Venting Too broken to form relationships?

[Scacie]

For the longest time I thought I was aroace until I fell in love with my best friend at 20(she was my first crush). Recently learnt that she had a crush on me awhile back but got over it because I was aroace. I'm absolutely heartbroken and things could have been so different if we just talked about it earlier.
It just feels that all my mental illness and trauma makes me too broken to form relationships. I hide so much from my irl friends and it feels that I can never form genuine friendships with them let alone something more. Perhaps that's the reason I never got any crushes.
She is one of the few people in life I felt I can tell anything and everything to. We've been through so much over the past year, from my attempt and her episodes, and I felt that those were the events that made me form such a deep bond with her and eventually fell in love with her. I've never felt how falling in love feels like before and once I felt it I desparately want to experience it again. However, everything that happened over the past year was so stressful for me I'm scared to go through the process again. I'm also not sure if I can develop crushes on others without forming such a deep bond first.
I desparately want to love that way again but the process to make me able to feel it was traumatic enough that I don't want to go through it. I'm too emotionally isolated from most friends to even begin to feel something like this.

TLDR: It feels like I can only fall in love after developing a really deep bond with someone. I desperately want to feel it again but all my baggage and the process of forming this bond makes me feel like I can never feel that way again. It makes me feel broken and super depressed

 

[LittleCupcake]

I felt like this sometime ago and its possible to form relationships its just not in the same way everyone else does. Most people fall in love with someones looks then personallity but for people with trauma its just the personality that counts. Theres things that people hide in the beggining of a relationship and over time you talk about it if you choose to share, its something that takes time. Forming any type of connection is tricky.

 

[Scacie]

It really is. I live in a really conservative country so none of the baggage I carry(mental illness, being trans etc) can be talked about easily with people. I have to put on a mask with my irl friends every day and its something that's preventing me from forming any meaningful bonds with them. I'm honestly not too sure how to change that irl, I hide so many things even from my 'closest' irl friends.

It feels like I can only form genuine relationships online(and not on most normal sites that is, I project a mask even there). Two of my deepest friendships(including my best friend) I met from here, and they are about equally as broken as me. Theyre the only people I can confidently say I 'love', and they've talked me away from doing it so many times in the past.

I felt like this sometime ago and its possible to form relationships its just not in the same way everyone else does. Most people fall in love with someones looks then personallity but for people with trauma its just the personality that counts. Theres things that people hide in the beggining of a relationship and over time you talk about it if you choose to share, its something that takes time. Forming any type of connection is tricky.