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Grasping at straws

General Support / by turtlePated

December 16th, 2022

Are some people just made to be alone? Am I?

Relationship Stress / by turtlePated

December 6th, 2022

...See more All my life I've been pretty introverted. I've never been someone who has to have dozens of people around me at all times. I'm comfortable in my own company, I require time on my own to recharge my social battery. The last time I had friend(s) plural was in high school. We were a small but pretty tight group, and I miss that even now 19 years later. My longest friendship was with a girl I knew from 6th grade through high school. She was my best friend, and we were there for each other through some hard stuff. When my parents divorced and I ended up alone at home thinking about it all the time, she would come over or pick me up and we'd go to the pharmacy where her dad worked and just hang out in her car until he got off work and then she'd take me home and they'd go home. But then one day she just stopped answering my messages, and eventually when I never got any sort of response from her I assumed it meant she didn't have anything to say to me and stopped trying. Then a few years later, the church my family went to got a new youth pastor. He and my brother got pretty close, they were close in age and had a lot of similar interests. Likewise, the youth pastor's wife and I became friends. After about two years, the same thing happened again. One day I texted her for the last time and she hasn't spoken to me since. Ever since then, my friendships have been 100% online. Which isn't to discount them, because I've met some wonderful, amazing people from all over the place, and I've been fortunate enough to get to meet some of them in person. I think I might be closer to them than I've been to anyone in a very long time. But it's not the same as having someone who can come over and sit beside you on the couch when you're feeling lonely, who you can go to the movies or out to dinner with. I'm still very much an introvert and I highly value my alone time. I just wish it didn't have to ALL be alone time. Whatever I do; shopping, theaters, adventures downtown, I do alone. I've tried to make new friends offline, but I don't have any hobbies or interests. I check forums and meetup websites for local events to see if there is anything that catches my eye, that sounds fun, that sparks interest. There's nothing. Two weeks ago I turned 34. The sum total of my romantic experience is this: when I was 6 years old, there was an upperclassman at my school who assisted the gym teacher and a lot of the girls in my 2nd grade class had crushes on him. One day at the end of class someone untied his shoelaces and when he sat on the bleachers to retie them I ran up and pecked him on the cheek. The end. I've tried half a dozen dating apps. I even got desperate enough to pay subscriptions for some of them for awhile. But I'm wasting my time. In that high school friend group, there were guys and girls. Two or three times through high school, one of the guys dated all the girls in the group one after another. Except for me. Never me. I've been in love. I'm in love right now. With a gay man who lives 700 miles away from me. So I know that it has less than no chance of ever even happening. But I don't want anybody else. I've tried. I'm still on those dating apps (though I gave up paying for them and most of them are utterly unusable if you don't pay) but I'm still wasting my time. I look for him everywhere I go, I've tried and tried to find someone to take his place. And I'm still alone. It's not fair to anyone involved. Not to me, not to the men I catch myself comparing to him. Maybe I should just take the hint the universe has been hammering me over the head with. That I was put here to live and be and die alone.

Emotional blunting / numbness

Depression Support / by turtlePated

December 12th, 2022

...See more I mislike the use of the word "struggle" when I'm referring to my depression. To me, the word "struggle" implies equal but opposite forces. And that does not reflect the reality of my experience at all. I've been, frankly, getting my *** kicked by depression for half my life. I started medication a few years ago, and it really did help for awhile. Until it didn't. And for the past two years I've been working with different doctors and therapists trying to find that sweet spot again with little success. Over the past several months, I've noticed a change. I did a little web searching and found the term "anhedonia", which describes a state in which you feel numb to positive emotions but still feel negative emotions. I had a psychiatrist refer to it as "emotional blunting". I don't know if it's a result of medication or if it's all in my head, just misfiring brain signals and hormone imbalances. Or if it's emotional burnout. Or any number of combinations of the above. Sometimes there's an odd sort of comfort to feeling nothing. After all, when you're already flat on the ground you can't fall any farther. But right now, though, I just want to feel again.

Am I doing this right?

35 & Over Community / by turtlePated

November 27th, 2022

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