I’m sitting here with a razor blade because I feel like I deserve to be punished; however, I made a commitment to my counselor to not punish myself for two months, and I have neither someone to talk to nor anywhere to go for support, therefore I am writing this in the hopes that maybe someone can help me feel better, because I have nowhere else to go.

What has been frustrating me is chess. I’ve been playing chess for 9 years since I taught myself how to when I was 12 years old, and I have recently decided to take it more seriously to become better. What I discovered was that I have a 100% failure rating on Chess.com’s tactical trainer and a level of 850 in total, meaning that I have basically achieved nothing in the last decade and am as terrible at it now as I was then, hence the desire for a punishment. It wouldn’t have been the first time I have.

I’ve tried so hard to become better and be descent at chess, and then to repeatedly fail without any sense of accomplishment or achievement from the beginning I must say is a painful experience, one that is reminiscent of women and socializing.

In fact chess and women have much in common with each other for me - although I like them, they’re both complicated, and I seem to be a universal failure with both. In my entire life I have not ever approached or otherwise talked to a woman in person that liked me. No matter where I am, who I talk to, or what I say, I will either be rejected, rebuffed, shunned, ostracized, insulted, ignored, or taken advantage of by women. Most of my social life is spent talking to imaginary friends because I have spent almost all of my life unable to find anyone at all that I can spend time with and that can actually like me.

I do the best that I can to sound attractive, smart, interesting, sensitive, and demonstrate all the other alleged redeeming qualities that I have, the fact of the matter is that I never succeed and am never enough. Chess and everything else I want to be good at but am not and overall most things in life are the same way it seems. I have studied, practiced, asked others, I have really tried and I really want to be better, similar to how I would really like friends, but I have achieved nothing, fail recurrently, and have not improved at all.

And I have been left to my own devices to handle all the immense pain that I have bottled inside of me - brutal and recurrent self-inflicted punishments to myself that have left me horribly scarred.

Yet others wonder why I have no confidence? What is there for me to be confident about? That I tried? What a comfort that is. Doesn’t that make everything better? Shunned, rejected, lose, fail, drop out, but I tried. Now I feel better.

Why shouldn’t I be punished?