Desperate for pity

[Ryan_047]

Hi!

I'm depressed for 7 years now (this feels horrible to acknowledge) . In this time interval I've had ups, but mostly downs. My life went ahead somehow, but I have always felt that something is wrong. I don't remember much of my childhood, especially times in which my parents say that I was happy and outgoing. My memories consist of random (happy/interesting) moments, some dreams (mostly nightmares) and some traumatic events.  I have always suffered from "shyness" and anxiety growing up. I was considered a gifted kid and did very well in middle school and early high school, went to different kind of competitions and whatnot. I started being bullied in 8th grade, and it pretty much went downhill from there.

High school was traumatic for me... not because I suffered from various impactful traumas such as accidents, but because I suffered from long term stress and anxiety, which I didn't know how to handle. I did not even consciously acknowledged that I had these problems for a long time. Those repressed emotions slowly built up into emotional numbness -> feelings of apathy and generalized anxiety -> chronic depression, generalized anxiety, chronic stress and suicidal thoughts/ideation. 

I came to the realization that the general cause (or at least the partial cause) of all of these feelings is a lack of feeling seen, valued, understood and loved for who I really am. I never felt important or felt like I should exist. When I was a kid, I remember thinking and saying things to my mother along the lines of "if I wasn't around, you wouldn't have to sacrifice for me". I especially want my depressed, angry, suicidal, miserable side to be seen and loved unconditionally. I have no idea if this is a proper expectation to have of another person. I hate that I'm dependent on other people for my emotional needs. I feel like I'm too fucked up at this point for anyone to love me in any way. People "love" and "like" my façade, which is harder and harder to maintain.  

Over the years, I couldn't really afford to go to therapy because of financial reasons and the fact that I didn't want to let my family know that I'm struggling.  I always felt that I would break them beyond the point of repair. Some attempts were made, but they ended up backfiring. My parents always fought. There was always a silent (or not so silent lol) tension, and I think this is where my anxiety comes from. They hate each other, don't communicate properly and I generally don't trust them to be intimate with me. They are also both depressed or fed up with life at the very least. My father threatened to commit suicide multiple times. My mother suffers in silence but I can see that she also has suicidal thoughts and depression. Won't go further deep into that rabbit hole, but you can see why I didn't talk to them about how I'm feeling. I fear that they might have manic attacks and kill themselves, or physically fight each other or something. 

Now I'm in college but due to my state of mind and constant thoughts of suicide, manic attacks, chronic sense of loneliness, mental fog I just cracked. I can't go on. I passed the majority of my subjects, but I'll have to repeat a year. I'd like to get a job (I know I could if I really put my mind to it) and save some money, but can't. The only thing that is on my mind is being hugged and appreciated, things which I cannot get. I had some girls show interest in me over the years, but I unconsciously pushed them all away. I'm glad I did that, because it's not fair for them to have to deal with someone so mentally destroyed as me. It's just not fair for the other party involved and I don't want to pull up a bait a switch tactic or be manipulative. I'd love to have a romantic partner, but my unconscious expectation is that they would be my therapist. I don't know what expectations are healthy to have for a partner, but that certainly doesn't make it on the list. Yet, I'm so desperate for any kind of intimate (intimate as in sharing feelings, not sexual) relationship.  

I'm spending most of days zombifying myself through distractions because I get overwhelmed with negative emotions. No, I just can't sit and be present with them because when I do, I end up daydreaming about suicide or actually researching ways to kill myself.  Teal Swan's video on suicide helped me because it felt so validating and made me feel seen. I've grown in some areas over the years, but if I was forced to look at my situation blindly optimistically, I'd say that I've actualized 15% of my real potential that I could have actualized in these years. I've done shadow work, meditation and all sorts of other stuff, but I can't form a habit out of anything positive... The resistance always has a flavor of "I have to change myself so that others will love and accept me". I can't fight through that, I can't work through it, and I can't resolve it due to my fear of irreversibly breaking anyone who comes too close. 

I'm waiting for therapy right now, thanks to a forum's user. Though I cannot help but feel like it's futile. The wait for getting paired with a therapist is killing me and I don't even have the guarantee that it's going to help me, or that it's going to be a good therapist who can handle me and who know what he/she's doing. 

I have written all of this because I needed to vent. Also because I want pity, because it feels like love. Yes, a part of me expects pity from anyone reading this. I'm frustrated and ashamed of that part. It feels like that last sentence is a manipulation for pity as well (as well as this one). 

Oh yeah, for anyone commenting something along the lines of "toughen up" or "gO tRaVeL aNd SeE hOw BaDLy oTHerS hAvE iT", please go find the nearest sharp metallic corner, and smack your head into it as hard as you can. 

[Yarco]

I pity you. It sounds like you've been through a lot of traumatic stuff.

I'm full of sorrow and compassion at the misfortune that you've suffered over the years

I'm sorry you had to live with that constant tension, stress, and anxiety.

I see you, I get you, I understand you. I love you unconditionally for exactly who you are. Not the fake front on the surface, the real you underneath. It doesn't matter if it's fucked up, it's authentic man.

I appreciate you (as much as a stranger can). You deserve intimacy and you're worthy of it.

[puporing]

@Ryan_047 Have been in your shoes, very similar kind of dynamics but I think you're so much more self-aware than I was, and being thoughtful about how you might affect someone in a relationship. I had to leave home right as I finished uni, home was always quite violent and toxic to be in.

Took a few years to find a decent therapist very recently (after about 9 years since first onset of depression). I'm afraid we have a very deficient mental health system and/or access to healers. I'm not sure about your financial situation now but if money was no longer an issue I'd recommend someone.. I have worked on and did whatever I could on my own but still needed that external source of unconditional love which sounds like is what was missing for you.

You might feel like you're on some kind of hamster wheel to reach towards love and intimacy but on the back of your mind feel this futility. Therapy may or may not completely take that away depending, but it could take the edge off. Still not great so don't give up on the search if you can! I know it's really backwards because you're literally a victim/product of bad parenting and now have to pay the price by paying someone to give you what you deserved.. yeah it's messed up.. but it is what it is.

In regards to romantic relationships, seems like you're very conscious about this and I don't think you should actively hold yourself back... actually I believe that most people enter into romantic relationships at least in part (to varying degrees) due to unresolved trauma which we all have from one extent to another. Just being conscious about it makes you healthier to begin with. Or could wait till you've had some satisfactory therapy. 

Healing goes in waves.. you may get some from here and there bits and pieces over the next few years, from therapists, random strangers like this forum, romantic partners, teachers, etc, it may be a neverending process but things do get better in time.

Edited February 14, 2022 by puporing

[puporing]

8 hours ago, Ryan_047 said:

I especially want my depressed, angry, suicidal, miserable side to be seen and loved unconditionally. I have no idea if this is a proper expectation to have of another person.

I believe it is of your caregivers, but collectively there's still a lot of unresolved traumas that most caregivers don't have the capacity to do this as they didn't get it themselves and are not conscious enough to heal this part of them before having children.

8 hours ago, Ryan_047 said:

I hate that I'm dependent on other people for my emotional needs. I feel like I'm too fucked up at this point for anyone to love me in any way. People "love" and "like" my façade, which is harder and harder to maintain.  

We are a social species and need others that's why one of the toughest punishments is solitary confinement. People who say you can meet all your needs/just let it go through meditation alone are kind of delusional imo (maybe the rarest of individuals I have not met/heard of??). You're not too fked up to be loved, you're lovable no matter what you are and how you're feeling any given moment, and you are love. I'm sorry it's so hard to find people you can be authentic with. Maybe if you put yourself out there more others will feel safe enough to do the same. We do have a somewhat toxic positivity culture esp at work and such. People struggling with depression and such cannot release this energy naturally with those around them and just keeps bottling it up. It's not helpful at all when we can all have a bit more awareness and compassion to help each other feel seen.

[Ryan_047]

12 hours ago, puporing said:

You might feel like you're on some kind of hamster wheel to reach towards love and intimacy but on the back of your mind feel this futility.

Exactly. 

11 hours ago, puporing said:

You're not too fked up to be loved, you're lovable no matter what you are and how you're feeling any given moment, and you are love.

Why?

All love is conditional, and people "love" me only if some of their needs are directly or indirectly met through me. All I did my life boils down to prostituting and changing myself so that others would love me. Nobody likes and wants to be around a wrecked ship. Unless I provide some sort of emotional or physical value to someone, I'm invisible or even hated.

What happened now is that a part of me got fed up with trying to please everyone so that I'd be loved and seen, said "I'm having no more of this bullshit, this ends now. You'll either be loved as the miserable wreck that you are, or I don't fucking move." I still want my family to love me unconditionally, but I intellectually know that ain't gonna happen. Best case scenario they'll just misunderstand me and become very worried or creeped out. The same goes for anyone in my life. Constant stress and anxiety took their toll on me and I got more and more sick, and this is why this part of me stepped up (I think). Though now, even though I feel better, I'm at its mercy. I cannot move forward because of it, yet it wants something futile and out of reach. 

[Ryan_047]

@Yarco That felt comforting to read, but at the same time hollow. I expect a sliver of empathy to fix me. I generally expect to be fixed if a need of mine is met 1% of the way. I wonder where that comes from.  

[Breakingthewall]

I read you and I feel empathy and sympathy for you. I think that the solution to your problems is to stop presenting a beautiful and false facade to others and to have as a principle to be completely open, transparent and sincere. what you long for will come to you

[Ryan_047]

@Breakingthewall I hear you, but I feel that if I do that I'll be completely abandoned and irreversibly damage the people I love.   

[Breakingthewall]

1 hour ago, Ryan_047 said:

@Breakingthewall I hear you, but I feel that if I do that I'll be completely abandoned and irreversibly damage the people I love.   

you are wrong man, by trying to show a face that is not yours, since yours is "unacceptable", with all that supposed negativity, you are castrating yourself, becoming a zombie. you have not had the love and acceptance that you needed and you have hidden yourself that way. mistake, that rots your life, and now to be yourself you need time, maybe years, but it is what it is. little by little, always transparent, raw honesty, and beauty, love, courage, creativity, originality will come out of you. truth. there is no other way

[puporing]

15 hours ago, Ryan_047 said:

Why?

All love is conditional, and people "love" me only if some of their needs are directly or indirectly met through me. All I did my life boils down to prostituting and changing myself so that others would love me. Nobody likes and wants to be around a wrecked ship. Unless I provide some sort of emotional or physical value to someone, I'm invisible or even hated.

You're waking up to this pattern for most of humanity, yes most people are not conscious enough to be unconditionally loving, relationships now tend not to be unconditional, but that doesn't mean it isn't a possibility for you and others who wish to evolve to their potential. You recognizing this pattern is the first step towards more unconditional love for yourself and all of humanity. You deserve unconditional love need no explanation, but if you really want one I suppose it's one of the crucial ingredients for beings to evolve and expand their consciousness. And that's the journey we're on. All the things that're happening externally are to bring you to greater consciousness, wake you up to your true nature, love, peacefulness, joy. But even if you stay where you are now in relative terms, the universe does not discriminate, it loves equally. It does not have a preference for Hitler or Jesus for there is room for both. And for finite beings/in this finite form, we are capable of evolving more and more towards this universal/unconditional love that's already present and within you.  

Love from finite beings will always seem just short of what you are searching for. But meanwhile, your evolution could benefit from finding those who can at least give you a taste of it and there's no shame in that. 

Edited February 15, 2022 by puporing