There was a girl in high school going on to university who I liked, she knew and liked the attention, but ultimately wasn't interested.
Once, she called me a "perverted fucking freak" over a misunderstanding. She apologised once it was cleared up and things went back to usual for a while, but it's always stuck with me, and I think she was right. There were many, many other things said by many, many other people, but something like that coming from someone like her really stood out.
For a long time after that I avoided people because that's not what I wanted to be and I was tired of hating myself and second guessing my every action, word and thought. "Don't be a creepy fucking stalker" I would tell myself far too often when making social decisions. "Always assume everything you want to do or say is horrible and don't do or say it"
Now it's almost ten years later and I don't avoid people any more - people simply are not a part of my life. I routinely go weeks at a time without seeing a human face, or even the fucking SKY. I haven't had a face to face conversation with a person who isn't a blood relative or speaking to me as part of their job in over 4 years and I've never been less disgusted with myself. I don't have to tear myself apart over what other people think of me, or worry that I'm making people uncomfortable, if there ARE no other people.
I'm now crushingly lonely, but I'm comfortable with who I am and I'm too scared of becoming somebody I hate, or even running into people who remember me that way and reminding them that such a disgusting piece of shit infected their lives, to try to do anything about it. I'm not sure I could survive going through that again. For the very first time in my life, I think that maybe I could tolerate living like this, and I'm not sure it's worth the risk to try to change anything.
"Yesterday was a good day, today is a good day and tomorrow will probably be a good day too" I now tell myself far too often, to calm down whenever I start to break down into panic over how long it's been since I last had anything in my life that was worth living for. There is nothing of any value in my present or future, but I no longer cry whenever I'm by myself, or stay up for days at a time regularly panic-vomiting, or need to keep my hair short enough that I can't tear out fistfuls of it. I don't need a reason to keep waking up in the morning, it's enough just to have no reasons not to.