I just kind of have to vent and this seems like the most fitting place.

I have been extremely anxious my whole life. I never sought treatment or any kind of care. So it's just me managing what has mostly been a nightmare for almost four decades.

It's 325 am, I'm awake because I've spent the past few days overthinking the living daylights out of a great friendship I have I'm likely very close to ruining. I try to limit how much I text because I always overthink what people say, especially with this friend. She's an attractive woman, I like her a lot, but it's platonic. I've fought and struggled to keep my mind aware of that. We actually met because I asked her out. What she didn't know is I asked her out to simply get it over with, to hopefully shake my attraction and get back to not overthinking that. She said no, she had a boyfriend and I was so relieved. We've become fast friends over the years, but recently she has been venting pretty hard about the boyfriend, saying she's going to end the relationship soon. She said that she would've said yes to me if she had been single and I told her then that I would've just sabotaged it and she said she wouldn't have let me. All this time, I had been able to be a good friend to her but I was only able to really shake my normal anxiety because I was just so relieved that there was no chance for it become something else. It was just friends, she had a boyfriend and she genuinely seems to like me as a person. For me, it was as easy as it got. But the way she's been talking, I have doubts now. Those things I mentioned, but she also wants to convince me to change my retirement plans and stay near her, basically. And those things are all entirely plausible that it's purely platonic but they might not be. And considering I asked her out before, and I know she has a boyfriend, I don't want to appear to be the guy who has just been her friend for all this time and then bring up this topic just to try to get some clarity and her take it as "here's just another guy who just wants to get with me." This whole situation is literally driving me nuts. I have a huge headache from being in red line overdrive all day, I know I can't ever know without talking to her but I don't want to ruin my friendship with her.

 
I don't want to date. I tell people I retired. People are too much for me and life gets too chaotic for me and I really struggle badly trying to manage a relationship. But I also want everything that is supposed to come with a relationship. I know the way I am, it won't ever be like that, but I also can't convince myself of that so it's a constant struggle between those two ideas in my head and I usually just avoid any and all humans like the plague. So there are just so many parts of me running with the vague lack of information I have and deciding I should do this, that, or the next thing. I'm feeling completely overwrought, all I want to do is completely cut myself off from her just to ease the stress but at the same time, she is my best friend and this is all just stupid crap in my head I can't stop even though it's all fucking nothing. Like, she's my friend. There's nothing else to it. There's nothing to freak out about and yet I feel like I'm having a nervous breakdown.


That whole mess is what's driving me insane, despite being diagnosed with skin cancer a few weeks ago. I have no idea yet what treatment will be beyond a surgery I'm still waiting to have scheduled, nor do I know what the outlook is. And yet, this doesn't bother me at all. When I first found out, I was fucking relieved. FINALLY, an end to this goddamn nightmare was in sight. I've enjoyed things in life, but it's also mostly been horrible. The things I've enjoyed took a lot of work to get to where I enjoy them and they're not exactly flooding my life. It's mostly just shit, my brain torturing me, and then some good times like bushwhacking through the woods completely alone beside my dogs, which is my favorite hobby. There's no one out there and I do enjoy the woods in general, so it's the one place I can go and just be calm and at ease. But ultimately, I can't even figure out yet if I'm actually going to go through with getting any treatments. I'm so fucking exhausted of everything. It would be just so much easier to let nature take its course.

And I know I'll hear a lot of "get helps" and everything, but my whole fucking life is centered around me just surviving my brain. It's been four decades of this. I'm terrified of how much I will hate myself if getting help actually helps. If all the noise just turns off and I look around realize how much I've absolutely stunted and disfigured my life trying to outrun and hide from the constant blurring of my mind, and now, after all the damage is done, I'd be "good to go?" Four decades of sacrificing everything I am and could have been, for something I could have just made go away? There are things in my life that I've just given up on for so long, there's no salvaging them. And I don't even care about them right now because the blurring and all the noise take precedence, but if they were gone suddenly? I'd hate myself so much more.

I just had to vent. None of this is going to go anywhere. I don't know what choices I'll make, because I'll just wait until I absolutely cannot wait anymore and just pick what to choose in that moment. 

I will try to glean something good from this before I end the post: If you're suffering from any mental health issues, please don't wait or hesitate to get help. You don't want to be this far down the track with your life in absolute shambles, a practical hermit, and happiness has only ever meant not miserable. Don't put it off until you're four decades into your life to decide it's time.