What is it to be happy with your life? Is it who you are, who you've become, or what you wish to be? For me it seems an uphill battle to be happy with any of those. As I've realized before, my mind is split between coming out and staying like I am- a facade, an actor. Either way I can't change this part of me. It's a core aspect of who I am.
I sometimes really hate myself. I hate this life, I hate what I've done to myself. I wish I could have a different life, or somehow start from the beginning again. I can just do my best to fake being straight, and put my mind on a constant strain but can I really keep it up my whole life? And why is it that I have such an urge to not be free...and to even help in shackling myself?
Can I just stay here in the closet my whole life?
I don't want to come out, so maybe I don't have to ever come out. Maybe I could keep this going, have a boring relationship with a plain woman and go through life without really taking any risks. It's just I can't connect with people and I'm hollowing out. I can't stand having to accept my being gay. I want to run away from it as far as possible. What kind of cost could amount by not coming out? If I keep going in that direction I may actually kill myself. I used to play this tune when I was younger. I didn't know what it was about but I'm getting closer to its meaning these days.
My mind's getting pretty messed up. I'm to the point where, in mid laughter and seeming happiness, I'll go stone cold blank faced and have no clue what we were so happy about. The thoughts run through my head: "Oh right, that's not who I am. I'm not happy. I don't have a fun time". Really, what could possibly be funny? What could be so important? I'm disassociating to the point of delirium. Maybe I'm just so tired of being fake, but when that feeling hits me those thoughts and questions generalize to all of life and I become very depressed. I want to live but it would mean giving up the safety net of illusion, something I've learned to live with my whole life. I have to face this continuing deterioration every day and it makes me wonder if it's worth getting up.
Throughout my writings I've been back and forth between ecstatic confidence and suicidal depression. It never seems to stabilize or get better. I just keep moving on through the nights.
and yet...when I just wake up after a good dream, when the air breathes into my skin, when everything's right, and when my mind's not at war with itself: when I'm feeling alright... it's more than just a feeling.
Does life ever get better? Yeah it does. It might not be soon, but what are you going to do, other than stick around and fight through it until it does? And if you don't feel like fighting today, do it tomorrow.
To be brutally honest, get the fuck out of the closet. Just reading this makes it painfully obvious that staying in will inevitably lead to suicide as your mental health further deteriorates. You will have to make a choice between a short life of pain and suffering, ending with the remorse and sense of loss from your friends and family, who would never even be graced with why you would have made such a choice, or toughing out the bigotry of the ignorant and truly enjoying yourself among those graced with tolerance. The choice to me seems fairly obvious, but I guess it is subjective and, ultimately, yours to make.
Perhaps this is not the greatest advice, but from my view, choosing not to do/be "who you think you are" is also part of who you are. Choosing not to be happy and be in pain is fine, you're grown up (I assume), and can make your own decisions regarding this. Making those kind of choices is the humane part of this experience we call life. You'll eventually make a choice that leads to your happiness... or not. Life is what you make it.
With that said, I recommend choosing happiness. Literally the worst thing that could happen is you have to start from scratch relationship wise (family and friends), and if that does happen, then I refer to this old quote: "Those that matter don't mind, and those that mind don't matter". Cheers.
As scary as coming out seems, you won't be happy running away from it forever. Running becomes habitual and will make you hate yourself. Feeling like you're fake and lying all the time must be horrible, no wonder you feel depressed and hollowed out. I know it's really hard but you need to face your fears, accept yourself and come out. You'll be happier and stronger for it.
'Does life get better'. Ending with this i will assume that you are young (Late teens).
Acknowledging who you are is part of creating ones adult identity, which is what will framework for defining yourself and your actions for the rest of your life. To live a better life you must take the first step, you must come out, to be brutally honest, the only one who can do something with this situation is you. I can try to give my thoughts on why it's important, but ultimately you're the one who decides how it's all gonna go down.
Beeing gay is not something you can change. Try as you might, changing ones sexual preferences does not happen. One can live a life imitating that one is attracted to the opposite sex, but this will more than likely not be a happy life.
The people you are afraid that you will push away from you by coming out, are the people who are supposed to support you in this situation, and if they are not doing that, then it's up to you to find someone who will. You friends and family should want to see you happy, not live your life hiding a part of your personality, so strong, that it is the major driving force behind all your future relationships.
If you know your family and friends will be pushed away then your friends are not really your friends, and your family does not have the unconditioned love for you which they are supposed to have. You will need to find an alternative. You can become part of a community larger than yourself, find others withing the group who you can socialize with, who are on your level and don't care whether or not your gay.
Does life get better? I like to explain this with a quote that works for trying to stop people from commiting suicide. "Suicide is a long term fix for a short term problem". As you mature into a full adult, you will get to choose. You get to choose where you want to live, you can move away from your family and never speak to them again, you can move away from your friends who don't accept you, and lead a life in happiness under a new identity, and this new identity can be how you truly want to.
Life does get better, and as cheesy as it sounds: Hang in there!
On November 24 2011 18:09 kammeyer wrote: Ecstatic confidence and suicidal depression fluctuation is called manic depression, seek cognitive therapy.
What qualifies you to tell someone to seek a specific type of therapy? If you do not truly know your stuff, it is better to remain silent, rather than misinform someone.
I am not trying to make you look bad, i just want to make sure that you know what you are doing so that you don't accidentally harm someone.
If you don't wish to reply here feel free to toss me a PM.
It's your life. It's the only one you'll ever have. It gets better when you're no longer forced into social situations you don't want to be in. Your happiness in life is entirely up to you. Get independent. Make your own happiness. Apologize for nothing.
Op. I would seek help somewhere. Phone somebody, there are many helplines that will help you talk through things. It says you are are from Canada, what province, I can get some resources for you if you want.
I don't think anyone here can really tell you what to do with your life. After all, its your's. I think though you need to speak to somebody.
Why don't you want to come out though? What is stoping you?
Op. I would seek help somewhere. Phone somebody, there are many helplines that will help you talk through things. It says you are are from Canada, what province, I can get some resources for you if you want.
I don't think anyone here can really tell you what to do with your life. After all, its your's. I think though you need to speak to somebody.
Why don't you want to come out though? What is stoping you?
It is true that nobody can tell the OP what to do with his life. You can however, give good advice, and the OP can choose to fallow some of it. It is not productive to discourage people from posting good advice.
Happiness is partly a matter of finding people who like you for who you are. All of who you are. But to find those people, you have to take the really scary first step of being yourself around other people to find out who likes you. And that can be terrifying, because part of you will wonder if anybody out there will like you for who you really are rather than the mask you wear, but I promise you they're out there.
You don't need to go around telling everyone that you're gay, if you don't want to. But you ought to be proud of yourself for admitting it to yourself. I've met plenty of gay people through mutual friends who went for most of their life unable to admit it to themselves. It's a difficult thing to got even so far as you have, so be proud and take comfort in at least that much. If you can accept it on a personal level, that's another huge step, without even telling anybody else.
It's tough. It requires courage to admit to yourself who you are, and to be that and fuck the haters. Everybody says shit like that, and I know that it sounds simple and shallow. It's much easier said than done, but regardless it really is the truth. There's nothing wrong with you, you're just different. Learning to embrace it is a difficult journey, but a worthwhile one. The only trick is to keep taking steps forward.
Of course life gets better. You learn to deal with life better. And to do that, all you need to do is keep taking steps through life.
I have some fantastic advice regarding your problems.
Suicidal depression is not cool. This one time I was feeling really bad because I had a stomach ache. I was like "Dang, if I had to live the rest of my life vomiting like this, I'd rather die." Then I realized I could drug myself up and I felt much better
Also, if you're having trouble getting yourself out, and the resulting closetedness is hurting your sex life, then just remember: Sex can wait! Masturbate!
If you are more concerned about having to hide your identity, just pull up the youtube video of Reflection (the Lea Salonga movie version, not the Christina Aguilera weaksauce version). Then when the chorus hits, just belt along with it "When will my reflection showwwwwww...whoo I a-a-a-am (Hitting this run is crucial even though it's not in the movie version) INNNNNNNNNsii-iii-ii-ide." I always feel better about the prospect of having to hide my identity whenever I sing that song in my dorm and my neighbors yell at me to shut the fuck up.
On the other hand, if you are more concerned about the loneliness and isolation of your closeted condition, just remember that you are not alone! 70%+ of the children of asian immigrants remain single until well into their 20s. I've been single for like 5 years now and in that time I've learned to love the finer things in life, like planking, My Little Pony, and Taylor Swift. Also, I have over 200 friends on Facebook now, so do the math. (The math being that 200 > 0, thus I have a positive number of facebook friends, and and almost positive number of rl friends =D).
So get out of bed in the morning, because the day will be beautiful and full of sunshine or not (if you're in the northern latitudes this time of year). Also, if you don't get out of bed, then you will eventually die of dehydration and your corpse would be really disgusting to remove for whoever would be responsible for cleaning out your room should you fail to continue being alive. Don't do that to that poor, poor soul!
But in all seriousness, if your condition is as you say such that you cannot uncloset yourself for some reason, then find something in your life that you can be passionate about. When I was in the depths of my stomach-flu for example, I really enjoyed watching anime. Watching the Soul Society arc of Bleach got me through that dark time real well.
EPT
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