I am a 29 year old male suffering from a soup of mental disorders and other tribulations, hence my other posts. I am unemployed, living with my parents after graduating with my electronics engineering degree. I am unable to find work, depressed, and tired. Instead of explaining my previous posts over again, I will just come to the point of how I feel now. At this moment, I am at a low no one else around me can surface. I suffer from something that I was afraid might get worse by time; I suffer from extreme self hate and body dysmorphic disorder – or as it is better described. BDD has its extremes showcased commonly in eating disorders resembling the chaining and imprisonment that results from this pest of a disorder. From young, I suffered the weirdest forms of OCD that lodged with me since my pre-teens; from feeling existentially guilty after saying “shit”, to feeling I have to wash my hands to get rid of harmful germs. I spent my childhood fearing that eating a candy bar would give me diabetes, and all sorts of other vexations. While my parents and siblings enjoyed a pizza, I was crying about not having done an even number of jumps on the staircase. BDD soon started into my teens and never left me. My BDD stems from extreme self hate about my teeth and dental appearance. Since I was 21, I was extremely aware of how crooked they were. I flossed, brushed, and did everything by-the-book, but thanks to a lifelong coffee addiction, they turned yellow early on in my life and thus immune to whitening, on top of bad luck with broken teeth after eating something. I had no finances to fix them and this left me in despair and turmoiled into extreme self-loathing and depression. Last year an abscess “randomly” formed around a back molar and we had to do a root canal on it promptly. I was taken aback by the pain being so bad that I not only lived with chronic pain, but also feared losing my teeth. The song continued into a dark symphony of self detest as I noticed how my now root canal become a darkened tooth. Since the root canal I suffered depression knowing that the tooth isn’t alive anymore and that I most likely will lose it. I feel as if I cannot forgive myself and get on with life. I take interest in commercials and the society around me where individuals with nice looking teeth makes up the majority of the population and showcase their “pearly whites” without major dental flaws, and it drives me off a cliff. It is hard to describe to people around me why I am severely depressed about having the root canal and the lack of comfort I have had since I have had this procedure done, coupled by the extreme contingency of having to cover my mouth every time I smile. I feel I failed, and I am also extremely self conscious about the darkening, and about the thought of the dead tooth inside my mouth, rotting away. It makes me hate myself ad nauseum. I almost feel “grossed out” by myself. I fucking hate this existence, and what aggravates the depression is seeing others with beautiful teeth and a healthy smile dominating the world and causing intense envy in the bottom dwellers like myself. I want to go back 10 years when my teeth was still pretty and I was healthy. I thus became a recluse, I avoid socialising at all costs; and I turned into a closet misanthrope, Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Hell hath no fury…