Everything is falling apart

I’m new on here and I have so much to talk about. This is gonna be a long one. I’m german, that’s my excuse for any grammatical or spelling mistakes.

I go into very much detail here, because I like doing that (idk why, I have always been someone who included pretty much every detail when talking about anything) and on here, I don’t need to worry about annoying anyone, because I don’t know anyone and if someone does not want to read this insanely long text, that’s fine and I won’t know.

I don’t even know where to start. I feel like I need to include “a bit” of backstory here.
I’ve struggled with bad thoughts, self-hatred and no self-confidence, for a couple years (I think it started when I was 13 or 14 y/o, I’m turning 19 in a week.), but it has never been that bad. I still enjoyed my life and those thoughts only came to me in very sad moments, which were pretty rare. It got worse over the years and I started cutting, which got worse as well, but that and most of the bad thoughts stopped about 1,5 years ago, after I finished school and started studying at university. I finally felt like I’d get something done in my life, I was proud of and had fun with what I did, I even had a girlfriend.
In August, I broke up with her after 21 months, because it just didn’t work out anymore. That’s fine, it happens and I don’t regret anything of that, neither the relationship nor ending it.
Shortly after that I became really good friends (best friends by now) with a girl I met online.

At the moment, she’s the only real friend that I have and the only one I can talk to about what bothers me. Now that’s where the probably biggest of my problems comes in: She has gone through the same stuff as I did (self-hatred, self-harm etc, that stuff). Due to that and people hurting her, she’s not getting as attached to others anymore and develops barely any feelings or empathy.
None of that is her fault and despite that, she is a truly wonderful person and probably the best I have ever met.
Nontheless it hurts me so much to notice over and over again, every single day, how one-sided this friendship is and how much more I care about her, than she does about me.
But that does not mean that she does not care at all. She does and it makes her sad when I am.
Which leads to my next problem: Even though she told me she’d always listen to me when I wanna talk, which she does, I do not tell her everything, not even close, because I notice how it hurts her. It’s hard for her to handle, when my depression kicks and I tell her about how I want to die or hurt myself, which is unterstandable and I think it’d be hard for everyone to have close friends telling you that kind of stuff.

That means I don’t talk to anyone about my problems, which are these:

  1. Self-harm. As I mentioned, I started cutting a couple years ago. I was never able to really get rid of it, until I had that relationship. I promised her to not cut again and I did not break that promise, until I broke up with her. After breaking up, because I did not talk to her anymore afterwards, I no longer had the struggle, that if I cut, I’d either have to tell her I broke my promise or I’d have to lie to her.
    So I started again and it got worse than it’s ever been before. I had only some scars on my right shoulder before that, not even that many. Now my left shoulder kinda looks like my right one did before. I started doing it on the left one, because if I did anymore on the right, they’d be visible when wearing short sleeves, there’s just no space left. At the moment, I do it almost every day. I think my cuts are relatively big, the ones I did right after the break-up are not fully healed yet.

  2. I want to die. If it wasn’t for my best friend, I probably wouldn’t be here anymore. She’s the only one I have and even though I have a wonderful family, that’s not enough for keeping me alive. She is. I am afraid of the day our friendship ends, I hope it never does. The thought of losing her, in any kind of way, terrifies me the most right now. I’m pretty sure, if I ever lose her, without anything else changing, I couldn’t do this for much longer.

  3. Self-hatred. One of the reasons for the 2 previous problems is this. I hate myself so fucking much. The way I look, behave, talk, just everything I am. I truly wish I was someone else. Whenever I talk and hear my voice, look into a mirror, laugh (even though everything is pretty shitty, I am a rather humorous person and laugh about a lot of stuff), see any part of my body, say something just slightly unkind, stupid or something that I think is funny, but then it’s not funny, I am disgusted.
    Additionally, I have a terrible way of handling things. I run away from my problems. Sometimes by avoiding them, sometimes by ignoring them even though I shouldn’t, but, which is the worst part, most of the times by lying to others. I lied to my ex about so many things, which I truly regret, and I lie to my best friend, mostly so I don’t have to tell her about my problems, when she asks me about how I am, if I cut again etc.

  4. I can’t control myself. I have pretty big problems controlling myself.
    That’s mostly about food: I can’t hold back when it comes to food. When I do grocery shopping I always come home with more than I planned to, I get food delivered to me way too often and when I plan ahead what I want to eat which day of the week, I usually eat two thirds of that on the day I bought it. But I am not overweight, because eating too much makes me hate myself so much and feel so bad about myself, that I restrain myself from eating anything for days, which I know is not the right way, but I can’t help it. I always feel like I need to make up for the days I eat too much.
    Another thing I can’t control is cutting. It’s become like a drug for me and I need it so much and I know I shouldn’t, but just as it is with food, I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t hold back.

  5. I am a disappointment. I finished school when I was 17 and I started studying maths at a german university in the same year. I love maths. In school, I hated most classes, except maths and biology. I was really good at those. The stuff just feels like it was made for me. Both subjects are so interesting that I didn’t need to do any studying, because I just learned about it in my free time, for fun. It’s been like that since my first years in school and for 8 years, I was sure maths was the thing I would want to earn money with when I grew up.
    Then I got to universtiy and it was so much fun. It was all so interesting and I loved it. But then it became very much harder pretty fast and soon I was still interested in it, but I didn’t understand it anymore. I failed all my exams in the first 2 semesters. I started over again this year, but I will probably fail again.
    This hurts me in two ways.
    a) The realization, that maths might not be what I’m made for, after it felt like that for about 14 years (I started getting interested in maths when I was 4, my Mom once told me), hurts me so much. Not being able to do what I love, simply because I don’t understand it, is terrible for me.
    b) I don’t want to disappoint my parents. Failing the first year is fine I think, but if I fail again this time…
    They are great parents and I honestly think they would never lose faith in me, but I feel like deep down they’d be disappointed that I wasted 2 years of my time and their money. But what might be even worse is that I disappointed myself. Maths was always the only thing I considered myself to be really good at. Now that’s gone. I’m not intelligent enough to do what I love so much.

  6. I overthink everything. Whenever I see someone has read my messages, but has not answered, I aways instantly assume they are mad at me/hate me, without considering they might not have the time or the motivation to reply right now. Even though I am aware, that sometimes others don’t want to talk or need some time to reply, I always overthink when they don’t.
    And here, by “they” I actually only mean my best friend tbh. I don’t take it as serious when others don’t reply, because it’s not as important to me what they think about me as it is what she thinks. I could handle someone else being a bit annoyed by or mad at me, but I could not handle her being that.
    So when she does not reply to my messages, which happens quite often, be it because she is at work, playing video games she can’t pause, meaning reading a message is possible, but typing an answer is not, or because she just does not want to talk, I always feel like I did something wrong. Instead of then waiting for an answer or accepting that she does not want to talk right now, I make it even worse by telling her about it. I tell her that I feel like I’m annoying or that she’s mad at me and ask her if she is.
    Then she either replies and it turns out she just not had the time to do that before, which makes me feel stupid, or she doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to talk or still doesn’t have the time. If she doesn’t, it starts all over again, getting worse and worse, because I worry more and more that she might hate me (which is fucking stupid btw, she’s the best friend I’ve ever had, she’s not gonna hate me because I annoy her once).

Something else that I overthink: We both play a lot of videogames. As I mentioned, I met her online and she lives kinda far away, it takes me 4,5 hours to get to her when going by train. That means because we can’t meet very often, we talk via discord very much and usually play videogames together while doing so.
Now when I see she’s online and playing a game, alone, I also think too much about why she didn’t ask me to join her. It’s hard for me to accept that she sometimes just wants to be alone, because I am someone who never wants that. I also never not want to talk to her, which kinda explains the overthinking, when she’s not replying to my messages.
I think all of this is a result of what I mentioned earlier, that she doesn’t get as attached to other as I do.

  1. Aggression problems. I get very angry very quick, but only at myself. I almost never get angry at others and try to see the positive things in what they do and hope they have good ambitions, even though it seems to be otherwise. On the other hand, I get angry at myself for every little thing. For example making a bad play in a videogame that I know I could have done better, forgetting stuff (dentist appointment, calling my grandma to thank her for the postcard she sent me, watering my plant etc., nothing too crazy important), expressing myself in the wrong way thus hurting someone else (which happens way too much), saying something stupid because my brain just stopped working for a moment.

  2. I’m terrible at socializing. After finishing school I moved into a new town. I now live alone and after 13 months of studying at this university I haven’t made any friends or even one acquaintance. I don’t talk to anyone when I don’t have to, because I feel so uncomfortable when I do. I wrote earlier that I met my best friend online. Well she’s not the only one, there are some other people, that I wouldn’t really call friends, but I’m cool with them and we play something together every now and then. It’s so much easier for me to talk to others I don’t know yet when it’s on discord, then it’s not a problem at all. That’s why everyone I talk to is either someone I met online or someone from school. I don’t see any of my friends from school anymore, because we all chose different paths and are living our lives far away from the others, none of us stayed in our old hometown. That means I talk to literally no one in real life, except for when I have to.

Now after reading through all of this again, I realized that the parts 4-7 could also be part of “self-hatred”.

It got even longer than I expected and there’s so much more to it, that’s bothering me, that I won’t put here yet, because it’s all just results of the above.

If you read it all until here, thank you very very much. Just typing this here and getting it all out of my head helps a lot. I am not sure what I want to achieve by posting this, what kind of replies I expect or want to see. I just want to talk about it, all of it.

2 Likes

Hey Eclipse_47

I’m glad that you’re sharing your thoughts and feelings here.

I don’t have many advices for your problems, but maybe I can help you a little bit.

I don’t struggle with depression, anxiety or self harm. But I know share your thoughts and feelings it’s not something you can simply do it. My ex girlfriend have anxiety, until this day she almost doesn’t tell anyone about her struggles. She open herself about it me so few times with me. I don’t know you, but I feel proud of you.

It took me almost a year to share something here in the support wall.

Don’t be ashamed of failing in school. It took me 8 years to me to graduate in electrical engineering. 8 years my friend. I also considered myself a failure back then. But, if it something that you really love, keep fighting, don’t give up. Try to open yourself to your parents, telling them you feel sorry of failing, that it’s harder than you could bare, but you want to keep on going.

It can be hard to make new friends. But I think it’s something that you can try to do. Maybe finding an environment that you feel more comfortable and safe can help you not worrying about much. And if you do make a friend, and you trust him/her, try to be open about your struggles little by little (even with your best friend).

If this is helping you somehow, please keep sharing here.
Thank you for writing here once more.
And write here again if something good happens to you. If you make a new friend, or managed to deal with self harming. Ok!?

Please take care. And keep sharing.

2 Likes

Hello Friend!

I read your post, and I have one question: Are you me? The thoughts and feelings you describe resonate with me:
3. I hated my appearance and voice so much, even though by all accounts I looked and sounded normal to others. It turns out that I’m transgender. After going through therapy, I realize that my feelings of despair and self-hatred were due to my dissatisfaction with my masculine physical features and my deep voice. I also tried to run from these feelings (and all other negative feelings) and that was not helpful. I went to a “support group” at my university for help; the therapist group leader and the group members helped me communicate my feelings and eventually I was able to make friends who I could talk about my feelings with. Running from my problems prevented me from getting better, while talking about my problems made me get better.
4. I also eat too much. Eating tasty food (I think) sets off a release of endorphins in my brain that makes me feel better immediately. I do not know if this is true for you as well, but I felt less alone after reading your words.
5. I went to university for a subject I love too! I struggled with my courses in my second year. I began dealing with my problems through the support group but I did not feel like I was improving. Like you, I also thought the subjects got harder and I began to slowly give up on studying, going to lectures, writing essays… during this time I worked at the front desk of the study hall, I observed older students and professors hosting study sessions and explaining rules and theories. I realized that I wanted that sort of help and I went to the professors I liked and classmates who I thought were smart and asked them “I’m having trouble learning. Can you help me with this?” At the same time, I too felt afraid to disappoint my parents by failing my classes. One day I talked to them and they asked me how I was doing, I was about to say “fine,” but then i told the truth and said “I am not fine.” After that, it all came out at once and they realized that I was afraid of doing poorly because their opinion of me was so valuble. I think it made them feel good, but they quickly told me that their love for me did not depend on my grades. They asked me if I had a plan for how to improve, I told them some ideas I had and they suggested some others. I hope that your parents respond well if you try to have that aort of conversation with them.
6. I overthink things as well! I relate to that “no reply means no friendship” thing too. I forget who told me this, but people have many reasons for not replying to a message. Maybe they are at work. Maybe they dropped the phone or laptop in a river. Maybe they are sleeping. Maybe that person is dead. They are all valid reasons why someone is not responding to my message, and none of them are because of me.

Finally, I have three questions for you about your interests. I want to recommend some German things (and some Austrian things) to you, if you choose to reply to my questions. Do you have an interest in classical music? Do you have an interest in poetry? When you feel sad, do sad forms of media (music, films, books) make you feel better, or do happy forms of media make you feel better?

All the best @Eclipse_47! It’s nice to meet you.

2 Likes

Your reply seriously means a lot to me.

I thought about what I wrote here in the last couple hours and the more I think about it the more I’m convinced I should open up to my parents, about some things.
You gave me a good feeling and some motivation, thank you.

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Hey @dit2!
Thank you for your reply. You made me feel less alone as well.

You know, even though I don’t have problems opening myself up to people I know and I always want to talk, rather than to handle everything by myself, it’s hard for me to talk about that stuff with someone in person, especially strangers. That’s why I don’t think if some kind of support group would help me.

I also feel better while eating something good, just shitty afterwards. I enjoy good food and there are so many different things that taste good. Sadly, the ones I like the most are the unhealthy ones.

You wrote about something, that I didn’t mention in my post, but which also sounds like me. I lost my motivation to do anything for university. Just like you said, I barely attend any lectures, do my tasks or study.
I’m not sure if I just could ask someone for help. I know that it’s not a bad thing to ask for someone’s help, but I’d feel super uncomfortable.

I wrote about my lies to evade problems. I lie to my parents too. When they ask how it’s going, I tell them I’m fine, have no fiancial problems, university is going well. Nothing of that is true. I don’t dare telling them the truth. I told them I failed my exams and they took it easy, because failing in the first year is not a shame and I’m by far not the only one, but I’ve been acting like I’m motivated and it’s going well since then.
So if I told them the truth, not only would I be scared to disappoint them, because I can’t handly my finances and fail at university, I would also have to admit that I lied to them.
I’ve been a liar ever since I was a kid. Stuff like stealing my siblings’s candy, staying up too late, doing anything forbidden, I would always deny it, no matter how much evidence there was. Admitting that I did something wrong, lied to someone and apologizing to them has always been incredibly hard for me.
Thinking about doing that scares me, even though I know it’s the right thing to do. I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll have enough willpower to bring myself to it.

There’s nothing I can say against this. You’re right and I know that. It’s just that sometimes she doesn’t reply in such a long time, even though I know she has seen the message, that I know she could have, if she wanted. It’s hard for me to accept that sometimes she maybe just doesn’t want to talk.

I’m not really into classical music or poetry, but neither do I hate it, so feel free to recommend me anything.

It depends on what I want. If i want to supress my sadness and forget about it, distract myself, happy forms of media help me with that, like motivitonal music or funny videos.

But which happens more often when I’m sad is that I want to lie down and do nothing but cry, letting it all out.
In that case, I like to listen to sad music, songs with lyrics I can relate to or beautiful melodies that I like.
If you have a couple minutes, this is one of those songs, so you know what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVf2EeTMNJo

Sadly, I pretty much never am able to do that. I never cry, even when I want to. It’s not like I don’t get sad, I just do not cry and I don’t know why. It bothers me, because as I said, I often just want to let it all out and can’t, it’s frustrating. So I usually end up lying in my bed for hours, sad and suffering from not being able to have that relief of crying, until I fall alseep or need to get up for whatever reason.

Reading your reply has really helped me a lot and made me think about everything more rationally, Thank you so much. It’s very nice to meet you too.

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I hope everything pans out for you. Blessed Be.

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It is natural to have doubts about an unfamiliar and unknown experience. I applaud you for opening up to us on this forum. Perhaps you will become more comfortable expressing yourself honestly in person, after some practice expressing yourself here, anonymously.

It is an uncomfortable, vulnerable feeling to ask for help. One may feel as if they are a burden. The thing is, an isolation problem must be solved with human connection. It will be uncomfortable at first. It may always be uncomfortable I believe it is the right thing to do.

Vrv Nation? I’m not familiar with them. Thanks for sharing! That song reminds me of Katatonia, specifically “The Longest Year.”

Oh boy do I ever relate to wanting to cry, to let some of the pressure out, and not being able to. Do you want to try again? Have I ever got some music for you. I suggest you listen to the Lieder of Franz Schubert. The works I am thinking of in particular are his two Liederzyklus (song-cycle) adaptations of Wilhelm Müller’s poems Die schöne Müllerin, D. 795 (1824) and Winterreise, D. 911 (1828), both are tragic stories of unrequited love für Singstimme und Klavier. There are performances by many great singers and I suggest the following: Fritz Wunderlich, Sir Peter Pears (Tenor), Hans Hotter, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, or Thomas Quasthoff (Baß).
Herr Schubert also wrote many beautiful stand-alone songs, such as:
Wanderers Nachtlied II
An die Musik (the poet J.W. von Goethe is also worth reading)
Gretchen am Spinnrade
+more when I remember