I graduated from a top uni in 2019 less than a year before the world changed. I was enjoying my first look at real life and my first time having money, meeting girls I was interested in, developing friendships, and traveling. Then COVID hit and I couldn’t do much of any of this. Everyone I knew retreated to their hometowns with family and I was left alone. I never had any family, but I had been able to mostly mask that feeling during normal times with everything else going on in my life. But it really hit me hard then, and I started going stir-crazy and getting panic attacks about being alone forever. I started thinking about ending it because I’d never belong and I felt like I started to see everyone’s true colors.

This coincided with a couple physical traumas I experienced during COVID. I went to an ENT doctor because I thought I had sudden hearing loss in one ear. She prescribed a high-dose steroid for a couple weeks. She then conducted a hearing exam a few days into it and said I didn’t have hearing loss and she didn’t see a need for me to continue the steroid. It didn’t sound like a big deal if I did continue, so I did but I later learned they are extremely serious after I suddenly developed tinnitus. This obviously exacerbated my frustrations and depressive feelings. Secondly, I went to a dermatologist for acne scars. He prescribed a laser that he burned my entire face with, and above everything else this is the worst experience of my life.

It’s been a bit over two years I’ve been dealing with all this. A lot of times I wish for an end. I am not a direct casualty of COVID, but I do feel like it brought about the conditions that made it clear I was never going to survive in this world without family support. It just happened to be COVID that showed this, but any other adversity that came my way would have likely done the same. I have also been delving deeper into my psyche and discovered I fit various diagnoses for things like autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphia, highly sensitive personality, and so on. I don’t know how much of these are nature vs nurture given my extensive trauma, but to answer your question, yes, I’ve lost my marbles and I don’t know if I’ll ever find them given the absolute clusterfuck I’m in.