This is hard for me to say because I've never talk to anyone about this before and I'm getting into things with self-harm and I worry something will happen to me eventually. This'll be a wall of text and probably therapeutic to write. I'm currently 22/m and I’m shaking with adrenaline as I type this out. Its hard to organize my thoughts and I’ve been jumping through the timeline with whatever comes to mind. I should probably say this to a therapist, but my parents are keeping money from me and don’t believe in therapy. I had attempted to talk to them before about my depression but was told to ‘cut the shit’ and not to tell my father about it because he didn’t have time for it. I used this attitude with my friends as lots had been pushed away because they didn’t understand why I was like this and why I couldn’t do anything about it. I was called a downer in the sixth grade and I kept a majority of this to myself since. I’m currently using DXM as a release, my first exam is tonight and I’m about $3500 in debt as I write this out.
I had abusive parents growing up that would yell at me and be beat me for a lot of reasons, some made sense to me and some didn't. If you're eastern-European a lot of us joke about this kind of abuse and I don't know if mine was any worse than others.
Before I was five, I don’t remember anything of this, we lived in Europe where my family is from and I had some troubling health issues as I grew up. I believe I was in very bad condition for a time and wasn’t sure if I would make it. More information doesn’t really come up and I don’t talk to my parents a lot. I am not in touch with any of my relatives on a personal level as when we moved here I was mostly cut off from them except from phone calls and times when my grandparents would be here to take care of me.
We moved to Canada when I was 5 and don't remember much from then. I was a timid child, but I picked up the English language quickly from watching TV often, I resulted in being the person that people came to for help when we had a new immigrant that spoke my language but didn't speak English. I didn't mind any of this and helped wholeheartedly and these were most of the friends I made growing up. I sought solitude and had become more and more engrossed in cartoons - I'm a bit of an expert on the few cartoons I watched and did well at a bar trivia night on the matter. We didn’t have a computer or any video games for me at this point. When my grandparents came here to visit I was given more freedom as I got to go outside with her a lot to the park – but not anything more than because she didn’t speak the language and wasn’t particularly close with anyone for playdates. There was a small park in the complex where I played with some children from my home country.
My taste in these cartoons was first things like Tom and Jerry and classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons but soon I started watching the more avant-garde shows that made me cover my eyes like Courage the Cowardly Dog and this one weird episode of The Ripping Friends that involved a finger and nail coming out of a guys belly but the nail would lift and up and this would always make my skin crawl.
The one thing my parents had made sure of was that I never wanted any material good. I had numerous big cardboard boxes filled with toys and they were proud of this because it gave them pride to know that money was taken care of, something we couldn’t have in our home country, my mother had never learned to ride a bike simply because she couldn’t afford it. However, we never went on vacations and in order to be able to afford this my parents worked a lot and were never very affectionate with me, they couldn’t afford the vacations that people had to exotic resorts or Disney land. We had gone to MarineLand a few times and Wonderland but mostly when my grandparents had been here.
My parents had worked so much it would require me to come home from school in kindergarten and go commute with my mother on the bus to the factory they worked at and then commute home with my father in the middle of the night and getting a pizza for dinner. Other times I was stuck waiting in the work cafeteria with books to keep myself busy, no one else would bring kids in. Speaking of books, I loved these immensely. My younger grades had a reading contest where I was blowing past my classmates and read at one point had read 100 more books than anyone else had with favorites like Amelia Bedilia and Geronimo Stilton – and other books of this difficulty that I can’t really remember. My parents were very proud of this fact and would tell everyone. I think I was looking for someplace to escape to and remember more of those books than my life.
The abuse wasn’t constant like some others, but a memorable event was when I was younger was when I had really wanted something and threw a temper tantrum, to solve this as we went home by mom came into the backset of our Honda and beat me, I was threatened with this this happening again as I was growing up. A lot more than this I can’t remember.
Once we moved to a house as I got into grade 3 things changed, I had previously mostly hung out with other kids from my culture exclusively (my parents had also liked this since they were in as much culture shock as me and had had me mostly have playdates with them). When we got to these new kids, I suffered culture shock, the next-door neighbors were as white trash as you could get in a 300k house 15 years ago and treated their kids far differently, the few yelling matches were worse, but the kids fought back and swore and stuck up their middle fingers at the parents. It was very weird for me and eventually more arguments occurred with my parents as I craved the freedom my peers were given. I was only allowed indoors as my parents went to work during the day and once, they were home I was only allowed to go as far as the lengths of my street.
I was very alienated and still dressed weird with weird clothing my mom picked out, they were kind of like cheap badly translated Chinese clothes from cheap stores my parents would shop at. Being only allowed indoors and already spending a lot of time on cartoons – when I got an Xbox for my birthday, I flocked to it, I loved Halo and Amped and other games and got engrossed it. When we got a computer and the internet, I loved it even more.
My academic success was paramount, and they didn't care much for anything else - my grades were important and math and science especially so to the point where my dad tutoring me ended in tears and beatings – the math and science was beat into understanding and I didn’t have much of a choice, the other subjects was though of as not important and easy and no assistance was offered here – I was just expected to get a good grade. I was threatened with tutors as child and didn’t want to spend the little bit of time I had home alone before my parents got home after working doing homework – Since I would have to keep doing homework after they got home. Once my schoolwork was done, I was given a workbook to continue working on. I was encouraged and pressured to do things above my grade level and continue to be beat till I could do it. I grew up being the weird kid even more, I always had dandruff since I was only washing my hair once a week and dressing as well as any blunder-years photo you see. Living here and being like this lasted until I was in the seventh grade, where because of the housing market we moved to a small 3-bedroom apartment and sold off most things. I didn’t keep in touch with anyone from before but lots of kids do this when you move as it gets difficult. Here I was quickly accepted by a lot of the girls at school because I had hazel eyes like in the Twilight saga that everyone was going crazy about. This was weird to me and I had no exposure to it but I was soon finally feeling accepted by others that were here from a different culture and they were helping me get into it as well. These two girls who lived in the complex next door had taken me under their wing and soon I was getting more fashionable with their help and socializing more with people. The few crushes I had on girls I was too afraid to do anything about or say anything and continued to be a shy and timid person. I couldn’t join any clubs or do much after school as I was always required to go home and do my homework. On the weekends I had more leeway, but this was fruitless since it was hard to make friends while only being allowed outdoors on the weekends. Eventually I was able to go outside in front of the building and talk to my friends during the week but couldn’t go anywhere with them. In the classroom I was calm but had outbursts when kids would bully me – I would yell and scream at them before getting sent to the office as it got quieter. My grades suffered once we went got to the sixth grade and I switched to a middle school where kids came from all over. Being this weird meant I was more of an outcast here where there was a larger population of kids as the cliques formed and I couldn’t relate to anyone and no one took pity on me and I became a recluse with the exception of a younger kid that lived next door who really liked Videogames and had a PlayStation but sadly went to a different school. In this time, I was bullied more and more and would spend time at recess imagining to be in my videogames and going around the yard acting it out. As you could imagine this didn’t make me popular. My parents were none to happy about any of this, my beatings continued and got harsher as my grades dropped, and I had gone to school with bruises only where the clothing covered. We would argue a lot about where I was going and why I wasn’t doing homework instead. All my time was spent indoors doing homework or with them. My first kiss in the eighth grade was with one of the girls in the complex next door who understood me enough to make the first move and continue to do so. The girl I kissed, S, could relate with being secretive to parents and doing things behind their back like we were. Both of their parents had more issues with drugs and alcohol and just didn’t care about her. But soon I was going to the mall for the first time, and the movies for the first time and eating out and enjoying food, music, clothing and art from different cultures. However, this wasn’t without its flaws since I was bullied the way little sisters bully older brothers, I was teased often and made to wear a bra at one point because of my man-boobs. The lack of physical exercise since I couldn’t go outside made me a chubby kid and I have yet to ever be confident about my body as the teasing about man-boobs continued. I had become friends with another boy who also spent lots of time indoors and around this time I was taught about online gaming and got hooked on online games. The first times I was allowed to stay over at a friends house overnight were here.
Soon after S had broken off her friendship with the other girl lived in that complex and it was just me and her. Our relationship had lasted until early high school, as by then she started hanging out with other friends and wanted to break up and go have fun. She would soon tell me about making out with the emo guy and having sex at our high-school. The 2000s were rough.
Throughout high school I was still not allowed to do many things, parties and staying out late were off limits so I flocked to the groups that played videogames and enjoyed books. Soon I was staying up late whispering to all my friends playing Counter-Strike and Halo CE.
These friends stuck with me for awhile and most of my time in high school was like this and it all blends together in my memory, some new games came out and the group changed but it existed and that’s what mattered. I was a big part of the 4chan /mu/ community and commonly joked around about ‘tfw no gf’ as I harbored a crush on the same girl for all of high school. In the 12th grade I had my first long term girlfriend where we dated for a year and a half. I was her first guess, she was the first person I saw naked and fingered. Things were great between us but from influence by her friends she wanted to go farther and be intimate together, but I struggled and would get nervous when thinking about sex and had harsh performance anxiety. We eventually broke up not long after a harsh argument where she thought I didn’t want her due to my lack of sexual performance and how nervous I was when meeting her parents for the first time.
After we broke up early in my first-year university career my depression worsened, I was left lonelier than ever before in a new university where everyone felt like they had already made cliques or we had nothing in common.
I could never keep my parents happy, any bad grades or news were met with arguments and beatings and any good grades meant I didn’t get beat. The constant amount of time they call me ugly and fat continue regardless of what my academics were like. I would have panic attacks and breakdowns while arguing with them and I would just be forced to stay alone in my room with the TV off. Trying to get my mind off things via my cellphone or TV would result in them taking it and turning it off, forcing me to think about what I did wrong. I never knew what I did wrong, I couldn’t keep them happy and it was so hard.
I struggled to find friends and still do, any time spent is by wearing a façade and interacting with other smart students to get help on homework. I had hooked up with two girls from my past but never got past heavy petting as my sexual performance issues were never fixed. Drinking had started here with a single, pretty, friend but had not managed to turn into anything more. I did not drink a lot but would skip class and go drinking during the day since I had to be home in the evening or my parents would get upset. I had also started smoking marijuana around this time as it gave me a nice release. The marijuana use continued with friends for my old group in high school and soon resulted in getting caught with it in my backpack. A large argument ensued with my father, but he decided not to tell my mom. I was not beat, but he was hurt and cried. I didn’t stop smoking. I had begun using more and sneaking out to get it too. I was caught once more after I grabbed, and my father found 4g in my car before I had a change to get it out.
Soon after my depression continued getting worse, my use with marijuana has continued to grow more. I use it whenever I get a change and struggle to find anything interesting when I’m off it. When I was away from home for 16months at an internship I stayed indoors and smoked every change I got. My grades are mediocre, but I got the internship anyways as I answered the questions fine.
The arguments with my parents continue throughout this, I’ve wanted to move out and live closer to campus my whole time here to get an escape, but I can’t as my parents don’t approve of it and think all I’ll do is party and do drugs. There’s nothing more important to them than me passing my exams and graduating.
Now I’m here, this week my parents went on their first vacation and I went through 3 bottles of cough syrup as I started experimenting with more drugs but luckily I chose something shitty to start off with and got scared of the side effects I had, enough to stop after the third bottle. I can’t find help at my school because the only offers I’ve gotten were to go into group therapy as too many people need help and I wouldn’t be able to talk about my experiences in a group setting, although hopefully now I can. We have a 4-month long waitlist to see a therapist in Canada and I don’t have the money to see one in another way due to the money my parents keep from me. I talked to a doctor when I was told I should start exercising and eating write, going to speech therapy and a test was done for low testosterone. I can’t find the motivation to eat well or exercise and my testosterone levels were normal.
I fear I won’t graduate and be stuck here longer. I can’t focus on my studies and struggle to find the help I need. What do I do?
Submitted December 07, 2018 at 08:16PM by whatamiconfused https://ift.tt/2QHAgLd
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