[SquareMile]

I dont really know how to quantify how i am feeling right now, i remember making a post here years back, and decided today to come back and just put it out there. No one here knows me, its anonymous, so what the hell.

I feel totally and utterly dead inside. I just cant feel any emotion whatsoever. I am not sure when this numbness started, when i started feeling like this, all i know is that its ruining my life.

The problem i have is that there are so many offshoots to my situation, that i dont know where to start. I was abused by a friends sister when i was around 8/9 years old. I say abused, but i am not sure if that is even what it was. I had a crush on her in the way an 8 year old boy has a crush on someone they look up to. She was fourteen at the time. I remember wanting to be noticed by her, and wanting her attention. I am unsure how it happened, but one evening she made me do some things to her. I wont go into detail, but when i left my friends house the next morning i felt sick and dirty. I had never kept any secrets from my mum until that point, but felt that i couldnt tell her what i had done as i felt so disgusting. I dont recall much about the situation that happened, i will come back to why in a moment. I know it happened a few times, and i know each time i felt sick at what i was doing / being done to me.

Around a year after that, i was on a school trip, and began to get homesick. I recall breaking down on the phone to my mum as the secret i had kept had become too much. When i got back i recall crying and breaking down and telling her everything. As any mum would she went mental and went and spoke to my friends parents who were also disgusted and dealt with the situation. I dont remember the ins and outs of what happened, my memory plays cruel jokes on me, sometimes i try to re-live the situation just so i can determine whether i invited what happened on or whether it was actual abuse. Every tme i try to re-live it my memory cuts it out and i cant get to the answer im looking for - was i abused? was this just things that kids get up to? did i ask for it because i had a crush? - it drives me insane.

My father left us when i was 2, came back when i was 5 and left again when i was 7. He was a drunk, and beat and mentally abused my mother. I recall snippets of this, the most vivid memories are him totalling the living room door with one foot duing a row with my mum, him driving us home after drinking 2 bottles of congnac and also he and i having a fight when he verbally abused my mother when collecting us for the weekend. He always had girlfriends, many of whom he would have sex with where my sister and i could hear and sometimes see. Being young at the time it was pretty horrifying hearing / seeing these things - again - too young to really comprehend just what adults do. My dad was also verbally abusive to me. When i was a youngster he would tell me how crap i was at football, so much so that i quit playing aged 11 and didnt kick a ball again until i was 15 years old, in the uk, this is a very late start to be playing the game. From a young age i became by default the man of the house. Whether it was squashing spiders, fixing leaks or worrying about bills, i feel alot of pressure was put on me at a young age. Especially looking after my mum and sister.
I dont have much of a relationship with him now for obvious reasons. I disowned him around 4 years ago. He was causing more pain in my life, so i decided to cut him out. He rarely showed interest in what i had been doing, or my problems, which ill come onto now, so i told him how i felt and that was it. Recently we have begun to build bidges as my grandmother is and wanted to see us together - i feel nothing though, he may as well be a stranger, and when i saw him at christmas time i felt pity and not the anger that had consumed me for so many years.

In my late teens i experiemented with drugs. It started off with cannabis. Amusing at first, had some good times, but that all changed. At the ime i had started taking E as well, and again had alot of fun. I recall one day eating a spacecake when i had a broken ankle. I went on what can only be descibed as a very bad trip for 9 hours. Until that point, i had never thought about dying, or losing my sanity, but after that, it opened a door i simply could not shut. I began having, what i much later learned, were panic attacks. Not knowing what a panic attack was i assumed i was starting to lose my mind. I couldnt face people for fear of getting locked away. I drank heavily, used cocaine and generally abused my body. This went on much through my early to mid twenties. I discovered valium and used that to take away the panic attacks i had after drinking an using drugs. Believe me, this did not go down well in a major investment bank in london, when the sh*t was hitting the fan one morning and i was sat there in my own little world not even knowing what was going on. I was up and down like a yo-yo. I took so much valium, diazepam whetever i could get my hands on that it simply didnt work anymore. One evening i swallowed 70mg and the next day walked out in front of a bus half asleep, if it wasnt for the date i was with, im sure i would have been squashed.
Eventually it all got on top, and the doctor told me id have to make some changes. Without even realising it, my drinking had gotten out of control and i simplky didnt care, as for every drink there would be a pill which would sort me out the following day, or so i thought.

I cleaned my act up, stopped drinking and doing anything for 7 months. I lost weight, looked great, found someone i fell in love with, went to a counsellor who really helped and life seemed good. The counsellor told me that i suffer from seasonal depression and also had some elements of OCD and addictive behaviour (which would explain the binge drinking and drug taking). I had it under control, but when my relationship broke down, i went back to square one, and worse.

My most recent relationship broke down as she felt my mind was elsewhere. That i wasnt paying enough attention. The truth was i just couldnt feel anything, i was totally numb.

I am scared i will become like my father. That i would have had it all and lost the lost. I feel like a virus, in the way that if anyone comes near me and touches me, they will become infected with the numbness i have. I sleep about, with people i neither know much about or care for, just to see if i can feel something, joy, disgust, sorrow - whatever - just so i can feel something, anything.

At the moment, i simply dont know what to do, or who to turn to. This is such a multi layered problem, with so many angles, that each time i address one, i get smashed from another angle with something else. I cant sleep for worrying what i have become, or what will become of me. It bothers me that i cant feel. That the only way i can be stimulated is to get drunk, or watch porn. Its not nice, its not very human and im sick of being this way.

I would like to think i am fairly intelligent. I wite poetry, and can paint. I have lots of interests outside of my own problems - animals, photography, sport, films, books - lots of normal things. Im told i am a very good looking man. I have a high flying job for a bank in the city. A nice car. A nice flat in a decent suburb. But i find it hard to be grateful for all these things (which i have gone and got myself, through hard work) when i feel like i do.

Recently i have simply stopped talking about how i feel. I sit in work silent. Waiting for the day to end so i can hit the gym and forget about everything for a hundred and twenty minutes. I cry randomly like a kid. I feel a total failure, like i let my mum and sister down. Like i have failed at my job. Like i am so utterly digusting that i dont deserve to meet someone nice, and if i do, because of the way i am, one way or another i will end up pushing them totally away and making them hate me.

I dont know what else to do or say. I bore myself going over this all in my head, and i feel stupid writing all of the above and for seeming like a total and utter drip.

[alextop30]

I cannot say I know what you feel, or how it must have been, but what I can say is that you have gone through many things that 95% of the people will not go through in 2 lives. All that I want to say is that you should never feel like you have failed because you have been through a lot and that didn't bring you down. Put your head up high and just say it is not my fault. I would also recommend psychiatrist because you do seem to have some very complicated issues with which it is nice to have professional help but you should never ever compare yourself to your dad because you were strong enough to forget him and to take care of your family this shows that you are so much better that it is indescribable. As for the history you described I just say everyone makes some bad choices and yours are completely explained.