So I’m dealing with some deep personal struggles right now and I would really appreciate some advice. I’ve always been a shy person, slowly becoming more introverted over time. Growing up, I never had many friends. Just enough to avoid feeling alone, but when those relationships ended, I was left with no one. This pattern repeated itself throughout my life: my closest friendships either ended badly, with people making fun of me, or just fading away due to life changes. I’ve always carried this feeling that maybe it was my fault that these relationships didn’t last.
A few years ago, I had a boyfriend who was really supportive. He helped me cope with loneliness since I had no friends at the time. For about a year, everything felt perfect. But eventually, things went south. I started feeling disconnected because there were things he did that I didn’t like, but I was too scared to voice my feelings. Eventually, I lost love for him, and the breakup wasn’t clean.
Since then, I’ve developed a huge fear of relationships. I have this idea in my mind that I’m the one who ruins everything, and I’ve told myself, “Stay alone. You’ll be better off that way.” I convinced myself that loneliness wasn’t that big of a problem, and it was safer to just avoid getting too close to people. The fear of not being able to handle relationships has been paralyzing, making it hard to even form simple friendships. I’m scared of trusting people too much and getting too attached.
Because of that fear, I’ve even started imagining a future where I just live alone. Maybe with a pet, but even that feels complicated and expensive, and I don’t know if I could handle the responsibility. I don’t want to get married or have kids, and it feels really strange—almost wrong—when my family talks about my future like that’s what will happen. They say things like “when you’ll be married” or “when you have kids,” and it clashes completely with how I see my life. I’ve never told them any of this, so they don’t understand, but it makes me uncomfortable every time.
At first, I was okay with being alone. It wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t horrible either. But then I got new friends, and everything became more complicated. I’m friends with someone from a previous group who reconnected with me, and I ended up meeting a whole new group of people through her. The issue is, I don’t really like them. I feel like I’m stuck in a one-sided friendship, where I’m pretending to be okay with things I’m not, and it’s starting to hurt.
On top of all that, I’ve realized that I’ve started depending on small coping habits just to feel okay. For example, I recently started hugging my blanket like a big bolster when I sleep, and it feels really comforting—kind of like how some people use plush. But now, when I don’t have that, I feel like negative things come much easier and it make me sadder than before, when i was used to sleep with nothing. It’s like I need it just to feel calm.
My family situation has also made things harder. Sometimes I feel scared of my parents, not all the time, but enough that it affects me. Growing up, I kind of learned that if I spoke calmly, I wouldn’t be heard, so I had to get angry to get attention. Now I get angry more easily, especially when I’m with people, and sometimes I don’t even realize it’s happening. That makes it even more frightening, because it feels like I can lose control of how I come across. With my parents, it often turns into conflict—they yell at me and say things like “why can’t you be pleasant?” or that they don’t want to take care of me when I act like that. With other people, I feel like they just see me as annoying and want to avoid me.
All of this has made my fear of relationships even worse. It’s not just friendships or romantic relationships anymore—now even family relationships stress me out. I’ve started to feel like I just want to live on my own as soon as possible, where I don’t have to deal with that pressure.
Then, things got even more complicated. I discovered Deltarune—and I became too emotionally attached to it. The characters, the world, it all felt perfect. It became my escape. At first, I just wanted to meet people who were like the characters in the game, but eventually, it grew into something much deeper. I don’t just want people who are like them; I want them. I want to live in that world. The real world started feeling worse and worse by comparison, and now I’m really struggling with the idea of ever feeling connected to real people again.
On top of that, I’ve developed a crush on Susie from that game, making everything even harder. The desire to be in that world with those characters has made my loneliness feel even more intense and painful. The real world just doesn’t compare anymore.
So here I am. I feel lost, alone, and really scared of relationships. I’m not sure what to do anymore. Has anyone else dealt with something similar? If anyone has some advices about my fear or finding a way to feel less isolated.
(Thank you if you read it it was pretty long)