Hi, I'm new and this is my story (very long!)

Hi... My name's Cody, I'm 18 and I just started college this last week. I'm certain I'm a Love Addict, and I'm leaning greatly towards Codependent, but I also think it's a bit of a mix of other things, such as Torchbearer or Obsessed Love Addict in some ways because I definitely am addicted to fantasy and let it carry me away into infatuation based on almost nothing real. I posted a general introduction in the Introductions/I Need Help fourm, but this is the much more detailed version (so basically, if you’re interested but don’t want to read this much, read the other one for the quick version). I’m going to apologize in advance if this gets very self-pitying, I have a lot to get off my chest.

To start, I've never actually officially been in a relationship before. Until about a year ago, I never even showed much interest in being in a relationship to begin with, mostly because I didn't feel I could, deserved to, or was comfortable even thinking of such things. I have had a pretty crazy childhood, surrounded by drugs, alcohol, and constant fighting and violence. Heck, I was smoking marijuana and eating out of a dumpster at age 5… not kidding. But I don’t smoke anymore, or drink. After a combination of bullying, my dad (or actually step-dad, but he still thinks he’s my real dad, and I never met my real dad and I’m not sure if he even knows I exist, I was a mistake from a guy my mom cheated on my step-dad with while they were married, :/ but that makes my mom sound worse than she really is, my step-dad was the abusive one, my mom’s generally a good person just with some occasional bad judgments), and many later horrible boyfriends of my mom’s, I have practically no self-esteem, I rarely make friends, and never any that I would consider close to me, I stay quiet as much as possible, and generally was always more or less content to live in fantasies and fiction, whether created by my imagination, from books, movies, or video games. Just the thought of me being romantically involved with anyone made me turn red with embarrassment, so I never even gave it much thought.

This all changed about 2 years ago, I was a junior in high school. I met someone who seemed different than all the rest. The first time I saw her, she was playing a violin for her part in a project for some other class in the school's media center. She wore the most unusual clothes, had hair shorter than any other girl would dare, was very small and petite, and probably overall a little odd-looking to most others.

She seemed a little nervous playing the violin, and she did, admittedly, mess up a couple notes in the song she was playing, and I could see a few of her classmates giggling, and there was a very unenthusiastic applaud once she was done as she awkwardly returned to her seat. I pretended not to pay much attention, but I almost felt like crying as strange as that sounds, and as unusual that was for me at the time (I probably had literally not cried once in probably the previous 3 years, I was emotionally dead inside, I had to be to deal with the things going on at home all those years). It was like out of nowhere I suddenly felt something I never felt before, I just wanted run over and hug her and tell her she was amazing. After a few minutes I had to leave (having been secretly glancing over at her every 5 seconds the entire time) and I never saw her again the rest of the year.

Then at the start of my senior year, I finally got one class with her. I quickly became more and more infatuated. She always seemed like the very quiet odd one of the class who no one talked to, like me. I eventually found her on Facebook and sent a friend request, though I had never spoken directly to her yet. This is when things began to get out of hand... I started reading her profile, looking at tons of pictures she had taken (many artsy and cool), then started reading status updates, notes, etc.... after about a week I realized I had literally read every single thing she had ever posted publically on facebook over the last year to when she created her profile... stalker, creeper were the thoughts going through my mind, but I couldn't stop, I started checking multiple times a day to see if she had come online and posted anything new. Every morning in class I would be literally shaking with anticipation as she entered the room. I listened intently to anything she ever did say and turned red whenever she looked at me and said something to me in group projects. I thought of her constantly, all the time, I stopped all my usual hobbies almost entirely. I started crying myself to sleep every night, hugging a pillow wishing it was her next to me. I was convinced I was in love with her. I felt like I was going insane and hated myself for being so creepy about it all, after all I had never felt anything remotely like this before and now it was so strong I couldn’t think of anything else. I dreampt up fantasies constantly like the first time we'd really have a conversation, our first date, first kiss, first time confessing our love for each other, proposal, marriage, kids, etc...

Somehow I finally talked to her after about 3 months of this, in December just before Christmas break, we were doing another group project and she ended up working alone so I left my group and asked if I could join her (I was almost in one of those dream-like states where you don’t even feel in control of your own body). She smiled and said sure and thanked me. We worked together for over an hour and talked non-work-related stuff, even joked around a little. I couldn’t believe I had actually done it, I was sooooo happy. ;D After that I felt so empowered, so much more confident and outgoing than I ever felt. We talked a few more times on Facebook and I eventually asked if she wanted to see a movie together, as horrifying as that would be for me, actually meeting someone at the movies, practically a date. Something about her made me feel like it was worth it to be terrified and finally do things like that I’d never have done before, just to be around her, it was intoxicating and I felt empty every second away from her.

Then she said she couldn't go to see the movie that weekend, then the semester changed and I had no more classes with her, then the next weekend she couldn't either, then I let it go and we just talked a bit online every now and then, then she stopped replying to my messages and we slowly stopped talking altogether…

Needless to say, I spiraled down into depression. This was the lowest I'd ever been. I wanted to be in contact with her again so badly, but then I started to realize she was actually much more well-liked and popular than I had thought, she just had a very specific type of people she was friends with, artsy theatre/acting types, as she was into acting too, and she was in fact one of the more outgoing and talkative people at school. After a couple months I realized she wasn’t really who I thought she was, that this "love" was really infatuation derived from mostly fantasy. She was actually just being friendly and didn’t really have much interest in me, even as friends. I finally accepted that it was over (well never really begun) with her.

I felt alone all alone again, It was like I was finally shown a glimmer of hope only to have it disappear back into the darkness. I started to self-harm, cutting, a lot. I sought help with my depression on some forums for teens struggling with depression and such. This was another eye-opening experience for me, except it did nothing to relive my depression, if anything it made it worse. I had never realized how many others there were like me to be found just a few clicks away, in some ways it felt amazing to meet people I could relate to, but at the same time, I then began obsessing over them and their problems. I treated each individual person and their situation as if it were my fault for not doing more to help them. I felt like I needed to save everyone and every second I spent doing anything else was selfish of me. I then also came to believe maybe this was the answer to end my pain, to meet someone who felt the same as I did, someone who felt lost, broken, and empty, and be their savior of sorts, make things better for them, and fall in love. I would contact dozens of people privately and try to talk through everything they were going through individually. It got out of control and I actually started to keep sheets of information to remember what I had discussed with whom.

I found one girl from England (I live in the US) who seemed to have the most extreme problems of anyone there, and I read her whole life story. I wrote to her sobbing, telling her I would surrender myself to her if she would let me take care of her. She was very surprised but said she felt touched by the message, she has bipolar and would sometimes get hurtfully cruel and hateful towards me but I never showed that it hurt and remained calm and supportive through each of her episodes because I knew she didn’t mean any of it, and she’d usually apologize later. We started to get kind of close… then she suddenly announced that she had gotten back together with a girlfriend from her past and they were going to get married and live together and take care of each other… I still remain friends with her to this day, but I secretly had yet another falling apart from that, though it was not too bad because at least she was happier now.

For several more months I kept talking with such people, and taking all of the bad things personally. Once a 14-year old girl I had started talking to tried to commit suicide, and I frantically called her local police to go check on her but her parents had already found her unconscious and she survived, but she told me after a few days in the hospital that she still wished she had “done a better job.” I carved her name in my arm with hearts and such really deep so it hurt, somehow feeling like the pain would transfer away from her to me or something. But even with all I was trying to do to help, I more and more began to feel like I was fighting a losing battle. It tortured me that I couldn’t help everyone… but even more awful was the fact that, deep down, I knew a large part of what kept me trying to help was the hope that I would meet someone who would fall in love with me for being there for them, which was completely selfish. It all became too much to bear, I started having a ritual of adding new scars for every bad thing I read happening to any of these people, and I started falling apart even more. I quit trying in school (and I had always been an A student), stopped caring to hide how I was feeling and would sometimes sleep in class out of exhaustion, some people started to find out about my self-injuring and I began getting made fun of for that too.

I tried to commit suicide myself, to bleed out, but I didn’t really know what I was doing, it was just an impulse. Half way through the process I decided this was the most selfish thing I could possibly do, because then I could help no one at all. I concluded that I simply needed to use some moderation and balance between my own life and worrying about other people’s problems, after all, how can I possibly strengthen others if I’m not strong myself? I finally began easing off the obsession a bit, and started working on stopping all these bad habits. The forum I had been on was also starting to become a nasty place, I started making enemies because I always called people out when they were being hurtful or rude to someone else on the forums (in one case, someone had told their life story and this one guy just told them they were dumb and useless and no one cared about their problems, so I confronted him about it and got spammed by several of his friends who jumped to his defense, telling me to go kill myself and stuff, simply for defending someone ). So I quit the forum entirely, and just locked myself down to the people I had already become well acquainted with and had other ways of contacting.

I joined a new forum with the intent to start things off fresh, without the intent of basing all my conversations around people’s depression and try to make some more “normal” friendships. I know that sounds bad but I wasn’t avoiding anyone in trouble, I just wasn’t exclusively looking for the most troubled threads and posts. Almost immediately I took notice of a girl there who seemed nice. Oddly enough, I was just about to message her, to approach her casually as a friend rather than all the weird crazy over-the-top-ness I had done with all the people before, when “she” sent “me” a message saying I seemed really nice and that she wanted to get to know me. It was the first time someone had really contacted me first with interest.

You probably already know where I’m going with this. I felt like that huge coincidence that we both took notice of each other like that out of thousands of people on the forum must have been like a sign. She was very sweet and after a while, I began to feel like we had something, she was genuinely interested in me, not just using me to vent to as I always asked everyone else to use me as (not that’s all anyone would do, but that’s just kind of what our friendships would be based around because I wanted them to talk to me about what was going on). We got very close very fast and I can honestly say this was/is the closest I’ve ever been to someone, I finally felt comfortable telling her anything, and her the same, and we’d go on webcam often and watch movies together sort of like a date. I was starting to come out of my depression a bit, though there is still chaos at home as always, but I could finally cope and stopped cutting because I felt like she was worth it, I was motivated to quit, I had something to look forward to. After a while, I began getting clingy… I started saying I wanted to meet her, that she was the best friend I’d ever had (which is true), and I wanted to be more. However, she felt I was moving way too fast, she had met someone online before a lot like me and he had started telling her he loved her and asked her to get naked on cam and stuff, which, she recently admitted she did do, because she felt forced into it. She thought he was going to stop talking to her if she didn’t and she is terrified of losing anyone she’s close to because she finds it extremely difficult to make new friends. But she feels awful and used because of it, and he started being terrible towards her, leading her to feel trapped because he knew all her secrets and now had pics/videos of her nude. She thought I was going to do the same things to her, and kept trying to keep me at arm’s length when I tried to tell her how much I liked her and stuff.

Eventually, I started obsessing almost as much as I had with that girl in school, except this time it was with someone I was openly talking to, so I made my feelings clear… all the time, and started becoming a broken record, to which she would never quite respond like I wished back to. I also very frequently tried to get her to open up about any bad things that might be bothering her and stuff. I started to feel uncertain of my feelings though, something was missing, she wasn’t extremely troubled in any way, there was nothing she needed saving from, and so I felt useless again, and I felt a little distanced having come from different backgrounds where she has been kind of spoiled (in her own words) and I have pretty much been in non-stop hell. I realized I have an attraction to the hurt, the needy, and she was neither, so something just felt off, I couldn’t be useful in any way, she didn’t “need” me like I needed her. She finally made it clear she only wanted to ever be friends, I said I understood, but then still came back to the subject a few more times, and no doubt have grinded at her nerves. Now we haven’t really had a conversation in nearly two weeks, and I feel like she’s trying to faze me out. I brought too much drama too many times after being told no and she is getting sick of it. Every day I ask if we can talk tonight and she just kind of says maybe and then when night comes, she says she’s sleepy or busy, so I didn’t even ask today, and she didn’t say anything to me either.

And so now, the whole cycle is repeating again. I have had an eye condition called blepharitis (though now I kind of suspect it may also be related to anxiety, or at least anxiety makes it worse) and it’s been acting up really bad lately as I start my first year in college. It causes my eyes to burn and water so I blink constantly, rub them, close my eyes, and squint all day, which makes me seem very weird and some probably think I’m crying with all the tears and putting my face into my palms. I think it’s over with her too now, even as friends, it’ll never be quite the same, and even if we were together, I don’t feel quite right still, I need to be needed in some way. I haven’t met anyone in any of my classes that seems at all like me, everyone seems happy and outgoing, and as strange as that sounds, that makes me feel intimidated, uncomfortable, and distanced. I gravitate only towards needy, hurt, people, otherwise I don’t feel like I can do any good, they’re already happy without me, whereas I’m not happy alone, I need to feel like I matter and have completed them as much as they completed me. I’m falling back into depression, letting things get to me again, and started cutting again a few days ago, and have every day since so far. I’m spending countless hours every night searching for love online, often staying up past 4am or even 6am even though I have to get up before 10am and do a lot of work for our family business (we breed dogs) each morning, so I’m very sleep deprived, huge dark circles under my eyes and fatigue. I’m back to crying myself to sleep every night and hugging my pillow pretending I have someone there to protect and take care of.

So… I figured out what specific disorder I think I have awhile ago, Codependent Love Addict, which led me to this site. I would have to answer “yes” to at least 20 or more of those questions on the 40 questions thing here. Right now, I can tell you exactly what I’m truly, deep down wishing to find, but I don’t know if it’s right to want this, it just seems weird:

I want to find someone who is on the verge of suicide, who is smart, creative, passionate, sensitive, but overwhelmed by all wrong in her life and looking for a way out. I want to be her savior, show up and make everything better, I WANT her to be struggling with an addiction of some sort, to be self-injuring like myself, but then we work together to fix these things. I want to feel like I could gladly die for her at any time, like I would do anything for her. I want her to have my complete loyalty and love, but enjoy having it, want it, and show appreciation and love back. I want to have made all the difference and turned her life around. I want her to get upset or scared when I’m gone and tell me she loves me and NEEDS me and beg me never to leave her. This is the part I feel is especially wrong or warped: I want her to control me, give me direction, tell me what to do and what I want because I do not know what to do or what I want on my own, I always need other people to tell me what’s best or what I want. For example, even at restaurants, I always just order whatever someone else orders or ask them what I should get. I want to be her support, to protect her, to comfort her, to do whatever she wants, and to be her… “pet.” This does also go into sexual stuff it seems… I’m not as obsessed with sex as most my age seem to be but when I do think about that stuff I often fantasize of being dominated by a girl, not the other way around, or being like a sex slave, there for her pleasure, not mine… sorry if this is getting weird but I hope it makes it clear what my problem is and why I think I’m a Codependent Love Addict.

I’m going to admit… I came to this site with half the motivation of finding someone here to love… half of me doesn’t want help with this as this site is intended, and instead wants to embrace it with someone else with the same kind of thing… I’m sorry if that kind of makes me a bad guy here and I won’t blame the moderators if they feel I should be banned for that. Or maybe it isn’t even like that and I’m not making much sense, I don’t know anymore, I just know I feel messed up in the head, like I’m some kind of poison or something… I just can’t seem to think about anything but finding someone to accept and love me and let me take care of and love them, but I feel like what I want is wrong and bad.

Someone please tell me what I should be doing…