I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking to achieve by posting this (though the more I think about it, it may be attention), but I'd like to share my story.

I'm 18 and have been neurotic for most of my teen years. I'd say this was because of myself being a generic fat loser coupled with problems at home. My coping mechanisms were food, porn, games, suicidal ideation and eventually drugs. Around a year and a half ago, I'd discovered TRP. I was instantly infatuated. It was the ultimate vessel for mental masturbation. Thoughts of improving myself always constituted frequent day dreams before, but this new concept telling me I could fuck women, have power and in general be the fucking man? Nothing drew me in more.

However, just like before, I made no real changes. Of course, I read and I read, but nothing truly changed. I was turning into an asshole really, acting like I'm the shit without a true basis. I would hyper-analyse every situation and person as beta and alpha. This made me a more judgemental person and damaged my mental health even more. After a year or so, I'd evaluated my behaviour and determined that the TRP community was a bunch of garbage, but I still acknowledged and agreed with TRP beliefs. Still, for a few months I was the same but slowly climbing out of my neurotic state, as I'd hit rock bottom and was determined to climb out.

For the past 3 months, I've been working on myself, but with a focus that was more so spiritual and less "I wanna be the shit" focused. When I read this back, it seems to align with true values of TRP more, indicating that maybe I cherry picked what I saw in TRP to fuel my mental masturbation fantasies. So, I've been lifting, studying, listening to self-help and self-improvement audiobooks and staying sober. I wish very much to keep this behaviour up and I know it's just early days. And it's now that I return to TRP and re-evaluate it and feel a stronger understanding of it. But I'll be honest, I initially returned because I thought "fuck, I wanna get laid". However, things such as building an empire for yourself, improving reality, taking on the unknown, the essence of masculinity appeal to me a lot more now.

I do have some direction as to where I will go from here, and it's mostly to just keep doing what I'm doing. One question I guess that I do have is, what is the true nature of the TRP community (and more specifically this one)? Sometimes it feels like EVERYONE is LARPing, and just that some are really bad at it, but as much as I ever doubt the members of the community, I for sure resonate with the core beliefs.

I hope this somehow adds something of value and I thank you for your time.