They didn't care about avoiding fast food and sweets around me. I tried to go back to school and find a job, but I discovered that losing the weight had not fixed the deeper problem.
Even when I felt more comfortable with myself despite the loose skin and everything else, I couldn't look people in the eyes. I couldn't behave normally. I overthought every movement. I felt aimless and alone everywhere I went, always wanting to go back home, even though home was also my prison.
At first, I didn't even want to talk outside. Even when my grandpa came, I wouldn't go outside or spend time with him. I kept waiting until I would finally look perfect. It never happened.
Then I realized something that devastated me: the people who I knew—friends, bullies—moved so far away from me, living their lives, being adults, while I was still a kid trying to fix my life, trying to "catch" them, while in reality I hadn't even moved from the starting line.
Needless to say, at Christmas I started eating cakes, and I gained all the weight back. I dropped out of school after one class because I couldn't handle people and felt depressed.
The next ten years became a cycle of losing weight, gaining weight, and repeating the same thing. The same happened with porn. I would make enormous efforts, convince myself that this time I was going to change everything, and then eventually collapse back into the same patterns.
A major reason for this was that I realized that after so much effort and sacrifice, nothing had actually changed. I had not progressed in life. The weight could change, my habits could change for a while, and I could make huge commitments, but I still couldn't function around people or build a life.
Meanwhile, I got a receding hairline, which made me feel even worse about myself. I tried to accept all my flaws, but I also had gynecomastia, which has made me feel less of a man my whole life. I have loose skin, a lack of charisma, a lack of personality, an inability to function around people, and difficulty with small talk and social situations.
I started thinking that you can't have anything in life if you don't have connections, and you can't build connections if you're stupid, awkward, shy, and a loser. And I felt that I was all of those things.
I felt stupid. I felt like I couldn't learn. I tried to learn skills, but I couldn't. I spent my days doomscrolling.
The one thing I did consistently over all these years was self-therapy. I learned so much about myself: the reasons I did the things I did, why I behaved the way I did, and the psychological and physiological reasons behind it. I spent years trying to understand myself and trying to rise above what I had become.
I also worked out a lot, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. I would work out because I ate more, because I was afraid that even clean food could make me gain weight, and because I felt that I had to compensate for everything.
Food became one of the few things I had left that could make me feel something or feel safe.
I also had pets that I loved. Awful things happened, and they died. Each time, I broke down. There were years of terrible depression, suicidal thoughts, and complete despair, along with suicide attempts that I was never able to go through with.
Those periods also taught me something strange: when I stopped expecting anything from life and simply accepted the misery, I sometimes felt at peace. There were no expectations, no hope, just living in the present moment, today.
But I don't live in the present anymore. I just see time passing by. Each day feels the same: workout, food, doomscrolling, research, journaling, porn, and my passion, comics.
I spend most days doomscrolling, daydreaming, hoping, ruminating, and talking to myself because I have no one. I imagine situations in my life that could have gone differently. I imagine having a girlfriend and friends. I imagine being successful. I imagine having a normal life and finally becoming the person I wanted to be.
Sometimes I also imagine taking my own life. I don't plan to do this in coming months/years, because I still have Mom and my new dog, and this is another thing that exists in my thoughts and imagination when I think about how trapped and hopeless I feel; I have only them. My mom is 60 years old, my dog is 4 years old, and all I think is how much they will be with me, how long before they get ill, and how much before they will count on my help, and I won't be even able to make a phone call... That's how paralyzed I am socially. And I can't handle the thought of those things coming, and they are coming.
I wanted to create comics. I have great ideas and designs, and I can say that confidently. I analyze things to the point of ridiculousness, and I can see that in another life I could build something special. But I can't seem to do it.
Every day I want to improve my drawing and write scripts, but instead I have a big, unsorted journal full of ideas, self-reflections, and thoughts. After so many attempts and so many years of not seeing results in any part of my life, I am in a constant freeze state.
I don't know anymore whether what stops me is laziness or a freeze state coming from shame and depression.
I feel like a disgusting loser. I have nothing to offer: neither looks nor personality, no skills, and I feel unable to learn.
My father made me feel my whole life like I was retarded. There's a part of him I know deeply loves me; I know that for sure. I have wondered whether he may have had borderline personality disorder later in life, because it would explain the sudden changes from being calm to becoming abusive.
Now he has mellowed out, and my mother is okay, but I am not. I remember everything: every cry, every tear, every bad thing that happened, and he was part of it.
But what can I do? He retired, Mom is retiring this month, and I don't earn money. In fact, I've never worked, and believe me, I can't express how ashamed I am saying this here. I despise myself, and I am deeply ashamed of it, and I cry writing this. They never mind paying for me; for them I am their son, but they don't think about the future. They didn't do anything all those years, neither when I wasn't aware of how much I was ruining my life, nor when I was trying to fix it, nor when I was breaking down and lying down on the floor unable to move, trying to bring their attention, but after years of this cycle, I know now this for sure; they don't know how to help me. It is a sick and complicated relationship.
Our life is very modest. We live in an ugly apartment, and I can't stand it, just like I can't stand my body. I can't stand the imperfection of life, of me, of everything.
I worked hard on leaving behind my perfectionism, but I still wish some things were different: a small, clean apartment, a car, a girlfriend, and a life. I don't need everything to be perfect. I just wish some basic things were different. I see people around me, and I ask myself, why all these people have so much, and I can't get just a little.
I'm 34, uneducated, ugly, creepy, awkward, socially anxious, shy, friendless, and a loser. Each year feels like a month because every day is the same. Every day I wish there were someone who would reach out to me, give me a hand, and force me to change, but it won't happen.
My sister, whom I hate, has a perfect life and enough money, and she lives somewhere else. She is very manipulative. She once gaslighted me when I told her about suicide, asking me if I knew how expensive a funeral would be. This past week had a wedding; she didn't invite me. I blocked her number some time ago when I really felt abandoned by her. So she didn't bother to contact me in any other way and probably thought I wouldn't come. I know she isn't responsible for me, but I would just want her to know how fucked up I am. I am like a helpless, hopeless child, and I am ashamed. There's no person in the world who would feel such disgust and hate towards me as I do.
I am alone. My life feels like a prison. I can't escape. I'm afraid. I hate being here, and I hate people.
I have developed disdain for people, but I'm not some kind of incel. I hate myself too. I try to be fair. I spent most of my life in shame, thinking it was all my fault, that I was born like this, and that no one was to blame. And it's not true.
Ironically, I also can't stand the idea of being alone, but like I said, I have only a mom and a dog; I don't count on my father, because we barely talk. I always dreamed about a big family, feeling secure, but I feel so scared; everyone I loved died, and now it's me, my parents, and my dog who replaced the previous pets that I can't get over.
Since I was a kid, I was always watching other people and feeling jealous. I would look at other families and think their lives were better. I watched other people living their lives and felt that I was different, worse, and behind.
Now I see other people living, having wives and kids, and building careers and lives, while I don't even have a girlfriend. They seem beyond me in development, and I feel incredibly far behind.
When I was young, I was even jealous of things like gaming; kids around me had good PCs and were playing with each other, and I couldn't. I finally got a good PC at age 32; Mom bought it for me. How pathetic is that? And so what? Years later I realized I can't even enjoy playing because all I think about is how much of my life I wasted. I wanted to relive my childhood when I felt safe, I guess; it didn't work out.
I always felt different, worse, and behind, and I still feel that way now. I feel like a kid standing on a playground while everyone else is playing and nobody wants to play with me.
So here I am: 34, ugly, sweaty, uncomfortable with myself, a loser, living with my parents, daydreaming about a better life, doing what I can, dieting, working out, trying to get into drawing, finding a way of living, while actually doing almost nothing except dieting, working out, and ruminating about all the mistakes I made, about how terrible a person I am, about how stupid, useless, and worthless my life is.
I am so incompetent in every part of life; everything is so hard for me, more than other people, way more, and I still was trying to fight it back, and I can't, as if I couldn't learn, couldn't understand.
And I don't say that just to attack myself. I want to be fair. I know I am a despised loser, and I can't change my life. Everyone moved on, and I am stuck.
I am a kid living in a 34-year-old body. I am Peter Pan, but alone, ugly, and stupid.
I can't go to the dentist. I can't go to the store. I can't try to find a job or learn skills. I just can't. If I had a choice between doing that and hanging myself, I feel like I would rather hang myself, despite the fact that I want a better life. That's the contradiction: I want a better life, but I feel incapable of doing what would be required to build one.
I'm apathetic. I'm disgusted with myself on every level possible, and I feel like there is no help.
Multiple times I was in a position where I could force myself to try going further, but it never worked out. Now I'm so depressed because of all the wasted effort that everything I was willing to do years ago I can't do anymore.
I live in a constant state of anxiety, depression, jealousy, comparison, misery, and hate.
I am deeply scared and ashamed. I can't function normally anymore. My life has revolved for the past ten years or more around trying to rise up through self-reflection, discovery, journaling, working out, dieting, trying to understand why I am the way I am, and trying to rise above it, only to fall back into binge eating, depression, suicidal thoughts, and pathetic attempts that I was never able to go through with
I have never been to a store alone to buy groceries. Again, how pathetic is that? I have never worked, except during school. I am 34. I have nothing to offer. I have no skills. I am afraid of getting a job, of being a creep or a weirdo around people once again, of working hard just to be miserable, and then of going back home where I will be alone.
I don't feel like anything is meaningful anymore.
Everything I loved has passed. Everything that gave me comfort and made the world feel normal is gone. TV shows that once made me feel safe now remind me that the people who made them are gone and that nobody seems to care about those things anymore.
I can hear old intros and music in my head, and I wish I could go back to when I was a kid, when I knew someone would take care of me and I wasn't alone.
Everything I used to love reminds me that I'll never see my grandparents again. I'll never see the pets I loved again.
It makes me feel even lonelier and sadder. I can't even watch the shows I used to love anymore. Everything feels like a waste of time.
I'm so scared because I know myself. I don't know if I can change. Maybe I don't even want to. Maybe part of me wants to keep feeling this way, even though it's killing me, because this is how the world looks to me now.
I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.
I wish I could have been different. I'm 34, and for so many years I've asked myself these questions, then ignored them, doomscrolling, hoping, daydreaming, until I finally woke up and realized how stuck I am.
Now everything just seems sad.
I don't really know what I'm asking for by writing this. I just don't know how to live with the feeling that everything I loved belongs to the past and that I'm getting further and further away from the life where I felt safe.
That's not living.
I don't know what to do. I barely function, trying to distract myself with doomscrolling. I already planned out suicide in the future, to now experience once again seeing my close ones getting older, weaker, ill, and dying. I don't want to see that again, and without them I have no reason to live, even if now I feel ignored and alone.
Suicide terrifies me. I believe in God and treat it seriously, but I'm stuck. I have no way out of this; I just don't. I can't on my own. I lost all drive, will, and hope, and no one is coming to save me. No one will grab my hand and force me to get better, and I believe that I can't change, because I always was too soft, too weak for living.