Or, giant baby still is not over this after fucking years, like an asshole Ok so. Junior year. Year before my (ex)girlfriend and best friend had broken up with me, and I was hurt as fuck and we kinda drifted apart for a while. I got increasingly closer with another friend, who I will call D. D was a lot more outgoing than me, and the type of person who could talk me into doing shit with her, which was hard because I was and remain a total fucking cowardly goody goody. I got her into roleplaying, because it was the only way I could actually connect with other human beings and remains one of the few ways I have today. I roleplayed explicit stuff with my best friend before this, but there was a lot more of it with D. Sidenote: I wasn't a virgin- I lost it with best friend, and for years thought I had pressured her into it. I even thought that I had raped her for a long time until we had a discussion earlier this year and she said that that wasn't the case. D was a virgin, and I had known for a while that she really wanted to lose it. Eventually everyone around us start making jokes about how D and I are practically dating, so at the end of first semester/beginning of winter break we decided that sure! I am very easily influenced by other people, and she tends to make really not good relationship choices. I get extremely invested extremely quickly, because I am an emotional vampire who'll take any inch of affection or affirmation I'm given. We spend junior year and the summer before senior inseparable. I get consistent exercise for the first time in my life because I'm constantly biking over to her place or around town with her, she is over at my house just as often, we do just about everything together. At the time both of us were home alone a LOT, and we quickly become sexually active. I can't speak of what it was like for her but it was really, really not good for me, to the point where I would fake orgasm and never actually came during sex with her. From my perspective it was because she was always too rough. She was a masochist but outside of extremely specific situations I am not, and no matter how many times I asked her to be gentler she never quite got it. I'm extremely sensitive- direct clit contact is a giant fucking no, and any type of insertion that isn't my own single finger at the edges is my biggest fucking squick. It is viscerally upsetting. It tended to go great when we were feeling each other up/foreplay/baby's first bondage, alright when I was taking care of her (I was always worried I was doing it wrong), and fucking terrible when she was pleasuring me. Around the end of junior year I stopped wanting to have sex because it was just unpleasant as fuck, but of course because I'm a nervous nellie I never told her why. During the first part of summer vacation she went on a trip with my family, and we stayed at the house of a friend of my dad's who were on vacation themselves. Here she came out to be as nb but said that she/her were still ok (and since then she has gone back to identifying as female, so that's why I'm referring to her as such). I basically mention this only to say that I think she might have interpreted my drop off in sexual interest as because of that? And sometimes I worry myself that it was because I'm a terrible person ect ect Over that summer she became more and more annoyed with me. She always got annoyed because I tend to assume any emotion I can't immediately identify as anger and began appeasement dance (this is something that everyone I know gets annoyed at me for so like. not just her.) Also apparently she was having a tough time that summer and I couldn't tell (she never really told me but I should have figured it out.) During the latter part of the summer she decided to do a cosplay for her senior project, and my mom agreed to help her. My mom did a LOT of the work, and feels like she was taken advantage of in retrospect, especially since D threw away the cosplay later and never really thanked mom for her help. During con that year she was really short with me and I didn't know why, but since I was freaking out anyways because it was crowded as fuck that year I figured she was either also affected by the crowds or annoyed at me for being so jumpy and cowery. The terseness continued into the beginning of senior year, until it reached a breaking point during a class project where we were supposed to paint a watercolor of a cliffside (it was a science class. Fucking waldorf.) I could not figure out the watercolors, and I was literally distraught. The first day I went to my next class, math, sobbing, and the second day I was crying basically as soon as the watercolors came out. She got really annoyed and was kinda ignoring me, and I was huddled in the corner sobbing over the watercolor picture. I remained really emotional into math, and this was exacerbated because I felt like she was ignoring me. She felt like I was ignoring her. I found out about this during lunch and tried to apologize, but she remained angry. I tried to apologize again a few times throughout the day, until finally in choir she passed me a note that said that she couldn't do this anymore. I blew up- I have no fucking clue now what I said but probably along the lines of how could you do this to me- and the choir teacher kicked me out of class. Over text she later confirmed that she "didn't want to be friends, but maybe in the future." I absolutely completely lost it. We shared all of our friends, and none of them "wanted to pick sides." I couldn't be around her at all without crying, so I ended up loosing my whole friend group because I was the one making it an issue. Teachers got annoyed at me because I was the one making it an issue. I ended up intruding on another friend group and probably really bothering them because I just didn't wanna feel alone. I never did good in school and now I absolutely tanked everything. I fell hard. She said that she couldn't deal with me anymore. She said that she couldn't deal with the self-loathing anymore. Everyone else said the same thing- nobody can love you until you love yourself. Loving myself seems impossible. I've tried faking it till I make it, I've tried actually accomplishing something to think about proudly, I've tried medication and all those "tell yourself you're great ten times in the mirror!" things and none of them worked. It doesn't even feel like something I've failed to achieve. It feels like something that's impossible. And it means I can't find love, and I don't deserve love, because until I can achieve this mythical fucking "loving yourself" I'll never be a real person. I don't think I'll ever find any kinda love again because I found the two people in the world who'll put up with my weird-in-a-not-cute-way and my roleplaying and my endless fucking babbling about fictional characters and ocs and stories and the weird pace-run thing I do and the sounds I make and how ugly I am and I just. blew it. because I couldn't love myself ugh I'll probably think of other things to post in this thread later but thats it for now
Pardon me if I go off on a rant here: The entire "nobody can love you until you love yourself" thing is 100% unadulterated bullshit. People who say that have no fucking clue and are just repeating empty words that they've been told contain wisdom. I am overflowing with self loathing and I am loved. Sometimes it hurts to realize that you are loved when you feel so bad about yourself, but it doesn't stop other people from loving you. The real truth is, "it's hard to accept being loved if you don't love yourself, but you can do it." If you are still in high school, you are in the unfortunate position of being surrounded by people who have little or no clue and little or no experience but who can't help but think they've finally got things figured out. Things they've heard that seem to make sense are going to stand in place of the actual wisdom and insight that they might one day develop for real. And they are mostly not going to understand someone who doesn't fit into the false & tidy paradigm they've been sold. The other great truth that the shitty saying has concealed is this: "you don't need others to love you in order to love yourself." What I mean by this is that a relationship isn't going to "fix" what is "wrong" with you, it is going to demand your time and attention. It will eat up spoons, although a healthy relationship may award you bonus spoons too. Sometimes it is absolutely worthwhile. Sometimes you are better off focusing on caring for yourself and learning how to be okay alone. Nobody else can tell you what you need, although a therapist you can connect with might be able to help you sort out your various wants and needs and figure out your priorities. You don't need a relationship to be well. You don't need to be well to be loved. It might sound like a paradox or a riddle, but both statements are true in my experience. It can take a lot of time - literal years - to divest yourself of the bullshit cultural programming and experience being okay with being alone. It is useful and healthy to cultivate friendships in the meanwhile. It is okay to pursue romantic interests while working on yourself. (it is not necessary to respond to every romantic opportunity. Part of you might say "but what if this is my only chance, what if this is The One and I miss it?" That part of you has been lied to and deceived. There is no One, there are just people you connect with and people you don't, and you don't owe anyone reciprocation just because they show an interest. You don't even owe it to yourself to pursue an interest if it's not a good time for you.) If the things I say here sound crazy and weird and stupid, you can imagine me as the mad witch in the woods grumbling about the fools who try to keep you chained to shame. You are welcome to join me at the cauldron of you like. We're mulling cider ^_^ (more seriously, everything I've written is the reflection of what I've spent the last five years learning after spending ten years lost in a maze of misery and pain. I really really hope that I can help you navigate a little, even if it's still a years-long process.) (edited bc autocorrect changed "years" to "year" at the end there, which is not accurate)
seconding xitaqa i fucking hate myself and I've somehow got people who love me you don't need to love yourself before other people can.
