I've hidden myself from the world. I've avoided everyone and kept to myself from the age of 12 to 22. No friends, no life experiences, nothing. I've been planning for the past 2-3 years to save up money and run away to another city. In a couple months that is happening but I'm second guessing myself. Can I really be openly gay in one city and hide from my hometown? I don't care about my family finding out but I'm scared to death if my relatives find out and pretty much all our family friends. I know I shouldn't care what people think but it's just so hard. Am I ashamed of being gay that I have to run away? Am I being selfish? I don't know. Maybe being in a new place will give me some time to make some friends and find a support and enjoy my life a little. I try not to think about it but it's like what's the point? I have severely scarred skin on my body and I won't be able to get physically close to anyone for a very long time, I'm thinking 30+ and I'm at the brink of losing my current job but that doesn't really matter since I'm leaving this city soon. It seems like it's problem after problem. I don't know how things will work out when I leave but I just don't see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore. I may sound depressed but I don't think there's such a thing. Anyways rant/whine aside I don't really feel like living anymore, I don't know, we'll see how the whole run away thing works out.
Wow, that sounds exactly like me. I am not gay, but I am a woman who was born with an intersex condition and brought up as male due to that. I cut myself off from the world, at the earliest possible opportunity, because to me having no life experiences was prefferable to having life experiences where I had to live a lie in order to achieve them. I have never lived, just merely existed. I also have no friends. The way I see it, is if I can't live a normal life as simply a woman, with no degrading labels attached to that, I'd rather not have a life. It is painful at times. but I know if I'd tried to live a lie, I'd have commited suicide years ago. slylikeafox is right though, you cannot run from who you are. You can certainly run away to another city, and only you can know if that is the best thing for you. But you cant run from your sexuality. You can certainly suppress it, but you wont ever be able to get rid of it, or change it.
Don't run away from people, but don't think that means you shouldn't leave. If you feel a change of place will suit your lifestyle more, and you will be happier living as a gay man- you are hardly running away and more just changing something about your life. Take the plunge, it sounds like you need to find yourself. Good luck. Make yourself the number one priority before you start thinking about other people. Usually you would have to consider others before rash decisions, but it seems your confidence is shot and that really needs to be altered.
You sound depressed =( *hugs* Things will work out, take it easy. Don't stress and try not to think negatively. I know it can be hard! You're not alone It might help if you speak to a counselor too, Say things like you said in your post, eg you don't feel like living anymore -just saying it to someone can get it off your mind and be healing. If i were you I would stay put, figure out what you enjoy. Perhaps comunity college is an option? maybe you are creative? Maybe while you are still working you could apply for other jobs in that field, if its what you like doing. Everyone wants intimacy, some people manage to obtain it easily, others (like me..) don't have a clue =S Being alone isn't that bad, I've never had a real partner either. It doesn't matter there is more to life
Wake up. Life is passing you by. Shout out that your gay. Your incredible lucky and you just don't know it - Don't waste your life son. Goodluck Sunshine
Even tho the advice of the previous posters seems to vary I think all of them had validity. We can't decide for you but it is healthy to share your angst. I would say leave and go to another city - one with a large, visible and vocal gay presence. I guess that's what I did when I abandoned living in Mississippi and went to New Orleans when I was about your age. Fell in with ppl I could relate to even become friends (and sexually intimate). I guess when it dawned on family that Jim and I were more than just roommates it no longer had the shock value after me sleeping around indiscriminately and doing drugs for years before that. But I was a questioner of our folly culture while still in high school, so everyone knew I was a misfit - it didn't matter what new shocker I would pull. But that was changing times. You have to find your own way and support system in a less rebellious atmosphere. So, move and try to assert yourself as a free individual. I tried living up to others' standards for me and the most liberating moment was when I turned on, tuned in and dropped out.
One other thing I will say, although cutting yourself off from the world is not really ideal, I think you did the right thing as opposed to living a lie. The longer you live a false life to try and hide who you really are from people, the harder you make it when you finally do decide you need to just be yourself. On the outside, you may be around people, but on the inside, you will still feel isolated, even more so probably. You can be surrounded by people, and still feel alone on the inside. Although my life is very isolating, and downright painful at times, I still know that living a lie would have been that much worse. I never tried living up to expectations others had for me, and I think I am definitely better off mentally for doing that. If you do not yet feel strong enough to be yourself, then cutting yourself off from people was probably the best thing you could have done. Living a lie will not make you happy, and requires a lot more mental effort to do than isolating yourself. So you wouldn't have gained anything from doing that anyway. If you think the only way you can be yourself is to move away, I would strongly advise you to try and do that. Although living a lie is no life, completely shutting yourself off isn't really a recipe for happiness either. Its just the lesser of two evils I guess. I've never had a partner, and while that is hard to live with sometimes, (It's definitely becoming harder to live with the older I'm getting) I know that being with someone if it doesn't feel natural or right to me would definitely be a mistake. And it would just make me even more unhappy. I hope you can find a way out soon, and can finally live life the way you really want to. Good luck with it all.
I dont think you should run away from your family and friends, but perhaps its come to the point in your life for you to pick up and make your own way. It's gonna be stressful at times and definitely not easy, but thats what makes the goods times so good in the first place. Maybe once you've established yourself in your new life you will have the confidence to tell your family and friends the truth about yourself.
I have a different perception than what was said, being schizophrenic. I have lived all over the place, San Francisco, LA, Dublin, London, and small towns in France. I went to college but dropped out and ended up developing schizophrenia along with my best friend who still lives with me. Everytime I have to see my family I want to run away even though they know everything about me, but I just chose higher ground. I am in a bigger city that my family lives in and for a while they were trying to help me out financially and I would gladly take what they were offering but with the mental health team I have, I have totally cut myself off from feeling indebted to them, and if it wasn't for all the nice services we have here for the mentally ill, I would move again with my roommate but it's too complicated, we looked into it. I started with meeting people off the internet, sometimes just for sex, but it has lead to having a support network, sometimes flaky. I am known to others as being a good guy and stable at this point, and I have achieved independence from my family and I am glad because they piss me off. I do what I like to do, and I don't care what kindof people approach me, I can make friends with them. I started a process of assimulation to the community where I set boundaries of what I tell to others about myself, trying to know more about the other person and I have become quite the snake at this. I help homeless gay men have a couch and get a job and an apartment and deal with intrusion in my house of professionals trying to increase my stability. If everyone could have the services like they do for the mentally ill in some states the world would be a lot better. I think it's important for any gay person to live in a bigger city, but not totally essential and I have tried recreating identities in the different places I have lived and it has lead to me knowing a heck of a lot about myself, but only now do I know how to talk with other people in the normal way people talk. It took me a long time to learn that because of my strange character flaws I have always had. I got over it, I am not happy nor sad but usually pretty serious. I can't be light any longer for how much my mind has been tapped into and recircuited. It's a struggle to be sane and it's preferable to being in doubt about one's life. Assuming you are all not on the pills I have to take, and had to take them all the sudden, it would lead to catastrophic feelings of suicide for the first year, and for a lot of people that take them. Your life could be a lot worse and I have been through hell over and over again, but I remain and exist and do what I can to still give a gift to others that are searching for answers. Leave, return, stay, just turn the other cheek to the people you don't like and be better for yourself. There is no real force to tell other's that you are gay unless they are hitting on you or something and it's not always that great to be open. On the internet I can be freely gay as well as my home with my boyfriend, but when we go into society we put on our masks and armour to be prepared for any callous thing that could happen to us, the bad side of being mentally ill, the treatment of undiagnosed ordinary people that seem to have no purpose at all sometimes the more I think about it. The answer is to read books, read, read, read. Know thyself, and then you'll never be hurt by others or intimacy. In the end though I think you should escape, grab life's experiences and see where it takes you.
