Let's begin with dating. Dating is a hot topic in my home, and among my family (meaning cousins and siblings). I personally have a distaste for it. I also have problems with interpersonal connections, and feel a severe amount of stress about this topic. I get a physical pain in my chest, I feel really depressed when I look at happy couples and such. Sometimes I become short of breath, and I had an altercation with this particular symptom recently. Long story short, I had an asthma attack at the train station the other day.
I actually had a long distance relationship with a girl from New York a few years ago. We have lost contact, but at the time she was my biggest supporter, and I hers. We made a Twitter account, and every so often we would post cutesy stuff on it. I don't know what it was in particular that made it so special to me, but it was the only time I was certain I was loved. I know parents and family have unconditional love and whatnot, but I'm referring to a more intimate type of love. Even writing about it makes my heart heavy. I was the reason the relationship fell through. I recently checked up on her, and she's doing well. I am so proud that she is doing well, as I am not.
One can, and probably will, make the argument that I have a stable mind and body. This is not entirely true. Whenever I think too much about something of actual value to me (eg school, "friends", family, my sister, life, etc.) I begin to tremble with what can only be described as fear. Not a quake in my boots type deal, but most definitely fear.
I suppose it could be a fear of being alone, but I've been effectively alone my whole life, save a few months when I was fourteen. I have never been able to tell anyone anything and them do the same. I don't really have confidence enough to talk to people, as I just moved and transferred schools and know no one.
I have tried talking to my sister as a close friend, like we were before I left for boarding school, but the link left with me. She was the only one I could actually count on to keep me safe and successful. I don't know where I would be right now without her. She's just moved on, I suppose.
Emotions as a whole aren't my strong suit. Whenever I feel anything other than depressed, I tend to have anxiety en masse and have fits of trembling that I've gotten comments on. "Are you alright? You're shaking..." Mainly, I've gotten a few from my cousin that I'm here in London with. These comments happen to make the shakes worse. I absolutely hate when I shiver, shake and sweat due to nerves. While I was gone for school, my anxiety went from that of a pebble, to Kilimanjaro. (Okay maybe not that bad, but it feels like that's how I've done.)
Anxiety disorders suck, and having one that's undiagnosed is worse. I feel like if I tell anyone that I'll be shamed for not "manning up" and in fact, I've received a similar talk, upon telling my mother how I felt about the world sexually.
I came out as bisexual, not by choice, and she shamed me for "being indecisive" and then told her once more. She didn't really take it any better. The main difference was that she said she didn't want me to be friends with any of her friends' kids because she thought if I liked a man and was with a woman, I would be predisposed to have multiple relations simultaneously. Then I realized I dislike sex. And she called me a liar because I watched porn once. I was seven, and it was out of curiosity. I wanted to know why people likes it. I didn't see the appeal.
So the moral of my story is if I tell any domestic friends anything important, I get, for lack of better words, verbally fucked. Don't even get me started on the correlation of sharing my opinion or thoughts on things and getting put down by both parents at the time.
Well, why don't we? I used to row crew. I had done for about two years. I was pressured into the engagement because she said I should try the first practice just to "test the water" (pun intended). I didn't see a problem with this. I had made plenty of friends by the Christmas of 2014, but was also terribly depressed. Between social anxiety and all of my friends being a year or two older than I, I couldn't really hang out a whole lot. They were all sophomore and above, and I had just sort of seen it as a scary thing to engage in.
Over my tenure of rowing, I had expressed my desire to quit crew altogether, given I was in eight-to-ninth grade and was scared of all the seasoned high schoolers. I hadn't really cared much about the sport, just the people, and as such it was a hard decision to make. I saw them every day. It would be hard to change.
I was met with "You're just lazy!" And "you hate discomfort!" When in reality, I was a gold medalist in my age group. I didn't want to be treated like this. I admit, I had a few days where I would simply wallow in misery, and do terrible work. But to combat that, on good days, I would be burnt out by my work, and thought I could be going far. Even on bad days, I was still embarrassed by my awful performance. That should speak in itself.
Around Christmas my mother told me I was quitting the team, and I had no decision otherwise. I was to stop contact with all of my friends on the team. That was all of my friends. Literally. An hour or so later, she approaches me and says, and I quote from memory, "I'm not letting you quit." Okay. I prefer that over having no friends.
This is basically my whole story up to now, and why I dislike myself, my life and my home life. I missed a few things or skipped them due to my capacity for anxiety. Some of this may be chronologically distorted, which is due to some head trauma I received in January. Sorry about that!
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