I feel so alone. I've been trying to sleep for hours now and I've got a pit of anxiety rising in my stomach. I'm going to post how I'm feeling (sorry, I've never done this before so I apologise if I get it wrong).
I moved to England just over 3 years ago for work. It also coincided with a horrendous falling-out in my incredibly competitive group of successful and popular girl friends (where I really tried to fit in but never really felt like I could get it right). Sadly, I left under a real cloud with many people no longer speaking to me and the people that did still support me seem to have moved on with their lives and it has been really difficult to keep the momentum going in these relationships.
My very lovely boyfriend moved to England to be with me and since then, we've been working on making a life for ourselves here. We both have fairly demanding jobs- him, long days commuting into London and me, I work in mental health and am regularly told that I'm shit at my job when I can't 'fix' things for people. I realise that the stress is getting to me, I know I shouldn't personalise these comments but they really get to me. Unfortunately, I've never really been very 'thick skinned' and since childhood, I have used comfort eating as a way of managing difficult emotions. Throughout this time, I've been trying to support a family member, who can become quite emotionally unstable and frightening when she feels vulnerable. She is effectively 'sofa surfing' so keeps all her stuff in our spare room, so even if people did want to visit me here, I don't have the space to give them a bed!
I'm 32 now and my partner and I have been TTC for about a year now, rather than losing weight, I appear to be putting it on with all the comfort eating. I have completely lost interest in sex which leads to rows with my partner who would happily have sex every 15 mins of the day, if he could. I think that this is partly my general stress that's impacting on my libido but also, now tipping the scales at 16st, I feel utterly hideous and not sexy at all!
I've recently been hit by news that several of the people that I thought were still my friends from home are pregnant (I hear this on the grapevine because no one has been directly in touch to let me know). They are planning weddings (again, not told, nor invited) and have very cohesive relationships. This seems to have highlighted how completely alone and lonely I feel. I've tried making new friends here, mainly through work but everyone seems to be so established in their lives, I find it difficult to form these new connections (also, they're all busy with new babies too). My partner is lovely but he's much more confident and practical about these things and also quite enjoys his own company so I generally get the sense that he doesn't understand what I'm feeling.
I feel terribly guilty about a huge surge of envy that I feel towards the people that seem to have life and friendships sussed, to be able to manage their weight, to have a thick skin and a functioning reproductive system.
Is anyone in a similar boat?