CBT

I don't really know how to describe what my absence from updating this has been like. Things like "eventful" or "busy" don't cut it. Just been feeling rather miserable, overall. Actually, "overwhelmed" is the perfect word for it. Overwhelmed by everything, really. The scale of trying to sort one's entire life out, and the pressure of it. I have gotten to the point where I am snappy and short-tempered at the slightest annoyance. I've been at a standstill generally. Not making much progress on any front. But I keep all this frustration shut away inside, which just exasperates the short-temper.

I did turn 26. But that's not particularly something I was looking to celebrate much. And perhaps depressingly, no one else seemed to care much either. But going out there and socialising to meet people who might care is feeling like too much right now.

Of course, I'd love to be hopeful. While it's easy to look at the past year and see everything that went wrong and the time 'wasted' there, I did make some improvements and maybe learnt a bit more about myself. Even if I slipped back on those improvements, I know that I could do it once. But it's the downsides that hit home more. The things I couldn't do and the things that went wrong.

If there is one positive in all this, it may be that I do at least want to have sex. Or find some interest in the idea of it, anyway. The actual act going to find and then sleep with someone, even in the most anonymous of situations, is feeling a bit out of my reach at the moment. But I haven't completely lost the drive or desire, which is a symptom of depression I'm glad not to be experiencing right now.

But these past few weeks, I've found that when I want to have a wank, I put on straight porn. Yet I'm not having any kind of questioning phase (or another one). As time has passed I've just become more certain that I don't really find women sexually attractive. I don't find the sight of a naked woman repulsive or anything melodramatic like that, but it just doesn't arouse any interest in me. I pick what I watched bases solely on the guy.

Perhaps it's because there is this disconnect between what's on screen and my own sex life that I've been watching it instead of anything gay. Otherwise I end up thinking about my own situation, and the worries and anxieties I have about it. But a guy with a girl? That's not a part of my world at all, so it is 'fantasy' for me. Not something real, or likely to be personally real. It's easier to put out of mind the less arousing thoughts that accompany watching something that (even in the most broadest of senses) resembles my own sex life. I've kind of stopped doing it over the past few days. If I keep it up, am I going to end up conditioning myself to only be able to come with straight porn or something? Like all those people with that gay OCD who aren't attracted to men but become fixated on the idea of it and end up distressed over it?

I have no resolutions for this year. Not any I set around this time. If there is one thing I've learnt from the parade of failures that has been my past year (or ten) it's that if you want to change something, you just start right then and there. My resolutions would, sadly, have just been then same as they would have been for years either way.

I have started cognitive behavioural therapy in the last few days, which is the CBT of the title. (The idea of the sexual CBT doesn't do it for me.) It gets to be the title because it's what starting to make me feel a bit hopeful about changing things. It's mostly just been reading lately, but I see a lot of myself in the descriptions of errors in thinking and such. I've wrote before about worrying about how I look or feel or am preforming during sex (not to mention other avenues of life), which is one of the things it has mentioned. It's not actually a new revelation to me, but it's nice to have something to try to aim for.