 

Hello there, all good? I'm writing this post because i have none to talk with, and this community seems a very responsible place when it comes to help people suffering, quesit in which i applaud the ones that take care of this subreddit.

I do not have a diagnosis of depression disorder, but i do have a lot of mental instabilities that do indeed gave me enormous suffering and anxiety/depression-like symptoms.

So, without any longing, i'm gonna explain why i'm feeling so terrible in these last moments:

I've always trived for knowledge, since my childhood. My mother and relatives always liked and appreciated my early intelectual landscape and desire for the studies of natural science, and, a little more later on, philosophy. However, my psychologist warned my mother that, even thought my tendency for the search of knowledge was venerable, i was still a child, and the lectures that i've made were perhaps not ter suitable for my age. Even thought my mother did indeed showed a relative worry because of my psychologist's warning, she did not, however, actively stopped me from reading and learning more advanced topics.

Also, i already had a psychologist very early because of my rather worringly social tendencies. In my early years, i was terribly furious and agressive, and very arrogant. I also already suffered from intrusive thoughts and scrupulosity, as i recall, probably when i was 7 ir 9 yo, asking my friend why i "didn't love God" due to my thoughts.

After my mother moved out to another district of my city when i was a 10 year old, my behavior changed a little bit. I was no longer that agressive, and i learned to be less arrogant and more compassive with other people.

However, even thought i was able to socially thrive more successfully at my new school then in my former, i still suffered from a lots of problems regarding attachment.

I was never able to successfully create an intimacy with other people, no matter how hard i tried. The most meaningful relationships that i had was with my mother, some relatives, and early childhood friends and colleagues (and also with my dog. May i still remember you, Chocolate), but even with tem, i never felt a real trust and intimacy. I always felt like a spectator in other peoples livre: i saw my friends talking to eachother, people dating, but when i tried to talk to tem, it was always a superficial talk, and when i went with my friends, It never felt like i was with them. I was just... there, walking with them, and when i talked about something specific, in the best case there would be a brief discussion that would be rapidly overwritten by other more "interesting" topic proposed by another friend. I also had (and still have, in a more amente and relative way) a very serious problem with emocional attachment: when i didn't liked someone or something, i had to hate it from the bottons of my heart, while when i liked someone or something, i needed to love them and stay with them all the time, and got nervous or deceptionated when i couldn't satisfy them. My mother always critized my emotional and cognitive "extremism", that affected all parte of my life, but more specially my relationships. I still don't know to this day if i genuinely have an attachment problem, or if i'm just being too "egocentric", and i'm afraid it might be a mix of the two. Nevertheless, i think this problem regarding attachment presented a real problem that affected my behavior, including my sexual one.

My sexual behavior was already a bit... "wacky", in my late childhood, and i don't know if the problem was that nobody reprehended me in a correct manner, or if i reprehended too much myself. My sexual behavior already felt shameful to me when i was a child, and to this day i feel afraid to tell things that i did because of this. And the trouble only got worse when i exposed myself to masturbation and pornography at the very beggining of my puberty. My friends already joked about these things to me, but i really never cared to look further into these things until this period that i mentioned. And when i started to dive into these things, i felt utterly shameful, and this was only amplified by my religious breakdown.

For me, religion was the start of the arch of one of the worst periods of my life, that is the one i live how. As i mentioned, i was already relatively religious when i was a child, but when i hitted the puberty and my already disaligned sexual behavior flourished even more due to hormones, i started to deep dive even more into religion as a motivational way to control what i was feeling. However, i didn't became fervent religious, i became *obssessively* religious. I spent hours looking into theology and religious philosophy, and even more praying endlessly in hope my prayers would be heard. I starved and literally beated myself out, and considered cutting myself as a way of "sacrifice". In fact, religion taught me that love equated to sacrifice, and if i truly loved something, i needed to sacrifice endlessly for it, no matter what. And that's what i did. This notion changed myself from the inside, and to this day i still can't just enjoy something pleasureful such as eating normally. I became quickly sad, and my school notes dropped. I never had failed so much in my life as i did.

And yet, nobody heard my prayers. I was already insane of sacrifices and procrastinating theological and historical contents about religion. But my sexual behavior only got *worse*, way *worse*. I legitimately tried to kill myself, and wondered why nobody heard my suffering, and if whoever i was praying to had pleasure in seeing me suffering. I saw all these religious people claiming abou the joy of having *intimacy* with the divine, but i just couldn't feel it. I just felt even more lonely than i was before. I wished that i loved someone and that someone loved me, even thought i wanted to continue searching, endlessly searching for an answer for what i was passing throught.

And my search led me to Greek philosophy and the scientifical theories of counsciousness. I didn't had religion anymore, so that was the only thing left for me. I searched and conjectured all the possible theories relating to philosophy and science, and i convinced myself that my purpose was to know. Literally, to know everything possible, and try to help humanity overcome death. I felt so empty, and i needed to feel like i have a purpose and that what i do matters, so i sticked to this philosophy i still believe to this day atleast. But yet, i still feel even more lonely, and i have none to love and be loved. In fact, what i believe don't have place for me being loved. I feel lonely with my knowledge about the world, and nobody wants to hear me.

At around my breakdown, i met a girl in my school. I sincerely don't think i can describe how beautiful she is only in this post, but i can truly say she is incredibly gentle and friendly. I just couldn't talk with her about what i feel, and so i tried to enchant her with my artistical abilities, and i tried to make a painting of her, and i established to myself a deadline. I wanted it to be a surprise to her.

Together with my intelectual strenghts, my mother always appreciated my creativity, specially in creating stories, gift which i can't see myself without. I create stories aout me, people i know or knew, and fictional characteres, which i do my best to enhance with my knowledge. And when my breakdown led me to Greek philosophy, i putted my analitical knowledge together with my passion for art. I started to think that my art should be perfect, mathematically perfect in all it's details. When i decided to make a painting about her, i deseperately look throught classical and neoclassical canons of body proportions. I wanted to make the perfect art for the perfect person. Yet, despite all my mental effort, i failed. I just couldn't sit in my chair to try to draw or watch videos nor read books about drawing, because i started to feel anxious and distracted, *overwhelmingly* anxious and distracted, at the point of feeling physical pain.

As i said above, i don't have a diagnosed depression, but my mother and my family always tried to know my psychological disturbances. My aunt and other relatives think i have a minor degree of autism, while my mother thinks i have TDAHD and some kind of OCD, which is the one i tend to agree more. My friend tends to disagree, as he thinks i have Asperger. Nevertheless, it's very clear to me that i have a severe and cronic problem with anxiety, attention and intrusive thoughts. My obssesions leave me with constant distress, which i try to amenize with certain behaviors (which is what makes me agree more with my mother's view). I just don't have the attention to concentrate in something without being overwhelmingly anxious by other unwanted thoughts popping up in my mind, nor without being easily distracted by other thoughts or by my own enviroment.

This led me insane, because i just couldn't concentrate to make the perfect painting for the one i loved. Of course, i could just try to paint and draw something without worrying myself about mathematics, but this just didn't felt right to me. I needed to something perfect for her, for if i truly loved her, i needed to show a *sacrifice* for her. And my pain only got worser and worser with my sexual behavior.

Throught all these moments, and still to this day, i can't just quit masturbating and watching pornography. I thought if i truly loved her, i'd be finally able to overcome this for her, but this just didn't happened. It felt insulting to me, as if i was betraying her. I didn't just wanted her to love, i also wanted to love her, and show to her that i could love her unconditionally. Even though we weren't dating, i had a commitment to her, and i felt *horrible* by the fact that i couldn't love her. In fact, i became afraid, and i'm afraid, that i can't love anybody, not even myself.

All these problems mixed made me unnable to complete the painting in the deadline. I haven't even started the painting, i was still calculating all the proprortions. I became terribly upset at myself, as i was throught all this period. It just defeating, as if i couldn't love her. I even wondered if it was worthy going to school, because i just couldn't show her anything to be happy with me. But i still went anybody, as it was the last day of the semester.

I just felt terrible, terrible thorught all the day. I wish i could be happy by seeing her happy, but there was something horrible inside me. She was happy, but i didn't made her happy, and it didn't felt like she cared about it. In fact, i noticed this in all my friends. They didn't really cared that much if i was happy or if i made them happy. I was just... there.

And then i achieved a morbid realization: nobody really cared that much about me, or if i was worthy for them. I saw other people caring about eachother, and i saw all of them loving eachother, but they just didn't care about loving me, nor i could love them because i felt too messed up to be able to do that.

It felt like, in my whole life, i was just... a recorder. I was just there to record not only other people's life and meaningful relationships, but also all the knowledge and culture of humanity, and to reporduce that in a way that maked some sort of sense, atleast to me. I didn't even felt like a human anymore, i felt as if i was... something, that tried to repoduce what a human is because i saw it so, but i could never actually be a human. I could never actually love, because i can't prove that to someone, nor be loved, as nobody can nor is supposed to love a mere recorder, a silent historian.

The only thing that made some sense to me is knowledge, because, at the end of day, that's why and what i was made to me, a catalogue of knowledge, information. I sincerely just didn't killed myself because of that, and because i'm scared. Because i feel as if humanity despised me but needed me to record things, and i don't want to disappoint humanity. I love humanity. Humans are beautiful. It just feel a tragedy that i'll never able to actually live a history with someone. I'm just made to record things, not live them. As if there was a factory-made defect in me just to ensure this.

I'm sorry if this post was unnecessarily long, but i felt like recording everything in order that you may have a better perspective of me. And sorry if this didn't felt like necessarily related to depression, but please believe me, all of these things bring me a lot of pain. I hope you have an awesome day, and that you love firmly the ones close to you, and that they also love you. Thank you very much.