Hi guys, emotional and dramatic post coming up so be prepared. At my essence, I'm a pretty normal person: I am a not-bad-looking woman with various talents and a lot of kindness and compassion to give. Those are just my qualities. But the real problem is I feel like I have no value.

The first time I felt this way was around when I was 5 years old I think. I have a very distinct memory of the moment I became aware that I was subpar to other humans. It was actually something my parents told me. Moreover, it was in the way they treated me, how I was unimportant, and not good enough for their expectations (and I don't just mean whether I wasn't a good kid or student or whatever, but throughout my teenage years especially, there was something wrong with my personality and my body that displeased my parents—something was really wrong with me). While my parents despised me at home, my teacher at school hated me as well. Now, after a lifetime of low self confidence and bad experiences, I know that this self-hating business is a bit of a vicious cycle: you feel low self-worth and like there's something wrong with you, and other people can either sense this, or you present yourself in a way that keeps you open to ill treatment, and then people treat you like a lesser being which then convinces you that you really were worthless all along. But at the time, I thought all the adults around me hated me because there was something despicable, something inspiring hatred, in me.

Now to come to my body. Growing up, I never felt my body was mine. In recent years, I've discovered feminist writing, self-love, and empowerment which made me realize there was in fact nothing wrong with my body, and it might be beautiful even. Still, the thought that there is something essentially wrong with it remains because it was instilled in me all my life. And of course, my teenage years were spent with an eating disorder, and I remember getting injured from overexercising, but when I ran at the gym until everything hurt all I could think was how my dad would see me in a swimsuit during summer and would think I was so fat. When I was older, I'd see parents with kids, kids that did not look particularly beautiful or remarkable, and I wondered how it was that their parents loved them. I knew I was so ugly and my parents hated me for it. Of course many other bad things happened but it's all the same, so I'll save you the trouble of reading.

In the end, I got out when I was 17, I even moved to another country for university. However, I always carried that broken feeling inside me that never left me alone. I felt like such a small thing, like I had no value. I was always trying to please others, molding myself into whatever shape they liked, satisfying their needs, without having any idea of my own. I could be anything to please others: that is what I was after all, a thing. Of course, this got me involved in manipulative/abusive/toxic relationships with men. When I was young, my father left me and my mom for another woman and started another family, and my mom always told me it was my fault and I believed it. I still believe my father would've stayed if I hadn't been so unlovable as a daughter. There are just some things you believe at the level of your soul, and there's no amount of rational thinking done on a good day that can change these facts taken so firmly to heart. I always ended up recreating the same dynamic I had with my father with any men I dated after and I was always hurt. I put myself in bad situations, did things I did not want, let myself be treated like a worthless piece of shit, because at my core I believed that's what I was and I deserved it. I also punished myself a lot, even in ways I did not realize. My whole existence was a fight against myself. Oh I felt bad.

Now I use the term "dating" loosely because no man actually ever committed to me. Well I had a boyfriend once 6 years ago, a relationship that only lasted 4 weeks, during which I always felt not good enough for him and tried to shape myself to his liking, until he told me he had actually never liked me. All these kind of confrontations and ones to follow, I felt on such an intense level, they inspired pains in me that were not even suited to the situation at hand, because I was living and reliving my father's abandonment that I had never faced through all these situations. I had some similar smaller affairs and then a 2 year long one during the pandemic.

I would call it a relationship, but the guy never wanted to date me. He did say he loved me but that he wasn't ready for a relationship, blah blah, all the usual crap I get when people find me unlovable and unsuitable for relationship. But this one was Bad. As any one in my situation would do, I got involved with BDSM when I was a teenager. To this day, the only thing I can come to is the thought that I'm worthless, that some man hates me and is treating me really badly, and hurting me. Yeap. I am aware of the theories about BDSM, how it can be a way of dealing with trauma by changing the scrips, and the correlation between your worst insecurity being the thing that you can come to etc. So when I got involved with this guy, I knew he was a sadist. Our sex life was very very rough, both physically and emotionally. I felt so spent and used afterwards. Still, I could never leave him. Even when he put me through hell. Turns out his sadism wasn't limited to sexual endeavours, and he really enjoyed manipulating me, hurting me, making me cry. For two years, during which he never committed to me even though he told me he loved me everyday—a thing that made me feel so insecure and like I was never good enough for him—I was with him, I try to leave about 12 times, but each time I went back to that awful cycle: of him treating me so nicely at the beginning, saying I was his soulmate, and then treating me so awfully, like I was nothing, and me feeling so isolated and awful. During this time, I was at my lowest. I stopped talking to my friends because I couldn't explain what I was feeling to them.

But I got out. Finally I did. And finally I felt good about myself. At this time, I discovered my talent for my work and my talents for the arts, and I had some successes. Which made me feel good about myself. I thought: "hey maybe I've lived a whole life of solitude and sadness, but it was no waste, it gave me the artistic sensibility I needed to make the work I make"...and stuff like that I tell myself to console myself.

And then I met the guy. He was the nicest person I met. We talked and talked for hours, he was kind, gentle, sweet, we had all the same interests, we understood each other in a way no one else did. Oh I fell for him. The things I felt for him were some of my purest emotions, there was no harm he was trying to bring me, I knew all my emotions were instead bringing me to somewhere higher, where I would finally be happy. We went on dates that were amazing. We had sex and cuddled for hours and talked and told each other things we never told anyone. I never felt the need to do anything rough with him. In fact, all I wanted was all the softest, all the kindest moments with him. I loved when we had sweet loving sex, and I never even brought up BDSM. I knew he was hurt too, and he had some similar feelings of inadequacy, and I liked that we could understand each other and I really wanted to show him the love which I knew I could give him.

We got closer and closer and the idea that maybe this would be the one relationship that would be good to me, the one good experience to make up for all the other ones and fix me, came to me. But then the time between our dates grew, and he grew distant, but assured me it was only because he was scared of intimacy too. I believed him and gave him some time. But in those days I suffered. Badly. I woke up feeling depleted, of some energy within me that was essential to my being, and I went to bed spent. And finally I had the idea I should end it; it was probably what he wanted anyway, and frankly I was looking forward to being freed from these awful lows I was having, no matter how much I liked him. I told him my feelings but that I felt like he wasn't reciprocating them and that we should be friends. There was some resistance on his end. He wanted to talk in person. Well, we met up yesterday and my god was it awful. He told me all these things about how he's not ready for a relationship, and all my dreams crushed, and I felt so inadequate, like I had failed. It was a year of me trying to convince him I was lovable. In the end, it ended with me in some pitiable state, basically begging him to love me.

But now it's over of course. And I just don't know....why every time I fail. I try so hard to make some man love me, I'd do anything, I'd sacrifice my whole being, just to have someone accept me and love me. I never keep friends either because I find it hard to trust or be close to people. So I have these feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness firing up again. And I want to know, what is wrong with me that made so unlovable to so many people throughout my life? Was there something wrong with me when I was born or did something go wrong along the way? Will I ever heal? Or am I missing something essential, I lack something other people have, and I will live a life of solitude?