Hi all,
I’ve been a lurker on the site for a good while, I first came across the site more than 10 years ago I’d say, and started visiting frequently in the past year or two. I sometimes saw posts that I wanted to comment on but hesitated, but eventually figured I might as well create a post, even if it’s pretty bad.
My life is pretty bad, and pretty empty, and my mind is usually heaving under the strain of constant thinking…I think of it like an old computer that’s full of files and is sorting through them in the background, meaning that the available memory is tiny, and basic mental tasks become a slog.
My main problem is the same it’s been for twenty years, being gay and not wanting to be. This resistance has led to my life becoming empty and lonely and a general pile of crap. I was twenty at the time and I’m forty now, a fact which is laughable and stupid to my mind as I feel like I’ve been stuck since then and I’m still just a kid basically.
I used to drink and smoke a little back then, and started having bad ‘trips’ and hangovers which just screwed up my brain even more, with all sorts of unpleasant experiences and paranoia and shame and being laughed at in public by people, which has hurt and led me to be a recluse pretty much.
I’ve had a IT job for the past two years but am thinking of leaving that as I feel like I’m bringing down the others in my team. We only meet in an office one day a week, which should be manageable, but I’ve gotten sort of worn out from the work and can’t raise my mood enough to have basic common warmth and friendliness towards my colleagues.
Plus I’m peevish and resentful and just lacking in energy or enthusiasm most of the time, and I feel like that negative energy is affecting the others.
I’ve felt that way for about twenty years too, like I have this current of dark or evil energy in me, which might harm others, like I could do some mind trick and make someone else sick…not that I believe I can but that a part of me feels it might be possible if I’m not careful and keep my thoughts on a secure leash.
I guess it’s just the anger and sadness that creates this blackness, and it manifests in weird ways, such as thinking all these nasty thoughts about people, so much so that I don’t often know how I really feel about people.
I’ve been trying to improve my mood with meditation in the past few months but any progress is slow and prone to slipping away again fairly quickly.
I would have packed it in years ago but for my mother, and she and my father are getting on in years now.
I guess I should feel shame for how much worry and sadness I’ve created for her due to my unhappiness and depression, but I don’t feel much of anything, which leads me to think that maybe I would have come a cropper even without the gay thing…eventually my callousness would likely have come to the fore.
So yeah, I have plenty of other tales of woe and bad memories but that’s probably enough for now.
Not sure if there’s any way out, I’m making some progress accepting being gay, but when I see a pretty lady on the street I can easily topple into the rumination again.
Thanks for reading
6 comments
How come you can’t accept yourself being gay? Society has changed and is very accepting of gay people now (depending on where you live).
It’s mostly this notion I have that falling in love with a woman would be more romantic, or magical, plus my opinion that women are better looking in general.
Like I still miss walking down the street and the joy of seeing a pretty woman, and seeing a good looking guy just isn’t the same.
Which is probably pretty silly and something easily overcome by most people, but I seem to be extra sensitive or just a baby, or maybe just a selfish AH.
I wasn’t that well liked by most of my fellow classmates in secondary school (high school for us folks), and was probably considered gay by most of them, even though I didn’t realize that myself at the time….so being gay was something shameful, and certainly mocked and I probably have some lingering associations between the term ‘gay’ and hearing whispers and that when I’d speak in class.
But I think I’ve been feeling bad about myself for 20 years too and when I criticize myself a lot I tend to get a bit shaky mentally, and have low self esteem, and this has likely contributed to my feeling bad about being gay.
Unfortunately at a time when I needed to just reflect on things and mind myself, I continued to drink and smoke marijuana, and had some pretty bad times, like feeling guilty that I’d decided to stay at home and smoke rather than go on a night out with friends…and that becoming the focus of my attention while I smoked…which was not pleasant! I didn’t smoke that much or often, maybe having a batch of 5-10 joints over a weekend every few weeks, but each time my head would be clearing and I’d start to feel somewhat normal again, I’d get some more and end up with my head in bits again post weekend.
I stopped after a year or two and even stopped drinking a few years after that, but I was pretty messed up by the really.
As the years went by I just stagnated and friends drifted away.
So yeah, maybe if I’d just decided to knock the drinking and smoking on the head for that period, I might have had time to process being gay, and gotten comfortable with it.
I mean I still could, but I’m pretty bitter and twisted by now, so the rest of my life is such a mess that it would take a lot of resilience and determination to get back to a reasonably well functioning life.
Sorry for the essay 🙂
There’s nothing wrong with being gay yet still finding women attractive. I used to live in SF- I am straight- but I typically find gay men more attractive than straight men (mostly bc gay men tend to take much better care of their face and appearance than straight men, and dress much better too).
(forgot to add- I am female)
Have you tried therapy? Good therapists are really hard to find though (i’d say maybe only 5-10% of therapists are good), but if you manage to find one, I think it should help. Or try googling/YT gay+self acceptance. Sometimes, things on the internet are helpful if one has no professional help or help from friends/family etc
Yeah I was seeing a cognitive behavioral therapist for a good few years, but it only helped to a certain extent. I’ve been on antidepressants for years too and they do stop me from getting too low. Watching YT videos is a good suggestion, I’d never watched one until a few weeks back and it was interesting to see someone else who had struggled a bit with some of the same issues.
It’s not so much that I find women attractive anymore now, but that I miss finding them attractive, which I did until I was 20. It’s just a matter of not thinking about it, or thinking about it from a different perspective, but that’s easier said than done for me as I can get into this obsessive rut over things.