I'm struggling with BDD from undesirable plastic surgery.
I'm starting to feel like I'll never have a real chance at life. I worry that I'll never be in a relationship again, never have another boyfriend, never get married, never have kids, and never be truly happy.
I'm 37, and I've been struggling with this for two years. People tell me I'm beautiful, but it doesn't mean anything to me because I see myself the way I see myself.
My legs have ripples that look like cellulite running down my thighs, and the elasticity of my stomach skin has been compromised. I'm not toned at all, and I don't feel like I ever can be again. I feel so disgusting and disfigured that I can't even experience a moment of joy. I can't live life. Even thoughts of just simply being with a husband and kids and enjoying life in our home, nights outside in the yard, events (fairs, concerts, travel) make my heart hurt to the extreme because it's all I ever wanted and I feel left behind while life keeps moving and people around me keep going on to the next chapter of life and here I am grieving over the life I could have had. It makes my heart want to explode all day, everyday.
I used to be so extroverted. I loved life, had fun, was funny, full of energy, and always wanted to do everything. Now I isolate and don't want to do anything. I was beautiful. I loved dressing up, being around family and friends, spreading joy to people and strangers alike, and simply enjoying life. Now I can't do any of it. I had so much potential for living a normal, happy, average life, maybe even an above-average one. Now I feel like a waste. I feel shame, ugliness, disgust, and deep regret. I dissociate and feel like I'm not even living, as if I'm watching life happen and this can't possibly be my real reality.
I was in a narcissistic, abusive relationship that took my youth. He had wandering eyes, and I caught him many times in situations involving other women. It wasn't full-out cheating, but it was clearly inappropriate and attention-seeking. Every time, I felt like I wasn't good enough. I thought I needed to look more like the women he was interested in so I could be enough. That is what led me to plastic surgery. That relationship withered away my self-esteem.
I thought surgery would be my glow-up. I thought he would stop looking at other women, and that I would finally feel better about myself. It didn't work. What it did do was show me how much I had let external factors dictate how I felt about myself. (Young and dumb, I know.) I don't see how any man will want me now and if I can truly find peace in my body.
Now, I even feel like everyone looks at me as a waste and a failure (not everyone knows about my body situation - only those closest to me do) haven't done anything with my life, and because of this, I can't even fix the mistake of wasting so many years on someone who treated me the way he did.
Therapy and meds aren't helping. I have ADHD, PTSD, and OCD. Adderall has been the only thing that has helped me move at all, and now even that is starting to lose its effect.
I just don't know how to move on with my life. I don't think I can live this way any longer. This isn't a life. Relief is only found through isolation, isolation from the world engenders in me the worst loneliness, FOMO, and existential torment.
How and could I even get beyond this? Trying to find the the easiest least painful way to ctb because I can't go on like this.
