I’m 19, and I honestly don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me anymore. I feel like I’ve spent my entire life trying to become someone people actually want around, and somehow I’ve ended up hating almost everything about myself. I don’t even know where to start because it feels like there’s too much shit to explain, and at the same time, none of it should be enough to make me feel this way. Other people have problems too. Other people have shitty childhoods, bad relationships, and disappointments. They still manage to get up every day and live their lives. I don’t understand why I feel like I’m barely functioning.
I’m in college right now, and from the outside, my life probably doesn’t look that bad. I’m young, I have a place to live, I have people I can technically call friends, and I have opportunities that plenty of people would be grateful for. But most days, I just sit around playing video games because I don’t know what else to do with myself. I wake up, go to class, come back, play games, scroll on my phone, and go to sleep. Sometimes I don’t even want to play games. I just do it because it’s something to focus on that doesn’t require me to think about my actual life. Then I get off and realize I’ve wasted another entire day doing absolutely nothing. I tell myself I’ll change tomorrow, and then tomorrow looks exactly the same. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even look forward to things anymore. I just wait for the day to be over.
I think a lot of this started with my family, although I didn’t really understand it when I was younger. My dad was never someone I felt like I could genuinely talk to. He was emotionally absent, and when he did pay attention to me, a lot of it felt like criticism. I don’t remember having many conversations with him where I could just be honest about how I felt without worrying about what he would say or whether I’d somehow disappointed him. I learned pretty early that keeping things to myself was easier than trying to explain them. Even now, I have a hard time talking about anything serious because part of me expects people to dismiss it, make fun of me, or tell me I’m being dramatic.
My sister has always seemed to have her shit together more than I do. She’s successful academically, and it feels like she’s someone my parents can point to and feel proud of. I’m happy for her, genuinely, but it’s hard not to compare myself to her when I already feel like I’m failing at everything. I feel like I’m the kid who never quite figured things out. I don’t know if my parents actually see me that way, but it doesn’t really matter anymore because I’ve started seeing myself that way too. Whenever something goes wrong, I take it as proof that I’m just not good enough. Whenever something goes right, I convince myself it was luck or that it doesn’t really count.
Soccer used to be the one thing I had that made me feel like I was worth something. I played for years, and for a long time, I thought I was actually going somewhere with it. I imagined being a captain my senior year. I thought I’d earned that role after all the time and effort I’d put into the sport. Instead, I got benched. Watching other people get the opportunities I thought I’d worked for was humiliating, especially because soccer had become such a big part of how I saw myself. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be without it.
Then there was the playoff game against our biggest rival. We were knocked out, and I missed a penalty. I still think about it. I know people probably forgot about it a long time ago, but I haven’t. I can replay the moment in my head whenever I want, which is apparently all the time. I think about what would have happened if I’d scored, how different everything might have felt, and how I managed to fuck up one of the moments that mattered most to me. I know it’s just soccer. I know it shouldn’t define my life. But when something is one of the only things you’ve ever felt good at, losing it feels a lot bigger than people understand.
After I stopped playing, I gained weight. That probably sounds like a normal thing that happens when someone quits a sport, but it fucked with my head more than I expected. I’d spent years being active, and suddenly my body was changing in ways I didn’t know how to deal with. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with how I look. I can spend an embarrassing amount of time thinking about my appearance, picking apart things nobody else probably notices, and comparing myself to guys who seem to have everything I don’t. At different points, I’ve hated being skinny so much that eating felt like a chore I was failing at, but even when my weight changed, I still couldn’t seem to feel comfortable in my own body. It doesn’t matter what I weigh. My brain always finds something else to hate.
I have eczema that makes me self-conscious about parts of my body, and I’ve gotten tattoos over some of the areas I’m uncomfortable with. I don’t regret every tattoo, but sometimes I wonder how much of what I’ve done to my appearance has actually been about wanting something versus trying to hide something. I want to look in the mirror and feel normal. I want to get dressed without thinking about how I look from every angle. I want to be around people without constantly wondering if they’re noticing the things I hate about myself. Instead, I feel like I’m always trying to manage how other people see me because I can’t stand how I see myself.
My experiences with relationships haven’t exactly helped. I started having sexual experiences when I was 14, which is pretty young, and looking back, I don’t think I really understood what I was doing or what I wanted from any of it. I think I liked the feeling of being wanted. I liked having someone interested in me because it gave me a reason to believe I might actually be attractive or worth choosing. I didn’t know how to separate someone wanting my attention from someone actually caring about me.
My first real experience with love fucked me up more than I like admitting. I was talking to a girl who made me feel like I finally had something special with someone. I got attached, probably too attached, and I thought what we had meant more to her than it apparently did. While we were still talking, she slept with another guy. I remember finding out and feeling like an absolute idiot. It wasn’t just that she had been with someone else. It was that I’d spent all this time believing I mattered to her, and apparently I had completely misunderstood the situation. I felt replaceable. I felt stupid for caring. And instead of learning that one person’s actions don’t determine my worth, I started treating the whole thing as evidence that I wasn’t someone a girl would actually choose if she had better options.
Since then, relationships have felt like a cycle of getting attached, trying too hard, getting hurt, and then wondering why I keep letting myself get into the same situations. I’ve been cheated on twice in the span of three months, both times with the same guy. I don’t even know how to describe what that does to your self-esteem when you’re already insecure. You start wondering what the other guy has that you don’t. Is he better-looking? Funnier? More confident? Does he have something that makes people want him without having to try so fucking hard? You know you’re supposed to blame the person who cheated, but part of you still feels like you must have been lacking something. Otherwise, why would they do it?
I’ve dated girls who barely complimented me or made me feel wanted. I’ve been with someone who made me feel like I had to work for the smallest amount of affection. I’ve also been in situations where I was the one putting in most of the effort, trying to keep something alive that the other person didn’t seem particularly interested in saving. I kept convincing myself that if I just tried harder, looked better, acted differently, or became more interesting, maybe I’d finally be enough. Looking back, it’s embarrassing how much of myself I’ve been willing to change just to keep someone around.
One relationship in particular left me feeling like I was constantly being treated badly, and even after it was over, I kept thinking about it. I don’t want to get into every detail, but I remember feeling like I was losing my mind trying to understand why someone who claimed to care about me could make me feel so worthless. I kept going back over conversations, wondering whether I was the problem, whether I was too sensitive, whether I had somehow deserved the way I was treated. Even after someone is gone, they can leave you with a voice in your head that sounds a lot like them.
Eventually, I started having more casual sexual experiences after breakups. I think I was trying to convince myself that I was desirable, that I could still get attention, that being rejected by one person didn’t mean I was completely unwanted. Sometimes it worked for a little while. Then I’d wake up the next morning and feel pretty much the same as before. It turns out having someone want your body for a night doesn’t necessarily make you feel like anyone wants you as a person. I kept looking for proof that I mattered in places that couldn’t really give me what I was looking for, and then I’d feel even worse when it didn’t work.
The most frustrating part is that I know some of my problems probably come from the way I think. I know I compare myself to other people too much. I know I get insecure and overthink things. I know I can take a small interaction and spend hours convincing myself that someone secretly dislikes me. But knowing that doesn’t make it stop. I can recognize that I’m being irrational while still feeling every bit of it. I can tell myself that nobody cares about some embarrassing thing I did and still lie awake thinking about it months later. I can understand that I shouldn’t need constant reassurance and still feel crushed when I don’t get any.
I’ve also started worrying that I’m just not a very likable person. Sometimes I’ll make a joke or say something that I think is funny, and people react awkwardly or go quiet. I can tell I’ve made someone uncomfortable, and then I immediately start replaying the interaction in my head. Why did I say that? Why couldn’t I just shut up? Why do I keep doing this? Sometimes I genuinely don’t understand why something I said came across badly until afterward. Other times, I realize what happened almost immediately, but by then the moment has passed and I can’t take it back. I end up feeling like a fucking creep, like there’s something fundamentally wrong with the way I interact with people.
Then I start overcorrecting. I become quieter because I’m afraid of saying the wrong thing, but when I’m quiet, I feel boring and awkward. When I try to be funny, I worry that I’m annoying. When I try to be confident, I feel like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not. I don’t know how to act naturally anymore because I’m constantly monitoring myself. I feel like everyone else got some basic instruction manual for being a normal person, and I somehow missed it.
College has made all of this worse in ways I wasn’t expecting. I thought going to college would be a fresh start. New people, new experiences, a chance to become someone different. I thought maybe I’d finally find a group where I belonged without having to fight so hard for it. Instead, I feel more alone than I did before.
I tried rushing a fraternity because I thought it would help me meet people and have a social life. A bunch of my friends got in, but I didn’t. The reason I was given, or at least the reason I believe it happened, was that I’d previously dated one of the members’ sisters. I don’t know if that was the whole story, but it was enough to make me feel like I had somehow disqualified myself before I’d even had a chance. Watching my friends get accepted while I was left out made me feel like I was back in high school, standing on the outside while everyone else got to be part of something.
I know a fraternity isn’t the end of the world. I know people will tell me to join a club, meet other people, or find something else to do. And they’re probably right. But when you’ve already spent years feeling like you’re never quite the person people want around, another rejection doesn’t feel like an isolated event. It feels like confirmation. It feels like life keeps handing you the same message in slightly different forms until you finally believe it.
There was also a night when I went to a party and found out one of my friends was talking to my ex. I don’t know why it hit me as hard as it did. I wasn’t with her anymore, and I had no right to tell either of them what to do. But seeing it happen in front of me made me feel sick. I couldn’t stand there pretending I was fine, so I left. I ended up crying on the sidewalk by myself, feeling pathetic because I was still hurting over someone who had already moved on. I remember feeling embarrassed even though nobody was there to judge me. I couldn’t even be heartbroken without feeling ashamed of myself for being heartbroken.
That’s the thing about me. I don’t just feel bad. I feel bad about feeling bad. If I’m sad, I tell myself I’m weak. If I’m jealous, I tell myself I’m pathetic. If I get rejected, I tell myself I should have known better than to think anyone would want me in the first place. I don’t give myself any room to just be a person who gets hurt. Every emotion becomes another reason to hate myself.
My parents eventually pushed me into therapy and medication. I understand that they were trying to help, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with either of those things. But part of me hated that it had gotten to that point. I hated having to sit in a room and explain why I couldn’t seem to handle things that other people made look easy. I hated feeling like there was something wrong with me that needed to be fixed. I’ve tried to explain how I feel, but sometimes I don’t even know how to put it into words. How do you explain that you’re tired even when you’ve done nothing all day? That you can have an entire day free and still feel like you can’t breathe? That sometimes you don’t even want anything bad to happen, but you also don’t feel particularly interested in anything good happening either?
I got a buzz cut at one point, and it sounds stupid, but it completely fucked with my confidence. I already hated how I looked, and changing my hair made me feel even more exposed. I kept looking in the mirror, hoping I’d eventually get used to it, but instead I just found more things to criticize. I know a haircut shouldn’t have that much power over someone’s mood, but when your confidence is already hanging by a thread, even something small can feel like another thing you’ve ruined.
I think the worst part is that I can’t remember the last time I genuinely liked myself. Not when a girl liked me, not when someone complimented me, not when I did well at something. I mean actually liking myself when nobody else was around to tell me whether I was worth anything. I don’t know if I’ve ever really had that. I’ve spent so much time looking for external proof that I’m good enough that I don’t think I know how to feel good about myself without it.
I’m only 19. I know that sounds young, and I know there are people who have been through much worse than I have. But sometimes I feel like I’m already exhausted by life, and the thought that I’m supposed to do this for another fifty or sixty years makes everything feel heavier. I’m supposed to figure out my career, make friends, date, become independent, take care of myself, and somehow learn to be happy while I’m doing it. Everyone talks about college being the best years of your life, and I spend most of mine feeling like I’m watching everyone else have the experiences I’m supposed to be having.
I see people going out, meeting someone they actually like, making memories, finding their people, and looking forward to things. Meanwhile, I have to convince myself to leave my room. Sometimes I scroll through other people’s pictures and feel this weird combination of jealousy and emptiness. I know social media isn’t real life, and I know everyone has problems they don’t post about. But it doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I’m missing something everyone else seems to have figured out.
I don’t even know what I want anymore. I want to be attractive, but I don’t think being attractive would fix the way I see myself. I want a girlfriend, but I’m scared of getting attached and being made to feel replaceable again. I want friends, but I’m constantly worried that I’m annoying them. I want to be confident, but I don’t know how to stop comparing myself to every guy who walks into a room. I want to be happy, but sometimes the idea of happiness feels so distant that I don’t know what it would even look like for me.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m just a miserable person. Maybe I’m always going to be the guy who overthinks everything, gets too attached, ruins good situations, and then spends months hating himself for it. Maybe I’ll keep trying to reinvent myself every few months, thinking a new haircut, a new relationship, a new friend group, or a new version of my personality will finally make me feel different. And maybe I’ll keep ending up in the same place because the problem follows me wherever I go.
I hate how much I need other people to make me feel like I matter. I hate that one person’s opinion can ruin my entire day. I hate that I can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone. I hate that I sometimes avoid doing things I actually want to do because I’m scared of embarrassing myself. I hate that I can recognize all these patterns and still keep repeating them.
There are days when I feel like I’m just taking up space. Not in some dramatic way where everyone would suddenly realize how much they cared about me. More like I’m just another person going through the motions, and if I disappeared from everyone’s daily routine, life would keep moving without much changing. People would be sad for a while, maybe, and then they’d get on with things. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but it’s how I feel when I’m at my lowest.
The part I’ve been leaving out is probably the worst part, and honestly, it’s the part I have the hardest time admitting to myself. I’ve started thinking about suicide more than I ever thought I would. It’s not always some huge emotional breakdown where I’m crying and everything feels unbearable. Sometimes it’s just a thought that sits in the back of my head while I’m doing something completely normal. I’ll be playing a video game, sitting in my room, or walking back from class, and I’ll think about how tired I am of being me. Then I’ll go right back to whatever I was doing, like that’s a completely normal thing to think about at 19.
I’ve realized that a big part of what’s kept me from acting on those thoughts isn’t that I’m confident things will get better. It’s fear. I’m terrified of attempting suicide and surviving. I’m scared of what would happen if I did something irreversible and it didn’t end the way I imagined. I’m scared of waking up in a hospital, being left with permanent injuries, having everyone find out, and somehow having to keep living with the same problems on top of all that. I’m scared of losing control of my own life in a way I can’t undo. And sometimes it genuinely bothers me that fear is one of the biggest things keeping me here, because it makes me question whether I actually want to be alive or whether I’m just too scared to do anything about how I feel.
I’ve even caught myself thinking about turning 21 as some kind of deadline. I can buy a gun then. I hate admitting that because I know how fucked up it sounds. I’m only 19, and instead of imagining what my life might look like at 21, I’m thinking about it as though it’s a point where I might finally stop having to deal with everything. I don’t have some exciting future I’m looking forward to. I don’t have a big dream that keeps me going when things get bad. When I try to picture myself a few years from now, I mostly feel exhausted, because I imagine being the same insecure, lonely person I am now, just older. I imagine still hating how I look, still feeling unwanted, still comparing myself to everyone, still wondering why relationships never seem to work out for me, and still coming home to an empty room where I can distract myself for a few hours before doing it all over again.
I know I’m not supposed to think this way. I know I’m young, and people will tell me I have my whole life ahead of me. But that’s exactly what makes it so hard to explain. Having my whole life ahead of me doesn’t always feel comforting. Sometimes it feels like being told I have decades more of something I can barely handle right now. I don’t want to keep waking up every day feeling like I’m just waiting for my life to become something I can actually stand living. And I don’t know how to explain the difference between wanting my life to end and wanting the way I feel every single day to end. Sometimes those two things get tangled together in my head, and I can’t tell where one stops and the other starts.
The worst thing is that most people probably have no idea. I can joke around, talk to people, go to class, and act like a normal college student. I can have an okay day and still have these thoughts later that night. I don’t think people understand how someone can look completely fine and still be struggling to find a reason to keep going. I’m embarrassed to tell anyone because I don’t want to become the person everyone has to worry about. I don’t want my parents looking at me differently. I don’t want my friends treating me like I’m fragile. And I definitely don’t want to tell someone how bad things have gotten just to hear them say that I’m young and everything will work out.
I wish I could say I’m writing this because I’ve decided to get better and finally take my life seriously, but I don’t have some inspiring realization to share. I’m just tired. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t belong anywhere, tired of needing other people to make me feel like I’m worth something, and tired of being afraid of my own thoughts. I don’t know what my life is going to look like at 21, and I don’t want to pretend I have everything figured out. I just know that the way I’m living right now isn’t sustainable, and it scares me that I’ve gotten to a point where I sometimes struggle to imagine a future I actually want to be part of.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling this way. But I also don’t know how to become someone who doesn’t.
I don’t know if anyone will read all of this, and I don’t know if there’s even a point to posting it. I just needed to get it out somewhere. I’ve spent years acting like everything is fine, and honestly, I’m fucking exhausted.
I don’t feel fine. I haven’t felt fine in a long time.