Trigger warning: depression, hopelessness
I don’t want to write too much, because I’m really not feeling good right now. I’m 32, and have Avoidant Personality Disorder, which is a debilitating social anxiety, and have dealt with extreme loneliness, self-hatred, and jealousy toward more socially inclined people for over 15 years.
I have never been on a date, I have never had sex, I have never kissed. Do you know how it feels to have less relationship experience than your average U.S. high school student, to feel like a pathetic piece of shit every single day? AvPD might be for you if you want to.
I have one online friend, and a brother I live with, but I have no in-person friends, and haven’t been part of a friend group in a decade. I don’t know how to talk to people, I don’t know how to meet people.
To top this off, I am recently out of an online relationship with someone who I gave my entire life savings to help, over $20,000, who turned around and blocked me because I’m hard to deal with. I spent the entire relationship thinking they were scammers, and am still not unconvinced, but either way, I’m down to nothing now.
I have a job, I’ll get back there again, but all my life is work and being home, and I am so, so tired of a ‘life’ where no one cares about me, no one had ever shown interest in me, and now I have no money at all, and am just as pathetic as I’ve always been, and I’m hopeless.
I’ve been in some pretty rough places in life, but that sounds pretty fuckin’ awful and I’m sorry to hear all of this.
I had a friend who is in pretty much the same boat, which is why I decided to comment. Pretty much a virgin, maybe had a little more experience in other ways but a virgin regardless. They also had a significant amount of savings that they pretty much spent entirely on alcohol and their dad who used him for a wedding and a new car when my friend’s mother passed away. They still struggle with hopelessness to this day. No ideology or way of thinking can address the hole in your heart and the way to deal with it is to find and develop hobbies that smooth over it so you can focus on other aspects in your life than the pain.
Me and him got into Warhammer, we got into tabletop RPGs, Magic: The Gathering. All the nerdy hobbies. I personally got into grognard tabletops with civil war and napoleonic figurines because I like painting them. These help distract you from the pain in life and you can find other people interested in these hobbies and meet them that way. That’s the best advice I can give; find something like that you love even if it’s weird as shit or a hobby. In the case of my hobbies, get a 3d-printer!