I don't like to share this kind of thing in public spaces. I don't want to appear like I'm suffering from crippling loneliness...and yet, it is absolutely impossible for me to bottle it up much longer. So please, feel free to ignore this post, as I just feeling I need to vent at least once about the state of my life's social status.

I am shy. I am anxious. I am the type to overthink over every little situation. And I cannot, no matter how I've tried to psych myself up for it, make the first move in establishing friendships, conversations, relationships etc IRL. This has been my situation since...fuck, high school? Junior high school? A while. I'm 27 now, and I have had exactly 1 girlfriend in the past 10 years, for barely 7 months. Friends-wise, I was okay up through high-school. I had friends from my childhood that I could hang out with and that was fine with me. After graduation...well, you know how it is. People go their separate ways, and I lost contact with virtually all of them.

College was...mixed. I made some new temporary friends, but certainly no relationships. No intimacy. And after I graduated...poof, those temp friends, gone. I have lost all motivation since the middle of college, really. I've tried to accept the way things are, I've tried to change them, I've tried to pretend I don’t care...but frankly nothing works. I'm tired. In an effort to throw my fate to...well, fate, I took a job abroad and went into the thick of it. That's where I am now. I miss my family, but I can live with that. I still chat with them plenty, so it's not like they're nonexistent. My coworkers here have given me some more temporary friends, ones I want to hope will be permanent, but at this point my brain just throws that concept out the window, and I have no actual hope of it.

All of this has given me what I can only describe as a crippling need for intimacy. Fake, exaggerated, whatever. Anything. I want to feel wanted, valued, and like somebody actually cares. This has led to my, no way around it, addiction to porn subs and sites. It's not something I'm proud of. Far from it. But it is something that is my reality. I let uncensored, greedy, desperate thoughts and feelings out through this medium...and in the short term, it helps. But in the end it hurts even more because inevitably, these 'relations' are shams. Either I get pay-walled, ghosted, left on read, not read at all, etc etc. But I always go back, because I don't see an alternative to finding that endorphin rush, that feeling of even for a moment, being WANTED. And that's where we are now.

Sorry for the long rant about my problems. It has felt good to write it out, honestly. But I don't think it's changed anything. I'm sure I'll go right back to doing what I've been doing. At least it's out there now, right? I feel like I've aired out that dirty laundry, to some degree.

Anyways, thanks for listening...or reading I guess- 👍