u/ApprehensiveLocal0

Hola. Soy un nini (NEET/hikikomori) que acaba de cumplir 30 años, nacido y crecido en Asunción. Desde que terminé el colegio a los 19 no tengo más estudios completados y nunca tuve experiencia laboral. Viví la mayor parte de mi vida solitariamente frente a la computadora o celular desde los 10 años más o menos, ya que mis padres me permitían usarlos todo el día y también me permitían faltar mucho al colegio y quedaba en casa solo jugando videojuegos o navegando en internet en la PC sin parar. La razón por mi aislamiento y addición según nos dijeron, fue por traumas violentos que sufrí en la infancia por parte de mi padre, amigos de mi barrio y bullying de compañeros del colegio durante ese tiempo. Recuerdo empezar a verme como una persona "defectuosa", como si mi propio ser fuera inaceptable y el problema fuera lo que yo mismo soy, ya que siempre fui un niño muy poco masculino, sensible, perfeccionista, frágil, tímido, socialmente torpe, no violento ni estoico, etc. y fui muy vulnerable a violencia debido a eso. Me diagnosticaron depresión, ansiedad social, autismo, insomnio, déficit de atención, bipolaridad, trastorno límite de la personalidad, etc. y me recetaron toda clase de antidepresivos como paroxetina, escitalopram, fluoxetina, duloxetina, sertralina, venlafaxina, trazodona, etc. ansioliticos, hipnoticos y algunos antipsicóticos, pero mi entorno hogareño y mis hábitos siempre seguían igual y mis padres seguían con su misma crianza sin prestar atención a los consejosn dobre el entorno hogareño, crianza, entonces nada mejoraba y mi situación sólo empeoraba.

A partir de los 16 ya me daba cuenta de que no me podía concentrar en el colegio (probablemente por las pocas horas de sueño y muchas horas frente a la pantalla), así que fuimos junto a un psiquiatra que me dio ritalina (metilfenidato) y luego de eso empecé a abusar de drogas cuando leí en internet que se podía producir mayores efectos si aplastabas las pastillas de ritalina y la inhalabas. Luego empecé a abusar de otras drogas que me recetaban como clonazepam, zolpidem, alprazolam y también dextrometorfano. Después de eso abusé prácticamente de todo lo que pude, como marihuana, cocaína, hongos/cucumelos, (aprendí a cultivarlos en mi casa a partir de esporas), LSD, óxido nitroso y DMT (aprendí a hacer una extracción química con la planta que la contiene) que usé con un vaporizador. Creo que abusar mucho de DMT me llevó a un empeoramiento de mi depresión ya que estaba en una mala situación en mi vida y luego en un mal viaje catastrófico con hongos cuando tenía 20 años más o menos, repasé memorias sobre mi vida en donde pasé momentos de vergüenza, pelada, donde me rechazaron, me insultaron, se burlaron de mí, me pegaron, etc. y fueron tantos momentos a la vez y tan rápido que me hizo concluir que soy la persona más defectuosa, rara, insignificante y marginada del mundo, alguien que está al fondo de lo último de la sociedad, de los estratos más bajos de la sociedad, más bajo que el que está en lo más bajo. Luego lloré inmensamente y mis lágrimas corrían sin parar como raudales, de una manera que nunca antes había llorado. Me terminó causando una depresión muy severa y me provocó un terror existencial y una visión de la vida en sí como un castigo, y duraba 24 horas porque sentía horror durante el día y luego al dormir tenía pesadillas, así que me sentía horrorizado de existir. Nos fuimos de immediato con un psiquiara y me dijo que mi depresión es "muy severa", me dió antidepresivos que funcionaron un poco.

Luego nos mudamos a San Lorenzo y todo siguió empeorando ya que dejé de hablar con personas que conocía en Asunción y mi aislamiento empeoró, así que pasé la mayor parte del tiempo, como siempre, solo en la PC o el teléfono. Pocos meses después vino COVID y sentí una excusa para poder estar aislado más tiempo aún y seguir viviendo así. Luego logré conseguir oxicodona sin receta en una farmacia pequeña cercana solo pidiendo y pude comprar como 5 cajas que tenían, y esto empeoró todo muchísimo. La oxicodona me hizo sentir normal y feliz por primera vez en décadas de mi vida, mi depresion y ansiedad se habían ido por total, pero solo por unas horasy tenía que tomar más para mantenerlo. Abusé la oxicodona y tomé en total como 120 pastillas de 7.5 mg durante dos meses más o menos y me di cuenta por primera vez de que me volví adicto, porque no podía controlar el uso de las pastillas como para decidir tomar solo los fines de semana o algo así. Luego tuve que ir al centro de adicciones para consultar con un psiquiatra y me sentí sinceramente identificado por primera vez en mi vida como "drogadicto", y mi papá estaba ahí y frente a la policía y los pacientes me dijo palabras denigrantes, lo cual me afectó y me humilló profundamente como sentirme que era una basura de la calle. Luego nos atendió el psiquiatra y yo no podía levantar la cara y me costaba hacerle preguntas ya que me sentía como alguien tan "bajo" que ni siquiera podía mirar a alguien normal como un doctor a la cara y hablarle. Esto empeoró muchísimo mi situación y la manera en que me miraba a mí mismo y empecé a verme como un vago, drogadicto o basura de la calle, y empecé a abusar de alcohol, cigarrillos, pastillas para ansiedad, etc. y también heroína (no quiero decir cómo). Compré heroína como 11 veces y llegué a inyectarme como 8 gramos en total en esos dos años.

Luego un día, cuando ya estaba dejando de usarlo, justo pude conseguir otra dosis y mientras estaba borracho me inyecté en el baño casi medio gramo en total, que era muchísimo para mi baja tolerancia en ese momento, y lo siguiente que recuerdo es despertarme en el hospital con cables en todo el cuerpo y pensar inmediatamente "ndera, tuve una sobredosis, sabía que iba a pasar alguna vez" porque tenía el deseo de accidentalmente provocarme una sobredosis que me mate ya de una vez. Al parecer mi hermana salió con mi mamá a comprar algo, luego regresaron un momento porque habían olvidado algo y luego mi hermana me escuchó en el baño haciendo ronquidos agónicos, como muriendo, y con mi mamá tuvieron que romper el candado y sacarme, pedir ayuda a los vecinos para que me levantaran y me llevaran al auto de mi mamá para ir al Hospital de Clínicas. Estuve en terapia intensiva por tres días y tenía un puntaje de Glasgow de 3/15, que es lo más serio y significa que no respondía en absoluto a ningún estímulo, y también hipoxia con los labios azules, a punto de morir.

Luego de eso seguí tomando un poco de alcohol pero me di cuenta de que casi morir por la sobredosis me hizo pensar que tengo una segunda chance para vivir y no quiero desperdiciarla, así que dejé todas las drogas y medicamentos y, completamente sobrio, me fui al gimnasio. Mantuve constancia durante 9 meses seguidos sin faltar una semana y manteniendo una dieta sana. Pero aun así tenía síntomas fuertes de depresión e ideación suicida por lo que tuve que ir al psiquiatra y me dieron bupropión, que paró un poco las ideas suicidas.

Durante ese tiempo conocí a un expat canadiense mediante el foro /pol/ de 4chan y decidimos encontrarnos en persona, y se convirtió en mi mejor y más íntima amistad (platónica) y me propuso un proyecto de abrir una empresa juntos a. Es una larga historia y lo publiqué aquí (en inglés): [aquí]

Terrminó la amistad por varios motivos pero principalmente porque la presión de mantener la amistad y el negocio fue mucha para mí y también por las dificultades con depresión, insomnio y ansiedad (el tratamiento que estaba recibiendo no me ayudó) y ahora mismo estoy como en un limbo, sin desear hacer nada, como si todo hubiera perdido el sentido. La mayor oportunidad de salir de esta situación de mi vida la perdí. La pérdida me dejó tan mal que volví a usar pastillas, quedarme en la cama, no ir al gimnasio, etc. y hace poco tomé un montón de pastillas y terminé en un estado de intoxicación muy fuerte y mi hermana me llevó al hospital neuropsiquiátrico donde me internaron por casi dos días. Fue una de las peores experiencias de mi vida porque tratan a los internos como reos, las condiciones son horribles peor que en una cárcel, los internos actúan de manera incoherente (no quiero describir los hechos que vi), los doctores o enfermeros no me querían ayudar ni me tenían en cuenta y muchas otras cosas. Hace una semana salí y ahora volví a la misma vida de siempre.

Que hago? Ya no sé que hacer. Solo quisiera volver a poder encontrar una persona con quien pueda abrirme, ser vulnerable y poder tener una conexión cercana como la que tuve con mi ex amigo canadiense y tener esa oportunidad que me dió. Quisiera poder hablar con una persona, escucharla y ser escuchado y quien pueda conocer en persona y compartir nuestras vidas y que me pueda aceptar aunque la mía esté en ruinas

Hola. Yo hablo un inglés muy fluido aprendido autodidacta y me gustaría conocer personas con quien hablar en persona. En dónde los puedo encontrar aquí en Paraguay?

I need to vent because I'm struggling badly with a loss that has hit me harder than almost anything I can remember.

I'm a 30 year old from Paraguay. For the last decade I was a NEET with no job experience and no formal studies beyond high school, spending most of my time in my room on the internet and constantly immersed in English-language content since I was a kid. The only upside is that during that time I became fluent in English (rare here in Paraguay) through years of playing video games, reading books, watching Youtube videos and livestreams, browsing forums, and talking to people on Discord, all without ever taking classes or traveling abroad. The downside is that I spent years barely talking to other people in real life, my real-world social muscles atrophied badly and my social life basically never developed.

In my early twenties I developed severe depression after a horrific mental breakdown during a psilocybin trip, and eventually I fell into addiction in my mid-20s and ended up abusing several drugs including benzos, opioids, heroin bought off the darknet, and alcohol. I nearly died from an overdose at 27 after shooting up heroin while drunk and passing out locked in my bathroom, until my sister found me unconscious and rushed me to the hospital where I spent three days in the ICU. That incident was my rock bottom and a few months after it I decided to completely sober up from all drugs and quit cold turkey. I then started training at the gym consistently four days a week, which helped me stay sober and off substances, though I still struggled constantly with my mental health.

Then in March this year I met a 33 year old Canadian expat who was a remote programmer and digital nomad living here in the capital city for some months. We had originally met through 4chan and he was surprised to find a Paraguayan on there so we immediately connected as like-minded, neurodivergent loners. We talked on Discord briefly and a few months later we met in person for the first time, where we talked for three and a half hours that didn't feel like that long because we were both so into it and I had never had a conversation like that in my life. He was so excited and said he felt like he'd found a unicorn because it was very rare to find someone in Paraguay who was both English-speaking and familiar with online subcultures like 4chan, and who could understand him on a deeper level than others. He really wanted to be my friend since during his stay he'd had contact only with other expats, and he didn't speak much Spanish and couldn't talk to many locals like me. I remember being terrified before meeting him because he had told me on Discord that he was from a wealthy family, had business experience, traveled around the world, and overall seemed more accomplished than someone like me who had done nothing with his life. I was terrified at first of being rejected as a loser but after I opened up and told him I had no job experience and had struggled my whole life with depression and addiction, he told me he had more respect for people like me than for wage workers who devoted their entire lives to a system he hates. For the first time in my life I'd found someone who still accepted me somehow.

Over the next three months we messaged and called each other almost every day, exchanged around 4000 messages in total and met in person 14 times. We talked for three to eight hours straight each time without running out of things to say. Sadly, I carried a lot of anxiety throughout because I was terrified of losing my only friendship, and years of isolation and substance use had left me prone to severe anxiety around other people. It was very difficult for me to open up and be as warm and friendly as he was with me, and I also felt very self-conscious speaking English, which added to the nervousness. Still, he was the most significant connection I'd had in my life and this was the first time I'd ever spoken English out loud with another person in real life after about two decades of building that skill completely alone in my room.

In April he proposed we start a business together because he wanted to have a shared project with me so that we could have a deeper friendship and more reasons to spend time together. He said that if I failed him and ruined the business, the friendship would end, but that it was worth the risk and I should roll the dice on this opportunity. This terrified me because I didn't want to lose the friendship, and I didn't feel at all capable of running a business after decades of rotting in my room without much real-world experience. But he thought I had a lot of potential and that I could do this, and put his faith in me and was willing to invest money in it, so the stakes for me felt immense. He came up with the idea of a chocolate product after he found a gap in the local market with genuine potential for success. I had a working recipe for the product, local knowledge, and the ability to navigate local operations with my native Spanish to execute the business, while he had the capital, previous international business experience, and the research skills to find everything we needed. We were both still relatively young in our early 30s, single, childless, with few responsibilities, and since his remote job wasn't very demanding we both had a lot of free time to execute it. Everything seemed so perfect for this to go well. He told me he was giving me this opportunity to get me out of my situation and into the real world, help me gain confidence, make money, etc. and I felt like my life was finally starting to move forward after so many years of misery and stagnation. It felt like a redemption that made it all worth it in the end and suddenly I had hope for my future for the first time in years. He framed it however as "you need this, I don't, I'm just doing it for the experience" which gave him a lot of leverage and power over me.

Pretty early on it got really difficult. I was 40 minutes late to our fourth meeting due to poor scheduling on my part when he was going to give me the ingredients he'd bought to make the product, and he got mad at me, telling me this was "strike one" and bringing up his past business partners who'd failed him for exactly this kind of thing. After that I felt like I was walking on a tightrope the entire time, constantly afraid of making another "strike" and destroying both a unique friendship and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which I think ironically made me perform worse and prevented me from being warm and natural with him. He'd say "I'm done" as a kind of threat whenever he was frustrated with me then walk it back after I complied with him, and he framed my mental health history as a liability to the business. He had spent $200 on the equipment we were going to use in production, and after that we were going to talk to another business owner I'd found as a contact to try to make a deal with him and possibly team up.

But then suddenly I got sick and was bedbound for three weeks in May during which I relapsed into depression and stopped messaging him as frequently, which I think was partly due to the immense pressure and anxiety that was building up in me trying not to mess up and ruin everything, especially after seeing him spend $200 on the equipment and put his faith in me to go do the business deal and not screw up. I felt suicidal and almost tried to end it all, feeling stuck in a situation where I didn't want to abandon it but also felt I couldn't move forward with it. As soon as I recovered we had a meeting where he was coming off a Vyvanse crash telling me that this last incident made me unreliable, and he went on a name-calling tirade calling me dumb and "very, very stupid" and told me this was the final nail in the coffin. During that rant I told him I wasn't feeling good and had been having suicidal thoughts, and he responded that he wasn't going to tell me to act on it or not act on it, but that if I did I would finally be at peace. I told him I didn't think I could be a good friend or business partner because my life was messed up and I couldn't really offer anything to anyone living like this, and I needed to get a job, structure, stability, and routine first to fix my life and become a stable person. He had done so many things for me the whole time we were together, he bought me food when I had no money to buy any, paid for my Ubers, gave me supplements to help with depression and insomnia, said the first profits of the business would go to me because my struggling family and I needed it more, offered to teach me skills and help me find a job, and listened to me and gave me confidence.

Eventually the business fell apart after we had a heated argument at his apartment over how to proceed next, where he proposed that I go talk to that business owner in person and try to pitch a deal all by myself without him coming with me, as a way to prove to him I could do this so he could feel safe investing money in this partnership. I felt like I couldn't do it because I was an anxious shut-in with low self-esteem, while this business owner was an important, socially successful person and the thought of approaching him filled me with absolute dread and anxiety. He decided not to continue after that, and after a brief exchange of messages where I thanked him for everything and asked if he was still up for meeting for coffee once I got a job and became more stable (which I had planned to do soon), he replied "we'll see, get the job and all that and we'll see" then blocked me.

That was two weeks ago and since then I've been waking up every day with intense regret, anxiety, grief, and constant "what if" thoughts. What if I had handled that conversation differently? What if I had been warmer? What if I had communicated better? What if I hadn't let my anxiety get in the way? The hardest part is not just losing the business but also losing a unique friendship and opportunity. For a few months my life contained daily contact, shared goals, long conversations, intellectual connection, and hope, then it disappeared overnight. I've stopped going to the gym, lost my appetite, and can barely get out of bed. My mind keeps replaying memories and imagining alternate timelines where things worked out differently.

I can see that this relationship probably wasn't as healthy as I wanted to believe and that some of the responsibility belongs to him and some belongs to me, but emotionally I feel like I've lost something irreplaceable and that I'll never get another opportunity like this again. I don't really know how to move forward. I think part of what's underneath this is that the isolation that built my English is the same thing that left me without the social tools to hold onto a connection once I found one. The thing that made me interesting enough to him is tangled up with the thing that made it so hard for me to be his friend and business partner. What scares me is that surviving addiction, surviving an overdose, and sobering up felt easier than dealing with this loss. I know that's probably because this experience touched needs that had gone unmet for years like friendship, connection, purpose and belonging. But emotionally it feels like I've lost something irreplaceable. I don't know how to stop dwelling on what could have been, and I don't know how to move forward from the feeling that I threw away the most important opportunity and friendship of my life.

I need to vent because I'm struggling badly with a loss that has hit me harder than almost anything I can remember.

I'm a 30 year old from Paraguay. For the last decade I was a NEET with no job experience and no formal studies beyond high school, spending most of my time in my room on the internet and constantly immersed in English-language content since I was a kid. The only upside is that during that time I became fluent in English (rare here in Paraguay) through years of playing video games, reading books, watching Youtube videos and livestreams, browsing forums, and talking to people on Discord, all without ever taking classes or traveling abroad. The downside is that I spent years barely talking to other people in real life, my real-world social muscles atrophied badly and my social life basically never developed.

In my early twenties I developed severe depression after a horrific mental breakdown during a psilocybin trip, and eventually I fell into addiction in my mid-20s and ended up abusing several drugs including benzos, opioids, heroin bought off the darknet, and alcohol. I nearly died from an overdose at 27 after shooting up heroin while drunk and passing out locked in my bathroom, until my sister found me unconscious and rushed me to the hospital where I spent three days in the ICU. That incident was my rock bottom and a few months after it I decided to completely sober up from all drugs and quit cold turkey. I then started training at the gym consistently four days a week, which helped me stay sober and off substances, though I still struggled constantly with my mental health.

Then in March this year I met a 33 year old Canadian expat who was a remote programmer and digital nomad living here in the capital city for some months. We had originally met through 4chan and he was surprised to find a Paraguayan on there so we immediately connected as like-minded, neurodivergent loners. We talked on Discord briefly and a few months later we met in person for the first time, where we talked for three and a half hours that didn't feel like that long because we were both so into it and I had never had a conversation like that in my life. He was so excited and said he felt like he'd found a unicorn because it was very rare to find someone in Paraguay who was both English-speaking and familiar with online subcultures like 4chan, and who could understand him on a deeper level than others. He really wanted to be my friend since during his stay he'd had contact only with other expats, and he didn't speak much Spanish and couldn't talk to many locals like me. I remember being terrified before meeting him because he had told me on Discord that he was from a wealthy family, had business experience, traveled around the world, and overall seemed more accomplished than someone like me who had done nothing with his life. I was terrified at first of being rejected as a loser but after I opened up and told him I had no job experience and had struggled my whole life with depression and addiction, he told me he had more respect for people like me than for wage workers who devoted their entire lives to a system he hates. For the first time in my life I'd found someone who still accepted me somehow.

Over the next three months we messaged and called each other almost every day, exchanged around 4000 messages in total and met in person 14 times. We talked for three to eight hours straight each time without running out of things to say. Sadly, I carried a lot of anxiety throughout because I was terrified of losing my only friendship, and years of isolation and substance use had left me prone to severe anxiety around other people. It was very difficult for me to open up and be as warm and friendly as he was with me, and I also felt very self-conscious speaking English, which added to the nervousness. Still, he was the most significant connection I'd had in my life and this was the first time I'd ever spoken English out loud with another person in real life after about two decades of building that skill completely alone in my room.

In April he proposed we start a business together because he wanted to have a shared project with me so that we could have a deeper friendship and more reasons to spend time together. He said that if I failed him and ruined the business, the friendship would end, but that it was worth the risk and I should roll the dice on this opportunity. This terrified me because I didn't want to lose the friendship, and I didn't feel at all capable of running a business after decades of rotting in my room without much real-world experience. But he thought I had a lot of potential and that I could do this, and put his faith in me and was willing to invest money in it, so the stakes for me felt immense. He came up with the idea of a chocolate product after he found a gap in the local market with genuine potential for success. I had a working recipe for the product, local knowledge, and the ability to navigate local operations with my native Spanish to execute the business, while he had the capital, previous international business experience, and the research skills to find everything we needed. We were both still relatively young in our early 30s, single, childless, with few responsibilities, and since his remote job wasn't very demanding we both had a lot of free time to execute it. Everything seemed so perfect for this to go well. He told me he was giving me this opportunity to get me out of my situation and into the real world, help me gain confidence, make money, etc. and I felt like my life was finally starting to move forward after so many years of misery and stagnation. It felt like a redemption that made it all worth it in the end and suddenly I had hope for my future for the first time in years. He framed it however as "you need this, I don't, I'm just doing it for the experience" which gave him a lot of leverage and power over me.

Pretty early on it got really difficult. I was 40 minutes late to our fourth meeting due to poor scheduling on my part when he was going to give me the ingredients he'd bought to make the product, and he got mad at me, telling me this was "strike one" and bringing up his past business partners who'd failed him for exactly this kind of thing. After that I felt like I was walking on a tightrope the entire time, constantly afraid of making another "strike" and destroying both a unique friendship and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which I think ironically made me perform worse and prevented me from being warm and natural with him. He'd say "I'm done" as a kind of threat whenever he was frustrated with me then walk it back after I complied with him, and he framed my mental health history as a liability to the business. He had spent $200 on the equipment we were going to use in production, and after that we were going to talk to another business owner I'd found as a contact to try to make a deal with him and possibly team up.

But then suddenly I got sick and was bedbound for three weeks in May during which I relapsed into depression and stopped messaging him as frequently, which I think was partly due to the immense pressure and anxiety that was building up in me trying not to mess up and ruin everything, especially after seeing him spend $200 on the equipment and put his faith in me to go do the business deal and not screw up. I felt suicidal and almost tried to end it all, feeling stuck in a situation where I didn't want to abandon it but also felt I couldn't move forward with it. As soon as I recovered we had a meeting where he was coming off a Vyvanse crash telling me that this last incident made me unreliable, and he went on a name-calling tirade calling me dumb and "very, very stupid" and told me this was the final nail in the coffin. During that rant I told him I wasn't feeling good and had been having suicidal thoughts, and he responded that he wasn't going to tell me to act on it or not act on it, but that if I did I would finally be at peace. I told him I didn't think I could be a good friend or business partner because my life was messed up and I couldn't really offer anything to anyone living like this, and I needed to get a job, structure, stability, and routine first to fix my life and become a stable person. He had done so many things for me the whole time we were together, he bought me food when I had no money to buy any, paid for my Ubers, gave me supplements to help with depression and insomnia, said the first profits of the business would go to me because my struggling family and I needed it more, offered to teach me skills and help me find a job, and listened to me and gave me confidence.

Eventually the business fell apart after we had a heated argument at his apartment over how to proceed next, where he proposed that I go talk to that business owner in person and try to pitch a deal all by myself without him coming with me, as a way to prove to him I could do this so he could feel safe investing money in this partnership. I felt like I couldn't do it because I was an anxious shut-in with low self-esteem, while this business owner was an important, socially successful person and the thought of approaching him filled me with absolute dread and anxiety. He decided not to continue after that, and after a brief exchange of messages where I thanked him for everything and asked if he was still up for meeting for coffee once I got a job and became more stable (which I had planned to do soon), he replied "we'll see, get the job and all that and we'll see" then blocked me.

That was two weeks ago and since then I've been waking up every day with intense regret, anxiety, grief, and constant "what if" thoughts. What if I had handled that conversation differently? What if I had been warmer? What if I had communicated better? What if I hadn't let my anxiety get in the way? The hardest part is not just losing the business but also losing a unique friendship and opportunity. For a few months my life contained daily contact, shared goals, long conversations, intellectual connection, and hope, then it disappeared overnight. I've stopped going to the gym, lost my appetite, and can barely get out of bed. My mind keeps replaying memories and imagining alternate timelines where things worked out differently.

I can see that this relationship probably wasn't as healthy as I wanted to believe and that some of the responsibility belongs to him and some belongs to me, but emotionally I feel like I've lost something irreplaceable and that I'll never get another opportunity like this again. I don't really know how to move forward. I think part of what's underneath this is that the isolation that built my English is the same thing that left me without the social tools to hold onto a connection once I found one. The thing that made me interesting enough to him is tangled up with the thing that made it so hard for me to be his friend and business partner. What scares me is that surviving addiction, surviving an overdose, and sobering up felt easier than dealing with this loss. I know that's probably because this experience touched needs that had gone unmet for years like friendship, connection, purpose and belonging. But emotionally it feels like I've lost something irreplaceable. I don't know how to stop dwelling on what could have been, and I don't know how to move forward from the feeling that I threw away the most important opportunity and friendship of my life.

I need to vent because I'm struggling badly with a loss that has hit me harder than almost anything I can remember.

I'm a 30 year old from Paraguay. For the last decade I was a NEET with no job experience and no formal studies beyond high school, spending most of my time in my room on the internet, and constantly immersed in English-language content since I was a kid. The only upside is that during that time I became fluent in English (rare here in Paraguay) through years of playing video games, reading books, watching Youtube videos and livestreams, browsing forums, and talking to people on Discord, all without ever taking classes or traveling abroad. The downside is that I spent years barely talking to other people in real life, my real-world social muscles atrophied badly and my social life basically never developed.

In my early twenties I developed severe depression after a horrific mental breakdown during a psilocybin trip and eventually I fell into addiction in my mid-20s, abusing several drugs including benzos, opioids, heroin bought off the darknet, and alcohol. I nearly died from an overdose at 27 after shooting up heroin while drunk and passing out locked in my bathroom until my sister found me unconscious and rushed me to the hospital where I spent three days in the ICU. That incident was my rock bottom and a few months after it I decided to completely sober up from all drugs and quit cold turkey. I then started training at the gym consistently four days a week which helped me stay sober and off substances, though I still struggled constantly with my mental health.

Then in March this year I met a 33 year old Canadian expat who was a remote programmer and digital nomad living here in the capital city for some months. We had originally met through 4chan and he was surprised to find a Paraguayan on there so we immediately connected as like-minded, neurodivergent loners. We talked on Discord briefly and a few months later we met in person for the first time where we talked for three and a half hours that didn't feel like that long, because we were both so into it and I had never had a conversation like that in my life. He was so excited and said he felt like he'd found a "unicorn" because it was very rare to find someone who was both an English-speaking Paraguayan and familiar with online subcultures like 4chan, and who understood him on a deeper level than others. He really wanted to be my friend since during his stay he'd had contact only with other expats and he didn't speak much Spanish and couldn't talk to many locals like me. I remember being terrified before meeting him because he had told me on Discord that he was from a wealthy family, had business experience, traveled around the world, and overall seemed more accomplished than someone like me who had done nothing with his life. I was terrified at first of being rejected as a loser, but after I opened up and told him I had no job experience and had struggled my whole life with depression and addiction he told me he had more respect for people like me than for wage workers who devote their entire lives to a system he hates. For the first time in my life I'd found someone who still accepted me somehow.

Over the next three months we messaged each other almost every day, exchanged around 4000 messages in total and met in person 14 times. We talked for three to eight hours straight each time without running out of things to say. Sadly I carried a lot of anxiety throughout because I was terrified of losing my only friendship, and years of isolation and substance use had left me prone to severe anxiety around other people. It was very difficult for me to open up and be as warm and friendly as he was with me and I also felt very self-conscious speaking English, which added to the nervousness. Still, he was the most significant connection I'd had in my life and this was the first time I'd ever spoken English out loud with another person in real life after about two decades of building that skill completely alone in my room.

In April he proposed we start a business together because he wanted to have a shared project with me so that we could have a deeper friendship and more reasons to spend time together. He said that if I failed him and ruined the business, the friendship would end, but that it was worth the risk and I should roll the dice on this opportunity. This terrified me because I didn't want to lose the friendship and I didn't feel at all capable of running a business after decades of rotting in my room without much real-world experience. But he thought I had a lot of potential and that I could do this, and put his faith in me and was willing to invest money in it, so the stakes for me felt immense. He came up with the idea of a chocolate product after he found a gap in the local market with genuine potential for success. I had a working recipe for the product, local knowledge, and the ability to navigate local operations with my native Spanish to execute the business, while he had the capital, previous international business experience, and the research skills to find everything we needed. We were both still relatively young in our early 30s, single, childless, with few responsibilities, and since his remote job wasn't very demanding we both had a lot of free time to execute it. Everything seemed so perfect for this to go well. He told me he was giving me this opportunity to get me out of my situation and into the real world, help me gain confidence, make money, etc. and I felt like my life was finally starting to move forward after so many years of misery and stagnation. It felt like a redemption that made it all worth it and suddenly I had hope for my future for the first time in years. He framed it however as "you need this, I don't, I'm just doing it for the experience" which gave him a lot of leverage and power over me.

Pretty early on it got really difficult. I was 40 minutes late to our fourth meeting due to poor scheduling on my part when he was going to give me the ingredients he'd bought for the product, and he got mad at me, telling me this is "strike one" and bringing up his past business partners who'd failed him for exactly this kind of thing. After that I felt like I was walking on a tightrope the entire time, constantly afraid of making another "strike" and destroying both a precious friendship and a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity which I think ironically made me perform worse and prevented me from being warm and natural with him. He'd say "I'm done" as a kind of threat whenever he was frustrated with me then walk it back after I complied with him, and he framed my mental health history as a liability to the business. He had spent $200 on the equipment we were going to use in production, and after that we were going to talk to another business owner I'd found as a contact to try to make a deal with him and possibly team up.

But then suddenly I got sick and was bedbound for three weeks in May, during which I relapsed into depression and stopped messaging him as frequently, which I think was partly due to the immense pressure and anxiety that was building up in me trying not to mess up and ruin everything, especially after seeing him spend $200 on the equipment and putting his faith in me to go do the business deal. I felt suicidal and almost tried to end it all, feeling stuck in a situation where I didn't want to abandon it but also felt I couldn't move forward with it. As soon as I recovered we had a meeting where he was coming off a Vyvanse crash, telling me that this last incident made me unreliable, and he went on a name-calling tirade calling me "dumb" and "very, very stupid" and told me this was the final nail in the coffin. During that conversation I told him I wasn't feeling good and had been having suicidal thoughts, and he responded that he wasn't going to tell me to act on it or not act on it, but that if I did, I would finally be at peace. I told him I didn't think I could be a good friend or business partner because my life is fucked up and I can't really offer anything to anyone living like this and I needed to get a job, structure, stability, and routine first, to fix my life and become a stable person. He had done so many things for me the whole time we were together, he bought me food when I had no money to buy any, paid for my Ubers, gave me supplements to help with depression and insomnia, said the first profits of the business would go to me because my struggling family and I needed it more, offered to teach me skills and help me find a job, listened to me and gave me confidence.

Eventually the business fell apart after we had a heated argument at his apartment over how to proceed next where he proposed that I go talk to that business owner in person and try to pitch a deal all by myself without him coming with me, as a way to prove to him I could do this so he could feel safe investing capital in this partnership. I felt like I couldn't do it because I was an anxious NEET with low self-esteem while this business owner was an important, socially successful person, and the thought of approaching him filled me with absolute dread and anxiety. He decided not to continue after that and after a brief exchange of messages where I thanked him for everything and asked if he was still up for meeting for coffee once I got a job and became more stable (which I had planned to do soon) he said "maybe, get the job first and all of that" and then blocked me.

That was two weeks ago and since then I've been waking up every day with intense regret, anxiety, dread, and constant "what if" thoughts. What if I had handled that conversation differently? What if I had been warmer? What if I had communicated better? What if I hadn't let my anxiety get in the way? The hardest part is not just losing the business but also losing an unique friendship and opportunity. For a few months my life contained daily contact, shared goals, long conversations, intellectual connection, and hope, then it disappeared overnight. I've stopped going to the gym, lost my appetite, and can barely get out of bed. My mind keeps replaying memories and imagining alternate timelines where things worked out differently.

I can see that this relationship probably wasn't as healthy as I wanted to believe and that some of the responsibility belongs to him and some belongs to me, but emotionally I feel like I've lost something irreplaceable and that I'll never get another opportunity like this again. I don't really know how to move forward. I think part of what's underneath this is that the isolation that built my English is the same thing that left me without the social tools to hold onto a connection once I found one. The thing that made me interesting enough to him is tangled up with the thing that made it so hard for me to be his friend and business partner. What scares me is that surviving addiction, surviving an overdose, and sobering up felt easier than dealing with this loss. I know that's probably because this experience touched needs that had gone unmet for years to me like friendship, connection, purpose, and belonging. But emotionally it feels like I've lost something irreplaceable. I don't know how to stop dwelling on what could have been, and I don't know how to move forward from the feeling that I threw away the most important opportunity and friendship of my life.