So, I'm sure all of you have read a story on here by now at least somewhat similar to mine, but I need to get it off my chest. This is going to be long, so have patience. Thanks in advance. I have been questioning my sexuality now, on and off, for just over 10 years. I am now 22. I couldn't really pinpoint the first thing that made me start thinking I wasn't at least completely straight. Upon thinking I had come to terms with being gay around the time I was 13, I told my mother and things went really horrible, I had thought she would be totally fine with it but told me how dirty and unnatural that is and how it better be a phase, however she never threatened me with not loving me or losing the relationship or anything. We hadn't talked about it since. Information about my questioning got to the wrong people in middle school and my life really went to :***:. I ended up attempting suicide twice and ended up subsequently having a couple of psych ward stays that only further ruined my social situation. On the way to my second psych ward stay, I told my father (with whom I have a generally toxic relationship) that I thought I could be gay, totally not expecting a good result; he was nice enough about it but said my mind is all confused right now and that I wasn't gay, I was just confused, but that he knew I was straight. After I got released from hospital I just ended up telling him he was probably right and I was straight, I just felt too awkward talking to subject with him and decided to let it go. Those scars are what I suspect led to my social anxiety issues with always wondering what/how much people know about me when I catch them looking at me. My family situation is a pretty huge mess, with all of my extended family in New Zealand and my immediate family having come to the US and split, making me go down there and come back up to the US again a couple times. Eventually we all settled in the US. I ended up with my dad who had always been in the Chicago area since the first time we moved to the US as a complete family. I went through middle school and the early part of high school drugged to high hell with anti-depressants, anxiety medications, and anti-psychotics for what reason I have no idea. The doctor has since lost his license, I know that because I am now a professional pilot, and when I had to get my original medical certificate I had a lot of explaining to do as far as why they should let me fly with a history of psychiatric medications let alone two psych ward stays, and they needed original documentation on the past situation, and have a current analysis of my mental state from the doctor that had cared for me in the past. Upon trying to find said documentation and set up that analysis, I found out that it wasn't possible to see him anymore since he had overprescribed medications. So I had to reach into my pocket and pay for a forensic psychologist to analyze me, that wasn't cheap, and fake it to him that I wasn't dealing with depression, anxiety, and the occasional suicidal thought. The medications really kicked me in the ass after a while and I just decided to stop taking everything because they never made me feel better about my situation, and I decided to repress my mental problems, just ignore my bad thoughts and everything. It works on the surface, but deep down it takes a horrible amount of energy, along with trying to live a totally straight life. I ended up having a couple sexual encounters with random guys, none of which I was really that attracted to during high school, but just guys that were curious also. I was scared of coming out to most of my friends because it's not that they were conservative or anything (and being conservative and hating gays doesn't usually go together believe it or not, conservatives are just as diverse as liberals), they were just the type who made fun of gays, or there were relationships I had where I was too afraid of changing anything at all, I just liked things the way they were on the surface at least. I did come out to some of the wrong people in high school who really made my gym class hell for a couple of weeks, it came to pass but certainly left some more scars and made my social anxiety play up to a level where it hasn't gone down since. During my junior year, I met an amazing girl, and the relationship we had was amazing. The sex life felt great....but I could rarely finish. Basically I've had issues with delayed ejaculation with both guys and girls. Therapists I've been to reckon that could be because of depression and anxiety. While I was in this relationship I sometimes wondered what exactly my motivations were. I always wanted the white picket fence kind of thing like so many people have written about here. We had a very mature, very serious relationship, we had very different views politically, we liked completely different things but we never had a fight. Until...I had just by coincidence told her that I was bi (what I thought at the time), and she was pretty much fine with it. But then a couple weeks later, I was getting drunk with my sexy Russian guy friend, and he had always known about my issues with my sexuality. Anyway, I got so wasted I suggested to him that we screw around a little bit, that I was really horny etc. He said no dude you've got a girlfriend and that he wasn't gay in the least, but that he appreciated the attention. This was the guy that nothing could really get awkward with, he was chill about everything. And I said fair enough and we passed out. The next day I get to my girlfriend's house from work and she was acting pretty strange, I asked her what was wrong, and she said she had a talk with my friend that morning. He thought the whole thing was a joke and thought it would be a funny story to tell my girlfriend, but the context of the situation and me just telling her about my sexuality wasn't all that funny to her. Things were a little awkward after that for a good few weeks. Months later, I went off to college and we ended up breaking up for various reasons, but it devastated me, because it was the first time in my life I had everything I thought I wanted. At my first year of college in florida, things went terribly for me, a couple of weeks after the breakup, I started looking for gay hookups. The reason for this is I knew I liked the penis on occasion, and the particular school I went to is 90% male. The school is smaller than my high school was, and the gay thing there was...accepted if you were flamboyant about it, awkward, mysterious and weird if you weren't flamboyant...similar to my high school. I cam out to my group of friends one by one, and they were all cool with it, with the exception of a few who said they were cool but things got weird and they dropped off the radar. I had a really close friend that first year of school who knew about me, and I ended up literally falling in love with him, but he was straight. I hadn't told him about the feeling until I moved away, but I never wanted to jeopardize the relationship when I was there. He ended up being drugged and raped by his gay big brother in his fraternity...and we have rarely talked since...apparently that whole thing turned him into a homophobe, which I can totally understand. I switched to the sister campus of my school in Arizona for my last 3 years of school, because I had such a horrible first year, with the heartbreak of losing my girlfriend of 2 years, and the sexual confusion and bad hookups...I just needed to get out of there. Upon arrival in Arizona, I just promised myself I'd stay straight. I ventured onto ********* now and again, found one guy, had bad sex with him, and that was kind of the end of any hookups, until I went back to chicago and hooked up with this guy I used to in high school every so often. After that one christmas hookup there has been nothing other than failed attempts at finding someone, a couple hetero dates that never went too well. I've realized recently that I usually try to push away the gay side of myself, and it only comes out when I isolate myself, as if I'm too embarrassed to let it out, but I have no idea why. I look back on my great relationship that I had with the girl in high school, and I wonder what it was that made me be with her. She was a stunner, absolutely beautiful, amazing personality, and the sex felt good...but I mean anything with warmth and lubrication can feel good if you will. It felt good being with her because I didn't have to worry about hiding any sort of gayness, I had a girl, she was my best friend...it was great, but there was just something about it that makes me wonder these days, something about the way it felt when she left. Instead of feeling a big loss in the way you usually do when you lose someone like that, I felt a feeling of being exposed again too... Now I am back in NZ on vacation, and I've been kind of feeling things for one of my straight friends back in Arizona, but now that I'm away I can't stop thinking about him and wanting to be with him all the time, it feels like it did with the guy back in florida. It feels like love, and it's bringing all my sexual issues up to the surface again that have been relatively dormant for the last couple years. I came out to one of my aunts here, but just told her that I'm not exactly sure what I am. The whole not knowing where I am on the spectrum causes me so much anxiety, and logically I know that I should just live with it. But I need some sort of certainty in it. I told her that's what has been causing me to be so down over the last so many years, and she said she finally understood why I couldn't explain my feelings to her. The backstory is I have a crap ton of bad things going on in my life in addition to this, and she has been one of the only people I can really confide in. I used to have people that I could talk to easily about my orientation, but I've lost those people over the years and I'm more confused and scared now than I ever was. I need to find some way to figure this all out and get my life moving. I guess I could say I'm less able to accept being bi than I am able to accept being gay. My life has been full of instability and ambiguity and being bi seems like another wormhole for me. There are things that make me think I'm pretty far on the gay side of the spectrum, for some reason I am losing sight of ever living out my years with a female, but recently I have dreams of living out my years with my best friend in AZ, even though I'm pretty sure that's impossible (sure maybe he's in the closet too, but I don't really want to lose sleep wishing he is). I just want all this stress, anxiety, and pain to stop. I want to be able to put down my fist and start moving forward, but I feel I'm stuck in a purgatory of sorts. Sorry for the long drawn out explanation, but that's about as compressed as it could get. It's way more complicated than that little snippet up there. :sleep:
hey fellow kiwi bro.i don't think i can help you with whether your bi or gay.i knew i was gay since boarding school but i hear it brings that side out quicker.i do get anxiety tho i know most people do to a degree.but mines got pretty bad in the past.i used to black out from the stress panic attacks.being in a new environment can bring it on for me.after telling a couple of mates im gay i felt a lot of anxiety go away in general. im sure anxiety correlated strongly with stress and trauma.you have had to much of both aye..sorry if i haven't helped much.i do generally feel for you tho aye bo .ps how is your nz trip going.
Hey no worries, I think one of the only things that will really be able to help me would be therapy, which I'll probably start looking into when I get back to the states in november. NZ trip is going okay I guess, I really need a car haha, been stuck at my uncle's place in the middle of nowhere thinking too much. Yeah I almost went to boarding school down here, St Kent's in pakuranga, then moved back to the states. I'm a jaffa if you were wondering lol. I think my biggest thing is wondering if my mind was playing tricks with me in the straight relationships I had, and if this whole thinking I'm bi thing was just the bridge that a lot of people talk about on the way to being gay. The thing that's getting me was I came to terms with being bi a while back but decided to live straight for what reason I have no idea, but now I'm just becoming more unsure as the days go by. Thanks for your input bro.
the middle of no where.that was my proposel for my town nelson new slogan(thats a play on nelson being the centre of nz ).i went to nelsons boys (school for sadist and masochists) i got an a.i can forgive the jaffa thing i guess might be a still bit uncomfortable talking with you tho .but guess i should try and be tolerant.i have thought about therapy before.i saw a lecture in oz that talked a bit how to deal with trauma stress.basically said if you cant change what happened find whys to not dwell on it.cartoons ect.if there is a solution dwelling on it with a view on solving the situation is good. it did work for me to a large degree aye.i don't dwell on my past nearly as much.only pain for nothing if i do aye .still need to come out to more people tho.hope you are going to go hiking in NZ.
Probably won't end up hiking, i'm shit broke. It's not that I'm dwelling on things from the past so much, I just have these reactions to some social activities now that feel almost physical, and I don't feel like I'm actually processing or thinking about what's going on, but my heart rate skyrockets, feel like the temperature goes up in the room, feel like I need to escape etc. One therapist told me that is a panic attack, and that cognitive behavioral therapy could work, but it never did a thing for me. I also minored in psychology at university, and I feel like that makes some treatments just not work on me because I know a fair bit about how all the treatments work, and a lot about other parts of psychology in general. It doesn't make it any less of a mystery figuring myself out though.
yep that's a panic attack.don't over breath slow breaths tho it feels like you need more.i guess you know that already tho.im pretty sure i know the kind social situations that get to you. being around a group of people who know each other but not me is a big one i freak out internally.and supper markets for some reason gets to me and another mate with the same prob.my freak outs have faded alot. im sure getting over a few things helped aye.hope someone here can give help you to figure your self out.if your lucky you might just be gay aye .
Yeah super markets get me. I pretty much freak out, only inwardly, when anyone looks at me. It just got burned into me I think because middle school and high school and to some extent my university were full of such judgmental people and I was always wondering what the person looking at me knew about me or if I'm at the supermarket what the person is judging me based on what I was looking at or buying in the supermarket. I'm also really self conscious at gyms or going swimming, I just don't even do stuff anymore. I'm totally fine if I'm with someone else generally though. And I don't have problems doing things like going to a doctors office or whatever, things that are normal to do by yourself.
