And just to end with some anxious clarification, I still love the Coquinuts. There's more I want to say, but that's for a private conversation, if I get the chance. I don't want to force anything.

Right now I need to protect myself from getting hurt again, but I'm available if anyone wants to talk.

I don't know if this needs to be said, but if I've ever hurt or upset anyone, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm such a screw-up, I'm doing everything I can to figure things out. There's so much more in my mind about how I see myself I've not gone into.

I want to make other people happy, even if I can't be.

There is precisely one person who I feel like has been there for me. They know who they are. And if they're reading this, it means more than I know how to say. 💛

I'm not trying to make anyone else feel guilty. I'm not angry at the community. I just feel lost, and I wish things were better.

And the reason why I use past-tense when talking of that connection is because it doesn't feel like it's there anymore. It feels like I'm not wanted anymore, and I've felt worthless over the last few months.

It feels like the last 18 months of pouring my heart into the thing I loved meant nothing.

I don't want to rely on them to help me or use them as a crutch. I don't expect that at all. But with everything spiraling closer to home and seemingly not getting any easier any time soon, it was a relief to have somewhere that made all the problems just not matter for a few hours each day.

I had one way of trying to put things to one side, and that was online, with the Coquinuts. That community, I hope, knows how much I love them. They gave me the only space I had to forget about the things going on around me, forget about how much I hate myself, and just remember how to smile.

I've thought about trying it again, but I've been too scared to go through with it. Scared that I wouldn't be able to commit again. Scared that I would be waiting who knows how long.

I feel like I'm trapped in a dark room with no way out, and my only option is to keep pretending I'm okay.

Getting mental health support in the UK is nightmarishly difficult. Professionals are overworked and underpaid, and there is a long waiting list. I was incredibly lucky to be seen anywhere near as quickly as I was.

And yet I blew it. Anxiety and doubt stopped me going, and I was discharged.

Simply put, I fucked up with the therapy. I fucked it up because I did what I've always done: I didn't trust myself that something was really wrong. I doubted myself, because I feel like I've never been allowed to be "not okay", and I hide behind a mask and pretend I'm fine as a coping mechanism.

I've barely set foot outside this year. For the first few months I was trying to get therapy to deal with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

I have NEVER engaged in self-harm, and largely out of fear, I don't think I'm at risk of doing so. But it doesn't stop my brain going to dark places.

In hindsight, things weren't good during that time. I never had the chance to learn what the world was like outside of home and how to exist in it. I'm 27 in February, and I still don't know how. I still haven't learned how to deal with everything happening outside of my control, and I'm terrified.

I've lost almost every connection I have to immediate family, and I don't have anyone else. When I was 8 I was taken out of school because I was bullied and abused by teachers who couldn't deal with an autistic child trying to cope.

I spent years stuck at home until my mum died when I was 17.

Earlier this year, my uncle passed away. Admittedly I didn't know him too well, my parents' sides of my family have been broken for a long time. But it came in the same span of a few months that my nana was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, my dad with early-onset dementia, and a fallout with my sister.

2025 was not at all what I hoped it would be. Last year was a struggle, but things have taken a nosedive for me this year. I don't talk about myself much because I don't like doing so and I barely know how. I'm already anxious as I type.

But I'm not exaggerating when I say I've run out of hope.