Throwaway account:

I turned 25 this month. This means something to most people, I thought it would have meant something to me to.

I graduated from a very prestigious college and have a Masters Engineering degree, I also haven't worked in my field or had a stable income in my last 2 years. Most of my friends don't know this and think otherwise. I do make money to sustain myself with some help from my parents however but my parents and myself are very disappointed with the direction my life has taken. I also don't smoke, drink, do drugs except very rarely (once every couple of months) when I visit my friends. I don't interact with my friends regularly as they are all high fliers and I used to be the "smartest" among them, many still think so of me, also the majority of them live abroad.

I also haven't ever had a GF nor ever even kissed one, every time I meet someone I tell them I had a GF from the past. Girls have shown interest in me but the combination of very less girls in my life (I lived in a very conservative place and studied in an all boys school, later did Mechanical Engg. with only 2 girls in my class), the very few who did show interest I didn't like and I friend-zoned them (they still keep touch). My Masters year abroad was better, I was beginning to party and meet and hit it off with a lot of females but nothing clicked, the one's who liked me I didn't like and the one's whom I liked were already taken.

I didn't want to rush things and wanted to make my first one special. That was also the first time I learnt to properly masturbate (23), I'm a male and this had troubled me greatly in the past as I had no idea if "everything was even working". I watched countless videos and tutorials and porn on it but just couldn't climax before, this made me very shy to make the first move. The first time I masturbated to completion was shortly after my 23rd when someone close suggested I watch hardcore anal "pain" porn (they sent me a link, its a very popular video of Hazel on pornhub with over 6 mill views), they said I was too "soft" and needed to break my mental block, the deed was done, but I was disgusted with myself after it. I've masturbated nearly every day since then but can only masturbate to completion to very particular types of porn which are sensual (the mechanical sex and wooden acting in most videos don't do it for me). Sexually I'm normal in every other way, my sex organs are perfectly functional, I'm a healthy male otherwise.

Unfortunately I'm currently living in a place without any of my old friends, for my birthday I picked up my Mom had some KFC (which I hate) and watched a movie which I already saw but thought she would enjoy (she didn't). Mom was pissed off and wanted to talk about my career the entire day.

Haven't cut a cake in over 2 years or received a gift from anyone other than my immediate family in over 6 (when one of my friends gave me a Playboy deodorant as a gag). Earlier I just used to buy "gifts" for myself to pass them off as what my friends gave me to my parents when I visited.

The last party I threw was when I was 20, I've been to many of my friends birthdays made birthday cakes for others and bought many gifts for many people. Somehow most of them end up going abroad and from the 20 or so close friends I have, only 2 reside in the same country I'm in.

They all asked me what I did for my "special" bday, I was so depressed (tried to hang myself, pussied out just as I started to see stars) that I took a day off and crashed at a friends place in a different city and smoke weed with. That guy recently turned clean as he got a new gf who believed he had a drinking and mary jane addiction. That guy used me as an excuse to smoke excessively and blamed me for it which ended up in a confrontation with his girlfriend. He is one of the only 2 friends I had in the country, now I'm too embarrassed to go visit him.

In summary every Birthday for the last few years have been the worst birthday ever, if my situation doesn't change drastically within the next, the next one will undoubtedly take the crown. I'm a good guy haven't hurt anybody, done anything illegal or destroyed myself with cigs, booze and MJ (I avoid doing them when I feel depressed as I know I'll get addicted, I do it when I'm with my old friends but that happens like once in 3-4 months). Still I'm no better than an addict, I'm addicted to online shopping stuff I don't really need (I research a product for days before buying the "best" cost/reliability/robustness/function wise), I'm addicted to watching news, science videos and documentary on YouTube, I'm addicted to watching series, I'm addicted to writing on Reddit (I've been gilded multiple times, made it to the front page and perhaps had a very fast karma growth, made 15k in a week before I got sick of it) and Quora (again pretty big there with a million views).

I know Internet points mean nothing, I have a Masters degree in Engineering, I can't get employed in my field (stopped searching, too much gap), I dreamed of joining NASA and becoming an Astronaut, I was on the path a few years back (topped my engineering class, led my design team, was a course rep etc etc), now I've crashed and burnt and don't know how to pick myself up. Sometimes I just wish I could shoot up some heroin (I've never done "hard drugs" before) and drown myself in a bathtub (as usual I researched a lot on painless suicide, this seems to be the best method other than the more complicated suicide by drop hanging).