Hello everyone,
I've been lurking on this site for a while now. Only recently did I gather the courage to apply for an account and this is my very first post. Please forgive any missteps in how I present myself here or if this is posted in the wrong section or with the wrong tag. I'm not here to provoke or dramatize, I just need to share what I've been carrying.
I struggle with feeling. Not specific emotions, but the act of feeling itself.
My childhood was a blur of abuse I only truly began to understand when I grew older. I was beaten, starved, molested by members of my extended family, treated more like a house pet than a child. I think some of the videos produced that way still float round somewhere on the internet. When authorities intervened, I was placed with my grandparents. They gave me a brief moment of stability before passing away. What followed was a relationship with my first boyfriend. What I thought was love I discovered to be abusive. He had been deliberately getting me drunk at parties, then injecting me with drugs in my sleep, trying to make me dependent while having sex with me. It worked but I since managed to get somewhat clean.
Since then, I've been sleeping with strangers. Men, women, anyone who will have me. I'm 21 now, and I think my real addiction isn't to substances anymore, it's to attachment. I fall for people quickly, and it crushes me when they leave, betray, or abandon me. I don't know how to stop trying for love, even though it's rarely safe for me. I've never been to a therapist, but if I had to self-diagnose, I'd say I'm caught in a cycle: looking for love, getting hurt, repeating the pattern. And now, I'm starting to notice something I'm deeply afraid of; I'm beginning to enjoy the pain, deliberately seeking out more extreme situations with people who don't care about me. I've even started to seek out attachment for the sole purpose of feeling the pain of it ending abruptly. Sometimes, I think I'm trying to punish myself. I have fantasized about one of my sexual partners ending my life and I found myself romanticizing the thought.
My parents are now trying to reconnect. I don't know if I should be angry, scared, or just numb. Part of me wants to scream at them when they call or show up at my door but I don't. I never do. I just sit there and nod along to their apologies mostly without even listening. Amidst all this, I'm trying to earn a degree in IT. I don't even know how I'm managing to take somewhat good care of myself while working a job and studying. Every day feels like I'm walking a tightrope, so much tension on it that it could just snap at any moment. I hate this feeling of being on edge constantly while everyone else gets to enjoy their time. I hate myself for feeling the way I do. Lately, I've started wondering if the answer is simply to stop feeling altogether. Is that healthier? Would numbness be better than this constant ache?
I've thought about suicide more times than I can count. But every time I bring it up with someone I trust, people just tell me not to do it. "Think about how others would feel," they say. Where is the honest discussion? I think approaching an important question like that with a pre determined answer sets it up for dishonesty.
So I just want to know:
Is there any perspective out there that makes sense of this?
Is feeling still worth it?
Is it still right to want to feel, even if its wanting to feel pain, or is it better to just end it?
Maybe this is my first and last post.
Either way, thank you for reading.
I deeply appreciate the time you gave this post.
I've been lurking on this site for a while now. Only recently did I gather the courage to apply for an account and this is my very first post. Please forgive any missteps in how I present myself here or if this is posted in the wrong section or with the wrong tag. I'm not here to provoke or dramatize, I just need to share what I've been carrying.
I struggle with feeling. Not specific emotions, but the act of feeling itself.
My childhood was a blur of abuse I only truly began to understand when I grew older. I was beaten, starved, molested by members of my extended family, treated more like a house pet than a child. I think some of the videos produced that way still float round somewhere on the internet. When authorities intervened, I was placed with my grandparents. They gave me a brief moment of stability before passing away. What followed was a relationship with my first boyfriend. What I thought was love I discovered to be abusive. He had been deliberately getting me drunk at parties, then injecting me with drugs in my sleep, trying to make me dependent while having sex with me. It worked but I since managed to get somewhat clean.
Since then, I've been sleeping with strangers. Men, women, anyone who will have me. I'm 21 now, and I think my real addiction isn't to substances anymore, it's to attachment. I fall for people quickly, and it crushes me when they leave, betray, or abandon me. I don't know how to stop trying for love, even though it's rarely safe for me. I've never been to a therapist, but if I had to self-diagnose, I'd say I'm caught in a cycle: looking for love, getting hurt, repeating the pattern. And now, I'm starting to notice something I'm deeply afraid of; I'm beginning to enjoy the pain, deliberately seeking out more extreme situations with people who don't care about me. I've even started to seek out attachment for the sole purpose of feeling the pain of it ending abruptly. Sometimes, I think I'm trying to punish myself. I have fantasized about one of my sexual partners ending my life and I found myself romanticizing the thought.
My parents are now trying to reconnect. I don't know if I should be angry, scared, or just numb. Part of me wants to scream at them when they call or show up at my door but I don't. I never do. I just sit there and nod along to their apologies mostly without even listening. Amidst all this, I'm trying to earn a degree in IT. I don't even know how I'm managing to take somewhat good care of myself while working a job and studying. Every day feels like I'm walking a tightrope, so much tension on it that it could just snap at any moment. I hate this feeling of being on edge constantly while everyone else gets to enjoy their time. I hate myself for feeling the way I do. Lately, I've started wondering if the answer is simply to stop feeling altogether. Is that healthier? Would numbness be better than this constant ache?
I've thought about suicide more times than I can count. But every time I bring it up with someone I trust, people just tell me not to do it. "Think about how others would feel," they say. Where is the honest discussion? I think approaching an important question like that with a pre determined answer sets it up for dishonesty.
So I just want to know:
Is there any perspective out there that makes sense of this?
Is feeling still worth it?
Is it still right to want to feel, even if its wanting to feel pain, or is it better to just end it?
Maybe this is my first and last post.
Either way, thank you for reading.
I deeply appreciate the time you gave this post.
