right back where i started

[Glides]

i am single. my two most recent exes moved on unbelievably quick, are happily partnered up. they're happy without me, i'm not happy without them. they are human. it could be reasonably argued that i may not be a human being at all, even if i am often confused for one.

i am now back to my typical glides routine after months of neglect, which is spending every waking moment beating myself up for my chronic inability to connect with other human beings and then having copious intrusive thoughts about things that would get me banned from the forum if i said what those things were, they're not pleasant. the inability to do the former is the reason why i dwell so much on the latter. it's funny, i'm about to be 27, which means i've been complaining about this for almost a decade. all i have to show for a decade of complaining is being in the exact same place i was at 17, romantically speaking. my relationships have been, overall, toxic and traumatic, so it could be argued that 17-year-old me was ungrateful for the gift of perpetual virginity, and i should've just let sleeping dogs lie. it's a gift. it hurts harder when you can only date people who treat you like an afterthought. i understand my younger self to be absolutely delusional, and if there's any consolation, i hate and despise my younger self so much that it doesn't leave enough energy to hate the current self. if anything, i would consider my current self to be a victim of the younger self, who ruined every opportunity to actually be happy.

so i don't really know what to do now. what happens when you make no worthwhile progress in ten years? i would consider progress to be "have a healthy relationship for a change" or "have a single sexual experience that does not result in a severe panic attack due to the copious amounts of trauma." some people suffer trauma and become hypersexual, i suffered trauma and became sex-averse. i know it's wrong to envy the hypersexual, i know it's a part of the backwards-ass way my possibly asexual self views sex as validation rather than pleasure, how i've always treated it like a game i had to win as opposed to an experience to enjoy. but i don't enjoy sex. not really. and i desperately want to. i want to enjoy romance, i want to have something more than a molecule's worth of the collective human experience. it only furthers the conspiracy theory that i must be some sort of subhuman genetic dead end that only just barely resembles a human being.

is it the neurodivergence? is it the trauma? is it the mental health? what is it? i dwell and i dwell and i dwell, unable to stop thinking about it, unable to solve the equation that will make me want to live for the first time in my life. i understand another human being cannot fix your wounds, but you can't be fixed in perpetual solitude. i have already understood inside myself that the pandemic will never end, that this will go on past my death, that this will be a pandemic that will last centuries at the most generous of measurements. everyone else will move on from it except for me and whoever else, where i already had a pandemic eating away at my mind. sometimes i wonder if i'm schizophrenic, or if i'm just being a hypochondriac again. i understand there is an instinctual rulebook everyone i know seems to have that i don't have. i have had friends tell me it's one of the most self-defeating things i do, to automatically assume i am a subhuman rather than a human, to be unable to understand why anyone could find me attractive and then find out it was mutual years later but i was expected to initiate everything, and that they now find me unattractive because i refuse to initiate anything until i am inebriated to the point of near-death. i still jokingly tell the story of how a friend i had a crush on had to get me nearly blackout drunk before i was able to initiate anything. i was unable to initiate with my now-ex unless i was fucked-in-half high.

the moral of the story is that i am only able to be a human being when i'm not sober, and that's a really bad spiral to go on. without my mood-altering substances, i more closely resemble a corpse than a person. i dropped alcohol at the start of the pandemic, and now i've been forced to drop weed too after realizing i had never interacted with my partner sober before. i went sober, they did not, the relationship ended soon after. i have never had a sober relationship before. not truly. i asked out my first girlfriend over the phone while blackout drunk at a new years party all the way back in 2015. she commented how shy i was in person when we met. we met over tinder. every single sexual and romantic experience i've ever had has been with the assistance of addictive substances. that led to me losing my gallbladder at 25, where the doctors couldn't figure out how someone with decent cholesterol and good blood pressure had a gallbladder physically shutting down, and i knew it was the amount of times i combined it with my prescription medication.

and worse is that weed used to relax me and now it gives me some of the worst anxiety of my life, ever since the surgery. that's psychosomatic. but i have never successfully had a romantic or sexual relationship sober. it became my crutch to try and have as many unsafe experiences as possible. and THAT is the thing i am almost unique in doing out of the people i know. none of my friends have that problem. none of my friends seem to hate themselves as much as i do. they say they do, and then they start relationships sober. so i don't think they truly understand the severity of what they're claiming. this on top of the pandemic being what it is and i'm just mostly isolated and fucking up at work and watching myself come crashing down without my crutches. i don't think i got far enough to be an alcoholic, because i had just enough self-control to only really go at it when i was trying to impress somebody. i never drank alone. but i think i was on the precipice of alcoholism. i think i was right over the line, and then my friend basically watched my ass for almost two years, and then the pandemic started and there was no reason for anyone to be drinking anymore. now i can't take a sip of even the mildest cider without rippling nausea and piercing pains in my stomach, and i can't tell if that's my mangled body unable to take its former vice or if it's also psychosomatic.

i think the sad part is that i still talk to my exes, and they worry about me, they're just so worried, and i feel like they pity me, and it's worse than if they hated me. they both ended it because they wanted their pandemics to be over, and they recognize mine never ended, that it's been going on far longer than the actual one. i don't know what to do with this. i don't know how to make a person truly love me, not just the vapid way friends tell each other. as much of a cynic and a nihilist as i try to project myself as being, there's someone really sentimental deep inside who just desperately wants to be loved, even if it's not realistic. my boss asks me why my performance at work is suffering so much, and maybe it's two breakups over less than a month and then concrete proof my exes are happier without me and my "precautions" and my "chronic illness" and all the things they said weren't burdens but were, in fact, giant fucking burdens.

it just does not stop stacking up. it just does not stop breaking you to watch everyone else being alive and recognize that you're the closest thing to a zombie that could actually exist, because you are a body without a mind. you have never had a mind. you have had base emotions like anger and rage and grief, but nothing more than that. the words i am typing are what a corpse would type if it could type. and my life is so little and so tiny, and i have spent ten years typing here and all i have to show for it is a body even more mangled than before, and five steps back for every one step forward, and barely able to sleep, and barely able to function, and everyone getting mad because i can't function after how much this body has been broken. i've been in therapy for almost a decade, i have been working towards progress for almost a decade, and i am not one iota happier. i can't even conceive how that's physically possible. i just want to cry and scream until i don't have a voice anymore. i could be in my forties, my fifties, and type about the exact same shit. and i'll just keep typing until i die, because it's the only thing my dead mind knows how to do at this point: cry against the inevitable.

i'm sorry.

[Hielario]

Question: Would you get any validation from me telling you all the ways in which i am envious of you?

[Glides]

Question: Would you get any validation from me telling you all the ways in which i am envious of you?

i probably wouldn't. the part nobody knew how to warn me about is just the emptiness you'll feel at being an afterthought. i'll say that's worse than being alone (though i'm alone right now lol) and you'll say the opposite because our experiences are unique flavors of suffering, and we'll both end up being right in a way. and i don't think that's fair to you.

now, if the experiences i had were largely healthy and everything it was said to be, well i already envy the people who got to have that, and we'd both be envying the same people. i dunno if i'm explaining it well.

[Datelessman]

I am so sorry to read about all this, Glides. You have a lot on your plate and it looks like that you have for a long time. I think it is positive that you stopped abusing alcohol and marijuana since it sounds like you wanted to quit using both as a crutch. Unfortunately, that means addressing the core root of your trauma and it sounds like despite being in therapy a while, that hasn't happened. On top of that, the pandemic has been rough for all of us, and brought out some of your deep seeded resentment.

Please correct me if I am misremembering things, but I recall you stated that you have sexual abuse in your history. Please remember that is not something which should easily brushed off but a traumatic event that we all heal at different rates from. I have known many women (friends and relatives) who have experienced molestation or abuse at various levels and they all dealt with it or didn't at their own pace and in their own ways. Please do not beat yourself up by some arbitrary standard. If you feel you have reached the limit of healing with a particular therapist, it may be time to find a new one with a clear set of eyes. Therapy is like any relationship in that it can get into a rut, especially if the therapist has no new ideas or techniques or so on for you to try. Finding a new therapist isn't easy; I remember as a kid my mother (another survivor) going through motions to swap therapists in the 80's and 90's. But it may be the only way to help heal the root trauma with professional guidance.

You are not "subhuman" or anything like that because you feel pain, or struggle, or want to figure out how to be loved even if sex itself is scary for you due to your trauma. You have the right to want happiness. You are not weak because you may have abused substances in the past or even because you have had problematic if not abusive lovers. Covid-19 created many problems, but one of the worst was yanking the sheets which were covering over problems that had always been there. This may be what is happening on a personal level, with more time in isolation over the last 2 years. But above all, being abused or mistreated is not your fault or something you deserve. You deserve to be as happy as possible.

I'm a loudmouth on a message board, not a therapist unfortunately. There may be some remote TeleDoc type options which may make it easier to try to find a new therapist who gets along with you and has a fresh perspective. Surviving, though, is not a one-and-done process. It can be a pain that is always there, but you and a therapist may learn a better strategy or method with coping with it and handling it. There's such pain in your post and I hope you can find some help and compassion somewhere.

Question: Would you get any validation from me telling you all the ways in which i am envious of you?

Why would you be envious of someone going through so much trauma and pain? If it is for the reason I speculate it is, then you're mistaken. It's actually a point Glides has made a few times.

[Glides]

I am so sorry to read about all this, Glides. You have a lot on your plate and it looks like that you have for a long time. I think it is positive that you stopped abusing alcohol and marijuana since it sounds like you wanted to quit using both as a crutch. Unfortunately, that means addressing the core root of your trauma and it sounds like despite being in therapy a while, that hasn't happened. On top of that, the pandemic has been rough for all of us, and brought out some of your deep seeded resentment.

Please correct me if I am misremembering things, but I recall you stated that you have sexual abuse in your history. Please remember that is not something which should easily brushed off but a traumatic event that we all heal at different rates from. I have known many women (friends and relatives) who have experienced molestation or abuse at various levels and they all dealt with it or didn't at their own pace and in their own ways. Please do not beat yourself up by some arbitrary standard. If you feel you have reached the limit of healing with a particular therapist, it may be time to find a new one with a clear set of eyes. Therapy is like any relationship in that it can get into a rut, especially if the therapist has no new ideas or techniques or so on for you to try. Finding a new therapist isn't easy; I remember as a kid my mother (another survivor) going through motions to swap therapists in the 80's and 90's. But it may be the only way to help heal the root trauma with professional guidance.

I don't like referring to myself as a "survivor" of assault but I have had at least 2 people assault me. One was a friend I had a crush on at a party (whoops) and the other was the second person I ever dated (whoops whoops). My most recent assault was in 2018 and it's been 4 years since (whoops whoops whoops) and my two most recent partners were both put off by how much discomfort i have with intimacy, to the point where i even felt too scared to kiss either of them. one of them helpfully defined this behavior, which got worse the longer i went sober, as "moving backwards in the relationship." both ended the relationship, in part, because i could not have any kind of intimacy without outright panicking. as much as i was upfront about this and as much as both separately assured me i was worth it, this proved to be a bold-faced lie. i haven't really tried to meet anyone else since the breakups happened within two weeks of each other in december.

i haven't socialized with ANYONE since mid december and it's early february now. i saw a friend i used to have a crush on and she hugged me and it was the first physical contact i'd had in weeks and i fully burst into tears in public. i am not doing well. i have not had any physical contact since that day in mid-december. i have not talked to a human being in person outside of a work setting since mid-december. at this point i have lost the motivation to talk to people using my voice and do not socialize with human beings. i do not have friends other than the handful of people who call me on the phone every so often when they remember i still exist. most of my now-former friends have completely dropped all covid safety and have explicitly made it so i can't socialize with them anymore. i had one of my best friends call today checking on me because he got really worried and he's not sure what to do about me either. funny because right before covid started my mental health was the best it had been in years and i was about to interview for my dream job. then the pandemic happened and that position disappeared because pretty much every film set was shut down lol. most of my hobbies involve staring blankly into space while something plays on the tv. i did write a feature script in a near-fugue state by barely sleeping for a month, and it's not anywhere close to coherent. the last time i tried to take a drink at one of the only covid-era parties i went to (outdoors and mostly masked), i felt severe stabbing pains to the point where i nearly fell over. i am told losing a gallbladder doesn't affect your ability to drink, so coupled with the severe panic attacks i now get from weed, i can't even willingly consume my vices. and without my vices, i cannot interact with people with my voice nor can i romance them. i have never had a consensual sexual experience sober before. and now i'm going to be 27 in two weeks and seven years of dating like this have taken their toll.

You are not "subhuman" or anything like that because you feel pain, or struggle, or want to figure out how to be loved even if sex itself is scary for you due to your trauma. You have the right to want happiness. You are not weak because you may have abused substances in the past or even because you have had problematic if not abusive lovers. Covid-19 created many problems, but one of the worst was yanking the sheets which were covering over problems that had always been there. This may be what is happening on a personal level, with more time in isolation over the last 2 years. But above all, being abused or mistreated is not your fault or something you deserve. You deserve to be as happy as possible.

I'm a loudmouth on a message board, not a therapist unfortunately. There may be some remote TeleDoc type options which may make it easier to try to find a new therapist who gets along with you and has a fresh perspective. Surviving, though, is not a one-and-done process. It can be a pain that is always there, but you and a therapist may learn a better strategy or method with coping with it and handling it. There's such pain in your post and I hope you can find some help and compassion somewhere.

i think deserving and getting are two different things

i dunno, i'm just really exhausted and dealing with health issues on top of my work slowly falling apart, i just feel helpless. i don't know how to find a new therapist after how difficult it was to find a new one. i don't know how not to be fired and be kicked out of my apartment. it's no one else's problem to solve.

[Datelessman]

I don't like referring to myself as a "survivor" of assault but I have had at least 2 people assault me. One was a friend I had a crush on at a party (whoops) and the other was the second person I ever dated (whoops whoops). My most recent assault was in 2018 and it's been 4 years since (whoops whoops whoops) and my two most recent partners were both put off by how much discomfort i have with intimacy, to the point where i even felt too scared to kiss either of them. one of them helpfully defined this behavior, which got worse the longer i went sober, as "moving backwards in the relationship." both ended the relationship, in part, because i could not have any kind of intimacy without outright panicking. as much as i was upfront about this and as much as both separately assured me i was worth it, this proved to be a bold-faced lie. i haven't really tried to meet anyone else since the breakups happened within two weeks of each other in december.

i haven't socialized with ANYONE since mid december and it's early february now. i saw a friend i used to have a crush on and she hugged me and it was the first physical contact i'd had in weeks and i fully burst into tears in public. i am not doing well. i have not had any physical contact since that day in mid-december. i have not talked to a human being in person outside of a work setting since mid-december. at this point i have lost the motivation to talk to people using my voice and do not socialize with human beings. i do not have friends other than the handful of people who call me on the phone every so often when they remember i still exist. most of my now-former friends have completely dropped all covid safety and have explicitly made it so i can't socialize with them anymore. i had one of my best friends call today checking on me because he got really worried and he's not sure what to do about me either. funny because right before covid started my mental health was the best it had been in years and i was about to interview for my dream job. then the pandemic happened and that position disappeared because pretty much every film set was shut down lol. most of my hobbies involve staring blankly into space while something plays on the tv. i did write a feature script in a near-fugue state by barely sleeping for a month, and it's not anywhere close to coherent. the last time i tried to take a drink at one of the only covid-era parties i went to (outdoors and mostly masked), i felt severe stabbing pains to the point where i nearly fell over. i am told losing a gallbladder doesn't affect your ability to drink, so coupled with the severe panic attacks i now get from weed, i can't even willingly consume my vices. and without my vices, i cannot interact with people with my voice nor can i romance them. i have never had a consensual sexual experience sober before. and now i'm going to be 27 in two weeks and seven years of dating like this have taken their toll.

i think deserving and getting are two different things  

i dunno, i'm just really exhausted and dealing with health issues on top of my work slowly falling apart, i just feel helpless. i don't know how to find a new therapist after how difficult it was to find a new one. i don't know how not to be fired and be kicked out of my apartment. it's no one else's problem to solve.

I only used the term "survivor" because I know some people prefer that to "victim" when discussing abuse. Ultimately whatever term you prefer, if any, is your call and I am fine with. I get the sense that a part of you blames yourself for the abuse you have endured, and that is both tragic and, sadly, very common. Society at large, from the macro to micro level, especially in the U.S., preaches the mantra that all of us are on our own and responsible for ourselves so anything that happens to us, even poverty or low wages or dead end jobs, are our faults. This is especially true of sexual abuse and assault.

It doesn't matter if your abusers were not strangers, or if they were people who you chose and were genuinely fond of. Nor does it matter if you were drunk/stoned at the time of your assault. Very few people are sexually abused by strangers and many instances involve other substances, or the favorite term of conservatives, "bad judgement." But none of that, not any item of it, means you or anyone else deserved to be abused. They were still crimes committed against you. But I know that such a thing, to paraphrase, is easier said than believed. Especially since the last one was so recent. 2018 is incredibly recent; I have friends who are still working through abuse that happened 25 years ago. Just last night a conversation with my mother ultimately led to a memory of her being gang-raped in the 1960's. There is no timetable for recovery and no deadline. It is an unfair burden to place on yourself to feel you should have "gotten past" a trauma that happened around the time "ANT-MAN & THE WASP" hit theaters. We all heal at our own pace.

The term "triggering" has unfortunately been co-opted and abused over the years, but it is a very common thing for people who have trauma to experience flashbacks of it due to a triggering experience or sense. For soldiers-in-war, we usually call it PTSD or "shell shock" or "battle fatigue," but it can happen to others off the battlefield, too. A friend of mine who is bisexual actually struggles to orgasm with men in part because it reminds her of being abused by her uncle as a kid. My mother who was abused by a family friend for a long time used to be triggered by men of a similar age and body type. It is normal for those who have suffered abuse and very common, unfortunately. I get the difficulty of wanting romantic attention yet being triggered and traumatized by it, but that doesn't mean you are unworthy of love or it is a lost cause.

Most people do what is called "self medicating" when it comes to dealing with trauma. Commonly it could be drugs or alcohol, but it could be anything. I could say that I eat, since I am overweight, for instance. Health concerns have led you to have to give up your "medications" of choice and now this has brought up the core, hard trauma. Like taking off the cover of a hole in a wall that has always been there. Again, I don't think it is fair for you to so hate yourself over this. But I get it that it's hard to talk someone out of negative self-talk. I mean, I'm almost the embodiment of that.

On top of this, the pandemic has hit you hard, and I also feel hating on yourself over that is unfair or undeserved. Covid-19 and the era since has effected EVERYONE. It is a universally traumatizing experience. Those who were already suffering or dealing with trauma had a new one heaped on them, which was also not their fault. Isolation itself is traumatizing; that is why there is a movement to end solitary confinement in prisons. Again, I know it is easier to say than believe, but it isn't fair to beat yourself up over breaking down during the pandemic. Rich, successful, extroverted actors, athletes, and musicians have had breakdowns during the pandemic. It's not your fault. It was none of our faults. And we all have to recover from it to a degree in our own ways.

I suppose I am fulfilling the stereotype of most men here; obsessed with "problem solver" mode. It is alright, also, if you just don't want to deal with it all and you want to "feel your feels" and let it all go for a while. But it feels as if you've done that and it is only causing you more misery. I wish salvation could come in the form of finding a good lover, but as you've experienced, it isn't as easy as that, either. Recovery is never easy and anyone who says so is selling something (or has been sold themselves). Since it is tough to be with people now due to the pandemic, if you have any hobbies or media or so on which gives you pleasure and joy and at least lets you de-stress for a little bit, now may be a time to delve into that a bit. If you have any creative outlet you enjoy which may also help you vent, go with that too.

You may be burnt out with therapy after a recent experience, and it is okay to want to take a breather from that, too. But when you're ready, it may help to try to an AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) certified counselor, or another one (if the one you had was one). Their link is here: https://www.aasect.org/referral-directory

I'm glad at least that you have this space (the forum) to vent and express your feelings safely. Sometimes having a spot like that can help, too.

[Hielario]

Question: Would you get any validation from me telling you all the ways in which i am envious of you?

i probably wouldn't. the part nobody knew how to warn me about is just the emptiness you'll feel at being an afterthought. i'll say that's worse than being alone (though i'm alone right now lol) and you'll say the opposite because our experiences are unique flavors of suffering, and we'll both end up being right in a way. and i don't think that's fair to you.

now, if the experiences i had were largely healthy and everything it was said to be, well i already envy the people who got to have that, and we'd both be envying the same people. i dunno if i'm explaining it well.

Good point. I won't do it then, even if those romantic/sexual experiences aren't the only thing I envy (as outlandish as that may sound).

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