u/Still_Angsty

A few years ago I withheld a truth from her for months until she found out. It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever done. I thought it was the right thing to do but it wasn’t. Or maybe I was just a coward. She somehow forgave me. Was nothing but the sweetest to me. She honestly saved my life a little this past year. I don’t know if she knows she did because I never let on that I was struggling so much. But recently, something changed, and I’m not exactly sure why. She just suddenly went extremely distant and cancelled all our plans before moving away. I have a few theories, but ultimately I always felt like her friendship to me was undeserved. For more reasons than I’m able to write about for fear that she could somehow see this. If any other friend got distant like that I think I’d feel kind of hurt, but it’s just impossible with her, cause any way she could possibly feel about me is completely fair and valid. It’s also genuinely possible that none of it was personal but that I just thought we were a little closer than we were. Which is totally fair on her end as well. So I’m feeling sad because I really love her still and I’ll just always regret for my whole life what I did wrong in that friendship. But also in a fucked up way I feel this sense like finally the thing that I deserved has happened to me. Like my friendship with her always felt like this happy mirage that just couldn’t be true, you can’t fuck that badly and just stuffer no consequences. There are a lot of details I’m leaving out that explain better why this is the way it is. I just needed to get it off my chest somewhere.

I cannot escape. For a year and a half now. I’ll start to feel a little better, taking it easy jsut resting on the couch. So then when I’m stable I try to expand. Just a tiny bit. Like, I’m gonna clean my room for 15 minutes. Or I’m gonna roll down to the ocean on my electric wheelchair. Or I’m gonna talk to a friend today. And the next day, bam. It’s like I’ve been hit in the head again. Just the most heavy painful disgusting feeling in my head like I cannot tolerate any thinking or sensory input. Headache and nausea and dizziness and breathlessness and feeling like I have a fever almost. It feels exactly how it felt the days after the initial hit. And then I have to treat it exactly like a new concussion. Literally bed rest and not doing anything to make it worse until the flare ends. It’s horrible.

The biggest triggers are exercise and mental effort. That’s why I have the wheelchair. I’ve tried graded exercise and it just made me deteriorate. If I increase, and then crash, and then increase more, the next crash will just be even worse, not better. Even if I just do the same exercise over and over with it increasing, I will continue to crash every time as if I’ve been re-concussed. It just never acclimates. It’s like I’m living in Groundhog Day. How is it that I got hit when I was 21 and now I’m 23 and in bed once again feeling like I just got hit yesterday because I dared to put some boxes on some shelves and played a crossword puzzle.

I swear to god this fucking drug. They want me to kill myself with it just to prove that is doesn’t work. I’ve had an interactive migraine for a year and a half and live lost my whole life I live on a couch it’s literally over for me. But they won’t give me any goddamn drugs besides triptans which only work for a very specific and rare type of flare up in my condition, and amitriptyline, which made me SO sick and there was just no way I was doing that to myself for two weeks because I need to be able to feed myself and it made me sick enough that I couldn’t. One doctor who I payed $300 to see promised that he knew how to get me on nurtec, sends it in, I get a denial letter, and when I message his office they say “we cannot help with insurance appeals. We do not do them.” I’m bout to give up I just can’t anymore

Does anyone know of a way to deal with this?

I’ve heard the definition of bisexuality thrown around many times, so I know, that attraction doesn’t come in equal measure for all genders, and all that. I seem to have very severe cycles of being super into women and then not in the least at all. When I’m in the part where I’m not, I hate it. I feel like I’ve lost something important to me. Like something has died. It causes me emotional distress. I desperately miss my sapphic activities but they just do nothing for me. I end up talking to men cause that’s who I feel attracted to but it doesn’t fulfill me the same way. Life just feels so colorless when I’m not attracted to women. I hate it and idk what to do about it.

Well you shouldn’t be, cause it could be your superpower!

So here’s a long shot. I had to steel myself to write this but I figured ah, fuck it. I have an embarrassing secret. I have a thing for men with allergies 🫣 specifically if it makes you sneeze and bothers your nose a lot. I know it’s weird! But I’ve just always been this way. I really enjoy worrying over someone. You can just vent to me about how much your allergies are annoying you! I will feel genuinely bad for you, but also get rlly flustered (and probably ask for details >.<). I know a lot of people end up feeling self conscious if they have really persistent allergies, and it makes me sad because little do they know someone could be adoring them for it and giving them attention for it 🥺 To know more about my interest, and perhaps tell me some of yours, we can chat ~

A bit more about me: I’m a size M, white, with short loose brown curls. A bit of a California wild child. I have been known to walk down the street singing out loud to myself, sit on the ground to read no matter where I am, and generally be very animated about the things and people that I love. I enjoy YouTube video essays and comedy shows, books, writing amateur poetry, and daydreaming about all the craft projects that I’ll (eventually! I swear!) make. I do suffer migraines, which can sometimes mean I’m not up for extensive chatting on some days. If there are any men with sneezy allergies who find it sexy when women have headaches we’d truly be a match made in heaven XD

If you are interested in my somewhat unconventional proposal and also think we might just vibe, hmu :) (edit: I have to sleep now but I will answer more chats in 10 hours when I wake up!)

P.S. bonus points if you also have glasses, I’ll seriously be all over you >~<

So like I enjoy sex with women but I’m not sure I’m romantically or sexually attracted to them. What confuses me is that if I say this, queer people will suggest that I have internalized homophobia (I’ve wished I was a lesbian my whole life and live in a town so lgbtq+ accepting I didn’t even know homophobia existed when I was young so I doubt it), or suggest that I’m confused because straight women don’t like having sex or being in relationships with other women.

But yet, some aroace people have and desire sex. And relationships. And in fact, many actively speak out about how a qpr can include sex and how aroace people can still want and enjoy sex and etc etc and it is a big no no to inherently conflate being aromantic and asexual with never having sex or romance. I mean my ex gf was literally a hyper sexual asexual who for several months wanted sex nearly every day despite feeling no sexual attraction.

How come, aroace people, in the absence of attraction, are still understood by the general “correct” narrative to sometimes be able to enjoy sexual or romantic acts, depending on the individual, but then if a girl says she enjoys sex and romance with a woman in the absence of attraction, it is seen as “incorrect.”

I’m attracted to men like a straight woman and I’m aroace towards women. But just like how some (not most, but some) aroace people still enjoy sex and romantic acts despite the lack of attraction, so do I.

Like men on their own? Don’t work me up that much. Ever. But sometimes I’ll be on Instagram or whatever and some clip from a show where two guys kissing for the first time plays. And it literally puts a full body, physical thrill through me. Completely involuntary. I’m just instantly insanely tuned on. Like my whole body just electric. Nothing else does that to me. Nothing else can make my body just automatically react like that. Especially not F/F kisses. Those make me feel tension and but it’s not like this jolt of electricity. It’s more like glee or happiness while nobly tinted on vs the absolute lighting of my body.

This is not me just noticing this. I’ve been aware of this for 10ish years. It was what originally kept me from coming out as bisexual because my physical reaction to men kissing was just such a crazy horny gut punch. And now I still doubt my bisexuality every time I see a clip like that or a show like that and it knocks me out. And yes I’ve heard of split attraction and I’ve heard that bisexuality doesn’t have to be a 50/50 split. But I fear that if my innate involuntary response is so different that it could mean something. (And no it’s not a gender thing I don’t wish to be either of them I just yearn for the cuck chair).

Fireworks started over my house. I used to love fireworks. Last year, I was sicker, and I cried in my bed until 3am, jumping at each one, praying and praying for them to stop. But this year, I’m just a little better. And I couldn’t help it. The couch I spend my days reclined on is right next to the front door. Barely thinking, I stepped outside. Sank to the ground on the sidewalk and watched, enthralled. Earplugs in, hands on my hands ears. Something like 15 people who’d been setting them off were pouring down the street all around me, yelling, trying to escape before the cops showed up. And that enthralled me too. Their life. Their exclamations of awe at the show, which I shared too, but could not voice. Each explosion hurt my head, sent an alarming jolt through my body, but I couldn’t pull myself away.

Then it ended. My heart rate was 130 sitting there. I was shaking, sweating like crazy. Now I’m inside and feel the buzz just sitting in me. My body doesn’t know how to flush out all those sparkles. That feeling used to be nice but now it feels like an omen of death. Like someone’s punched me in the skull. What will it mean for me tomorrow? This body is no longer made for fire, or thrill. But I keep setting it ablaze anyways. And I try not to. And I try to be good. But sometimes, and more often lately, the base of my nature gets the best of me. And I suffer. And oh how I have tried to change who I am. I feel like a doll made of cross reactive polymers. The one they made my head out of melts the one they used for my body. I am curious if thrill seekers with ME ever find a way to exist that isn’t a) constantly harming yourself even in the smallest pursuits of thrill, or b) chronic suicidality as you abstain.

(I do not condone illegal firework usage and I do not celebrate anything about this holiday, but if they are there, my monkey brain would like to see them)

The despair always feels more real. The hope feels like “copium” as the kids say. But sometimes I’m huffing that stuff and covering my ears and singing “lalalalala” at all the people who deny any hope of recovery. I will reach some deep zen and something within me will flip and I’ll be healed. I’ll catch a cold or get a vaccine abd spontaneously recover. I’ll massage my neck and something will slip back into place and I’ll be healed. I’ll try another one of hundreds of pill and that will be the one. I’ll just slowly regain vitality until I’m not sick anymore.

But then it comes crashing down. And I see my life. And I think about the future. And no matter how I try I see only darkness. There has always been a deep pessimist within me. I am pessimistic as a protective mechanism. I cannot tolerate the feeling of hoping for something and having it not come to fruition. It makes me feel a feeling that is sort of like embarrassment only 100x worse. It is the deep skeptic in me. I contain no amount of magical thinking and every time in my life I have permitted myself even a sliver of optimism I have been thoroughly smited and punished for it by the universe. There is only so much that you can be beat down before you learn.

I don’t talk about this to my doctor. I tell them that I find it hard to be stuck at home, and stressful to be so sick. But I present myself as entirely on top of myself, well adjusted, giving it her all, making the best of a shitty situation.

I am unequivocally NOT making the best of this shitty situation. I live in filth. I hate myself. My fear that there is secret mold in my house means that feel dirty and unsafe and disgusting no matter what. I do not shower. When I was very severe and crawling to the bathroom, I still washed down with disposable wipes every 2 days. Now that I’m mid-severe and able to shower without crashing (with rest), I only wash every 3 weeks. I buy things to help and then don’t bother to use them. I bought a pack of tshirts to use as pillowcases each day for suspected mite problems. But then instead I just started wearing them cause I ran out of shirts and can’t bring myself to do laundry. I hate myself. I hate myself for being so uncomfortable. I hate myself for not being able to organize myself and do what I need to do to help myself. I still haven’t started my SSDI application. I miss doctors appointments every months because I can’t get out of bed. Not cause I’m too weak, I get out of bed later, it’s just cause I stay up every night on Reddit and I can’t get up in time. I hate myself for thinking there’s mold and I hate myself for being too lazy to actually try to figure out if it’s there or not. Part of me doesn’t want to be proven right.

I never feel like sleeping. I stay awake till I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. I spent a year eating incredibly clean but then I trained myself to tolerate sugar again and now I feel too shit to make the healthier food every day. I don’t clean there is grime everywhere. There is mold all over the living room window but in so tired of trying to get my family to care and have them tell me I’m crazy. My eye is bright red and the doc said it needs eyedrios and hot compress and wash every day but fuck if I’m gonna do that every day. I stopped taking half my vitamins cause I just can’t handle remembering to take them. I feel perpetually disgusting, like every breath I breathe only poisons me more a makes me sicker. I don’t change my sheets enough. I’m probably allergic to dust mites but I didn’t do it yesterday Ave now it’s 9am and I haven’t slept so I’ll just have to sleep on it again. I crashed for a week when I tried to walk outside for 2 minutes. My nose is dry and my eyes sting. I cheat my low histamine diet every day. Most nights I have to hurt my brain with media to keep from wanting to off myself too passionately. There are a thousand possible treatments and causes but because they overwhelm my to sort and think through, I just do nothing.

I get extremely upset over things that happened years ago when I was healthy because my brain just decides to dig them to like there’s new and torture me just to keep me occupied.

I hate my stupid head stuck on fire in this stupid house that I hate that used to be my safe place ex but is now my prison that eats me alive. I often fantasize about running out of my house and just running and running and running until I collapse and then just being totally fucked.

Is there anyone else here who is disabled and stuck at home due to physical health problems? I know a lot of times, there is reason why those of us who go online are here instead of out in the world, and that’s mine! I always dream about connecting with someone who is in a similar position, I think we could understand each other and maybe provide some mutual comfort and distraction ❤️ I used to be a bit of a social butterfly so living like this has been a big adjustment for me. 21-35 age range is who I’m most comfortable with ^^

I’m open to friendship or nsfw stuff (I’m bisexual and interested in everyone :). Some of my interests include comedy networks and shows like dropout, smosh, SNL, and taskmaster. I like reading (I was more avid before I was ill), writing, birbs, and youtube video deep dives on social topics or old internet lore. I miss concerts and music and stage acting, which I used to do a lot. I love people who enjoy talking passionately about their interests and life experiences, I just rlly like people who are earnest and in unabashed about what they love. I’m very adhd so if you are neurodivergent we’ll probably be able to connect over that too! I’m kinda mushy, I like romcoms, and caretaking. I like soft things, and soft people :3

When I click “change that” it just leads me to a section in the settings with absolutely no option to turn it off. When I go to “pages visible” it only lists likes and following. Omg I hate this.

I’ve been horrifically ill, with no prospects in live, stuck at home too disabled and desolate to do anything. My prognosis is bad, my family is sick and unstable, I live the lowest life I’ve ever lived. I’m not a happy person. I couch rot cause it’s all I can medically do. I’m lonely cause I’m too weak and tired to handle seeing people. I’ve been forced to completely blunt my emotions because they cost too much energy.

But tonight. I don’t know what happened. I was sat here. I can smell the summer air through the open window. My family member is playing music softly in the other room. I felt calm in my body. One of the many potential treatments for my disease flicked past my brain, and something about all that combined, provided one singular second of true, happy, peace. A feeling like time could keep moving without hurting me. I feeling like for that one second I had no pain and no worries. I have genuinely not felt that for over year. Probably years. It was like taking one glorious breath after an eternity of struggling for air. Everything magically in place and normal, for that breath. True calm without any underlying fear or doubt or worry or numbness.

I’m almost in shock. I’ve been silently weeping since it happened. I’m human. I’m real. I’m not a machine that was built only to suffer. I can honestly hardly believe it but I know what I felt. Idk how long the memory will last but I’m grateful for it right now. It felt like a miracle.

I’ve been obsessed with XLOV for awhile now but I’ve never stanned any other groups, besides 2NE1 all the way back in elementary school like 13 years ago (who I do still love). The thing is, I don’t tend to be into very many things at once, like I only watch 1 or 2 new tv shows a year, I usually only discover 2 or 3 new musical artists a year. So I’m just not really looking for other groups to be a fan of because keeping up with everything XLOV is already a little overwhelming. But it makes me feel like a poser, and I’ve had interactions online where people seem sort of put off or upset when I answer that I only really know XLOV. So I just appreciate from the sidelines and don’t post about them but it’s making me sad because I rlly love them and want to talk abt it :(

Like, I’m about to lose out on money because I’m going to miss a doctors appointment today. The reason I will be missing it is because it is noon and I haven’t slept at all and I’m sick and when I don’t sleep I can’t do that to my body. The reason I haven’t slept is because I’m overheated, having a horrendous full body skin reaction, and extremely dehydrated from whatever I’m having the allergic reaction to, but also peeing every 20 minutes. So yeah not great conditions for sleep. But this whole time I’ve been thinking “what a failure, you’re letting your fucked up brian ruin things again, your mind is just so broken you can’t do anything, you’re letting your mental illness control you”

But like…am I?? If it really mental illness to not be wiling to drag a very sick body across town and to a doctors office with zero sleep?

I don’t even know anymore. All my failures, my sleeping in classes, dropping out of college, losing jobs, I have always classed as caused by mental illness, but…was it?? Is it mental illness to be unto overcome crushing physical and mental fatigue?

Losing the amount of money I have on these things feels like it can’t be explained by anything other than mental problems but I really don’t know where the mental problems e d and the physical ones begin.

Growing up has just felt like dying. Well now I’m 23 and very sick and disabled. Idk if that’s why I feel like this though cause I’ve felt this way even before I became so ill. I just feel like I was my most true self as a young child and each year has just been drifting further from myself and becoming less solid and less real and less here. Idk if it’s the internet addiction or small traumas all adding up or physical illness or mental illness or what. I really don’t feel real at all now. But I remember being real wayyyy back then. For awhile, I was, before I started to fade. But one thing about me is, that even as a young child, I could not envision a future for myself. When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up or told to imagine having a husband or a family one day, all I saw was static. So I think part of me sensed the fading was happening even if it hadn’t gone very far yet.

Hi all, I got two concussions last year and the second one left me quite disabled. However I never had any behavioral issues. It was all just fatigue, horrible head sensations and 24/7 pain, brian fog, autonomic issues, sensory sensitivity. If anything ! was less angry than I was before because I just didn't have the energy.
I still have all those problems, none of it has gone away, but now after a year of living cooked up unable to do anything (for awhile I was entirely bedridden couldn't even talk/walk/eat), 1 am suddenly so triggered and angry all the time. Never at people, and I have no violent instincts. But just at
*situations* Like unjust medical bills. Or our refrigerator breaking. Maybe frustrated is a better word. It makes me want to shout, and scream, and thrash around. I never would, instead | just sit there and chant over and over that I wish I was dead and then sob and blow money on DoorDash that I don't eat and make lots of Reddit posts about random crap. Or if I'm around people I just bottle it up completely.

I remember when I was a kid I was a little like this. I remember one time at age 12 I wailed on the couch for an hour because I came home to discover that someone had drank my chocolate milk that I'd bought specifically to get me through my homework. So like I've definitely never been a chill person. But this feels so much worse. Because I'm still sick, and my body has no energy to get the anger out. I can't run around the block, and can't go into the garage and sing as loud as possible. I can't throw fits like when I was a kid. It's the most horrible feeling in the world and I've never had it this badly even when I was a kid. It makes me want to stop existing, I just can't stand it. Anything but this.

Some context for this is that my friend is trans (so growing up we were both girls) and identified as a gay man for several years before this. So needless to say it caught me by immense surprise.

This is someone who I have long considered the platonic love of my life. We have genuinely been best friends since we were three. They are, to me, my soul sibling. The idea of kissing them, or having sex with them, makes me nearly gag. It’s not because of my sexuality, I am bi/pan. But it just feels so viscerally wrong, like doing that with your sibling, or your child. I always thought that our bond was deeper than that. They were my safe person. The one person I could be close with without ever fearing romantic feelings developing. Now without that safety I have no one like that in my life. I feel like part of me has died. Like I’ve been living a lie. When he confessed, he told me that he’d felt this way for \*years.\* Since \*high school.\* I can’t handle it. I wish I loved him back. I love him so much and I’m both angry at him for feeling it and angry at myself for not feeling it back. This legit feels like having your sibling tell you they are romantically in love with you. Your sibling who you are incredibly emotionally close with, whom you have told so many personal details or your romantic life to. No matter how I try I just cannot bring myself to understand how it is even possible for him to feel that way.

It makes me feel like, he doesn’t really now me. All this time I thought he knew me on this deeper level but he just saw me as someone to potentially make him feel good. I know I’m being irrational. I \*know.\* I don’t need to be told that these thoughts are cruel, and unsympathetic, and that people cannot help who they love. That he is suffering far more than I am. I know. I would never say any of that to him. I was very nice. I said I didn’t feel the same, I apologized, he said it was okay, and that he still wanted to be friends. But I feel like I’ve lost him. He feels like a stranger now. I still show up for him but I feel different, like I’m putting on an act. I don’t feel comfortable talking about my sexuality anymore, or being physically close like we used to (he is the only friend I have EVER felt comfortable having any sort of physical affection with).

I don’t understand what went wrong. I don’t understand why I can’t want him the way he wants me to and I also don’t understand how he could possibly love me that way. I’ve been in love with friends before, I understand the feeling. But this is different. I’ve never known life without this person. They don’t feel just like a “friend.” They are family in the deepest sense. I just feel so icked out and so guilty, and I don’t know how to ever feel okay over it.

Tl;dr, my best friend of 20 years confessed he is in love with me, and I cannot look at him the same because I always saw him like a sibling, and am seeking advice on how to emotionally handle it.

It’s me, I’m the useless one. It’s so freaking stupid. I love them more than anyone. They’ve been my Person since we were four. It would so magic, so poetic, to love them like that. But I don’t. I never have. In fact, they are, and I mean this literally, the *only* friend I have ever had who I did not ever think of romantically. That is what I liked about our friendship. It was the only simple thing in my life. It was the only touch I could ever have without wishing for more. It was the only guaranteed stable through line in my life.

It would be a revelation, to love them. But I don’t. I cannot. It would be like loving myself romantically. They are my soul sibling. It is a love that feels deeper than romance to me. When they confessed, I felt like I was talking to a stranger. I almost felt betrayed. Like how could you corrupt this thing we had that was more important than anything. How could you cheapen what we have with something so trite as romance. It’s not their fault, I don’t hold ill will over it. I just hate myself for not feeling the same. I’ve tried. I’ve tried over and over again. I can’t do it. It makes my skin crawl. Why does it make my skin crawl to think of being in romantic relations with my favorite person ever, who is gorgeous, and kind, and knows me better than anyone. Why can I access those feeling for literally everyone, even all my other childhood friends, but not them. It feels like such a cosmic cruelty. Me and this friend both fell profoundly chronically ill in our 20s, and sometimes I think it’s somehow my fault. Like if I had just loved them, like I was supposed to, it wouldn’t have happened. But I couldn’t. I just can’t stand it. Like I said, useless.