You can rant here

I am 28 years old and I feel like my life is a complete failure. I'm at an dead end job that i have to work to pay my bills. I've done nothing great in my life and i know I've been a huge disappointment to my family. I just feel really depressed and alone at the same time.

I hate not knowing what's wrong with me but not feeling like I can talk to anyone. I get angry at people for things I shouldn't get angry at them for. What is this?

Ready for the latest bad news in my life? It's twofold. First the bully I live with took my things out of the refrigerator and put them on a shelf in the pantry. I don't know for how long and he denied it. But I know it's him. So my cat's medicine and my medicine had to be thrown out. Second, I got a call from low income housing in oregon. They have an apartment for me. I am so poor that I can't even afford low income housing. I don't even have a car anymore. My car blew it's engine 2 weeks ago. So I have to turn down low income housing. How is that for a really sucky day.

i feel like ive had such a heavy decline in my health lately and imnot sure what to do anymore. I just want to give up completely but I’m scared. But I also want to so badly. I wish my friends understood that I don’t mean to push them away, but they never do and now I’m just alone. I’ve lost trust in everyone because I feel like my best friend has just lied to me to avoid talking to me. I’ve never felt so alone and useless in my life. I feel like giving up

i have no money, no job, no apartment, no car, huge debt, am getting screwed over by medicare, and a family that is toxic. all i have is my body and Chloe the cat. it feels like the universe is ripping me to pieces. i don't understand it. i realize it could be worse. and it could still get worse. I could be in an accident and become paralyzed or lose limbs. Chloe could be hurt or lost because of the bully i live with. I don't even want to think abou tthat but if it happens, I will not stop until I find her. Either I find her or I am gone. That is all there is to what is left of me.

Apparently I am such a lost cause that even therapists can't help me. Then people - therapists, friends, family - wonder why I stop saying anything to them when I'm at a breaking point. You don't get to say "I'm here for you", and then walk away and expect me to really believe what you said. I'm "too intense" with my words, I guess but that is fitting for emotions that feel too intense to deal with alone. My friends act shocked when I don't want to tell them how I'm doing as if they really can't piece 2 and 2 together. They're smarter than that. How are smart people so susceptible to denial about their behavior? Worse are the people who ask you once how you are and then launch into a conversation about themselves after hardly offering even a shred of support. Maybe I need new friends. I guess unhealthy people attract unhealthy people. Question is how to get mentally healthy when nothing seems to help anymore. Sorry to the person I replied to by accident

Every minute that passes when I'm in the same room as my brother without teling him how I really feel, like I promised, is slowly killing me.

But how on earth do you tell someone who is more or less alive because you are, that you don't want to be?

That you're slowly losing hope it'll ever get better?

That the only reason you haven't let your guard down and told them sooner is because you don't want to add to the pile of shite that is their problems, and you're scared if you stop fighting, they will too?

ok, so i'm overwhelmed to the point that i can't think clearly. and i was told yesterday to keep my mouth shut and just go along with everything. defending myself is part of my healing. so this housing situation is not good for me. and that is just the tip of the iceberg. i keep trying to tell myself that this situation is a blessing. that i have a roof over my head. but instead of thinking of it that way, i live in fear that these people will kick me out of the house and i have no where else to go. so i live in fear. that is it. i cannot talk to these people anymore. i will put on a fake smile and attitude that nothing is wrong. i will protect myself and Chloe the cat. it has come down to survival again with these people. they are toxic for me. i will ignore them except to be fake. it really sucks.

Just turned 34 today. Okay, nothing exciting, but every year that I get older, my fear becomes more real. The fear of dying alone with no significant other by my side. Been single for the past 15 years, and birthdays make me feel more depressed in that sense. Am I the only one with this fear?~

I'm sorry for unloading, but thank you for creating the safe place to do so. I want to believe things get better, I always tell my friends this and believe it for them....now if only I can believe it for myself.


***TRIGGER WARNINGS - LOTS OF ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP DETAILS***


I've had a lot of baggage to carry with me and I'm now forced to have to sort through it. A lot of my problems started when I was younger, I suffered a lot of loneliness. I have an amazing and supportive family, but I was a strange kid. I liked art and dinosaurs, I dressed up as the beast from disney for halloween. I was a blonde blue-eyed little girl with curly hair. I looked like a doll but my interests never matched my look. I was always the quiet outcast, even in preschool. Fast forward and I became that girl who asked guys to school dances because no one would ask her. She knew that....so she learned to ask first and the worst that could be said is "no."

This wasn't a bad start, but eventually it led to low self-esteem which led to a really long string of bad dating decisions. To give an overview....There were bad relationships that just didn't work, and then there were PTSD relationships that I'm still paying for today. Nick, Mike, Jay, Rob, and Cameron. This was the particular string that lasted for 9 years of my life.

Nick - He was physically abusive. I'll never forget trying to be playful with him and I flicked a towel at his butt to get him to play back...he grabbed his belt and left a welt on mine. It bruised pretty bad, the metal buckle made contact. I remember another time where my mom went to the bank and we were all in the car, he put me in a headlock to the point I turned purple, tried to bite him to let go, and my sister had to yell to stop him. He also went with us on a family vacation where he damaged our rental car, shot me with a bb-gun in the leg, and left a big hickey bruise on my cheek right in front of my mom. He was a terrible partner who I held onto because I thought he just "needed a chance." He was the fat kid who found himself through the military....he was actually just a terrible person and I couldn't admit it.

Mike - He was sexually coercive. I had a crush on him in college and thought I was out of my league. We decided to reconnect well after our classes together and decided to admit there was mutual interest. We made a plan to meet up and it was my first real sexual partner. I was still a virgin at this point so I allowed him to talk me into anal even though the idea made me uncomfortable. He told me it was a way to express love without me losing my virginity. I allowed him to get into my head. He gave me "assignments" to be clean enough, to "prepare and practice." I know there are sexual preparations that need to happen for certain acts and kinks, but this was like a white glove test. It made me insecure and I felt more like a prize livestock animal than a person after a while. I'll never forget a night we were intimate and then as we lie next to each other, he comments on how I need to wax my eyebrows. That made me feel wonderful after being so vulnerable. He constantly talked to me about working out and even made me feel terrible one time when I got my period during a movie. I was wearing tan shorts and luckily had a hoodie I could tie around my waist. He wouldn't let me sit in the car until he made a big deal about me not touching the seat and found a bunch of plastic bags. Of course I didn't want to mess up his car, but if I bled through my underwear, shorts, and hoodie...I think I'd have much bigger problems, he made me feel disgusting. I never felt good enough.

Jay - This was by far one of the worst, but unfortunately not the last. I met Jay at an independent film premiere that I did makeup for. He was eccentric and interesting, my family thought he was "like me." He was just very confident and forward. I didn't know what to make of him. Eventually we keep talking and I thought it was fun to have art assignments from him, challenges. He said he had his own business and wanted to know if I'd be a part of it. I was young and didn't know much of business then, I agreed. Time passes and I end up deciding to give him a shot since he was trying to say he liked me. What I didn't expect is for him to move in quickly...myself and my family felt bad for him since he was on foodstamps and living with his uncle in a house in NY where they didn't even pay for heat. (I should have known his business wasn't great right then and there.) So he moved in. What I didn't expect was for him to gaslight me during his 2 years with me. He ended up taking my virginity in an unremarkable way, just using his hands and I didn't like it....but I didn't say anything, I didn't realize. I thought I got my period. Took me years to think back and understand what really happened. He also decided to put on a show for everyone but me, I got to see his true colors. The rest of the world thought he was charming or funny, I saw a degrading manipulator. He made me question everything, he made me hate art, he made me afraid to be myself. ***TRIGGER***There was one night I got some of my voice back and I must have wounded his ego, that was what got me raped. I was without my contacts and told him I could take care of myself since he kept making me feel unwanted when it came to intimacy. He waited till I tried to sleep and that's when he took advantage, not stopping when I told him it hurt. I cried myself to sleep and confronted him in anger the next morning. He pretended it didn't happen, told me he was possessed. I was so scared that after so much time someone I thought I knew could hurt me so deeply. I believed him. He told me to sleep with the lights on for a week, he told me to keep my family safe by not saying anything. He followed me like a hawk after this happened, keeping tabs on me even more than usual. My family had to trick him so I could get out of the house, away from him. I remember running barefoot and hiding behind a dumpster across the street, hearing him call my name. A friend came and picked me up to stay with them. My mom watched the many faces of a sociopath unwravel that night. The next day I actually was willing to forgive him and keep the relationship, I was so broken. My mom took me to a park with my grandpa...my dad drove Jay back to NY. They set me free and I can't thank them enough for it. My family is my life.

-Rob was a bad marriage. I really liked him, I just wanted him to like me too. Turns out he only liked me to get into the country. Even on our wedding night, he didn't talk to me or touch me, he just went to bed. He was a liar and a narcissist. He only seemed sexually interested if he could choke me or put me in a situation that made me remember my rape. I told him it made me uncomfortable and we were just less intimate. Out of 2 1/2 years, I can count on both hands how many times we were intimate. He only started liking me when I started getting noticed during my life in LA. I was getting jobs and doing well in school....I was getting attention. This would benefit him. Long story short, it took my grandma getting sick with stage 4 lung cancer for me to realize how bad of a husband Rob really was. He made everything about himself, even my grandmother's sickness. I had to fight with him to go home for what ended up being her last Christmas, he didn't come with me because he simply "didn't want to." I don't regret having gone alone. I'm glad I did. I demanded a divorce after she passed. He started wearing his ring, he started making dinner for me, he tried to hold onto the lie he built. He destroyed any real feelings I had for him. I was done.

-Cameron. This boy was a real dagger in my life, and I allowed all of it. I've looked back on all of these relationships and realize I needed boundaries, I needed self-respect, I needed an equal over a fix-it project. With Cameron, I fell in love with his potential. He was an artist, he worked at the same place I did. He admitted having a crush on me and not saying anything because he knew I was married. At first he was shy and sweet, he'd blush and look at me with soft eyes. I was a fool for believing it. I started dating him and he immediately lied about a really bad weed addiction he had. At first I didn't think it was major, but it turns out he depended on it. It also made him angry. I didn't like it and I told him that. He said he'd quit, he told me he liked the same things, he said he'd move in with my family to be closer to me. It was all a lie that eventually caught up with him. He had wicked mood swings and outburtsts. For example, he worked in a department that made his clothes smell terrible, even he'd admit it. I got a new car, so I asked if we could bring the stinky clothes to the shop and he could change at work...this way my car wouldn't keep the bad foam-latex smell in the seats. He got really mad, to the point that he went outside and punched a trash can because I brought it up. His knuckles bled and I cried, he dropped in front of me to his knees and cried too. Eventually I tried talking to him with my mom, we thought he might have suffered a bipolar tendency. I didn't mean to diagnose, but everything about the dynamic was unhealthy and I just asked him what we could do, if we could get to the bottom of things. This caused a fight and when I went to cool down he drove away. My family offered to take us to dinner to cool off, and that's when he left. He didn't talk to me for a week, I didn't know if he was safe, he told people at work he didn't have a safe place to stay. He told me the house was a toxic environment. We decided to part ways for a month or two. I couldn't eat or sleep, the unresolve of the breakup haunted me. I hated it. I should have let it die there, but I didn't. I gave him another chance. I decided to see if I could work things out with him, and didn't tell my family...in my mind, if it didn't work, it wasn't worth sharing. Well, one night he called and my family discovered I was hiding it. That created a rift in my relationships at home, with the people who only look out to protect and help me. My family decided to move to Tennessee and I was going to stay behind with my job, the part that hurt my family more was my decision to move in with Cameron. After everything he did, it hurt them to watch me stay with him. I told them he was doing therapy, we were talking things out, I had lunch with him every day at work and called every ride home. I thought he was different, he told me driving away and leaving me was the biggest mistake of his life. I believed in second chances. Fast forward a few months, my family moves, I live with Cameron, things are ok until Covid hits. At first we just buckle down and deal with it, eventually I see where we can't afford our apartment, we fight. Tensions continue to grow. Cameron starts sneaking out and doing drugs again. He won't come to bed with me. Our intimacy is nearly non-existent. Our relationship is merely co-existence. I decide to go home for mother's day to see my family and he wants to stay behind, I respect the decision. I go for 11 days, and 3 days before I am due back in LA, my grandfather dies. He was my best friend. It was a huge hit for me. I tell Cameron and he shows minimal support, never offering to come out to me....just that he's sorry. Eventually I ask if he can come to me, he tells me he can give me 3 days because his mom said that was an "adequate amount of time." I was livid. He couldn't even ask what I needed. We fought. That's when the true colors came out...how he felt about my family, he actually asked me "What would I even do when I get there?" That was all he needed to say for me to know he didn't care, not about me. I ended the relationship and it was ugly unpacking the house...it bled into my birthday and I'm glad it's over.

Losing that relationship also created the loss of my LA home, my car was surrendered shortly after because the title was in the name of my grandfather (even though I was paying it and taking care of it), my job was still on furlough, and what started as a visit became a new living situation.

Now I live in TN with my family trying to deal with a history of abuse, feeling like a child/failure, losing my path just when it was finding success, and trying not to let the world situation keep me down. The level of uncertainty the world is experiencing right now just has me a total wreck. My mind has been a literal pinball machine. Sometimes I feel like I have to find a job and I fixate....other times I miss my grandpa terribly......there are times where I flashback to my bad relationships. I'm quite literally a mess.

While all of this is going on my family has given me a safe place and support. I can't thank them enough, but sometimes they wish I could embrace the positives a little more. Realize that they are here for me. They aren't wrong...but I feel like there is sometimes something in me that has to prove to myself that I can do things. It hurts my family when I get that way. I don't mean to. I'm in a tough place because I know my time with them is limited and I don't want to waste any of it. The losses run deep....but I also want to be able to know I can do things when they aren't here anymore, that I could survive.

So yeah....that's a long story, but it's mine. If you made it this far, thank you for reading and listening. Here's to hoping things get better.