After years of grief, depression and isolation, how do I rebuild my life?
Hello everyone,
I initially created an account so I could tell my story and ask for advice, but in the end, I mostly spent time reading other people's stories, and after a lot of hesitation, here I am.
This is going to be a long post retracing about 15 years of my life, with several trigger warnings: pregnancy loss, suicide attempt, and self-harm. If you are sensitive to these subjects, you can stop here. If you decide to keep reading, thank you.
Well, I (35M) have a whole life to rebuild, and despite a lot of effort, I sometimes struggle to find motivation and feel like I am stagnating. I will start by giving a lot of context.
During my twenties, I was in a long relationship with my ex GF, Let’s call her Amy. We had been together for 7 years, with ups and downs, but overall it was a rather healthy relationship, with good communication, plans for the future, and we were slowly building a comfortable life together.
During our relationship, we went through two miscarriages at 26 and 30 weeks, two years apart. It truly broke us. Both times, our loved ones, family and friends, put pressure on me to hold on, to be strong, to be the one who stayed strong for both of us because Amy was so devastated. I felt like my pain was not being acknowledged, like I was not allowed to grieve as well. So I tried to hold on as much as possible and did my best, but there was a scar in my heart that has not fully healed yet and probably never will.
We managed to get back up the first time, but our relationship did not survive the second time. There was too much pain, and we were not in a state where we could climb back up together. Our relationship deteriorated, and we separated a few months later.
After the breakup, I completely broke down, and everything I had been trying to keep inside eventually exploded. I fell into a deep depression, and by chance, I ran into a girl from my past, someone I had met at work at the time. Let’s call her Katy. We stayed in touch, and I fell very quickly and madly in love with her, at least that is what I believed at the time. Today, I think I saw her as an escape from reality, and I entered the most toxic relationship I have ever had.
We started seeing each other, and even though I was a complete mess, things between us were going well. Until I learned that I was not the boyfriend, but just the affair partner. She did indeed have a boyfriend. I already had feelings for Katy, and I am ashamed to say it, and you can judge me, but I agreed to continue that relationship even though I knew it was morally wrong toward the other man.
After that, the relationship had nothing healthy left on either side. She often promised me that she was going to leave him, and every time I found the strength to distance myself from her because the situation was only dragging me down even more, she always found a way to pull me back in. Still, my behavior was pretty toxic too. I did not listen to my friends, who explained to me how unhealthy and toxic this dynamic was. I was clearly mentally unstable at the time. I saw her as a way to save myself, when I had not taken the time to grieve my two children, my relationship with Amy, and I was not seeing a psychologist or getting any real help.
The relationship with Katy ended when she finally left her boyfriend for a third man, leaving me even more destroyed. You can say I deserved it, and maybe part of me still thinks that too.
The depression that was already there intensified, and I could no longer concentrate at work. Since I was responsible for my own safety and the safety of other people, I decided to resign before there was an accident. I started having self-destructive behaviors, and self-harm became the only thing that managed to calm me down when my emotions were too strong. I pushed away the friends who tried to support me, and I refused all the help they tried to give me. I was the worst version of myself I have ever been, and I ended up hurting everyone around me. My friends distanced themselves and gave up. I truly cannot blame them, considering my behavior.
I should clarify here that I am not close to my family. I am on good terms with my sister and my parents, but much less with my brother. My sister has a serious illness, multiple sclerosis, and my brother has always been problematic, which creates a lot of stress and sadness for my parents. I have never, in my life, wanted to add my own suffering onto their shoulders, and that is still the case today, so I do not turn to my family during hard times.
After that, I found myself alone. I could spend weeks without speaking to another human being other than saying “hello, thank you, have a nice day” while grocery shopping. I kept sinking until I made a suicide attempt. I was seized by a moment of panic and went to see my neighbors, who contacted an ambulance, and I was admitted to the hospital. After a few days and meetings with the psychiatrist, I was able to leave and began real follow-up with a psychologist.
At that stage, I hated life. I did not know what to hold on to. I had become a person I did not recognize and hated. I am normally rather cheerful by nature, and without false modesty, I was often the person people around me called for help, to listen to them and support them. Truly, I was an extremely reliable person, someone close friends liked to turn to, and at that stage I had completely lost myself.
I spent several years working on myself, learning to regain control of my emotions, and finding the person I used to be again. It was a huge amount of work, and I still made many mistakes with people I met during that period, mainly online through video games. But little by little, I managed to regain control, to stop my toxic and self-destructive behaviors, and to stop self-harming. I am going over it quickly here, but that was a lot of work on myself for years.
After that, I had a herniated disc, which led to surgery. The operation went very well, but it limits me slightly professionally and forced me to train and learn a new field, one that is less physical and more administrative and social, where I work with people going through difficult stages in their lives. And I like it a lot. I feel like I am finding myself again.
Anyway, that brings me to my current situation and my request for advice. Sorry, this was already a huge wall of text.
A few years ago, I managed to make a group of friends I first met online, who live about a 6-hour drive away from me. I go see them 2 or 3 weeks a year, and some of them also come to see me from time to time when our schedules work out. I have a plan to move closer to them if I find a job there and they are really waiting for me to move closer.
I have not managed to meet people close to where I live, so I spend most of my evenings and weekends alone. I have tried dating apps and stepping out of my comfort zone by going alone to concerts or local events, but I find that approaching people has become difficult. I am thinking about looking for a club or an association, but I have a lot of trouble finding the motivation, even though the loneliness is heavy on a daily basis, especially on weekends when I have no one to see and my group of friends are all together having fun, like at the moment when I am writing this post.
Professionally, over the last two years, I had a mission one hour away from home, so two hours of driving every day. Since I am still a beginner in my new field, it was a good opportunity to gain experience. Once the contract ended, I have been looking for a new opportunity since March 2026, but my field is quite niche, so opportunities are rare. I am looking both around where I live and around where my group of friends live. The lack of results and the few opportunities available remain a source of anxiety and mental exhaustion.
On the romantic side, after the story with Katy, I had a few flings that did not lead to anything serious, but it was during a phase where I should not have been in a relationship at all. It has now been 5 years since I last had a relationship, affection, tenderness, or even a hug. And in all honesty, I miss feeling the gaze of someone who loves you and building something with someone. In the last few years, I have only had dates with one girl meet on a dating apps, and it seemed to be going well until she started ghosting me and distancing herself. I assumed she had met someone else.
I am not physically attractive. I have gained quite a lot of weight with everything that happened, around 5.9'' for approximately 210 lbs, and I have about a hundred scars on my body from self-harm, some of which I find truly disgusting and that I will have to explain at some point, even if I can temporarily hide them with clothes. And I am reaching the point where I regularly tell myself that I must not be good enough, or that no one can be attracted to me, or simply that I do not deserve it after all my mistakes.
Anyway, after making a lot of effort to rise a little back to the surface and find myself again, I feel like there are still mountains left to climb in order to rebuild an entire life, and sometimes I get discouraged. I feel like I will not make it, like there is too much. I do not really have support on a daily basis, and I feel relatively alone going through this. I should add that I stopped being followed psychologically when I felt better, but I started therapy again about a year ago.
As I already said, I am not close to my family, and my friends are very good friends. If something happens to me, they will listen to me, but as for being daily support, that is not the kind of relationship we have, and the distance does not help.
So there it is. If you have any advice on how to keep trying, how to manage to motivate yourself when things are not simple, I would gladly take it. I know very well that no one will have a miracle solution, but every piece of advice is appreciated.
Thank you to those who read until the end. I imagine few people will have had that patience, and I hope you will not judge me too harshly either.