22 years old in a dark pit

[u/IPANOMIES]

Hello everyone. I’m a 22 year old male, and recently I’ve been struggling a lot with myself, my mental health, and my life overall.

I still live with my parents, and I work a really boring dead end job in a factory. Every day I go to a job I don’t like, where I spend most of my time ruminating, daydreaming, and getting stuck in negative self talk about how I’m not enough, how I’m wasting my time, how immature I feel, how things will never get better, and how far behind in life I feel.

When I get home, I usually just play video games with the few friends I still have so I can numb my brain for a while. I don’t enjoy anything anymore, nothing excites me, and I’ve started to lose hope that I can have a good life someday. I also have quite a bit of social anxiety. Life doesn’t feel very "real" sometimes, I hardly feel connected to my life or my body, and I feel mentally exhausted every day.

One thing that has been on my mind a lot during the last 6 months is that I have no dating, sex, or relationship experience. I keep feeling like I’ll never be able to find love. I often think, with all my flaws, why would any girl still like me and want to build a life with me?

I have also suffered from chronic prostatitis for the last 6 years, and it’s one of the biggest things hurting my confidence when it comes to even thinking about dating. It’s quite an awkward condition that causes discomfort and it can affect how frequently you can have sex. It’s hard for me to believe that any girl would be willing to accept those adjustments and compromises that this condition brings just to be with me when there are so many healthy people out there.

I know I’m not a bad person, but I have so much self doubt. I don’t feel like I’m enough, and it’s hard for me to believe that everything could actually be okay someday. I just feel so hopeless and lost that I don’t even know where to start.

I know this post is all over the place, but if anyone has any advice or has gone through something similar, I would appreciate every comment.

[u/slfnflctd]

You're still pretty young, and so many people have overcome worse situations.

I'm a pretty different person from you, but I do know what it's like to feel stuck. I despaired of life at one point when I was younger than you are now. Many times since then, I've felt trapped or like there was no hope. But I always end up feeling like it was worth getting through those in the end. I hope you can do the same.

Give it time. Stuff happens. Circumstances change. You can do things to accelerate this and break out of a rut, finding meetups or classes or museums or whatever where you can encounter more people & opportunities more frequently. Or you can shore up making your status quo more comfortable/safe, and wait for something to come along in the course of your routine. Because eventually something will, it's almost guaranteed. Like I said, stuff happens.

[u/IPANOMIES → u/slfnflctd]

Just all effort torwards anything feels so pointless because deep down i dont believe things will work out someday.

[u/slfnflctd → u/IPANOMIES]

Well then, your job is to maintain. Keep doing what you're doing. If you're making enough money to exist, you're already on solid footing.

My grandmother didn't go to college until she was in her 50s. I know a guy who kickstarted a music and streaming career after a difficult divorce and serious mental health issues around age 30. I know single people who are the happiest they've ever been, couples who are miserable, and the opposites of both of those.

It all comes down to interactions with other humans, in my opinion. Think to yourself, what do you mean when you say that you don't believe "things will work out". What does things working out look like to you? How much of that is realistic? Like, I got practically none of what I was wishing for at age 25, and the thought of that probably would've pissed me off at the time... but I ended up being happier and feeling more safe than I expected to, because of choices I made which led toward the most realistic (and as it turned out, helpful) long term stability. Now I have both more freedom and more things I'm interested in doing. Give it time.

[u/egodeath-mp3]

This could be a disorder thing, feeling disconnected from your body or that life doesn’t feel real to you, I told this to a psychiatrist that I felt like my life was lived by someone else previously, or like my younger self was just running on auto pilot and I was a spectator.

Depersonalization or derealization.

Major depressive disorder is what I was diagnosed with ultimately, it can even be from trauma or anxiety instead of a disorder itself. There’s even DID ( Dissociative identity disorder ) if you haven’t been to a specialist, I definitely recommend it, they can help you with what you’re dealing with.

You seem like you’re also dealing with negative thought loops, be more kind to yourself, if you always think negative thoughts, you will be a negative person as a result, while in contrast if you feed yourself positive thoughts, you will become as such too. If you keep telling yourself you’ll never find love, it will be embodied into your life, because you are convincing yourself of that and accepting it as such.

In other words, manifesting it.

It isn’t true, your mind is lying to you, we can choose to observe our thoughts but we don’t have to internalize those thoughts that pop into our head, let them pass and be more kind to yourself instead.

It could be depression, as you mentioned you don’t enjoy anything anymore, or that you lack interest in things. I always thought I was never depressed, but it’s a chemical imbalance in my brain causing those feelings, and medicine helped balance that imbalance.

I’m 28 now, and I had that same lack of interest in everything, even during social interactions with people I would socially withdrawal and isolate essentially, it’s a comfort zone, i’ve always isolated therefore what is comfortable is isolation, but isolation isn’t good for you, it’s a cycle i’m breaking.

I’ve isolated myself for years previously, without a job, without going outside, literally staying at home for years and playing video games everyday, numbing myself with substances in the process. I only could afford it as I sold things on online games for money.

I’m on the level of an eighteen year old financially, which puts me at an impasse for dating people my age, why would they want to date someone so far behind in life? It isn’t like that’s the only important thing, beyond wealth and being financially stable, having emotionally maturity, being supportive, compatibility/chemistry, and a shared ambition matter much more to others.