Is getting over this worth it?

[ForeverArmoured]

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; }a:link { } Forgive the cross-post, but I don't know how to delete the other post.

 

 

 

Hello,

 

 

I am writing this forum, because I need to ask a question to people of my own age group. I have no one I can ask this question of with the same degree of anonymity. Indeed, as you will see, I have no one in my life I feel comfortable asking this question to at all. But this question comes with a long back-story. I need to explain how things got to the point they're at now, so you'll understand why i'm asking.

 

 

I am a forty-five year old male. I live in Northern California and have lived in the same place most of my life. I've gone to school here, and it's quite possible I will die here.

 

 

At a very early age, I was close to my mother. Then something happened starting at five years old that would alter the course of my life forever: My mother sexually molested me. I won't go into acute details, but it was bad. None of my siblings know about it. I'm afraid the knowledge of it would destroy them. I enjoyed it at the time. I had no idea what we were doing was wrong. The abuse was mostly when I was below the age of ten. I only realized much later that what we had done was wrong.

 

 

I didn't bury these memories, but I didn't really acknowledge them either. The memories didn't come into play until much later in my life, but they had far reaching and far lasting consequences.

 

 

From elementary school all through high school, I didn't have many friends. I preferred to be alone. In high school, we had an open campus, and every break time I would walk off campus and sit behind the slowly rising construction buildings just off campus. I didn't hang out with anyone because I found friendships too difficult to maintain.

 

 

I now blame this on the things my mother did to me. She was an extremely domineering figure in my life all through this time. She also wondered what was 'wrong' with me because I was so non-social. I was also horribly, terribly suicidal. The suicidal ideation started at a *very* early age, like six or so. I was openly talking about killing myself in 2nd grade. This peaked in my teens, and along with the isolation from my peers and my family, both parents were wondering what was 'wrong' with me. A steady supply of ineffective psychiatrists paraded through my life with bottles of pills, and I was put in what amounted to a chemical straitjacket at the age of 13 onward.

 

 

It was during this time that my alcoholism began. All I knew was that I felt better when I drank, so why not? I made my own alcohol out of apple juice, sugar, and baking yeast. I was a resourceful little devil. My first attempt at sobriety happened at age 16. I attended meetings, and for a while until my late 20s, was a dry drunk. I was abstinent, but not sober. The problem was just waiting to come back.

 

 

It was at that time, I discovered my one true guiding light: punk rock. I love everything about it. The music, the fashion, the attitude, simply everything. This would continue to sustain me for a number of years until I tried to 'grow up' in the early 90s, but more about that later.

 

 

I had no girlfriend at any point in my stay at public school. All the people around me were in relationships and such, but not me. It was a day-to-day struggle to keep the psychiatrists out of my head and stay intact mentally, and this left no room for a girlfriend. I started to wonder what was wrong at that point as well. I never wanted a girlfriend. I wasn't interested in having a relationship with anyone. I didn't know what they were for or what the point was. When it came time to graduate high school (which almost didn't happen, as I had something of a nervous breakdown one day at school), I was the last one to receive a diploma. I had no friends to sit with, and after the ceremony, no parties to go to in order to celebrate. Hell, why bother? I couldn't drink or do drugs anyway....

 

 

I tried and failed at having a career after high school. At the behest of my parents and siblings, I went on SSI. My parents needed financial relief from the mounting psychiatrist bills as well as the cost of my anti-depressants. I had an army of psychiatrists to back up the claim that I was unable to work by that time, and trying to be part of the workforce was trauma. I keep feeling like I was under physical threat from my co-workers, which again was a gift from my mother. I was afraid to try at my job because any time someone tried to explain something to me, I thought I was going to get hit. This is from when my mother would 'help' me with my homework from school as a child. Her idea of helping me was to scream at me and hit me until I got the answer to the homework question right, and getting the right answer didn't happen often as I was so panicked.

 

 

So I simply stayed home with my mother, who was my only friend by the time I was in my 20s. She had retired by that time, and we would spend the day together. We shared everything and were very close. She encouraged me to not look for work and just stay on SSI because trying to work was such trauma for me. I didn't go anywhere, I didn't do anything. At all. We would just talk all day and watch TV. Whenever I said 'I can't just stay on SSI for the rest of my life; I can't rely on the pills the psychiatrists give me the rest of my life', her answer was always 'Yes, you can'.

 

 

Inevitably, the drugs and alcohol crept back into my life. I started smoking pot, and soon was going through up to two ounces a week. The opiates came next, and again, all I knew was that I felt better. I got the opiates from my mother, who had an endless supply of them for her spinal deterioration. How the hell I never put a hypodermic needle in my arm, i'll never know. I mean, I was doing every opiate I could get my hands on short of actual street heroin. But they were all prescription. According to a doctor I used to see, I fully qualify as a junkie even though I never shot up. I'm not proud of that fact.

 

 

It was during this time that I had my first sexual experiences, and they were all with other men. At that point, I had an interest in bisexuality. I had made (very few) real life friends through the internet, and some of those friendships progressed into sex. Only sex, however. No relationships. I was never able to enjoy the act. I could never 'get into it', as it were. It was as if I had this suit of armor on I could never take off. I didn't feel passion with these people, and the experience wasn't very enjoyable. Pleasant, but not enjoyable or satisfying. I felt as if my nerves were dulled. To this day, I don't feel as if i've ever been truly naked with anyone.

 

 

Eventually, my mother passed on.

 

 

To make this story a little shorter, I went to rehab after a bout with alprazolam addiction, and got off of everything. That was four years ago. Since then, i've gotten back to work for the first time in years in 2014. I'm currently back in school right now to up my skills. In rehab, I had a realization: Part of my misery was that I was trying to be something I wasn't, which was a normal person. I still loved punk rock and goth rock even if I didn't dress like it anymore. I yearned to express myself, but was always running into disapproval from mom, who objected to anything alternative because she was fixated on having a 'normal young man'. **** her. It is *MY* life, *MY* body, and I will do whatever I want with it.

 

 

In an act of both being myself and reclaiming my body, my beyond-shoulder-leingth hair turned into a much beloved mohawk, something that never would have been approved of had my mother still been alive. Bear in mind, this was not about rebelling against my now dead mother, this was about expressing myself and being me. This was about fully exploring my identity and whom I really was for the first time in my life. This was an act of reclamation and healing, not stupid and childish teenage rebellion.

 

 

The mohawk quickly got dyed a black light reactive green. I also (again, as an act of reclamation and not rebellion) started getting tattoos and piercings. In the act of exploration and self-expression, I found a new joy that I never knew I could experience. Once the mohawk came into being, all bets were off. I now fully dress like a punk and have a colored mohawk to this day. Also maybe wear a little makeup. Some eyeliner, mostly. And the best part is that in Silicon Valley, they don't care so much about your appearance. Hell, when I had my first three month contract position at a company after 20 years, I had a huge purple mohawk. No one ever batted an eyelash at me. I didn't spike it up very often for work, though. I had to draw the line somewhere!

 

 

Over the course of my drug abuse and inactivity, I became morbidly obese. That is the next thing i'm fixing right now. I'm successfully losing weight, and i'm working out. I wouldn't dare call myself a bodybuilder, but if i'm honest, that is what i'm trying to do. I have no idea how far that process can go at my age and starting from a blob of a physique, but i'm willing to try. I'm currently reading books on the subject in order to maximize the effects of my training.

 

 

I also now have a YouTube show as well as an Etsy store where I sell handmade jewelry and hand-decorated clothes for punks and goths. I'm currently advertising the show, and hope I can grow it to the point that I can make money on it through YouTube. I'm currently making merchandise to stock the Etsy store, and as soon as I feel I have enough merchandise, i'll start running ads for that as well.

 

 

I have straight A's in school, and for the first time in my life, i'm a small business owner as well as something of a punk/goth fashion designer. I'm trying to arrange my life so that my day job as a computer network tech supports my YouTube and Etsy shop. Neither one are making money right now, but i've just started advertising them. I look back at the old me, and it's like looking at a stranger. There's no question that i'm not the same person now that I was four years ago.

 

 

I've only just started out in life at 45. The only reason i'm not homeless is that I have siblings who are letting me live with them. They understand the situation (they grew up in the same abusive house I did), and are giving me the space to get my act together. I'm still on SSI, but i'm trying like hell to get a career and get off of it. Thanks the Gods that from an early age, i've been very computer savy. It's my only saving grace in all this.

 

 

But.....there's still a part of me that remains rather unexplored. I've never kissed a woman, nor have I ever been in love. Some nights I lay in bed or sit in my room at my computer, and desperately want to be held. It's maddening. I live with a sibling who is married and has a child, and sometimes I shed tears knowing that, in all likelihood, I will never have children. I don't know anything about relationships. Not the first thing. I don't know what I would get out of a relationship, or what I would have to give. I've never made love to a woman. I see love scenes in movies and I cringe, because that is something I would like to experience as well. But I don't know if I ever can. There's a deleted scene from the movie 'X-Men: Days Of Future Past' thats' on YouTube (https://youtu.be/pT9IOfmGq4A). I happened upon it....and burst into tears and curled up in a ball on my bed. Thank Gods no one saw me. That level of acceptance and passion....I want it, but it seems impossible for me. Utterly unattainable. I want to look that good physically, but i'm years away from it. That scene shredded my soul.

 

 

The one time I attempted to be physically intimate with a woman, it felt like my mother was holding me down and doing things against my will again. It felt like there was a loaded gun pointed at me, like I was under dire physical threat. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and worse, I couldn't explain to her why I all-of-the-sudden was running away. It was painful.

 

 

I also am in fear of a relationship, because every (and I mean every) relationship i've ever seen is the woman lording over the man and treating him like a child. I don't want anyone to control me like that. The married sibling I live with constantly treats her husband like an idiot and a child and insists on total dominance of every aspect of his life. He must enjoy it. The one relationship I saw that wasn't like that, the man was a man-child. He always insisted on getting his way on everything. My other fear is of turning into someone like that. If I do this, I want a partner, not a substitute mother. I want an equal. Period.

 

 

This is the crux of the question I want to pose to the women reading this: I realize that the difficulty I have relating to other people is due to the abuse I endured, and I don't know if all relationships are as I just described or i've had nothing but a lifetime of bad examples.

 

 

The question is: Is it worth it?

 

 

 

 

Are romance and relationships worth all that? I'm honestly asking because I have no clue. I've tried to get over the sexual and emotional abuse from my mother before, and the result was unbearably painful. I was so freaked out that I nearly crashed my car driving home from the therapists office. Intentionally.

 

 

Would anyone my age even want me? I've read that women tend to completely avoid men my age whom have never been in relationships. Add the whole punk/goth thing to it, and I must come off at first glance as someone who is very immature. But I do have my reasons, as i've just explained. The only thing that saves me is that I still look like i'm in my 20s. No one ever guesses that i'm middle-aged. When they find out how old I really am, their jaw usually hits the proverbial floor.

 

 

Am I actually missing out on anything? I'm thinking of trying to overcome the damage once again, as I am trying to fix all aspects of my life right now...but is it worth it? Or would I be happier just being off on my own as i've always been. As painful and filled with longing as love scenes in movies make me....part of me just wants to give up and not pursue that kind of satisfaction. But....but...is the way I am now so much worse? I feel like half of a human being, and sometime I feel an emptiness deep at the core of my being. It's painful, but i've learned to live with it for my entire life so far. Would it be worth it to find out what all this is like once and for all?

 

 

I regret my sexual experience with men, but would it be any better with a woman? Or someone I truly loved? I don't know. I just don't know. Of all the aspects of my life, that's the one I know the least about.....would it be worth it to break through the wall of pain and experience what's on the other side?

 

 

This is the question I pose to you, dear reader. I ask this question because I don't feel like a whole person, and don't know if it would be worth doing anything about it. I have no one I feel comfortable asking this question to face-to-face. Therefor, I post this here anonymously and ask you.

 

 

If you've read this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I've nobody to tell my story to and this is the first time i've ever come out with it. I'm only just now at this point in my life finding myself.

 

 

So, now what?

 

 

--Forever Armoured

[Fruitee]

You are 45 years old. When you think about your future do you want to live your next 30 to 40 years in the same way? Or do you want to make changes for better?

 

Going to therapy, losing weight, education yourself, taking care of yourself etc. How many years do you think you need to spend to feel whole? 1? 5? 10? And how many years do you have left to live after that? 20? 25? 30? And those years left you can spend happy.

 

I know it sounds kind of weird but that is what helps me when I feel like I have wasted my life. I think about the years I have head of me. And how I can be happy and better during those years. 30 years being happy is better than 80 years of unhappiness.

 

You have already made your decision by posting here. You know there is something missing. And you want to experience those things that you are missing.

 

If you dont know. Find out. Thats my advice.