Hi, I'm a new member here, although I've browsed posts on here (lightly) for years. I'd just like to vent a little bit, and then get some thoughts/advice from other people who can relate to my experience.. A quick intro: - I live in Calgary, AB, Canada (which is a decently liberal place where one can live pretty comfortably as an out gay person), in a loving upper-middle class household - I'm 21 and came out 2 years ago - haven't had sex yet but I'm becoming really comfortable with the idea of it now (nobody's judging me*, nobody's self-centred, everybody's loving) From about 7th grade, I remember starting to feel like I didn't fit in. One of my earliest gay thoughts actually goes back even farther to 5th grade (I think) when I was in a 7-11, walking through the magazines, and saw Jesse McCartney on the cover of a teen magazine and thought, "woww. That's awesome." But 7th grade was when girls and porn and even drugs started to become relevant.. when I discovered porn with my friends (we'd be in my bedroom or at my friends' bedrooms on the laptop, and take turns masturbating in the bathroom.. those became our hang-outs..) I remember that my friends would be really into girl-on-girl porn and I just couldn't get off to it. It was actually confusing. Like, what do you mean? That's not hot at all! I'd go to click on the orgy categories (cuz I guess subconsciously for me there'd be 5 hot guys and only 1 girl who I could ignore), but they hated it! Like, no don't click on that it's *gross*. So that was funny, but at the time I remember that being one of many fronts where I began to notice I was different. And I think also subconsciously, I started to associate these burgeoning gay thoughts (being gay, liking men, acting feminine) with being *gross* and shunned and scolded. While liking girls and anything to do with girls was becoming exponentially fascinating and 'cool'. Another anecdote was my friend who was part of this friend group that I'd masturbate with was the typical popular, cute, blonde, outgoing guy.. in class I remember just this compulsion to stroke his arm. Just seeing it on the desk, it was like it was asking to be stroked. I did, after which he recoiled and yelled at me, "you're gay!!", but forgot about it soon after. Starting in 6th grade, I began to get obsessed with music.. I've got a fairly popular Youtube channel where I teach guitar, and it all started in the 5th-6th grade. Idolizing Jimi Hendrix, playing several hours a day, jamming to Led Zepp, etc. I remember that fascination and love of music being so pure, so fun and limitless.. dreaming of being the next Eddie van Halen, and all the rest of it. Fast forward to the end of middle school, and high school onwards, when the pressures of the closet began to suffocate me in all directions, losing my self-esteem left and right each and every day as I'd always fret over being asked why I'm not into girls, why someone who'd championed masturbating and porn early in middle school had suddenly become seemingly asexual, skip parties since the thought of going for girls and being in that eye of the hurricane would probably make me puke out of horrible discomfort, (wrongly) feeling that this growing realization that I was gay meant that, from birth, I was *gross* *shameful* *alien*, etc, I began to compensate for my impending non-existent self-esteem by having a big ego! I'd use my musical interest, understanding of history and politics (which I began to learn a lot about since I had so much extra time from not chasing girls), interest in books/philosophy, and athleticism as the things that I found my self-worth in. Seeing as the way I'd been born made me absolutely worthless (<-- my thought at the time). So I became I dick, in other words. A precocious dick. Who progressively was losing touch with reality. This was all starting in about 8th grade. By the summer after 12th grade I was pretty out of it. I couldn't even talk to people because I didn't even know what my thoughts were, and I had no social skills to speak of since I had the same friend group all through middle school and high school, and with this ego that I'd grown, it was far easier to judge new people and shun them, than it was to talk to them. So that kind of sums up the first point, that I felt that I didn't deserve love for who I was born as, since I learned mistakenly that it was *gross*, etc. The second point, was the paranoia of the closet which I think all of us can relate to. For those of you still in the midst of it, I salute you. I haven't forgotten what that horror is, and you guys/girls are brave and strong and valuable. It's funny, I'm still friends with my middle school and high school friends, the people involved in the above stories, and they always laugh and tell me that of ALL the people, they thought I was the last that could ever have been gay. It makes me laugh too, now. The irony. But I was good at faking it, and I actually thought that, to counteract any gay behaviours that I might display, I'd act not only straight, but I'd act like THE straightest person in my school. I know it hurt me inside b/c in the 6th grade I was becoming a flamboyant sort of person, but at the height of my straightness in about 1st year uni, I was very stoic, straight-acting. So some of me got repressed. Back to the closet paranoia, even though I no longer have a fear of people seeing my history and finding out that I'm gay, it is still here. More on that in a second.. So this was the progression of things, the way I now see them now (21, 2 years off of coming out, and still recovering I'd say from the trauma of the closet). It's in these past couple weeks of summer that I've had time to think about myself. I think it's also important to note that I had a porn addiction throughout middle school, high school and the first couple years of university.. long story short - I think I've used it as a drug to put off any anxieties, or frustrations for the next day.. like, "oh I feel sad/frustrated/angry/lonely, okay I'll just PMO until I fall asleep, and then I can just worry about whatever it is that's bugging me tomorrow." Fast forward like 6 years and a lot of problems have built up. Not only because things have built up, but I forget the little things that were bugging me, so they become/became harder to fix. I guess I'll also add that I was a medium-user of weed, experimented with acid, and took molly once. A lot of the weed, some of the acid, and the molly were to self-medicate me.. hoping that the pickup would cure my social anxiety and general worries that I didn't even understand because like I said I'd put them off every day. But, to get back to these past couple weeks of summer, I did a no-fap spontaneously, and quit weed several weeks before. So every night for (the past 21 days) I've have to face myself in the mirror.. and the results are as follows, and on-going. 1. I have lingering feelings of self-hate, worthlessness, low self-esteem, etc. And as such, I think, have projected that upon things that I own, friends, and family - so that I feel that they're also unworthy of love and care. I'm trying to recover on this front and remember that I am a person worthy of love, I was not born *gross* and have always been perfect as I was born. Nothing was ever 'wrong'. 2. My paranoia, even though it definitely has downgraded significantly since coming out of the closet, I still get these horrid, suspicious thoughts that people are (to put it plainly, and it might come off stronger than I mean it to) plotting against me, conniving, ready to ridicule/embarrass/shame me at any moment, set-upon one-upping me, disregarding me, being very passive-aggressive, subversive, and fronting. All of which end up stoking that big-ego/straight-guy (whatever my idea of a straight guy is.. alpha, etc) front that I mentioned earlier.. the front to be the smartest, the most athletic, the best at guitar, in lieu of my self-esteem. The irony is that I turn out to be the only one displaying those traits (passive-aggressive, one-upping), and everybody else is actually quite kind, nice, honest. So either I come off sounding quite rude or awkwardly aggressive and/or fake, or I'm in my shell desperately trying to figure out how to blend into the really menial everyday social dynamic. In the end it's really just a weird social anxiety, that I feel is rooted in the paranoia of the closet. Thanks if you've come this far in reading. In the end I just wanted to ask anyone for their input on how to remedy those 2 points. And also, to those who might still be in some of the phases that I described earlier (middle school, high school) and/or reading this in 2017 or what have you, just be strong. It's wrong that the slant of society (even though it is getting better) seems to lead many of us to having these negative misconceptions of ourselves. We are all of value.. I hope to get some of your thoughts on how to reclaim that.
