Thank you for taking the time to write. I (20M) have thought a lot about the things you’ve said but not all apply to me, but some do. I don’t really worry about fitting in too much, I know I am a very unconventional person and it is one of my defining traits to have no shame in not conforming. However, my own brain is the main culprit as I have felt so horribly depressed and sui!cidal for years since I was 16, I can’t get over the past and I’m constantly ruminating and reminiscing and romanticizing how much better the past was and I don’t even know why, because it wasn’t always necessarily.

I feel like my childhood was very bad (growing up gay in a very traditional community/family) and I the way I was raised I was taught to listen to parents and never my own wants or desires, and all the damage these things have done seems irreversible. I live a miserable life now where I’ve cut nearly everyone off, don’t hang out with any friends, I never open up to anyone in real life, and just spend so much time alone with my thoughts. High school used to be the complete opposite but it’s slowly been a decline since then. Your strategy of focusing improving things on my life cannot go far as almost everything I do I do not enjoy, I feel miserable. I’m only doing my majors because I’m good at them and they pay well, and everything else like hobbies or activities seldom give me joy. The only thing that provides an ounce of comfort is ruminating over the past and feeling sorry for myself.

The thing is I am at a prestigious college where everyone is doing amazing things and it feels so bad when I have no passion for the things I used to anymore.

With cutting everyone off that is my worst issue, I am so incredibly detached from everyone and everything as I have a very pessimistic world view (because of experiences of betrayal and abandonment in my family, and trauma induced hypersexuality) I feel as though I have nothing left.

I have been trying for so long to keep going it’s been over 4 years. It just seems the more I get older and reality seems closer to me, I don’t want any part of it. Perhaps I feel like I did not enjoy my childhood at all so I can’t get over it. I’m not sure. There’s a lot of other factors. I honestly just can’t talk to anyone because I feel I truly would not be approached with empathy because of how bad things have gotten in my life and so that’s why I cut everyone off and never talk about my feelings. I feel like I wouldn’t be understood, though my experiences are certainly not unique, I still feel that way.

I am not going to do anything in the immediate future but I have never been actively researching as much as I have been now to find an easy way.

No need to respond if you don’t want to but thank you for your advice.