My story [long, potential trigger warning, I guess]

[Entropic]

So I think I finally figured out what I've been struggling with my entire life. Someone feel free to comment if you relate or not, I'd appreciate that. I am feeling very lost and confused right now as I just broke up with my ex and she was the only real source of intimacy I had. I knew it was a good thing to pick up therapy again so I am going to have my second session tomorrow and this time I also know I'll finally get the help I needed which I didn't last time because it was the wrong therapist and the wrong kind of therapy for me. I got an overall good impression of her the first time, so right now I'm placing all my hopes in her hands. I don't think I could manage without me throwing out that last lifeline link.

Anyway, it started when I was just zoning out watching videos on Youtube. I do this a lot when I just become lethargic and energyless so I end up wasting all time in front of the PC like now, essentially doing nothing and not being productive. I just feel kind of numb and derealized. In some ways I suppose it overlaps a bit with depression, too, except I know this isn't just mere depression; it's deeper and more complicated than that. I know this know because I have finally managed to work a bit on myself the past years and dealt with some of my problems which has helped to give a bit more insight into my own history and psyche that otherwise still feels so * fragmented. I told my new therapist that I identified so strongly with my relationship that now it's over I don't know who I am anymore and it's true.

The Youtube video in question was someone analyzing the meanings of the video game Silent Hill: Homecoming. The narrator explains how he thinks the main character Travis suffers a clear case of PTSD and I didn't understand why because Travis did not seem to suffer from the flashbacks like is otherwise so typical and defined to be so important to PTSD. He also did not seem to per se struggle with the anxiety of PTSD. However, something clicked in me, because if this narrator of the video thinks the main character Travis has PTSD, then I surely must have PTSD, because the aforementioned characteristics were reasons why I never could see myself in the diagnosis because my problems have been much more constant and on-going and did not occur in relation to just one singular event, though some are more traumatic and temporary than others. Then I ran into someone that mentioned there's this other version called CPTSD and showed me some information on it. I read up on it and a lot of pieces fell into place like  they haven't before; it described a lot of what I felt and still feel in a way I have yet to run into elsewhere. It  feels like a relief in the sense that I'm just not some abnormal person, I'm not crazy and I suck for being this way and I can't seem to be able to get my life together like other, normal people can. I've wished my entire life that I could just be normal.

Instead what it feels like is that my history is more a matter of separate and individual segments but I can't always see how one leads into another. There's a feeling of mental fog that clouds most of my past which isn't helped by the fact that when my mother died when I was 6, I told myself to forget and so I did. I can barely remember anything from my childhood, especially around the time and after my mother died. There's an extreme blackout between the age of 6 to maybe 9-10, when dad met another woman who was extremely abusive and negligent of me and my needs. It's easier for me to remember certain emotional states such as the deep-seated rage I felt during adolescence and the unfairness of my lot in life than how it all segmented in terms of memory-progression. It's more just a combination of * on top of * on top of * and it never * ends, and I decided I have no use in remembering anything of it so I forgot. Even the memories I do have including some I managed to recollect all feel hazy and weirdly distant, too. There's no real emotional coloring to them and I really disdained and part still disdain nostalgic people and people that enjoy a sense of nostalgia. It seemed weak to me, to hold onto memories that are so disgusting like that. I never understood why anyone would want to hold on to their pasts, especially if it contained bad experiences. After reading that article about the outer critic, I can place these reactions in a better context though I think it will take a very long time until I can see every aspect of how it seeps into my thinking and my life.

This sense of always feeling so numb is something I've begun to increasingly realize as I became more aware of my actual inner state. It took me years to reach to a point where I finally dared to look more into myself and recognize my own inner life, part because of how it was so overlooked I kind of learned to overlook myself, too. I was taught and told that my needs and what happened inside of myself didn't matter, and now it's very difficult to unlearn the idea that I don't matter to other people, that I shouldn't be a bother or a nuisance because if I am I will be punished for it. Dare express something that goes against the will of my stepmother and she'll just shut you down instantly and if you dare to do something she dislikes, she'll immediately get angry and punish you for it. It was always about her and what she wanted, never what I wanted.

So I escaped to the world of imagination and I read so much fantasy during this time. I also tried to write and I wrote stories and poetry and later my escapism moved to video games and anime series and I got seriously addicted to World of Warcraft. I spent over 12 hours a day playing and neglected my entire physical well-being and my schooling. It also didn't help that I moved out at 17 which was way too early than I should have had as a means to escape the hellish nightmare that was supposed to be my home. I hear other people speak of the word "home" as if it's something they are longing back to and experience a fondness towards; I don't experience myself to have a home. I am homeless and unwanted so I rather go somewhere else where I can at least be alone and have a piece of mind. To me "home" is occupied by the one singular woman that in the end likely ruined my life, though there were of course other women involved as well, but she was the one that physically and mentally separated me from the care of my father. One could say it was weak of my father to not dare to take the stand between me, his son, and her, that he rather kept the conflict going because he did not want to choose because that way he in a way  got to have the cake and eat it too. And here I am, an adult but I hardly feel like one and I am just so hurting inside, because if he had just dared to take a stand and rejected her and chosen me, all the other trauma I had go through would not be as nearly as bad because at least I knew then and there that there was someone that loved me. I know he loves me, but yet he's so afraid of her. All of us were afraid and are afraid.

There are a lot of people I have met in my life, some more or less dangerous, but her rage is the only rage I feared. She told me she wouldn't hit me and she never did, but it didn't stop me from fearing her rage, part because I think my father always chose to be a silent observer. He never stepped in to stop her and to make her calm her down, to defend me and to protect me, because he was afraid of causing a divide between herself and her. Part because she rages too much and controls and dictates everything. I don't know her entire story but I do know that she was the youngest sibling out of several and that her father was emotionally abusive. I can tell, the way she scrambles over resources and wants to indulge herself and justifies it with how she's an adult now and has the right to do that because she's making money, but I, as a child living with her, has no right to gain access to the same treatment and the same resources, even if it's something menial like being able to have ham on my sandwich. I just wanted a piece of ham on my sandwich too but I can't afford to buy it because I am a child with no income. We weren't poor, you were just being a selfish * and refused to share with everyone else.

And of course, I wish I could say my story ends here, this is the only horrific thing I had to go through, the emotional neglect of my stepmother and the fact that my father chose to look the other way, or how my paternal grandmother was in many ways the extreme opposite of my stepmother and how that was felt as negligent and how I was  so angry at her for so many years too and I began to despise her and be passive-aggressive and sometimes outright aggressive.

So what I have now, a broken life. No friends, almost no money because I work at a * job with * minimum wage pay despite having  a master's degree because I * up my choices in high school and I * up my choices at university, all because I struggled with clinical depression and then just depression and feeling lethargic and not being as proactive as I could have been because it was ultimately easier to go home, not do anything, play some WoW, eat and sleep and zone out of life while I slowly in the rear-window see it all go to * but somehow I can't even muster the energy to care about that, either. The feeling that if I had just gotten the emotional support I should have received from my family I would be a very different and successful person today, the kind of person I see everyone else being but me. A normal person. Someone I'm not.

And then, now, when I am somehow slowly recovering from this, I am alone again, abandoned by the one person I loved the most, the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I dreamt about us getting married one day. I wanted to marry her. She left me for someone else and I feel so emasculated, I feel so useless. I keep thinking if I had just been that successful person without all this extra baggage on my back, she'd love me more. Perhaps if I had not been born trans she would have felt more legitimate attraction to me.

This is why I got my cats because cats never place any condition on their love.

[joyful]

Hi Entropic
I am so sorry for everything that you've gone through. I know that you probably know this already, but you didn't deserve it.
I related very very strongly to this part:

This sense of always feeling so numb is something I've begun to increasingly realize as I became more aware of my actual inner state. It took me years to reach to a point where I finally dared to look more into myself and recognize my own inner life, part because of how it was so overlooked I kind of learned to overlook myself, too. I was taught and told that my needs and what happened inside of myself didn't matter, and now it's very difficult to unlearn the idea that I don't matter to other people, that I shouldn't be a bother or a nuisance because if I am I will be punished for it.

Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone.

[Entropic]

Hi Entropic
I am so sorry for everything that you've gone through. I know that you probably know this already, but you didn't deserve it.
I related very very strongly to this part:

This sense of always feeling so numb is something I've begun to increasingly realize as I became more aware of my actual inner state. It took me years to reach to a point where I finally dared to look more into myself and recognize my own inner life, part because of how it was so overlooked I kind of learned to overlook myself, too. I was taught and told that my needs and what happened inside of myself didn't matter, and now it's very difficult to unlearn the idea that I don't matter to other people, that I shouldn't be a bother or a nuisance because if I am I will be punished for it.

Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone.

Thank you for your support. I had my second meeting today and it's the first time where I felt in touch with myself. It was a weird feeling and really fit the definition of an EF. She asked me how I felt living with my grandmother while dad was away and working after my mom died and I just got this immense feeling of being small and wanting to be with dad and how I felt so angry and how unjust it was that I couldn't. I was old enough to understand why I couldn't but it doesn't diminish the emotional need, obviously.

And even though it made me feel immensely sad and admittedly feel abandoned though I really disdain to admit this, it actually made me feel like I finally began to connect to myself and feel all these feelings I just locked inside and numbed myself out to. It was extremely cathartic, addictive in a sense, even. So while in many ways life sucks because I lost my partner and I can't even speak to her anymore because of how it messes up with my head and my feelings and she was the only person I really knew, at least I feel like some things are getting resolved. I just wish so badly she could be here with me in the way I wanted her to be, even though she also hurt me so.