Tired of this (internalized homophobia, living in an imaginary world to avoid facing reality)
TW: Self-harm ideation. Long post
I (28M) have been struggling with daydreaming/rumination/limerence since January 2021. I am gay, with a significant degree of internalized homophobia (mostly towards myself, not against others, but still struggling) which I think it has been a great contribution to feeling like this. Grew up Evangelical Christian in Mexico. Very committed, at a certain point, to religion.
It all started during the pandemic. I had a date with a guy (lets call him F) I was hooking up on and off for a few years. We cuddled and had some sort of intimacy, but it gave me a lot of anxiety. I blocked him (yeah, I know I was a terrible person, we still talk and haven't blocked him in a while hehe) and prayed to God saying I didn't want to like men anymore (I was finishing college in a very demanding university, so I think not keeping my mind busy contributed to the coming things). After that decision, I had the worst anxiety crisis I ever had in life and thought about self-harming myself all the time. I went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed me Aripiprazole, I was in therapy for 3 years and I've been 3 months in therapy again after a 2 year break. The ideation was not voluntary, I was just thinking about the worst scenarios one person could ever imagine. I came out progressively to some of my friends.
With the medication the ideation went away, but I started to develop a limerence on F. From the first second I woke up to the last thought before going to bed, I thought about this person. I think I wasn't in love, but anyway I was super obsessed.
I met a guy (let's call him M) that was living in another country in 2024, and the limerence was transferred to M. I fell very hard for him, but the long distance wasn't helping to have more clarity about the relationship. It didn't end up well.
I was felling like crap because of the decisions that led me to break up with M. I was overthinking all the time and the limerence wasn't going away, so I decided to join the seminary of the church I was attending. It made me feel very connected to myself, but the inner conflict was still going on. I started to have a friendship with one if my classmates (let's call him P). He was much more religious than I and he was also some sort of designed prefect (he was appointed to wrote the "inappropiate" things we did and gave it to the principals). He was very homophobic, and I was closeted, but anyway the friendship started to become more strange. He was lifting up my pants with his feet, hugging me from time to time, etc. I fell in love with P, but still a very complicated situation since he was flirting with girls and often mentioned that he wanted to marry a girl.
After finishing the two years in this program we continued to talk from time to time, and I finally decided to tell him I was gay (I didn't mention I was attracted to him). After that, he stopped talking to me. Now I have a secular job and try to keep myself busy with other stuff, but the limerence, although less intense, is still frequent, all the time I have an image of this person, although I am not romanticizing him anymore.
I have blocked this person from instagram and have no contact and I am hoping that it remains so. Still, I overthink all the time. I am open to both of my parents, my sister, close friends and workmates but I am still in the closet to a large part of my social circle since they are mostly religious persons. I am not planning to remain in that circle, but somehow the contact is there.
I am grieving the life I had planned as a Christian, but this is killing me. I think the limerence sh*t is telling me all the time to be true to myself, even when everything else is falling apart. I think I am living a double, hidden, life and I am tired of it. Any advice?