Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more anger...

It's hard to hate yourself, especially when your self-esteem is so low that you shouldn't hate yourself but those around you that have chipped away at you the entire time.

That's what I've been doing. I've dwelt so much on my rage, how I betrayed people's trust and how in turn they betrayed mine by incurring my wrath as I incurred theirs back and forth like an empty swing flaying in the wind on an ugly early Spring day. I'm done being mad, all being mad has done is eat away at me like a bulbous cancer.

I've suffered both abuses and kindnesses of the LGBT community, sadly the former outweighs the latter and it's (not because of anyone here on this forum) because of that I must say "no more."

Some time ago I was talking to my father, and I had gotten a new smartphone and (suffering from extreme anxiety issues) and I told him that it kept scaring the crap out of me every time I got an email or a notification from an app. He said "Well, you can turn the sound down and set which apps you want to make noise alerts and whatnot," and I said "I need to be informed when (someone important) texts me, if not, I'll be in shit. He said "That's pretty inconsequential, if it causes you to suffer, remove it from your life."

And much like many of the things my Dad says, once in awhile one of them is unusually profound and makes a lot of sense to me days, weeks or even months later. And finally it's resonated in me that being an active part in a community (not this site, but out here in the real world) that has done far more harm than good to me is not only unhealthy, but self-destructive. By allowing myself to engage in thoughts, feelings and behaviors that will eventually cause me such distress is killing me.

In the last few weeks, my hair has been falling out-- doctor says it's due to extreme self-imposed anxieties, but my hairline has receded almost an inch in the last six months. I can't live like this and it's because of that I must bid adieu to the passive-aggressive relationship I have with my own sexuality. If I continue to engage in it, even if I'm accepting of myself, it will kill me and I don't want to die.

This isn't a matter of repressing anything, it's a matter of accepting that my sexuality is detrimental to my well being. And so without any malice or phobia towards others who are able to enjoy being comfortable with their sexualities, I simply must reject my own. There's black circles under my heavy eyes, I look ten years older than I am and my thick hair is receding. This isn't for me. I'm impressed so many before me made it so far and so many after me are able to make it beyond the points I couldn't.

I am weak, and that's okay.

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

Thanks, I figure even if the local offline gay community may have contempt for my indecisiveness I figure the online world would understand better, as it's easier to get inside my head online than off. I'm just hermit in a hermit kingdom of my own design.

Let's just say it comes from someone I once knew who just being around cost me an entire circle of friends, a circle I had to build anew from scratch. I've lost things, so many things, not just material goods, but identity, friendships, bonds, communications all because of this person, who happened to be openly gay-- or maybe not-- maybe just manipulative... and that this person was an openly gay racial minority, that wasn't the problem with this person, it was that this person was a locust in what was otherwise a spotless garden I had taken so much care in nurturing and nourishing and wiped it out in the blink of an eye. He ruined my life, my perspective on sexuality, personality, spirituality, politics, everything. I wish to speak of him no more as the very thought of him causes my back to contract and spasm as it does now just writing these words.

It's true what they say-- you don't judge a person based on the color of their skin or their sexuality-- but when they use these things as tools to manipulate others into destroying friendships for the sake of their personal amusement... well, let's just say some prejudices I can't forgive. I hold no malice towards the gay community-- just this one person and because I don't want to be like him, I simply physically cannot be like him.

I'll stick around the boards, I do like them.

I mean no offense when I say this, but you cannot understand. I appreciate the thought, but no one can understand this as I do. It's a matter of sonder on the part of everyone around me. The anthill from which we all climb about. It is terrifying, and I'll live with it casting a long shadow over me for the rest of my life.

I've seen countless therapists, doctors, I've been inpatient and outpatient in psychiatric wards, I've had CAT-scans, EEGs, EKGs, I've been cross-psychoanalyzed from here to Timbuktu. I've taken every psychotropic drug and anti-anxiety medication ever prescribed to me over the last two and a half decades and had thousands of hours on counselors' couches-- and nothing changes, it never changes. It can't change, even if I want it to, I always, in the end come back to where I was, so I'd might as well accept the fact that if I keep running on my little wheel eventually my heart will explode and as I've said, I don't want to die.

I simply need to accept what happened to me, and in my heart I've forgiven the person responsible, but the scar is so deep that I hold the animosity still and will carry it with me to my grave whether I want to or not. Everybody hurts. They say as bad as things are that they could be worse? No, I don't believe that. I think everything's the way it is, and nothing's going to change. I'm a hard-determinist and I'd might as well follow the current rather than swim upstream towards some lofty goal that isn't even there.

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

I have no desire to emulate the person I have wasted too much time hating and have every reason to hate but have forgiven.

That is an excuse created by cold Freudianists. Personally, all I've ever seen in psychotherapists is sitting there, talking to them, they nod their head and say "And how does that make you feel?" There are no hard results from psychotherapy, it's simply a tool used by health insurance companies to collect money off of people who feel the need to vent their problems to a total stranger.

Show me someone, someone according to a "study," (if there is such a thing) a renowned therapist who magically and proverbially turned iron into gold and after so much work made someone overcome something by sitting in a dim, uncomfortable room, nodding his head and asking a Millennial victim of psychiatry "and how does that make you feel?" over and over and over.

I would rather stuff down bad feelings that stir up even worse ones than engage in something that would make me loathe the skin I'm in even more for the rest of my life. When you say you understand what I'm going through, it's like someone who was never raped telling a rape victim "I really know understand," -- you can't, what happened to me was so deeply personal it was a rape the mind and the spirit. It was an all-fronts assault on the very core being of who I was and now that part of me has been lost, thrown into a cold oblivion and left with a hollow shell trying to live a lie he doesn't want to lie about.

What happened to me was unforgivable, but I found it in my heart to forgive the person, to forget them to act like they never existed and every time I load that gay chat app on my tablet I know I'm betraying that forgiveness and that's just not who I am.

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

This isn't a matter of logic or so much the party involved who ruined me. It's the fact that they used their sexuality to manipulate me like a marionette and that made me resent myself. I hate that I am what I am, not what I am, but the fact that I am what I am.

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

While I agree that life isn't a fairy tale, I don't think that looking at my own life objectively is a good idea. The idea of objectivity simply doesn't exist-- everyone's biased in one way or another. One cannot simply strip away their feelings from something they've experienced themselves and approach it so coldly and scientifically-- it just doesn't work.

As for the "what ifs" in my life, there's so many of them, like I'm sure there are in everyone else's lives. Looking back though, I can't remember more than one thing I've ever done right out of chance. Almost every situation I've ever been in has ended with me immediately thinking "Boy, I wish I'd done that differently."

Now, as for a lifetime of regret? Well, there's not enough exabytes on the internet for me to fill. And as the days go by, I'll remember random, more inconsequential stuff that I'll kick myself for. But that's just the way it is. That's the way it's going to be. As I've said I'm a determinist-- I see the pattern, now and it's hardwired.

This is the pattern...

Normality, sexlessness and a mostly unobstructed flow of thought.
An idea is implanted, it could be anything-- anything can be a trigger for my homosexual behavior.
That idea incubates for at least one hour, at most six or seven months and I'll get on the gay app on my phone.
I'll stay on the gay app, chatting for up to one week without remorse. (One week=new record)
I'll have some sort of low point usually immediately after orgasm and shut down everything.
I go into a period of hiding, change my appearance, act with a different demeanor and return to the sexless, normal and unobstructed flow of thought until I experience another trigger.

...the only 'logical' thing to do is to break this cycle, to ignore the triggers, to fight it and the insanity that comes with it.

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

I understand perfectly where you're coming from and frankly that's the method I'd been using the entirety of the last week I was on the app. But like my triggers, it's not just an orgasm that can set me flying away from the app. It's little things, all it takes is one tiny stray thought to flutter into my brain and plant the seed of doubt in the soil of uncertainty.

I've waged a war with my sexuality for too long and I realize that I'm not going to win or lose, so it's time for a ceasefire. I openly acknowledge that there is a part of me that's overwhelmingly homosexual but I'm not going to cross the demilitarized zone from one end or the other to try and make some lofty peace treaty because it will rekindle the war.

I'm tired, I'm damned tired and I can't emotionally afford to do this, anymore. My hairline has receded almost an inch in the last six months, never having shown any sign of doing so before. There are bags under my eyes and I look like someone going through heroin withdrawal even though I've never done heroin and am not in withdrawal of any narcotic.

What I need to do is rest. Sexuality is a monster under my bed, or, in my closet, if you prefer the connotation as it seems more appropriate in my case and I just need to keep a light on it, know that it's there, I know it's a part of me, but it's not something I want to embrace or sign a contract with lest I lose what little is left of my already shattered identity.

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

Have you ever seen the movie The Two Jakes? It's the sequel to Chinatown, both star Jack Nicholson. At the end of The Two Jakes Katherine (Meg Tilly) asks Jake (Jack Nicholson) if "it ever goes away." He asks "does what ever go away?" She says "the past." He thinks about this for a moment and says "I think you're going to have to work real hard on that one." She tells him to think of her from time to time and leaves his office. He sits down, but then he runs out the door and yells "Katherine!" She's already down the stairs and she looks up at him and he shakes his head sadly and even more sadly says:

"It never goes away." And that's how the movie ends.

It will be like sitting on a fallen arrow, which is military slang for an accidentally deployed, unexploded but active atom bomb which could go off at any time, but I'll manage, because it's exploded in my face before and I've no doubt that it will explode again, sooner or later.

Last night I had a strange dream that made me wake up sobbing. I was sitting in some room and someone was chastising me for no apparent reason, saying I was a "faggot who's never known physical pleasure," and that I was "so stupid that" I "probably can't even masturbate correctly." I like to sleep, sometimes I have good dreams, but much of it is just chasing shadows, chasing things the things I desire, but every now and then it's like being inside a world of utter joy. Isn't it strange? In this cold new age where dreams mean nothing to the psychologist that they could mean so much to me, the one who pays the shrink his pennies?

That dream has been bothering me all day, it's cast a shadow over my waking hours and left my head in an uncomfortable fog that hasn't left. I've been in such a funk since Friday that I haven't shaved or showered, I've barely eaten. A friend of mine had me over at his home the other day and remarked how terrible I looked, he asked if anything was wrong, I simply said "I've got a devil on my back."

 

Re: Years wasted. So much rage, so much betrayal. No more. No more rage, no more ange

Sorry for the necroposting, but I'd really like to get some more input.

I'll be calling a few different therapists on Monday when the offices are open, to find a good therapist who takes my insurance-- so let's just get that out of the way, first.

But any more input would be appreciated, as always.