Confused- need help

Hi everyone.

I hesitated a lot before coming here, but I decided that I needed help. I really haven't feeling well lately, and I'm not sure if there's anything anybody here can do to help but I have to try...

I'm 21 years old, male, and have always identified as heterossexual, but lately I've questioning it and the whole thing is driving me crazy.

I started masturbating when I was twelve years old. I didn't understand what I was doing at this point. I think I recall thinking about men once or twice during my early masturbatory experiences, but I also remmeber thinking about my mother, some of her female friends and animals. Looking back, I don't really see the things I was thinking off as sexual at all, and if I try to revisitate these thoughts they do nothing for me.

Then, when I was thirteen, I experienced what I've always believed to have been my sexual awakening. I remember seeing a topeless lady on the beach and getting an instant erection. I still didn't quite understand it at that point, but I was very excited. The first time I masturbated to a thought that I do deem sexual was when I was watching the 2004 movie Mean Girls (I don't know if this is weird lol, but I was a kid), I remmeber noticing how large Lindsey Lohan's breasts were in one seen and how they jiggled so nicely. After that, I had my hand in my penis throughout the entirety of the film. I particularily remember enjoying the "Jingle bell rock" scene, where the girls dance a sexually provocative christmas dance, and the party scene where Lohan wears a particularly skimpy outfit. By the end of the skimpy outfit scene, I had cummed at least twice.

This experience marked a turning point in the way I saw girls. Whereas before I'd only thought of them as silly and superficial, suddenly, there was something special about them. Something that made me instantly excited. It was the boobs, it was the ass, the curved hips, the soft skin, the sweet baby faces, and just their overall "girlishness".

I started masturbating daily at that time. At first, the objects of my sexual fantasies were mostly female starts in Disney Channel kids shows (which I was still watching at the time even though my friends thought it was childish and had moved on to "grown up stuff such as family guy"). I count Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez respectively as my second and third celebrity crushes (the first one, as I've already said, was Lindsey Lohan- god, it hurst me to see what she's become now...).

A relative got me my first porn magazine (a Penthouse) on the day I turned 14. I remember being somewhat disappointed at seeing a vagine. I'd hoped to feel some sort of sexual ecstasy when I saw it, I felt nothing, it was just a whole. Still, the magazine was pretty fun and had a few pretty girls with nice boobies. I had some fun time masturbating.

This made me confortable to look up online for porn, but I didn't enjoy it. I thought the camera work was weird and was annoyed by all the exagerated sounds. I also remember thinking that the the plots were pretty stupid. It didn't bother me much at the time. I didn't need porn, I could perfectly masturbate just with pictures or even just by thinking about a woman's body.

Fourteen was also the age that first saw me fall in love. It was with a little blonde girl in my class, we'd known each other since we were children and I'd never really payed her much attention. It started with me noticing that she was pretty, then I noticed how her figure was developing, then I started to think about how good it would be to get closer to her, to hug her, caress her, hold her hand. Eventually, she was in my mind all of the time and she was all I could think about. She quickly took over most of my masturbatory fantasies. Those were some of the best times I had masturbatory, I got huge erections and orgasms felt fantastic. I reached my peak on the day before I confessed to her, I've had some pretty fun orgasms after that, but none ever reached that point. She didn't reciprocate my feelings.

My life started taking somewhat of a dowturn after that. The girl I was in love with was really apologetic about not loving me back, and she insisted that we continued to be friends, that we continued to do stuff together and tried not to change anything. We were both fools. Our relationship grew closer and closer with time, but no matter how close I got, I could never get what I wanted. Yet it felt so good whenever I was just with her. She held my hand once or twice, I remember how warm and soft her touch felt. She hugged me once, I remember how good her breats felt when they were pressed against my body. I wanted to touch them, I wanted to touch her ass too, and pass my hand through her hips. I wanted to kiss her and hold her very tight. But I couldn't, because I knew that wasn't what she wanted.

Eventually, that combined with some issues with my family and generally low self-esteem and I just couldn't keep living my life anymore. I was diagnosed with depression when I was sixteen. I started therapy and I got better, but still, I wasn't entirely well until I left high school.

Masturbating thinking of the girl I liked became more difficult and painful as I gradually lost all hope, but I continued to do it. Sometimes, I'd try to get her out of my mind by forcing myself to think of some actress or model (hardcore porn was still not working for me), and that would be fine, I'd relieve myself, but I knew that these people weren't who I wanted. The most pleasurable masturbation experience that I had during my teenage years that wasn't thinking about the girl I loved was during a summer camp when I was fifteen. I met this tall, skinny girl, one year older than me who had small but very round breasts and wore very thight tops and short shorts that exposed her killer legs. She also talked quite openly about sex, in a totally unhinibited manner. I found her very arousing, and had a great orgasm masturbating thinking of her. I was too shy to even try to get some "real action", So I just said goodbye when the summer ended and just got back to obsessing over the same girl as always.

Then, when I was 17 years old, something happened that made me question my sexuality for the first time. By browsing youtube during my free time, I learned of the existance of something called "Male-to-female transition timelines" (and this is a part when I really need to start being careful not to offend anyone). Basically, I was very, very aroused by an Mtf transition videos, at the first I was like "ok, there's a little gay boy", but then, as I saw her body transform and adquire increasingly feminine contours, I became extremely aroused. This marked the start of my fascination with trans-women (I'm sorry if any transwomen here find this disturbing, I really admire the courage it takes to go through the incredibly painful process of gender transition and I'm entirely supportive of your rights, I'm just trying to describe my own feelings and experiences as well as I can). I started following trans youtube, and googling things about MTF actresses, models. I developed a few new "celebrity crushes as a result". Soon, transwomen became my second favourite masturbatory fantasy (the first one was still with the woman I loved). The first of these fantasies simply involved me being intimate with some transwoman, but later I started to imagine myself as a woman as well. I found both variants pleasurable. In those fantasies in which I was a woman, I generally imagined myself having sex with men. To be clear, the man was generally unimportant in these fantasies (or, at least, it certainly did feel that way to me), and the focus was always on my female self, her body, and the way she reacted to sexual situations. The man in my fantasies was generally left uncharacterized, though sometimes it was also a friend of mine whom I knew to be very sexually active (I don't think I find that friend to be "attractive" all, but given the way he acts around women, I thought he was the right choice to take away my female self's virginity).

So, anyway, after I had masturbated to this type of thing a few times I decided that I needed to explore my sexuality. "I can't be fully straight," I said to myself, "or otherwise I wouldn't be having this kind of thoughts". I tried watching gay porn first. Hated it, freaked me out, I gave up after 10 seconds. I don't expect I would have liked it even if I were gay, to be honest, given that I don't really like straight porn either. Then, I decided to look up pictures of a few male celebrities who (according to my female friends and relatives) were "attractive", as well as facebook photos of some males friends and colleagues. This did nothing for me, and the thought of actually being sexual with a man felt gross to me (sorry if this offends anyone here). I also remember seeing some guy couples kissing on the street and thinking that it was gross. At this time, given that I was madly in love with a woman and had a very clear story of heterosexual attraction, I only thought I might be bisexual, and I was ok with that. I just thought "hey, if I like both guys and girls, I have twice as much of a chance of finding the right person for me". I also had no religion, was from a left-wing liberal family, and lived in a generally tolerant environment. When it came to alternative sexual orientations, I was always told that these things were "gross, but ok," in my parents' words. Still, I wasn't finding any attraction to anyone overtly male, when it wasn't cisgender women, it was always either transgender women or very passable cross-dressers, but I did feel like there was something special about these women who had either been born male or were actually male. They did arouse me more than random cisgender women (though not as much as the woman I loved), so there had to be something about it. I went to the internet hoping to find an answer. There, I found that there were actually straight men who are particularily into the idea of a girl with a penis even though they'd never want to have sex with a guy, and that they actually sustained an entire portion of the porn industry. So I thought, "sounds about right", so I tried to watch some softcore shemale porn (just bodies and posies, no actual fucking, as I knew that they way they did that kind of stuff in porn turned me off), and it was good... up until the point when the penis showed up and I thought it was disgusting. "If you're particularily into trans-girls, then you're into penises at least," sounded like a rational thing to say for me at the time. But then I remembered that none of the trans-related materials I'd used to masturbate actually contained penises or any overt indication that these girls actually have them.

After that I just said, "fuck it, sexuality is weird, I'm just straight but with some unidentified weird fetish,"and that sounded just about right.

I think that what I like in MTF transwomen is this sense of constructed hyper-femininity. They weren't born like this, they may still have male genitalia, but still, their femininity is so forceful and so sincere...

Now, fast foward to the end of my last year in high school. The girl I was in love with fianally decided to break all contact with me at that point. I was devastated, but I eventually came to be thankful that she eventually had the courage to do what was best to both of us. When I finally managed to stop thinking about her all of the time, I felt like a huge weight had just lifted off my shoulders. At the same time, I got into the college I wanted, my relationship with my parents improved and I was no longer feeling depressed. I was ready to start a new.

My first year in college was great, I made friends right away. I tried to talk to everyone and keep all options open. For a few months, I had a mild crush on the first girl I met when I got there. I thought she was cute. Didn't mastrubate thinking of her, though, the girl I liked was still in my mind at that time and I had developed some pretty reliable sexual fantasies with transexual women that kept me satisfied (with time, I started to masturbate more to these fantasies and less to the girl I liked). I ultimately settled on a tight group of friends with two other guys and a girl. At first, I thought the girl was kind of ugly, and, while I wanted to keep myself open to the possibility of having a romantic relationship with anyone of the female sex close to me, I didn't really feel very attracted. This changed with time, however. As my emotional attraction to her grew, so did the physical one. I started to notice that she was much prettier than I'd once thought, and her breasts were much bigger than I'd realized. She also had a really cute, acted cute overall, and her personality was similar to my first love in many ways. I started to fantasize with her more and more. When the summer came, I saw her the beach, and masturbated thinking of her the following night. At one point, I was getting really nervous because I thought I might be in love and was seriously considering confessing to her. It terrified me, because my self-esteem was still kind of low and I was really scared of another rejection. Then, she suddenly started dating one of the other guys in our group. Part of me was relived (at least I wouldn't need to confess anyome), but mostly I was really disappointed. Looking back, I don't think I ever loved her, at least not in the same way as I loved that other girl when I was younger. The way I felt was similar in some aspects, I really wanted to be with her, to impress her, to look good in front of her. I craved for physical contact with her. I wanted to hug her, hold her hand, grab her leg, grab her breasts.... but it was never the same, super-intense "I don't think I can live without her" sort of sensation that I felt with my first love. Whenever she had....hum... let's say "moments of physical proximity in public" with my other friend, I find myself staring and I'm very aroused at the way her face lights up to say that she wants to eat his up. I also really like it when she touches his arm or leg, she has such soft femining hands, and the way she moves them is so graceful...

(continuing...)

 

Anyway, I felt lost when they started dating. Suddenly, I couldn't fantasize about her anymore. I still from time to time (I still do it now) but I always feel guilty and I never enjoy it as much. Part of it is because I really like my friend she's dating now, he's probably the person I'd call my best friend at the moment, but I also think it's because it feels less real now (I mean, that's the whole appeal of fantacizing about people close to us, right? Thinking "it could really happen").

So, I started to get depressed again. I don't see myself having a girlfriend, I don't see a girl choosing me over someone else. I think I'm very undisireable and will simply never have anyone in my life.

At about that point, masturbation got really difficult. My usual fantasies stopped working. I can still do it, but I never get as hard as I used to and the orgasm is never as good. I tried looking for new things that excited me. Hentai and sexually suggestive anime and manga worked for a while (once again, they can't be too over the top, or I have the same reaction as I have to porn...), but then got boring. I kept looking for pictures of women, both cisgender and transgender, that I found attractive and have managed to mastrubate to them (but once again, it's not as good, it hasn't been in a very long time).

And now we're getting at the part that really explains why I'm here. All of this frustration has led me to question my sexual orientation. I've stories of people who only come out as gay later in life. Recently, I've realized that a few people that had been in my life for a very long time (including people in my family) had been gay without realizing it, and I hadn't realized it either. So the thought started forming in my head, "what if I'm gay too?", and then I thought "nah, I love women", but then I remembered that my attraction to women was at all time low and that I was no longer enjoying masturbation (even though I still religiously practised it every day). After the thought had occured to me a significant number of times I just said "well, I'm going to experiment. It's not like I have anything to lose, it's ok if I am gay. Religious people think it's a sin, but I think people should just do whatever the fuck they want. I'm sure my family and friends would accept me. And sure, it would be disappointing not to have kids of my own DNA, but adoption is still a thing, so I could still have a son or a daughter. I can still have a little thing to hold in my arms, and mom can still be a grandma, I know she'll be the best grandma in the world". So I tried gay porn, and hated it again. Felt freaked out, not aroused at all, and immediately tried to erase the thought of my memory as soon as possible. But still, the doubt persisted "Am I gay".

So I repeated the routine I'd done a few years ago and seached for pictures of atractive men in order to test my responses to them. I got nothing from looking, and when I ever thought of homosexual sex I felt really disgusted (once again, I'm sorry if this offends anyone). Normally, I'd just hand up burying the doubt by looking at pictures of women immediately afterwards and masturbating to them. Whenever I was able to dot it and I enjoyed it, I felt reassured and was able to get back at living my normal life. But sometimes it didn't. Sometimes no matter how much I looked at a woman I couldn't get hard, and the more often mastrubated (it got to a point where it was 6-7 times a day) the harder it got. And the doubt persisted, "Am I gay", "Am I gay", "Am I gay". I didn't understand why I was having that thoughts, seeing as I trying to feel sexually attraction towards and that I was clearly failing. Women arouse me, men do not, maybe women no longer arouse me as much as they used to, but there are other explanations for that other than being gay, and when I still manage to mastrubate to a woman I still like it, it feels good, it feels right. Trying to mastrubate to a man has been impossible so far, as it either does nothing for me or freak me out. So why does the thought subsist?

I tried looking back at my past experiences to see I had ever dealt with similar feelings in my left. And if it was obsessively questioning things for seemingly no reason at all, yes I had, just not abot sexual orientation. One time I crashed my car while parking, and became terrified that it would happen again. For months, I was tormentated by the thought that I had scratched some neighbour's car without realizing I had done it. I stared obsessively at my car looking for any signs that that might be the case. My car is a very old one, so that really doesn't help. I used to think "was that scratch already there yesterday? Or did I do it today? Oh no, what did I do". I eventually got over that, but not without causing my family quite a lot of consternation.

There was also a time when I went to class and always had to go back to the place I'd parked to see if I'd really locked my car. At one point I was regularly doing that checking several times in an hour. I got over that as well.

These were the things that questioning my sexuality felt like the most, so I decided to search the internet to see if someone had ever experience anything similar. I found several pieces speaking of something called "Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder", basically, it's an obsessive fear of being gay. It's not a clinical designation but something that people on the internet use to categorize their obsessions. The HOCD stories that I read seemed to fit me like a glove (unlike stories of LGBT people discovering their sexuality, which I had already looked for), but still, it seemed fishy. How could I be sure I wasn't dealing with a bunch of homophobes and this wasn't some new form of gay convertion therapy? As a person with a scientific background, I immediately searched for peer-reviewed literature. I found only a handful of articles which used the term HOCD, though they all seemed fairly legitimate. Besides that, sexual obsession were definitely a thing (fairly well documented), and I don't think any expert on the subject of OCD would deny the fact that people can develop an obsession over their sexual orientation. It seemed fairly legitimate. So I told myself that was what I had, that it was stupid, and tried to put the thoughts behind me again.

But I wasn't able. The doubt still lingered in my mind, and I started needing to reassure myself more and more often. One day, I thought I had come to terms with myself "If I feel nothing in my penis, it isn't real," I decided. But then, a very concrete homosexual thought came to my mind during physical therapy (I have some back problems). I saw a picture of a really buff guy hanging on the wall, and, as a lied down, I was assaulted by this image of that guy fucking me in the ass. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the thought at all, I instantly freaked out, but, to my dismay, I found that I was actually feeling something in my groin this time. My penis wasn't hard, but it was definitely a little bigger and much more sensitive. being scared, I shelved the thought for the moment. It was only when I got home that I felt confortable to revisit it and check my reaction to it. My penis was still sensitive, and I had some mild response. I began trying to masturbate, but the more the thought lingered in my mind, the more I moved it around and tried to expand on it, the less arousing and more disturbing it felt. Eventually, I decided I didn't want to continue and switched to masturbating while thinking of women. That felt nice and comfy, though with normal lackluster levels of arousal, still, I was able to orgasm in the end and really enjoyed it.

I got back to checking the day after that. Still no response to male bodies, and I was still completely unable to get into the thought of being sexual with a man.

Then, a few days after, I got my first homosexually-themed dream. It was only a little snippet. I imagine this thin, purple-haired guy with a very round face taking off his underwear. I surely didn't find the guy "attractive", but I had an instant bones when he took of his panties. I didn't get to see any penises though, as I woke up feeling freaked out and terrified, and I did have a boner. So I told myself to calm down "It's ok to be gay, I repeated". As I was still hard, I tried to masturbate thinking about the dream, but the hard on was dissipating pretty quickly, I switched to more "attractive" (I really don't know if I can tell which guys are attractive...), so I switched to women. It wasn't instant, I had to foce it a little bit, but some measure of a boner eventually returned, I masturbated, I cummed, it felt good.

I decided to tell my father about the way I was feeling, seeking his help to interepret my thoughts. After a short conversation, he said he was pretty sure I wasn't gay, but then moved on to make it very clear that he's "rather have a gay son than a crazy son". He aslo told me to get out more and see if I could finally find a girlfriend. Oh, dad, I wish I could, but I know for certain that no woman will ever want to be with me.

A few days later I went on a trip with my parents. It lasted ten days. Mastrubating was harder because I had last time and I was sharing a room with my parents. Still, I made sure to find a way to do it every day, including the whole checking routine. I started checking out men in real life, and a lot of times I got this tingling sensation in my penis. I didn't like it, but I kept searching for it. Touching my self while looking at every guy within my field of vision. I would also look at girls to compare (though not as often) and I didn't get the tingling as often, but when I got it felt a lot better and my penis actually gre a lot more (a lot of time, though, nothing happened, and that caused me quite a lot of frustration). I also started looking at animals (mosttly dogs), and got a similar "groinal response" at times (though not as often).

Now I'm back from my trip and things feel pretty much te same. I obsessively look at men and women and try to compare my responses to them. Sometimes, my penis reacts to men, and I proceed to attempt to masturbate, but I'm never able. The thought disgustes me, I freak out, and I eventually give up. Mastrubating to women takes a little effort this, but I'm able to do it and I mildly enjoy it though I rarely get a really good orgasm.

The doubt in me persist no matter what I do. What if I'm gay but in denial? What if I'm just repressing really, really hard? But why would I repress it? I'm not homphobic. I think being gay is a perfectly valid sexual orientation. I'm not religious, I'm not conservative. I don't feel any need to fit in. I cherish the things that mke me different. I have a loving, and very understanding family, I have very tolerant and accpeting friends. I have several gay friends and acquaintances (though none of them very close), I've shared rooms with gay men several times, I've showered with gay men at the end of PE classes at school. None of that was ever an issue to me, I just thought "well, I'm straight, and it's not like they're sexual predators so I'll be here with them as I would with any straight guy".

But still, all of this questioning is killing me. I'm not able to anything else, it's just questinioning all of the time. And it's not like I feel I'm getting any closer to answers.

Today I had another dream. It was another snippet which followed a lot of other drandom things. It was another image of skinny guy, except this one was really naked and had a tiny, very thin penis. Once again, I woke up freaked out and with a boner. Tried to masturbate on the thought, couldn't do it. Tried to mastrubate thinking of "attractive men", it was better, my penis reacted, but I wasn't enjoying it and couldn't get into it. Switched the thought to women. Mastrubated. Good time, crappy orgasm. I then proceeded to mastrubate another two times this times this morning (both to women, each one less satisifactory than the last). And now I'm here writting this.

I don't know if any of you can help in some way. Even if you can't, I felt like writting this down was very soothing. I certainly feel better.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Do you have any thoughts/advice?

 

Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it .

And yeah, so far in my life I can say that femininity, or rather the idea of a woman, has always excited me a lot more than either sex's genitals (as I said, I seem to be indiferent to vaginas- though I do see in them some sort of utilitarian appeal, meaning I know you can put your penis there and that sounds nice- and I find penises just grotesque). Lately, most of my fantasies have involved vaginal penetration (sometimes I also fantacize about doing anal with women, but that's rare and I'm not really sure I'd be willing to try it in real life because the anus is the place where shit comes from...) but that didn't use to be the case. When I was in my teenage years, I'd say only about 40% of them involved going "all the way". Mostly, just thinking about "feminine imagery" did the trick. Female secondary sexual characteristics (especially breasts, but I've always liked hips and legs quite a lot as well) played a large part in these fantasies, but so did other things I associated with feminity (for example, feminine clothing or feminine gestures).

Whenever I think about these stuff, everything seems to become clear in my mind for a moment. I know I like women, the idea of a woman makes me sexually excited.

It seems clear now, and I'm feeling great, but I'm sure I'll go back to questioning the next time I want to masturbate to something but can't, or I have a weird dream like the ones I've described. Then, when I start questioning, I become confused because I really can't understand my cock. Sometimes it just becomes sensitive all of the sudden, even when I'm entirely sure I'm not thinking about another human being. I've read that there's only a 50% correlation between penile sensations and actual sexual arousal. That would surely explain why I once mastrubated almost half-way through looking at pictures of Shiba Inus (don't worry, i was already horny when I started). I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't seem to have an objective of being "entirely sure" about my sexuality, and I sometimes feel as if the very fact that I'm questioning is a reason to be suspicious.

So far, I have only masturbated all the way thinking about women (either cis or trans, or, at most, very passable cross-dressers). Women have surely caused me the strongest penile sensations so far (excluding maybe if we count time when I was already hard an feeling horny and forced myself to think of something else) and the only ones I've been confortable with (whenever I find myself feeling something in my penis while looking at men- normally this takes quite some touching to even start- I feel really anxious, and when I force myself to have gay thought they feel gross- I want to reiterate that I don't think it's "wrong" in any way or form, I just feel that it's "wrong for me", if that makes sense, and the thoughts leave me unconfortable).

I know. It wouldn't make sense to put it in the DSM because you can't put every single obession that people feel there (there also isn't "knowing if you locked your car OCD"). But I've found a few case studies in scientific journals (mostly good ones, first quartile) that use the term, and the existance of sexual obsessions seems to be pretty well accepted.

I'm not taking the term too much at heart, but it does seem to be that the stuff I read in OCD forums under that label are the ones I can relate to the most.

I check once and feel nothing. But can't get rid of the doubt.

I check twice and still nothing. But still can't get rid of the thought.

I check thrice and start thinking that something may be there.

So I check again, but it isnt. But so little time ago it felt real...

Overall, I find nothing a lot more often than anything, and when I find anything, the more I think about it the more it feels like it has some other explanation.

But I get into a repetitive cycle that I just don't seem to be able to get out of.

The rants in these forums generally seem relatable to me, even though some guys there seem to experience homosexual thoughts a lot more intensely than I do (some even speak of instant erections to their gay thoughts, to me, it always takes some touching, or it being already being sensitive in the first place before I can feel anything- I suspect that some of these people may actually be gay but in denial, but others do seem to be experiencing something similar to my problems- which I still don't believe to be denial).

I've always been a person who thought that an unexamined life was not worth living. I never trust my instincts, as they've let me down 90% of the times I didn't bother to think. I've always liked to examine everything to the smallest detail. Understading the world and understanding myself have always been the greatest motivations of my life. I hate the concept of "white lies", I hate the idea of people deceiving themselves, and I can't live with the thought that there's a possibility I may have been living a lie so far (I've always been intensely self-reflective, so this idea frightens me a lot). This is what really scares me the most about my obsessive questioning. I also feel that if I were to lose my heterosexual attraction (or find out that they'd been a lie all along), I would lose of myself. I remember the attraction used to feel so good, especially when I was thinking about the girl i loved. And it still feels good to a certain extent, just not as much (I've been feeling really low libido as of late, and I really hate it, I want to go back to being a horny teen, lol). I'm terrified at the thought that one day this all may just be suddenly gone.

Yeah, possibly. I've been finding that as of late, when I'm talking to a girl and I'm thinking "she's cute, maybe we could have something", the next thing that pops into my mind "no, don't think about that! She probably has a boyfriend, and if she doesn't, she probably will have soon. Surely she'd never want to be with you, you're completely undesirable, she'd want any man in the world before wanting you".

But if the problem really stems form here, then that's really bad because I don't see my self-esteem issues going away any time soon. They're really, really deeply ingrained in me, to the point it's almost "I think, therefore I suck". I'd pretty much just accepted this was something that I'd just have to live with all my life. That I loathed myself and there was nothing I could do about it,