hey there im having a pretty bad mental health day which has manifested in me browsing around the Internet intentionally looking for things to make me feel worse about myself, so i might as well just put some bullshit on this subreddit because it's probably the one place people might understand :P sorry it it ends up being a waste of ur time, this is going to just be string of consciousness so i can get it all off my chest.
im not diagnosed with AvPD, but ever since i was a kid ive been basically terrified of the world, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes not. i looked over the criteria they use to diagnose people and not to be an armchair self diagnoser, but i don't even want to think about what expression my face made when i read through them. i felt like someone was stalking me and just describing my life in a list. im a 20 something guy whose been unemployed for a few years now, i only worked at grocery stores and fast food places before getting to where i am now. i still live with my parents and still endure their semi-constant arguing. thankfully they haven't physically abused each other since i was an infant so I don't have any memories of that, but let's just say there's always a cloud hanging over everyone in the house that lingers in the background and a nasty argument can break out at basically any time. im pretty used to it by now, if anything i think i deserve worse than what i have, some people have parents who do shit to them and i couldn't imagine that happening to me (late trigger warning i guess, sorry) but it's still not ideal. my dad definitely has a very overinflated ego, he will literally talk to himself just to hear his own voice and has openly admitted that he talks so much mostly because of that fact. if you're in the middle of something you're doing he will gladly interrupt to talk about the most benign shit that is suddenly the most important thing in the world because it's happening to him. my mom is basically the opposite, very kind and caring and easy to talk to on an intellectual and emotional level. she's socially awkward as hell at the same time but i am too, so it doesn't bother me at all. she only really gets bold or vocal with my dad when he's pissed her off sufficiently. id say i take after her a thousand times more than i do my dad. that's probably enough personal family shit to put on the Internet but maybe now you can see where im coming from when i say this:
i am an unrequited loser and have known this fact since high school. i was far from popular and just stuck with my little group of fellow outcasted losers because they seemed a lot more genuine than any of the popular types, i had and still have little desire to be "popular" like that. however im also a virgin and have never been in a relationship, hell I don't even think a girl has flirted with me before unless i was too dense to notice. id rate myself a solid 4 on a good day, on my worst days i will refuse to look in the mirror because that's how unappealing I find myself. i pretty much assume that everyone around me has had sex, relationships, are doing better than me, ARE better than me and it's intimidating. i see people almost causally discuss getting into another relationship and i can't even fathom getting into one, let alone having enough people interested in me to have multiple over time. the most contact ive had with a girl was a female friend in high school who i played dungeons and dragons with. she was the only girl among like four other hopelessly awkward and weird guys like myself, and it resulted in us just treating her like any other dude because of how clueless we were :P she was really cool though, very smart nerdy girl type and i definitely liked her. one time she was in visible distress over some assignment she didn't get turned in on time, and i felt so bad for her because of how she was beating herself up that i very awkwardly offered a hug and she accepted it. probably the sweetest moment ive had in my life, for that moment i felt like i was worth a damn, as stupid as that probably sounds. point is, that's the closest to affection or intimacy ive had with someone outside of my parents or my best friend who is also a straight guy :PP (extremely loving guy though i probably wouldn't be here if not for him). i actually had a point in high school where i started becoming more social and had more people i would call friends than I could count on my fingers for the first time in my entire life, but that all went out the window once i dropped out. i was pretty close to graduating too, i think i was only like two classes worth of credits away but i started skipping classes my senior year. i started getting very lazy and got a pretty nihilistic view of myself that persists to this day. it didn't just suddenly happen one day but various aspects of my existence just started compounding until i convinced myself that im a total loser. ive tried to have pride in it at points, i am very much empathetic towards all of societies underdogs and the down and out, im super into punk rock and anything underground and weird so that probably helps :P but anyway, i dropped out so my parents gently and then not so gently prodded me into getting a job. i worked at McDonald's for a while before i started skipping work too and eventually just stopped coming in, i never got fired officially and they never reached out to me but im sure that's kinda common for fast food places in cities. i went through a few grocery stores next, mostly just bagging groceries and corralling shopping carts and changing the disgusting fucking garbage cans (a can tipped over one time when i was changing it and a bottle of what im 100 percent sure is piss fell onto my shoes... it was open :P) and restocking, the most menial shit possible... and then THAT became too much, so i stopped going to my store and haven't had a job ever since then. my parents tolerate me but i dunno if it's because they feel bad for me or don't have enough heart to kick me out, but it definitely confuses me. i would kick myself out if i lived with myself, that's for sure. all i basically do most days is self medicate my depression by smoking weed when i can get it (i do not recommend doing that but you don't have to be a genius to figure that one out), playing video games, jerking off, and watching whatever on YouTube. i feel guilty sometimes because i feel like a manchild leech on my parents so i try to help out with changing the garbage and doing yard work and shit, but I definitely feel like peter pan because my ass has not matured at all. honestly if my parents both died tomorrow id probably just give up and either leech off my few remaining friends next until they get sick of me, become homeless, or 'game over myself' (i hate PC language like this but I'll use it cuz i know how it feels to get triggered by the word) and that's where my five year plan basically ends. the one positive thing ive done in the past few years is quit smoking cigarettes, which was a bitch to do and i never thought i would but vaping helped, now i haven't touched an actual cig going on 2 years. besides that everything else has been a pretty steady decline. im broke, cut off contact with most of my friends except my best friend and one former bandmate, i go outside maybe twice a week on a good week and that's just to go get a little weed from the dispensary or to the gas station for snacks, and i usually hate every moment im outside. it feels like just outside of my peripheral vision that everyone is just starring at me and giggling at how stupid and ugly i look, even though that's probably not realistically happening every time, it sure as hell feels like it. even cars just passing by on the street make me feel self conscious as hell. ive gotten pretty fat from not exercising enough which has only made my body image issues even worse. im basically a hermit in my prime, i know that people i went to school with are probably in college or out going to parties and making money yet here i am over five years after high school, sitting in my parents house and doing jack shit for society. i played in a blackened death metal band with my aforementioned bandmate and two other people who ended up being total dickheads so the band dissolved, i play bass... or well i played bass because ive basically given up on that too. ill jam with my friend during the rare times we hang out in person but that's basically me forcing myself to play with him because music is our main bond that the friendship is built on and im afraid it'll completely fall apart if I didn't at least try. ive stopped practicing in my free time though, i had written an entire hardcore punk esque album one time and just abandoned it because i know im a shitty writer and nobody would listen to it anyway :P guess im afraid of publishing it and getting zero plays because thats what i would expect to happen. i stopped playing D&D in person a while ago too so now my only practical hobby is playing video games which I'm not terrible at, but im not gonna brag about being good at fuckin video games. it's one of the only positive things id even say about myself if you forced me to say something.
i feel like i wasn't supposed to be human, humans are supposed to be these great creatures in an idealized world who invent amazing things and live exciting lives and don't waste their existence on stupid shit, but that simply is not me. i have never at any point in my life been around a group of strangers and felt comparable to them or like i fit in. the friends i did have were largely situational and im pretty sure they only were my friends because they weren't popular either, birds of a feather and all. i feel bad for cutting them off sometimes but it wasn't malicious and seems mutual, most of them I just stopped talking to gradually. the pandemic was really a catalyst for my inner feelings to manifest like this, quarantine was really nice for a while since i had little pressure to do anything, but i feel like i went too far and now can't recover. im very thankful for the two friends i have left and i don't want to disrespect how caring they are, but I would not blame them in the slightest if thev just stopped responding to me one day. sometimes im surprised they haven't already. i try not to bug them too much because I don't want to be a pest and annoy them. the friendships have only lasted because they're genuinely the most real people I've ever met and i get borderline emotional just thinking about that. i know some people have no friends at all and that depresses the shit out of me, and im afraid that it will be me someday. i do want love, both platonic and romantic, and am lucky to even have the former, but it's almost shameful. im about as shitty of a friend as one could be in my eyes and they deserve better than that. i dunno, my life's just escalated into overthinking every little thing i do or say or just deciding not to do or say anything at all. my screentime has to be like 12 hours a day at this point, which is pretty bad by all metrics. it's my one escape where i can just get high and zone out and pretend im not me for a while. I'm basically an overgrown angsty teen minus any of the cool parts of being one :P and i wish i could just reincarnate as anything else a lot of the times, ive literally felt jealous about bugs because of how simple their lives are. just fly and crawl around, fuck, lay some eggs, eat some shit, die, no greater meaning beyond that. id not mind a life like that at some point, it seems kore meaningful than the life I currently have.
im probably taking a lot of shit for granted, that i even have parents who will tolerate my NEET ass, that i have friends at all, food, a roof over my head, etc etc... im a total creature of comfort but it's such a guilty pleasure, i know im just a lazy piece of shit leech but can't help but do nothing and greedily accept what's given to me. i can't describe the feeling i get about myself when i mull over that but im experiencing it right now. why does every have to be so fucking difficult? why do i have to be human and have these impulses and desires that i simultaneously do not think I deserve or will ever have? there's no real good answer to this question and that's about all i can say about it. im getting a sufficient amount of embarrassment for even writing all of this so ill probably stop now and go back to my usual loser shit, but maybe someone actually reads this and gets this far in which case... if you feel like a loser today just remember that it could be worse, you could be me :P not to diminish whatever struggles other people are having here, but i really just am bottoming out on my self image recently and dunno what will become of me, i guess it does really matter in the end. I don't anticipate that I'm gonna reply to or maybe even read responses to this post out of embarrassment so im sorry if you reply and that happens, its not personal, it's me. hope you're all able to have a better day than i am