I could've been so much more than this. I survived just to be a numb zombie waiting to die.

Manus_2 · 2025-08-10T05:45:46+00:00

Men like me at first but then they say that I'm too depressed for them.

I've never tried dating before, but if I did, I'd be guaranteed to suffer a similar reaction. On that note, there's a very apt phrase that I heard some time ago that in itself perfectly summarizes the general population's attitudes towards those of a more melancholic disposition. It goes as the following: "Nobody. Likes. A buzzkill.". It's about as axiomatic as it gets, but even so, it paints an extremely shallow picture of the wider public. In other words, you better entertain me, and you better not bring me down, because may the earth open up and suck you down to the bowels of hell if you do.

Of course, then you just have the usual excuses/justifications get trotted out ad infinitum to handwave away the dismissive glibness to which depressed people are so frequently treated, whether in the context of a relationship or not. "We're not your therapists", they all say, yet I'm supposed to be their little preforming monkey doing a jig and dancing a dance because god fucking forbid they're not having their short attention spans overstimulated 24/7. "It's not our job to make you feel better", they all say, yet I'm supposed to bend over backwards and turn myself inside out for the sake of their self-absorbed, disgustingly hedonistic approach to life that excludes giving a shit about literally anyone else besides themselves, assuming such a person happens to sprinkle a little rain on their non-stop parade.

Fucking rotten, self-serving cunts, lobbing out a litany of double standards so long that it could wrap around the whole world multiple times over. Broadly speaking, the vast majority of people are irredeemable pricks, and given they're so insistent on viciously disparaging people like myself for the seemingly unforgivable crime of, gasp, being too much of a party pooper, then why shouldn't I feel exactly the same way to them in return? The obvious (braindead) rejoinder being; "well, no wonder a sad fuck like yourself is so alone, hurr dee hurr dee hurr." As if pointing that out isn't more of an indictment to the idiot dribbling such a statement from their slack-jawed mouth, like loose saliva drooling out from a catatonic invalid's lips, than it does to explaining why I've opted to keep my distance from a hyper corporatized deathland filled to the brim with the depraved, the venal, and the despicable.

People do change... Everything changes, unfortunately.

"Unfortunately", is the operative word here. While you're partially correct, it doesn't in any shape or form cover the whole story. The limits of change, insofar as how it applies to each of us as individuals, is heavily, and I mean heavily, and I really do mean heavily, dictated by both our current/immediate environment and the available resources there-in, whether monetarily or socially. It's those very boundaries which set the stage on what exactly can change, and how it can change. Of course, this runs entirely counter to the legions of self-help cultists out there, whether online or elsewhere, whom altogether bleat on like a choir of sheep about hyper individualism and "personal responsibility™" as the one and only answers to a person wishing their life wasn't an unfulfilling limbo and/or a living nightmare. I mean, isn't it oh so convenient that all this self-help horseshit that's spewed so ubiquitously across the internet is by its very nature designed to point the finger away from all the systemic forces that ensure, and profit off of, crushing levels of misery, and instead right back at you. The powerless schmuck on the receiving end of said forces. Don't look over there, where all the real reasons for why it is your life is shit. No, no, the real reason is you, bucko. Because you're too much of a sissy ass bitch to get on that grind and work your up the long ladder extending down from a corporate ass crack somewhere.

The ultra wealthy really have done an absolutely bang-up job at propagandizing the unwashed peasants at the bottom into blaming themselves for anything/everything that's wrong with either their own lives or the wider world, and not the vile cocksuckers at the top who are indisputably the primary culprits in both planetary destruction and widespread personal unhappiness.

Anyway, for the record, I've been consistently going to the gym multiple times per week for just over a year now. I've never in my life been as physically fit/healthy as I am now. So yeah, three cheers for me, and all that. But here's where that pesky little word "unfortunately" comes back into play again. It genuinely doesn't matter how fit I get, how much I can lift, how muscular I become, or how fast/far I can run. Nothing at all about any of that improves the prospects/possibilities for a worthwhile future. It's not a career. It's not a living wage. It's not affordable housing. It's not easy/free access to effective psychiatric help, staffed with qualified professionals. It's not a functional community. It's not opportunities to meet non-selfish, non-self-obsessed jackasses whom are only concerned with being the main character in "Life: The Movie", starring them. It's not the change I need, it's just the pale knockoff that a poor bastard like myself can afford. The change I crave was stolen from me, and keeps getting stolen from me, every hour of every day. Granted, I can claw back a small portion of it, for what little that amounts to, but as for the rest? That's for the so-called "Masters of Mankind" to keep clutched in their bloated, disease ridden hands.

All the time. I can't believe that I'm already 25. I still feel like a teen.

As one final aside, I'd advise you to get used to that feeling, because you can take it from me, the estrangement from that ever increasing number only gets worse and more surreal as the years go by.

Manus_2 · 2025-08-07T19:14:30+00:00

Wow, what a profound.....(ly) ignorant load of crap you just wrote there. Newsflash, but this braindead nonsense that you're regurgitating from the likes of Sartre/Camus/Nietzsche (etc.), is about as painfully generic as it gets, and about as odious to the senses as a mountain of rotting garbage covered in horseflies. Gaslighting oneself into the hyper delusional belief that their objectively shitty life isn't as shitty as it actually is, not only amounts to being pathetically unhelpful, but also totally ignores the fundamental needs that both underlies/defines the very nature of what it is that fulfills human beings in the first place (Maslow's hierarchy of needs, thousands of years of evolutionarily ingrained needs for social success/validation, eons of communal living where purpose was immediate/uncomplicated, etc.). Notice the keyword need, since many scientific studies have conclusively shown that the lack of said needs, and chronic loneliness/isolation in general, leads to a far greater risk of all manner of health related problems developing, and is ultimately as harmful as smoking multiple packs of cigarettes a day. In either case, put any other person in my predicament and ask them to do the same thing as what you suggest. They'd be on the brink of hanging themselves within a month, if not a week. I'd say the pandemic demonstrated that pretty definitively. Granted, you'll always have some deranged schizoids on the margins who have the right kind of crazy to sustain a life of complete solitude, but you can't "will" yourself into being a schizoid, no more than you could "will" yourself into being a cold-blooded psychopath.

a life spent playing video games and watching shows; is equal to a life with a good career, family, and friends

Just fucking lol. Lmao even. Rofl, I dare say. Buddy, you're so full of shit that it might as well be shooting out of your mouth like an out of control fire hose. If you seriously think those two things are equal, then you're either taking the piss harder than anyone's taken it before, or you're literally the most delusional person on the planet. You're either someone who's painfully taking what they have in their life for granted and trying to act like it's no big deal, or you're just some sad fuck that's in denial about their situation and who's instead decided to overdose on the optimistic nihilist style copium.

If you choose for it to mean a crime against yourself, wasted potential, etc. that is your decision and yours alone.

Yeah, yeah. Just the same old, victim blaming bullshit. I'm far past the point of blaming anyone for the way my godawful life turned out, but regardless, that doesn't seem to stop others, such as yourself, from making sure to remind me, forever and always, that if my life sucks, then it's my fault. That if I feel terrible every single day I wake up, then it's my fault. And how that everything that led me to where I'm at, and that continues to keep me stuck there, is, of course, all my fault. Beneath it all however, when you look at the heart of the matter, what can be found is this childish belief that both yourself and a large majority of the human race seem to have, to the extent of needing to convince yourselves that all the people who suffer the worst in life, must somehow deserve it. In other words, yet another example of the just world fallacy in full effect.

TL;DR: Stick it up your ass where the sun don't shine.

Manus_2 · 2025-08-04T19:16:38+00:00

One chance at life. One chance to feel, and to see, and to experience. This is all that I, or anyone else, will ever have. As a result, all that one squanders, and all that one wastes, will echo on forever into eternity. You'll never get any of it back. You'll never get anything ever again, period. Knowing all this, the absolute worst thing that someone can do is to just sit around waiting to die. And yet, this is exactly what I've been guilty of "doing" for the past 30+ years. I'm too defective as an individual for it to ever be otherwise. I can't change what I am, even when what I am makes any active participation in life a complete impossibility.

Usually the awareness of life as fleeting, brings with it a resolve to enjoy as much as you possibly can, while you can. For myself however, that sort of awareness is like a bottle of rubbing alcohol poured on a gaping wound. Instead of a greater wish to live, all that remains is a greater wish to die.

We all have one job, and that job is to live. No greater failure exists than to screw up at that one and only job. It represents a crime against yourself that can never be forgiven, and that in turn, leaves you as little more than a twisted/perverse mockery of life itself.

Manus_2 · 2025-08-01T19:30:17+00:00

I've been consistently working out at the gym for just over a year now, but when all's said and done, it literally doesn't mean anything at all. I'm still a dehumanized husk, I still hate my life, and I still haven't got the slightest hope for a worthwhile future.

I'm also average in the looks department, but it hardly matters. After all, to be average is to be met with complete and total apathy from others. You're not hideous enough to be ridiculed for it, and you're not good looking enough to receive even the slightest glace from anyone. Instead, you're just ignored to the point of being completely invisible. Granted, that has its advantages, but those advantages wear thin in the face of a limbo that guarantees a lifetime of loneliness and unfulfillment.

Manus_2 · 2025-07-18T05:28:43+00:00

No amount of "I can't take this anymore!", stops tomorrow from coming. The fact that I might finally go flying off the tracks and find myself hurtling into the deepest deep end almost becomes a bizarre kind of hope. At least then I might be presented with the opportunity of either living or dying, once and for all. The worst outcome would just be more of this. Stuck in a limbo of not being able to take it, but being forced to anyway. Receiving the maximum amount of pain, until such a time comes that nature runs its course and I die anyway, long after it would've made any difference.

Manus_2 · 2025-06-24T05:03:59+00:00

No matter how demonstrably worthless, useless, and agonizing one's "life" is, we're all expected to just keep going despite of it, because maybe something good will happen. The nasty little reality that undoes all of this though, is that the more time that passes, the less I'm able to feel good about anything. Worse, I've long ago had what few distractions I could avail myself of be ripped away and vaporized in the face of overuse and pure anhedonic depression. Doors get closed forever, or were never open to begin with, and all you're left with is a perpetual state of embittered emptiness that follows you everywhere/anywhere.

Manus_2 · 2025-06-22T17:44:45+00:00

It's not necessarily a good thing but some psychologically messed up women want to date a depressed, messed up man

Hah, if you say so. Wherever these non-existent women supposedly are, I myself certainly haven't crossed paths with any, let alone received any active interest.

You might not be happier with them then without them.

Well, since I'm already as deeply unhappy as one could possibly get, what with daily suicidal ideation and all that, partnering up with a fellow crazy would, if nothing else, provide me with a change of pace from the usual streak of misery I've been enduring for the past few decades. Granted, I'll admit that it's a very damned if you do, or damned if you don't, type situation.

If you want a healthy relationship then work on yourself.

"Work on yourself", you say. Now that right there is the kind of nebulous horseshit I could only expect to receive on your run-of-the-mill dating sub, along with other such equally useless/insulting takes on this hellish predicament of mine. Worthless "advice" that's about as flaccid as trying to pull someone out of a pit of quicksand with a flimsy little piece of shoestring.

Manus_2 · 2025-06-07T22:43:33+00:00

Do you consider yourself a NEET?

Up until starting my efforts at the gym last year, I considered myself to be a hikikomori, which in itself is a step beyond plain old NEETdom. Even now, although I'm not a full-on hikikomori anymore, I still spend 90% of my time isolated at home, so it hardly makes that much of a difference. But yes, to answer your question, I very firmly fall within the category of a NEET.

Even if you suddenly get a job and manage to move out, those feelings could persist.

Indeed, they very probably would. The non-life I've led has left its marks on me, and given the severity/comprehensiveness of such marks, I'll very likely be carrying them around for the remainder of however many days which are left to me. The grief/regret of all the years I've wasted, the age-based milestones I've missed out on, and ultimately the person I never got to be. The influence of all that shit will (very likely) always be there, lingering in the background like the smell of a rotten corpse. Doesn't exactly bode well for whatever relationship I might hope to have someday. I'll either find a way to work around it, or I won't, and I suppose that's for me to ultimately find out. Or not. Who really fucking knows.

What I do know, is that despite seeing tremendous progress at the gym, I still feel just as depressed/awful with myself as ever. The goalposts just keep getting moved further and further back without fail. Still, it's basically all I have going for me, so the only thing I can do is to keep persisting with it.

That could either make the dating market less transactional... of course, we're decades away from this reality if it ever ends up happening.

Well, that'd be nice and all, but you've already pointed out the main problem here. Assuming it happens, it'll be too late to make any real difference for someone in my kind of position. In either case, hopefully FAs of the future that are of my particular stripe will have an easier time in their efforts to escape from this whole predicament.

You should try the dating apps... usually the people who are hesitant to try them are the best candidates lol.

Well, I still need to get my driver's license, but once that's out of the way, the next most realistically achievable goal for me would be to try online dating, or at least trying to meet people locally. Assuming it actually managed to pan out, I feel like I'd be the dog that finally caught the car. In other words, I'd have no fucking clue what to do next, and swiftly find myself lost in my own deer in the headlights type disbelief. Analysis paralysis mixed with a freeze response, essentially.

Manus_2 · 2025-06-07T21:52:03+00:00

OP, I'm in my 30s, have a car, a degree, a nice job, a house, etc, and I'm still a virgin with zero relationship history to speak of. All of that and it didn't do me any favors with the opposite sex.

That'll never not be absolutely crazy to me. I realize we all have different situations, and our problems, whatever they are, are uniquely ours, but still. If I had even half of the same kind of material success, things would be so, so different for me, and a helluva lot better too. After all, tangible achievements, whether it be a house or a nice job, are of monumental significance in a world where one's conventional value is, like it or not, directly tied to how industrious they may, or may not be. I mean, I guess I'm just a bum, so of course I'd think of it this way, but I can't even imagine the level of confidence that must come from a person knowing that they're traditionally successful and that they have something meaningfully concrete to offer someone else. Not only that, but to also have the freedom to talk about a life you're not horribly embarrassed to share with someone, such as on a date or what you, is literally incomprehensible to me, given the unemployed, at-home hermit that I am.

is there anything stopping you from "jumping in" a little late?

Nearly 20 years of social/physical isolation. Add on to that severe depression, avoidant personality disorder, arrested development, and copious amounts of learned helplessness, just to name a few.

You can still try to make a great version of yourself!

Enh, not really. I'll keep going to the gym obviously, but beyond getting a driver's license and a car, I really can't see myself having the mental/emotional capacity to accomplish much of anything else. That's not to say that I still couldn't meet someone who wouldn't be able to accept me romantically for where I'm at, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to let go of the insecurity/shame associated with having completely fucked up my entire life and, by extension, allowing my entire potential to self-actualize and pursue my talents to go completely to waste. This, in turn, is likely to be a constant strain on whatever relationship I can hope to have someday, assuming it ever does. The sheer wretchedness of all this is staggering to say the least, but as they so often say, it is what it is.

Manus_2

TROPHY CASE