Lonely, sad and a heavy drinker

This is my first official thread. I am Lucia and I am a lonely sad little person. My past is full of bullying and abuse even from my own relatives. I received physical and psychological abuse from my older brother. My parents did nothing to help me from him, many times they didn't believe all the things he did to me. They would always show more love and admiration towards him. My mother once said that she genuinely preferred my brother over me. I grew up being described as useless and ugly. It did wonders for my self esteem. People always call me ugly. They even ask me if I am a tranny, even strangers. All this made me shy. I don't feel comfortable meeting new people and have very few friends. The few friends I have, apparently they never want to do fun things with me. I love traveling but I do it on my own most of the time. It has always been like this, me being alone. I hate my birthdays, they are always so depressing. Full of Facebook greetings but not one person goes to my celebration (if I make one). I am almost 30 and feel I threw my youth and better years away. I developed alcohol abuse and gained 15 kg in 2 years, making me feel even uglier. I've had un satisfying romantic relationships, sometimes I feel I'll end up alone. I want to leave the heavy drinking, but it is hard. Alcohol brings me problems but brings me so much joy, not something I get on a daily basis. I have avoid it on certain nights, but I just end up crying and feeling like I am going crazy. Then I prefer to drink than go through that. I wake up the next day with a nasty bitter taste in my mouth left by alcohol and rubbish all over the place, since I order junk food when drinking (another nasty addiction). I feel full of regrets, get depressed and the cycle goes on. This is my sick sad life. I wish I had a nice group of friends to do fun stuff with, a boyfriend to love and loves me back and a healthy lifestyle. I just don't know where to begin. I have a very low self esteem and I am to shy. I even struggle to make eye contact. I am afraid of meeting new people and ask me, or think, that I look like a man. New people often see me as quite and boring, with no good conversation. What most people find funny,I don't, and vice versa. Does anyone feel this way?

Oh gosh Imph8885, so many issues that you describe were and some still are, my issues too, that I counted them: twelve.

Don't know where to begin eh? Start by quitting drinking. I quit many, many times before actually doing it 12 years ago. The bottle doesn't help.....it only dulls things for awhile and things aren't any better the next day.

I'd like to hear from you some more on this forum.

BTW, I'm about 30 years older than you. Believe me, your youth may or may not be gone, but there's plenty of future left for you. You can't change the past, but you can change the present........and the present will be your future's past. It'd be sad to look back on 2015 long after it's too late to do anything about it.

Thank you for your response constant stranger. I have tried cutting down on drinking several times but have failed. I don't know why I haven't been able to achieve it. Might be the fact that I don't feel strong enough to face my feelings and situation. I don't like this life. It is not nice living a life with constant hangovers, getting constantly into trouble with other people and having the people of the liquor store know me. They have even tried not to sell me more alcohol because of how intoxicated I was. I bet no man would fall in love with a woman like me. I have always been a sad person, but at least before I had a healthier lifestyle. Seems that it doesn't get any better with time, on the contrary, it just keeps getting worse and worse. I don't know who I am anymore. I don't live, I just try to survive every day. I am quite promiscuous as well, even if I am considered ugly by many people. I am not proud of this, but sometimes I feel a void inside of me that kind of fills up with male contact. Obviously, because of my situation, I am unable to have a proper relationship. Sometimes in a way, this behaviour makes me feel empty, dirty and unworthy.
There are times that all I want is to be alone and work on myself, but the temptations out there are too strong. I have a few friends, yet I can't tell them about all this. It is as if I have a double life. It is ironic how some people say that I look very confident, but deep inside I feel really insecure and just wished to disappear. Thoughts about death come and go. I am not the type of person who would actually commit suicide, but there are some nights in which I really wish not to wake up the next day.
I am at a point of my life where I either change or just continue my lifestyle and end up dying with a bottle of wine in my hand. Despite everything, I still have some hope inside my soul and I really want to change, it is just that I don't know how. Thanks for reading.

Oh wow, it's like you're talking about me....I used to methodically rotate which liquor stores I bought my supply from, just so the cashiers wouldn't guess how much and often I drank. It may have worked, I don't know.

Your last sentence is important...you have some hope, you want to change but don't know how. Can I give a bit of advice? I'd say you have a many issues and that could be a bit discouraging: where to start? Try to identify a task that seems "doable", start on that and get it 'under control'....not necessarily fixed and resolved, but started on, changed for the better and more under control. In essence, make a process of movement happen that actually achieves some accomplished goals, some things you can tell yourself, 'Yeah! I did that! I got that done!'

And congratulate yourself, give yourself some credit and move on, one step at a time.

Wow. I can totally relate with what you wrote about rotating the liquor stores! I guess I will try with small things. Sometimes I am very impatient and at the end of the day that impatience makes me lose another battle, which can totally bring me down. Maybe that is what has made it almost impossible to get rid of the bottle. In the past, I could spend months without the heavy drinking, but again I would eventually do it again. For the past year, I had been unable to give it up, not even for a few weeks. I moved to another country a year and a half ago. I use to see a psychologist back in my country and he advised me not to move because I was emotionally unstable for such a change. I guess he was right, but I was offered a good professional opportunity, those ones you get once in a lifetime. I don't know if I should regret it, since I have lost the few balance and control I had in the past. I even look different physically. Some days I feel optimistic and can go on with life, like a normal person. However, my loneliness makes me feel bored and I have the urge to do something wild, like heavy drinking, partying and casual encounters, all with consequences.

I guess that ever since I was young, I had an idea in my mind of what I wanted my life to be. Now, as a grown woman, many dreams didn't come true which make me feel like a failure. It is really hard to accept my life and myself. I also notice that many times I have to put up with people and situations that other people don't encounter.

Sometimes some friends annoy me so much when they complain about their lives and problems. I find their concerns ridiculous in comparison to the things I've gone, and still go through. Some people are so lucky, much more than me and still complain, which make me want to slap them. This is one of the reasons I can hardly tolerate some people. I just can't relate with anyone I know.

Anyway, thank you once again for your response, it seems honest and helpful. I appreciate it especially because you sure know exactly how it feels and what to do. Many people have tried to help me, but honestly they say their opinions without even knowing what it is to be in this position.

Every person I've ever known had dreams that didn't come true.

Another thing, people who've toughed it out through truly awful misfortune are in a real way living in a different world than the luckier ones, the ones who haven't suffered as much. Their problems can seem trivial by comparison.....doesn't help with our loneliness, does it?

It doesn't help. Sometimes I try to be more positive and see myself as a stronger person than those other people. I do acknowledge that there are people in this world that have to deal with things that are much worse than what I've gone through anyway. However, although that sometimes gives me a more positive perspective of my life, there are moments when I feel frustration. Yes, frustration, that is the word, that is what I feel that doesn't let me be happy.

What frustrates me more is how people in the past have humiliated me and I have been so stupid and shy to do something about it. That is why it is very hard for me to actually love another human being. I have encounter a few people in my life that have really cared about me (very, very few people have), but it is so frustrating that no matter how much I try, I just can't love them back as I wished or should.

About my dreams not coming true, well in a way I think you might be right with that. However, for some reason I always have to compare myself with others and always conclude that I am uglier, less smart, less fortunate, etc. I know I shouldn't compare myself like that, but sometimes I can't control it. I think my main issue is the frustration I mentioned and how stupid I feel for not standing up for myself, how I have let people use me and abuse me.

Anyway, thanks again.

Hey, what are we here.....twins separated by 3 decades? I dwell way too much on humiliations I let people get away with. And I'm not a forgiving type of person.

I also dwell on dreams I didn't have the resources or confidence to pursue.

Well, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. But being a bit tough doesn't take away the unpleasantness of living through all of this.