Greetings. I may have given some of you the impression that I'm a heartless individual with many of my posts. I want to get better and I'm starting to like this community so I'm going to take a leap of faith here and throw myself at your mercy.

Truth be told, the dark exterior is nothing more than a defensive mechanism to prevent myself from being hurt. See? I'm so soft that I have to protect myself from random people on the internet. Pathetic huh?

Want to hear something even more pathetic? Up until a couple of months ago, I would cry myself to sleep on average of 1/3rd of the month. I often find the loneliness and lack of love in my life too much to bear, yet, I'm too damn afraid and weak to do something about it. Sometimes I've been so hurt and down that I've cried damn near half the day. I'm a coward who uses the darkness as a shield because I'm afraid of the light. I'm terrified with openness and showing any type of weakness to anybody else because of how many people who have hurt me so I take the easy way out and hide from people or show them only what they want to see so I can be shown some kind of compassion without having to work for it. If that doesn't make me a weak and pathetic excuse of a man than IDK what does

Now? I'm completely numb. I bury my feelings and emotions. All I literally do is try to make money off my business ventures and play video games with short breaks to go to the gym or the occasional Yoga class. I want to be rich and perfect because I feel like that will be the only way any woman would ever want anything to do with me. If I don't have a lot of money and perfect looks and I'm not good in bed, what else is there? A bottomless emotional pit of nothingness. At least having these things would compensate for how empty I am and would allow me to have love with a fraction of the work involved.

Don't get me wrong, I can love and I have a few people in my life who I love and cherish and I can even be a deep person to the rare individual who can earn my trust, but I find it difficult to bond emotionally with people especially women not because I'm a sexist or anything because I'm not but because of how many of them have hurt me in a major way. I also find it much easier to be friends with people than form relationships because there is a bigger emotional investment involved in a successful relationship and are much more painful when they fail than a friendship.

Most days, I'm content to live in my fantasy worlds or do my own thing in complete solitude but sometimes, the loneliness gets overwhelming. What's sad is that I find my goals involving making money and my fantasies about the awesome houses, fancy cars, advanced gadgets (I'm a geek at heart) and places I could travel exciting, but the moment I shift those fantasies towards women or love, I feel dread and sadness. Furthermore, almost anytime that I see romance on a movie or TV show or a happy looking couple in person, I feel sadness and sometimes even anger or envy.

In short, I want people to think that I'm bad *** or even an evil psychopath who could kill somebody without feeling anything so that they don't see me as a weakling and try to prey on me or hurt me. Under the tough exterior though, I'm nothing more than an outcast. A mere shadow in darkness that lurks at the edge of society.

I'm starting therapy soon to try to work through my problems, but in the meantime, I think talking about my my problems rather than continuing to hide might help me open up and starting here while I still have the protection of anonymity would likely be my best bet.

I feel like I'm taking a risk here so depending on how you guys respond, I'll either attempt to further open myself up in the future or I'll close myself off completely from most people.

Thanks for reading