I am not in a happy place and I don’t know what to do. There is so much going on in my head that I can barely keep up with it all. I just want some rest.

I don’t even know where to begin. Gah. I have never been diagnosed with anything psychological for all my life (I am currently 23 years), but I don’t know, I feel as though something is seriously wrong with me.

I have always been a bit of a weird person I guess. Never quite knew how to interact normally with people I guess, I dunno. When I was younger I was either batcrap crazy around groups of people or pretty antisocial and buried deep into videogames with either myself (preferred) or with a few select close friends. Not much has changed in that regard, only I am less crazy insane in big groups and much more closed off, utterly silent. This is something I cannot stand about myself. I wish I was able to open up and talk naturally with people who I don’t know on a deep and intimate level, but I barely say a word, or refer to my staple vocabulary of ‘Sounds good,’ ‘We’ll have to see’, ‘You never know’, ‘That’s great,’ ‘Cool,’ and other such almost expressionless terms. It’s weird, I get the feeling from people I know rather well that I’m a really chilled out guy, and that is true to an extent, I go at my own pace and I dawdle. I don’t like being rushed, I prefer to stick to my own routines. But inside I find myself so concerned about almost everything. In many social interactions, I find myself dwelling more on the social interaction itself than actually enjoying and allowing the interaction to flow naturally. And I often find myself on such a tangent mentally when another person is talking to me that I completely lose the thread of what it was they were talking about and end up saying very little afterwards, which I HATE HATE HATE about myself. Why can’t I just remain calm and aware? And this has been going on for years now, primarily, I’d say, over the last five years especially I guess.

I can become very obsessive over things, and I have certain routines that I need to follow. I always brush my teeth after I have a shower, no matter what time of day or whatever. My routine for washing hands is all very convoluted (first wash with bar soap, then allow the bar to fall into the sink so the running water can rinse off the suds made by my hands so my old skin cells and whatever aren’t on it, and then pick it up and have a second wash with the bar; every time). I have a number of these little obsessions, and they’re not always particularly comfortable. I just wish I could relax about certain things.

I am deeply, deeply passionate about music. It is one of my three most powerful loves. I am both a collector of music and a composer of music, and have been doing alright with working in the industry. The process of composing music is one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had, and I hope/plan to continue to do so for a long time. Right now I’m having a bit of trouble with it all but I suppose it’s just another symptom of whatever the hell.

I take my spirituality very, very seriously, second only to music and travelling (I just wish I had the money to travel more). I try to open my heart to everything around me, and learn from everything. The world is stunning place, and everything is a teacher. I meditate (almost) every morning, and for the longest time I was having an incredible time with it. My perception of life was so full of light and beauty and nothing was aggravating me, but it feels as though something has been niggling at me since forever that has been very gradually building and building in size, and the last few months I’ve really been feeling it come down on me, especially very recently. I think, above all, I just feel so overwhelmed by everything going on in my mind. And it’s exhausting me. I sleep little, I think, and when I do it’s always past lunchtime when I wake up. I have always been something of a night owl (writing this at 2am is testimony to that), but I so desperately want to get into a decent sleeping routine so I can feel the sun. I’ve been getting up earlier recently and it’s made me feel so tired but I guess I know somewhere inside eventually it’ll pay off if I just go to sleep earlier. I dunno. Whatever.

I just feel so plagued by everything right now. I used to think I had depression when I was a teenager. I did commit self infliction upon myself, but only a few cuts here and there. But I don’t know if it was anything more than just a desire to be like those with actual depression, because it was ‘different to the norm’ I suppose? How ****ing narcissistic is that? Pathetic. But it was a horrible experience and a stupid one at that, and that’ll never happen again.

Over the last two years I started experimenting quite heavily with psychedelic drugs. I have no shame nor regret in any of that, for they taught me a lot about myself that I am grateful beyond words for, but I’ve no doubt the excessive level of consumption perhaps had some kind of negative effect on me somewhere down the line. I don’t know, but I wanted to get that bit out there. The last experience I had like that was over the new year period, but right now I have no desire to have any more, nor do I wish to particularly ‘smoke up’, and I already quite drinking over two years ago. I want to be have a clear head, I want to feel free from altered states of consciousness because I currently fear that it is another excuse to attempt to escape reality for a while. I hate that kind of judgement placed on drugs most of the time, but I don’t quite know how else to word it. I’ve had my time with them all now.

But moving on from that, I also stopped eating meat in January 2014, and started putting some serious, serious thought into what I put in my body. I try to avoid meat, gluten, dairy but that one can prove challenging at times, and sugar, which is sometimes also a little challenging (but a weird one, because I know it’s really bad for me but I do feel that little surge of dopamine whenever I eat some that just gives me a tiny, tiny bit of satisfaction; really not healthy physically or psychologically, huh?).

That isn’t a particularly important fact I guess, I don’t know, maybe it is. But this is ramble with no structure and I apologise to anyone unfortunate enough to attempt to read through it.

One issue that had plagued me for a very, very, very, very, very long time and for the longest time I thought it was the basis of all of my problems, is an undeniable addition to pornography. I am deeply ashamed of it, but happy to be able to be open about it, at least open enough to write it anonymously on a forum, huh? For a long time it was truly awful, I would view all females as some kind of sexual object and I still can barely forgive myself for that atrocity. I am doing okay with all of that now, I have no desire to watch pornography, but I understand that it stemmed from me not really having a girlfriend growing up (apart from one girl who was much older than me in America who came over for two weeks when I was 18/19 or so, but I had never had one before then nor have I had one since really, apart from ‘on the internet’, that cold, sterile dataverse). But sexuality has become such a strange, if not estranged thing to me now. I’m probably completely happy to be celibate forever, at this point in my life anyway. I don’t know. Whatever. Not really thinking about it.

I just don’t know what’s wrong with me, but typing all of this out has helped a little bit. Am I depressed? Am I socially anxious? Maybe I’m autistic? I don’t even know. I do not know. It’s a weird feeling to type things out on to a forum where however many people all over the world can read. I had not a problem at all with it for the longest time, but it’s become a little odd to me now. I have more or less anonymised my Facebook account because I cannot stand that godawful website and what it does to me and keep it only for personal/important contact. But the internet in general doesn’t seem to help, but I know TinyBuddha and TinyBuddha’s reputation as being a warm community and I really am very sorry for this incredibly convoluted, directionless ramble. I just needed to get all of this out as it’s been in my head for so long with no way to escape. I’m not sure if it’s help or not yet. I’ll see.