u/Neorxnawang-Christ

I'm working 8:30am to 6:30pm today, and literally at the start of my shift some lad walks into the shop, mid to late twenties, probably a little older than me. Greasy hair, zip-up hoodie he's probably not washed in a long time and a 101% polyester marvel t-shirt. He's tried to shave some kind of goatee two weeks ago and not bothered since. If I didn't have Anosmia I'm sure I'd complain about his odour, but he regardless he just exudes a certain aura that makes me not want to serve him. If you know you know.

I take his order and begin preparing it, and to be honest he's making it needlessly tedious and kind of just hogging up my time with bullshit - on top of that he's relentlessly talking AT me about... Whatever the fuck he's clearly interested in (something about batman I didn't ask about and I wasn't willing to engage him in) and is totally unrelated to me gathering up his order.

Honest-to-god, as he is chunnering on I can only describe him as the human equivalent of some shit like Hazbin Hotel or the edgy Joker memes Gen X'ers put up in their Facebook pages. Because he's making it take so fucking long to actually get his shit together (again, basically just making what should have been a 5 minute order take 15 minutes - making my life super difficult), a queue begins to form behind him. Maybe five or more people. (which - fuck off and get a life, it's eight in the morning. Do you not have anything better to do?)

My place doesn't let you wear long-sleeved T-shirts or jumpers, and I was working totally on my own. He had been staring at me and trying to peer over the counter for a while. When he finally noticed my arm, this fucking dickhead felt the need to, Infront of EVERYONE in the queue who would NOT have noticed or looked otherwise - PHYSICALLY LEAN UP AND OVER THE COUNTER, POINT WITH HIS FINGER AT MY ARM AND LOUDLY ANNOUNCE TO THE WHOLE FUCKING SHOP MY SELF-HARM SCARS AND ASK ME ABOUT IT. So naturally EVERYONE else looks and notices my arm, then also stare at it. You'd think saying "they're old, I'm fine, but thank you for being concerned" (he wasn't really) would be enough but no.

(And DON'T fucking get me wrong, I understand that, no matter what mental state I was in back then, I did it to myself - that it is unusual or concerning to see out-of-context even if they're old - and that people will look and will notice them. I would have no right to complain if he just looked or maybe asked in private, but THAT isn't what he did or what bothered me!)

This bloke gets a big-ass smile on his face and starts very loudly quizzing me on details he has no right knowing. How I felt, what caused me to do it, if it was painful, what I did it with, and various other significantly more awkward, inappropriate questions that the whole queue can hear and are obviously listening in on. Not ONE person pipes up to tell this man to stop being so fucking weird with someone who's obviously uncomfortable and ALONE, that you just DONT stare and you don't ask (that thing people are taught as CHILDREN) or to drop it. I stopped answering him after the first time he pointed them out - which doesn't stop him monologuing about how he "finds human psychology fascinating" and fishing for details. Still with a smile and excited energy in his voice, mind you. I give him his order and don't say goodbye, and begin serving other customers, but he's STILL trying to hang around the counter and continue talking AS I'M TRYING TO GET THROUGH THE QUEUE OF PEOPLE. Dude...?! Get the fuck away from me and just let me do my job?

Anyway, how has everyone else's day at work been so far? 😐

No I have not brushed that shit in two days.

In three months I'll be 21. I don't know where the year has gone, but it's bled away from me and nothing has happened. Nothing happened last year or the year before that other than a few mental health episodes and developing an alcohol problem (of which I'm five weeks sober). I'm 20 and I've never had a real friend, I'm 20 and I've never even kissed anyone or held hands. Soon I will be 21 and at the same point and I'm freaking the fuck out. I'm so fucking pathetic, awkward and sad, having no experience of anything at this age... And it's just going to get worse... I don't know how to make friends and I'm too afraid to make them. I just assume nobody wants to talk to me, wants to hear from me... I'm too scared to make the first move, even if it's just to say hello. I think about it, torment myself over it and stay silent because I don't want to be weird, annoying or even more pitiable than I already am. I'm even scared of ACTUALLY forming connections with people, I know deep down I'd never respond to a DM or I'd make up an excuse to not be invited somewhere (not that either ever happen to me) because just the thought of having... Someone else there, or maybe an obligation fills me with sheer dread and anxiety, I feel exhausted and drained just by the prospect of having a conversation and I don't know what it is. I desperately want friendship, someone I can love, and yet I'm terrified of anything and everything socially - things I really shouldn't be terrified of, and will just bolt like a frightened animal, only to feel even more ashamed of myself. I don't know why I'm like this or what I'm scared of.

Low-key such a truecel loser. I know I'm never gonna put myself out there so every year will be the same. Seriously, how can you be 21 and never had a real friend or any literally any form of intimacy with another person?

What a jumpscare - I've not had an episode in two years and genuinely forgot about this shit until like, yesterday.

I don't even have the brain power to type up some long rant. I'm three weeks sober after a year and a half of getting super drunk most days, not of my own free will (some weird physical twinges spooked me), and I'm in genuine fucking agony, I'm so miserable, I've lost the only thing I've ever had. I don't know why I have to drag myself through every week. My job isn't even hard, I barely work full time most weeks and I am still struggling so hard, most days my walk home which should be an hour and a half takes like, two and a half or three because I just sit down and can't get myself to move. Every noise at home makes me want to vomit or punch holes in my walls it's so overstimulating. Nothing has happened in my life at all for years except the brief reprieve of being a functional alcoholic, which I've probably already fucked my brain up with completely. I could have been dead and I wouldn't have missed out on a damn thing - I'm never gonna have a friend, let alone a girlfriend and I don't even know if I should, I would just drag everyone down with me. I'm never gonna have a life I am happy and comfortable in, I'm never gonna be alright. I'm in so much pain. I'm 20, and I've felt this way, just getting worse and worse since I was like, 11. Every day. It's not going away, it's not gonna get better, and the thought of having to spend another ten hours at work tomorrow makes my soul want to thrash desperately but not even having the energy to imagine lashing out in some way.

I don't know why I hate working so much. When I was like, 18, I remember getting called in because I thought I was off that day, and I just hung up the phone, threw it at my wall and just screamed and screamed until I couldn't physically scream anymore, until my throat was raw and I lost my voice. I couldn't stop sobbing after I got dressed. It's not even a hard job, it's not even that busy, and yet every time I hear a customer walk through the door I feel like plastering my fucking scalp to the ceiling. I'm half convinced the twinges that made me go sober cold-turkey were just a physical symptom of how much I fucking hate going to work. It doesn't matter what job it is, I like my coworkers and again, it's a piece of piss.... But I had these horrible stomach pains, twinges in my side and every time I ate it would make this feeling of acid and cramps and bloating so much worse, like I'd really fucked myself up somehow. I had two days off and it mysteriously vanished, and yet the moment I walked into the back room again, those stomach/side pains started up again in spades, like clockwork. But all I do is work because my mum would lose my shit with me if I didn't do anything. Shit, she's the only reason I have this job, because she made me apply for it. But I never really spend my money. I have £12,000 just in my savings account because I don't ever spend my money aside from bills and beer (which I obviously don't drink now except for the 0% shite). I could just quit and still pay her that £80 a week for a long time, so she'd have no right to complain at me.

Ever since I stopped drinking I've stopped having the desire to even leave the house. I've stopped going on my little hikes or playing videogames, hurting myself in some way, watching anything or doing literally ANYTHING that wasn't rotting in the attic of my mum's house, because alcohol was basically the only thing getting me to do any of them. I've not been to my spot in the woodlands since the last night I got drunk.

Like, what do I even do? I'm not getting therapy because I don't want to talk about anything like that. Besides, why would I pay for someone to tell me shit I already know and make me do self-help exercises they googled? Do I low-key just holiday to Amsterdam, smoke as much pot there as I can, go to the red light district to finally lose my V-card and feel awful about it afterwards and then just die?

I'm just an autistic, chud, drunk dyke on a hike. But a lot of the time instead of stewing in my own alcoholism out here, I just wish I had someone to show these little spots I love. Someone to share the quietness with. All jokes aside... I just crave what everyone else takes for granted more than I crave the next day I can drink myself stupid and simply ignore that little ache on the right of my abdomen when I do. I'm twenty and I have never had any friends. I've never been invited out, I've never had anyone excited or happy to see me. The closest thing to a friendship I truly have are my cats, or the Harvestmen in the woods that mistake my hair for tree bark and end up climbing on my face (I am not bothered by them, I just brush them off, but do not Google if you have arachnophobia). I feel like such a loser saying this without a connection to my name, but I just desperately want to love someone. I want to make someone feel beautiful, safe, happy. There's this little public garden hidden away that I know of, with a stone, sheltered seating area, and sometimes when I sit there alone looking out at the plants, I ache to have someone to rest their head on my shoulder, to just talk about things completely mundane. I'd love to hear the sound of her reading in an evening, surprise her with her favourite snacks when she's had a rough day. To fall asleep together on the train home, warm her hands in mine, complain about her taking my jackets or braiding my hair, grumbling about it being "too girly" even though I love it because *she* did it.... I want to send her stupid links to things I see on Tiktok I know she would like. I want to make her feel safe and adored and beautiful - to be on my knees for her, swallowing every little sound and twitch... It's so basic for everyone else, yet mythical to me.

But I have never even held hands with another human being. Even the odd accidental contact feels overwhelming, electric and it will linger for minutes on my skin, is twitch away from every little thing and not be able to reciprocate. I'm terrified of forming connections with people that I go out of my way to be as isolated and alone as I can. I'm a miserable, awkward mess of a person and I'm more an empty shell of misery clinging onto a sense of truly being *someone* than I am a person, and I don't want to drag anyone else down with me. I don't want to be a project, I don't want to be a chore, and I know that anyone who gets close would have to put up with me. At best, I have the presence and personality of a co-worker you think is funny for the two hours you're occasionally on shift together, then never think about or speak to them otherwise. I ignore messages, even the thought of trying to date or meet someone makes me feel sick with paranoia and anxiety, I will always run away and I know it. I'm literally my own worst enemy. I desperately just want to love someone, and I desperately don't want it at the same time. I'm such a loser.

The aspie chud is drunk again, divas. At least the Harvestmen arachnids that occasionally try to crawl up my hair from the leaf litter want me.

20f and only recently (mostly) out, but fortunate enough to live in and have grown up in an incredibly rural area, lots of woodland, countryside, hills and peaks, and I try to get out in nature (sometimes with a few beers and a good book or some music) whenever I can. Hope you guys are enjoying your day.

I have grown up and live very rurally, a twenty second walk in any direction and I'm in the middle of woodland, fields and farmlands. I like to wander aimlessly in the woods, far away from any other person, have a 4-pack of beers, sit alone, get drunk and maybe read, listen to music or just appreciate the emptiness and the sounds of wildlife, the breeze through trees... Sometimes I spend days here alone. Normal 20 year-old woman activities.

And on this day, just an hour ago, I'm reading a book called 'The Reunion', and I feel a tickle at my nose. I'm around 7 UK units in so I'm a little buzzed, and I assume it's just my hair. I have very naturally thick, long, curly blonde hair, maybe over 3.5 feet long, it's always let down so it gets in my face a lot. Then a few minutes later I feel that tickle a little further up my head and I finally look and pay attention - it's a fucking massive harvestman crawling up my face.

This game has had me drawing for the first time since my mid teens. I don't have a stylus so I've been just using my thumb on the original switch screen, so they're not the best, but I love them. Number three WAS meant to be Mr. X, but I'm not sure it looks too much like him, lol.

I was just walking home after a 13 hour shift at work, headphones in, and out of nowhere these two women quickly rushed my way from across the path grinning. At first I couldn't hear them, but when I took my headphones out they were talking about my hair - circling around me to get a better look, calling it a "like a cape" and "beautiful" and saying how they wish theirs was that long or naturally blonde (My hair is probably the only part of me that I like. It reaches below my ass, I think it's 3.5 feet long? and it's so thick I have to brush it in two halves, and if I took care of it properly it would be curly as opposed to frizzy and wavy) - but I still kind of can't believe it. It's given me an unbelievable confidence boost. They were sweethearts and it's so small but it means so much to me.

Thank you strangers. I want to cry.

I genuinely don't believe there is any such thing as an ugly woman. There are countless men who want to reinforce these unrealistic, borderline disturbing beauty standards but... Girls, it's all of bunch of shit. I couldn't care less about body hair, trimmed, shaved, full bushy, hair is totally NORMAL, EVERY woman has body hair - And however it is allowed to grow I couldn't care less. And let's be real, body hair is hot as fuck (treasure trails are fucking sexy let's be so for real). The same with stretch marks, I don't give a FUCK about them, honestly m cute and sexy. Stretch marks on the hips? Ungh...... Bad teeth, bushy eyebrows? Who gives a FUCK?!?! Humanity is much more varied than fake pornstars, and I can guarantee that even if these so-called "flaws" were repulsive (they're absolutely not), YOU are so much more than superficial shit. Bushy, overgrown eyebrows are NOT a turn-off! For all those men that glaze the Spartans and Roman empire? Remember that those civilisations loved overgrown eyebrows! You're gorgeous in the eyes of the ancients that men look up to! And WEIGHT, that's another thing - NOBODY SHOULD CARE IF YOU'RE FUCKING CHUBBY, soft, skinny, lean, muscular, fat?! WHO CARES?! You're still so fucking sexy and cute. And scars? I have PLENTY, they don't make you ugly at all - same for birth marks, acne, blemishes - ANYTHING. There is nothing disgusting about normal aspects of your body or history.

Honest to God, don't let moids and these stupid beauty standards make you feel like shit. Most of us don't care! The utter rejection of bodily features that are completely natural, gorgeous and un-problematic is so fucking strange. No woman is ugly, you're all gorgeous and deserving of love.

Girls, if you don't have a cat and you are financially capable and able to look after one, get yourselves a cat. Xenophilius is better than any other man who's ever been in my life. If you do have cats, please put them in the comments, I'm in the mood to see y'all's pets

Funny enough, that day, the 2nd of January, 2025 is so nostalgic to me. It's a strangely positive memory. January and February of last year, coming home after a long day of work, getting drunk alone in my room and playing Silent Hill 2 aimlessly, even when I was self-harming most nights I miss it. I think I was the most happy and content there. I can't even bring myself to play that game without sobbing anymore. I tried a few nights ago with some beers and I couldn't, it hurts, and it's just a game but it's the closest thing to a friend and comfort to disappear into. Honestly girls, I'm drinking more. I'm like, 5'4 and I don't eat much most days, and I'm still slamming 12 UK units in an evening on a practically empty stomach and I just can't sleep - I know that the alcohol is causing my insomnia. It's 4:30AM and I have work in a few hours, and I know I'm not going to nod off. I don't really know what to do anymore. I'm never going to be happy - which is fine, I suppose.

I've never had any friends, I was horribly bullied growing up. In my first primary school, it was so bad that I remember being followed into the girls' bathroom by a group of boys and battered. There was one boy, Leo, who used to strangle me, stamp on my back until his shoe prints were bruised into me. Headbutt, punch, kick, throw me to the ground, smack my head into things and countless others every day. It was so bad that when I was 7-8 I had fallen so far behind academically I couldn't tell my B's and D's apart. And instead of anybody helping me, I was ignored or even picked on by my teachers for it, calling me 'Adigail'. When I moved primary schools, academically I got back on track and excelled over my peers, it wasn't that I was thick at all, just struggling. But even so, I was still awfully lonely. I used to watch the kids on the playground have the most basic connections and wondering why I couldn't just have it. Why even being barely included in a game that would fall apart when I joined would be something I had to fight tooth and nail for. The bullying didn't really stop, I had most of my bottom teeth headbutted out, even to this day, between my lower canines all of those teeth are shattered in half down to the nerves because of that - and I used to get teased and wound up until I was so frustrated I would cry. I had another teacher pick on me at that second primary school. I remember we had a special event where we would just play games all afternoon, and she purposefully excluded me for no reason, making me go to the back of the queue and constantly give up my turns until I just wasn't playing at all. When I started saying no, that I wanted a go, I was punished for it, I even heard her say "she might be sulking, but she's learning". Another time she pulled me up Infront of the whole class, with the classroom door open at the end of the day so the parents outside could see and hear too, and made the entire end-of-day lesson activity stop so she could berate me for work that I didn't even do wrong - just didn't understand. Honestly, highschool was simply a lot of loneliness and isolation. The friendship group I did have would talk about what they did over the weekend Infront of me, and never invite me - when I tried they would say they'd see about a next time that never came. Nobody texted, asked for my number, when I tried to reach out nobody would say anything back, or it simply became exhausting for me to always have to be the first one to text. Watching people have active snapchats when mine was dead - those same friends only ever adding me (and other randos) to lively groupchats as jokes when the groups had died. When I started disappearing during lunch and spending all break in the girls' bathroom during my GCSEs, nobody mentioned or noticed. Nobody reached out in the summer. The few highschool friends that went to my college never tried to find me, never invited me anywhere between lessons, never texted. They all kept to themselves and I became an outsider, too exhausted to always have to make the effort.

(Buckle up for my mother)

And ever since I've been alone. I've struggled with my mental health so severely for so long that I have been actively suicidal since I was 12. I'm 20 now and nothing has changed. I went from being so depressed I could move my head off of my desk, so overwhelmed with misery when I was around 15 that I couldn't cry, becoming... Nothing almost overnight, and that's where I stayed for years, and have stayed. The only thing to break up the constant disassociation and complete lack of any emotion was the 2nd of January, and a few moments of fluke, some anxiety driven by OCD so severe I couldn't eat, and could get half a glass of water down without nearly vomiting. As a kid when I was struggling and in my teens, I only had my mum to lean on, and she just used to snap at me and yell. She was confrontational and nasty, to say the least. I used to move my chair to the corner of my room and hide between the wall and the door, and for some reason that enclosed space used to piss her off and she'd snap at me and move it back. She never let me take naps. Whenever I was visibly upset she used to get in my face and fucking snap at me. Whenever I tried to reach out for comfort in moments I was panicking due to my OCD, she'd just yell "well if it's that bad then go to the fucking doctors then!" In such a way that made me terrified, as a child, to go. When I was 14 I had a panic attack in my room so severe I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, I was crumpled on the floor and couldn't move - my last coherent thought, even though at this point I'd become terrified of the thought of my mum seeing me cry or unwell, was that I didn't want to be alone. I heard her stomp up the stairs, swing my door open and shout "well what the FUCK is up with you, then?", I don't remember most of that incident except her trying to drag me up, annoyed that I was on the ground, before yelling "fine, fucking fine then!" And slamming my bedroom door behind her and stomping back downstairs. When she got her new boyfriend I was around 12. I was a kid, and an autistic one at that and for a variety of reasons just avoided seeing him much. And my mum used to make me pass him in the mornings in a way that used to make me really uncomfortable, when I hadn't brushed my hair in days and looked like pure shit, awkwardly having to pass on the corridor before he left to go to his mother's house. I tried mentioning one morning "I'm glad you're happy, but don't put me into all of this just yet", worded in the clumsy way of a child - and she stopped brushing my hair, shoved me out of the front door and slammed it behind her. Then, despite the fact I always came home alone, she waited for me outside of school, followed me and my friend to a shop and when he left, she just bollocked me in public all the way home. I tried reaching out to my grandmother even though I was terrified a year later, telling her how I felt sad every day, when I didn't I felt nothing, and even though she heard, even though I kept trying to repeat myself and explain, she just blanked me out, literally changing the subject without acknowledging a word - except for telling my mum that I told my nana that she shouts at me, which she denied. There was that time that, because I apparently had an attitude problem and I think I was making my mum's boyfriend uncomfortable, she and my nans dragged me out of school in the middle of the day, yelled at me In the car antop of eachother (though I don't remember what about) and drove me, unexpectedly, to the doctor's. When they got inside, they switched up completely, acting concerned and making up self-harm issues I didn't have at the time. Obviously nothing came of it and that event was clearly a punishment. They have never asked me anything before or since. Ironically I later developed self harm issues and a restrictive eating disorder, and now I'm probably an alcoholic as I drink most nights every week, alone. I could tell countless stories about this portion of my life but you get the point.

That was the first time I ever went to a doctor, if unwillingly and based upon a lie, about anything, and I've never been to a medical setting since outside of a dentist to get my fucked teeth kind of fixed. I've never talked to a therapist, doctor, councillor, taken any kind of medication and I don't want to. I've just bottled it up for nearly a decade and carried on, because what else can you do?

Like, I'm ugly. I'm never going to have a girlfriend, that's for damn sure (and you know your social development is stunted when it takes playing a videogame at 19 years old to realise that you're gay). I desperately want connection but I can't make it, even if I didn't already know the outcome. I remember vividly that I was so ugly in highschool that the boys used to try to convince me that their "friend" who definitely existed totally had a thing for me, thought I was hot or wanted to ask me out... If I were to ever get DMs I would ignore them because the thought of being texted fills me with anxiety and nausea. I've never had someone hold my hand, or hug me or want to see me. I don't wanna die a lame virgin but I'm terrified of having sex. I don't care about myself or my ego In that situation, I just don't want it to be a bad experience for the other person and I know it would be. At the very least, disappointing and not worth the pity wasted on fucking me. Even through all the shit everyone in my life has put me through, I still want someone to love, I still want someone I can make laugh, make their day a little better, make them feel good and beautiful and wanted.

Fuck my autistic life. Stuck in a dead-end job, no drivers licence, no aspirations or plans except "get drunk this evening". I can't even make myself want anything out of my life if I tried. I try thinking of a hobby or job and even if it sounds okay, I can't make myself want it. I'm stuck, not just out of willpower but because I literally lack the ability to want. I don't know what life is outside of my job. Nothing can fix the fact that I just can't make myself care. Nothing is enjoyable to me whatsoever. It's not that I'm violently depressed and sad, there's just nothing. A comfortable nothing that no amount of determination or self help will fix. Low-key chud-maxxing rn.

I've never been asked out, never been on a date, I don't really have friends either and never have. And it shouldn't be something I even think about as a twenty year-old, but in highschool I used to constantly get put in awkward situations by the boys in my class. I can't quite articulate it, but putting me on the spot pretending to talk like friends or asking me benign questions because it would make me kind of uncomfortable and they thought my responses were funny, I guess. Too autistic to respond in a way that wasn't earnest and hilarious but not autistic enough to know exactly what they were doing and why.

​

Anyway, when I was 15-16, the boys in my class started to tell me that their "friend" thought that I was hot, fit, had a crush on me or wanted to ask me out. Obviously the friend never existed, joke being that I was and am so ugly and undesirable in personality that NO fucker wants me. And it happened quite a few times - and even though at the time even I thought that it was hilarious, I keep debating perhaps downloading a dating app (even though I honestly need to get my shit together first), and I just have that experience of being picked on in the back of my mind. Which is so stupid and I KNOW it was never anything that deep - and I'm GAY, I don't even care about men whatsoever, but I'm terrified of some arbitrary "bad thing" coming from trying to put myself out there.

​

I don't know if it's the Aspergers or my horrible general experiences socially, but even the idea of forming connections i desperately want seems daunting and puts me in this awful state of anxiety - like I'm doing something wrong or that I'm just making a knob out of myself. I desperately want someone to text, but the idea of someone ACTUALLY texting me makes me feel sick, and I know i'd never reach out. Like - i KNOW it's not that deep but I'm kind of trapped.