r/LGBTQMentalHealth

Im really struggling. Im 19 year old male in 3rd year university. I feel absolutely nothing. For the past decade ever since I started getting bullied for being gay, I changed who I am. I hid from my emotions, cut off any potential connections I could make by isolating, changed the way I walked, deepened my voice. Now that years have past, I am stuck as a person I dont want to be, still isolated, depressed, hopeless, and hollow. I feel absolutely nothing. Sometimes, I will feel a burst of envy for the life that I felt I was promised as a kid. It happened last week. I almost called the suicide hotline. I didn't because I didn't want to have the situation escalate and have real world consequences. I decided I would buy a rope and just keep it in my room for if I ever build up the energy and courage to actually do it. I never ended up even buying the rope in the first place.

There is no life inside of me. There is no love inside of me. There is just fog and a mask I hide behind. I tried coming out, but it doesnt fit. I still feel no connection to anything. I dont even know if im gay, straight, asexual, queer, or whatever because I am not connected to begin with. Every single day, thoughts and dysphoria about my sexuality arise. I dont know if sexuality dysphoria exists, but if it does, I have it. Every day, I masturbait to porn and instagram, building parasocial relationships up in my head to fill the sheer loneliness I feel. I dont know why figuring my sexuality out is such an issue for me. I feel like its torn away connection from me and if I can solve my sexuality, then I can solve my loneliness. I just feel like I cannot move forward in uncertainty because my body wont open itself up. Im just hollow. The fog is stuck. I dont know if I can properly diagnose the issue here or articulate my struggles well enough. I just have no one and I dont know what to do. It seems very hopeless.

I have been going to CBT for the last 3 years. Been on SSRI's for the past year. Ive tried going to LGBTQ clubs on campus and around the city on a daily basis. Ive tried being honest with family and friends. Some are accepting... of the minimal stuff I can actually articulate to them. Frankly, none of these things helped. I feel like im where I started. Ive tried.

I dont really know what is compelling me to make this post. I dont expect answers or a response. I am just writing to get some insight about myself. Your input would be valuable. Thanks for reading.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so lost that I’m running to Reddit for advice. I pray this doesn’t get lost in this channel because I seriously need some guidance.

For context I, (F, 17) and my best friend, (F, 17) were in a long term relationship for 3 years. THREE YEARS. We knew from the get go when we started dating that her dad was incredibly homophobic, maga, racist, and Republican but we didn’t care. We were 14 and we loved each other and we thought that was enough. And it was for a little while until EVERYTHING crumbled.

Around mid July this year her dad discovered that she is lesbian and dating me and he flipped his shit. He accused me of so many terrible things such as g(rape), SA, and coercing her into dating me. He also accused my parents of grooming her because they provided her a safe place to go and support. He then claimed her sexuality was a trauma response from the grief she experienced after losing her mom in 2023. (However that excuse of his makes no sense because we started dating 2 months before her mom passed away.) We tried to make it work for around 2 months but our relationship was really struggling. We were arguing a lot because she wasn’t able to process what happened and move forward. I admit, it was hard for me to understand her situation because I come from an incredibly accepting, democratic family, but still. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for her to accept that her dad was (and is) a bigot.

Anyway, fast forward to now, we’ve agreed that we need to just be friends so that she can work on her relationship with her dad but here’s the problem: he doesn’t want to fix the relationship. She’s tried so many things. She’s tried to have conversations with him constantly that he repeatedly shuts down. For weeks she had been pushing for family therapy and when they finally got into their first session, he immediately wanted to quit and find another therapist because the one they met was affirmative of her identity. He immediately wanted to find a conversion therapist or someone through their incredibly conservative church. Just today, she sent him a website with resources for Christian parents of LGBTQ+ children to work through things. It was basically an online support group and he told her, be, verbatim, “I don’t like websites like these because they try to push you towards acceptance and I am not going to accept you.” ..like what the fuck!???

Here’s where I come in: I’ve been her girlfriend for the majority of my teenage life. I don’t know how to not be deeply involved in her life because we still love each other so much, we just can’t be together right now. So I’ve been holding her hand through all of this, guiding her through her conversations with her dad as best I can over the phone, searching for and offering her resources, (I found the online support group she sent him) and overall being her rock. I love being her rock I never wanna not be there for her but I think I’ve become too involved. She’s a chronic people pleaser, it’s so hard to get that girl to stand up for herself, her dad is incredibly manipulative and it works on her every single time, she has no agency, she will literally ask everyone around her what she should do, when something bad happens she spirals and I have to talk her out of it. She’s keeps saying how much she hates her life and wants to kill herself and I’m frankly really scared that if I start to detach myself from this situation and attempt to let her figure this out on her own, she’s gonna crash and burn and I’m gonna lose her forever. But at the same time, I’m really exhausted. Between school, college apps, and managing her situation, I have barely any time for myself. I miss when things were easy for us. I miss her so much. I wish none of this happened and I have no idea how to save both of us from drowning.

if anyone has advice for my situation please send it. Even if it’s small. I’m desperate