gladyslafontant:

theunitofcaring:

Hey. I’m sorry I took a while to reply to this – it’s hard to come up with anything that might be helpful or meaningful for you, even though I do actually think there are lots of things out there which will be helpful or meaningful for you.

One reason it’s hard is that most good advice gets watered down into vague unhelpful versions and then shared in contexts where it’s no longer good advice and not appropriate. (Most good advice is specific to a person and a situation – there isn’t Good Advice For Humanity As A Whole, and there often isn’t even good advice for two lonely depressed 29-year-old men. There are tools for figuring out your own needs which, I think, generalize, but advice doesn’t.) That means, to give advice, you have to be clear enough to make the thing you’re saying distinct from the things that everyone has heard a million times. I hope I succeed at that here: if not, I would really appreciate your thoughts on where I didn’t, because I want you to have access to helpful concepts even if I’m not good enough at gesturing to gesture you at them. 

So, first thing, you were abused for most of your life (and yes, bullying is a kind of abuse, and can produce all the same effects as other kinds of child abuse), and that’s a ton for anyone to cope with. Building a sense of who you are, what you want, and what kind of person you want to be is a huge project, and there were people tearing you down when you were supposed to get started on it, and that’s awful. Normally I would definitely want to suggest you work with a therapist who is experienced with childhood bullying and abuse and related trauma, because it’s really valuable to have an ally in that process. You said therapy hasn’t helped you, and so I don’t want to suggest that, but I do want to describe some of what I think a good therapist would do, talking with you, so maybe you can figure out if it’s possible to do yourself. 

A good therapist would help you figure out which ways that you adapted in order to deal with bullying. You probably did things like train yourself not to act in ways you like to act, not to say things that you’d want to say, not to hope for things that it wasn’t a safe environment to hope for. It’s good to know those things, because they can be really invisible. I know people who’ve taken years out of a safe environment before they could notice “oh, wait, I don’t even like that food” or “wow, whenever anyone gets in my space I’m miserable for the rest of the evening” or “yeah, I wanted to start a band, I just don’t let myself think about that because I’m sure someone will tell me it’s stupid.” 

Building a good environment, after escaping a bad environment, requires knowing yourself really well, and being kind to yourself. You have to learn how to figure out which things make you safe and happy and fulfilled, and you have to give yourself access to them without beating yourself up for the fact you need them or getting trapped in thoughts about what the people who hurt you would think about you. You have to figure out who you are when you’re not trying to deflect bullying and when you’re not trying to avoid being like your bullies and when you’re just doing what makes you feel happy and alive.

It seems likely you have the kind of depression that is best handled with medication alongside other tactics. But regardless of whether you have depression, or want to try medication, I think you can get a lot of mileage out of giving yourself space and time to figure out in what kind of environment you can experience good things more. 

Part of that might involve learning to be more confident and assertive. There are types of confidence and assertiveness that aren’t bullying. I’m a confident and assertive person. You can confidently assert that you’re valuable and so is everyone else, that you love something and don’t want it denied to anyone, that you have value and you matter and you are important and worthy of love, without hurting other people. Part of the process of figuring out what environment you’re happy in might involve finding a kind of confidence and assertiveness which suits you and feels true to who you are.

It’s not true, incidentally, that you have to learn to love yourself to find someone who loves you. It is easier to date people when you know what makes you happy and have a secure life from which you can go and grab it, but relationships grow out of all kinds of things. I hope that you find someone who loves you and values you and respects you and if you’re into that wants to bang you, and I do expect this’ll get more and more achievable as other recovery things fall into place, but it’s sort of a separate thing from figuring out how to be happier and it’s much harder to make suggestions about how to get there.

I know for some people, owning a pet helps both with loneliness and with wondering what good it does for them to be in the world. If ‘this dog would have been put down if not for me, and wants to play right now’ is sometimes the right answer to the question ‘why should I even exist’, then I think you should go get a dog. If that’s not the right kind of answer, but it’s in the right genre, then maybe look into tutoring or mentoring programs for kids, or into joining a really intense online video gaming guild, or whatever. Filling the ‘I matter a lot to someone and they would be sad if I were gone’ part of your brain is really important, and it’s completely okay to fill it with a stopgap sort of thing which isn’t the long-term fix you want. (Relatedly, if you have any hobbies or interests which are filling this niche, don’t give yourself a hard time over them. I know people who worry they’re a loser for filling this essential human emotional need with something over the internet or with fantasy or with pets. That’s absolutely not being a loser. It’s taking care of yourself and it’s actively virtuous.)

The good thing about all of this is that there is absolutely no age by which you need to start it. There are people who live in an abusive and miserable environment until their spouse dies, and who learn how to build a life that makes them happy when they are 90. Even for people who had absolutely lovely lives with nothing bad that happened to them, it is so profoundly normal not to have this figured out in your late 20s. People, once they’re safe and have the right cognitive tools, can start trying to figure out how to be happy. It’s never too late for that. It’s not really something you can be behind the curve on. It’s also not something where you can tell where other people are; some people are cheery and put-together while they still have not figured this out. Now is an okay time to start. If you aren’t ready now, a year from now is an okay time to start. I don’t know what research you’re thinking of, but I suspect that it’s probably distorted thinking associated with depression that says ‘it’s too late to turn this around’.

This is a lot of work. I can’t tell you if it’s worth it to you. I do think you’re worth it. I do think that it works, at ages much older than 29, and that people build happy lives out of unhappy lives all the time. I think probably like half the people around you are trying to build happy lives out of unhappy lives, even if it isn’t visible. 

And I think people need more examples of this to learn from in the future, so every person who makes it out helps the rest of us.

Take care of yourself. No, really, take care of yourself. You can leave ‘why should I be alive’ on the table to revisit. Hopefully someday the answer will be ‘because this being alive thing is pretty okay and I’ve got a game on Friday’ and hopefully someday after that the answer will be ‘because this life thing can be great’.

Confidence is very attractive. Even if it’s fake. Even if it’s about interests not everyone approves of. There are people who would be interested in you romantically who either have the same interests or would be attracted to you for having passion.

I know it’s hard to really make yourself have public interests when you’ve spent a long time hiding yourself. I lived with roommates who complained in front of me they knew nothing about me, dated people who complained they knew nothing about me, and when I did mention any interests they misunderstood them. None of these people were “normal”, either.

But by 29, those people have flittered off into their own worlds. The people still looking for connections are more like you. That’s not to say there aren’t younger twenty-something people who will understand, you were younger once, but more people around your age who are still looking for love or real friends etc are going to be apparent if you take a chance.

The love of my life was afraid I would reject her because of her appearance and physical disability, so I had to initiate a lot of the relationship. But she was confident enough to provide some initiation.

And I’ll be frank as an autistic OCD woman who is not straight, I know, I know very well that there are women who are horrible. I know there are women who lead others on, some have the nerve to do this for years, and then decide the person they’ve been flirting with is creepy and hate them for being nice or harmlessly flirtatious in return, and all their friends and strangers think that’s some kind of victory, especially if it’s a man they’re treating like this. Women like me observe this and feel like garbage, too.

I know there are horrible women who think an unconventional man or for that matter an unconventional person just existing is cause for hatred. I know confidence can be damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But there are people, regardless of gender and orientation, who understand this is cruel and inexcusable. Others have been hurt like you have. Maybe you wouldn’t believe it to look at some of them, but more have than meets the eye. There are also people who are just natural caregivers who love to bring as much healing through unconditional love as possible, which is what all relationships should be but many are not because many are built on shallow foundations. Love isn’t a cure, but it is a natural medication.

I know it’s cliché, but I do hope you learn to love yourself. I know it’s a viscous cycle when you don’t, because it’s so much easier to love yourself when someone else loves you.

The world is going to be kinder to you at 29 than it was when you were younger, I do believe that. People have matured.

I’ll echo what theunitofcaring said, please take care of yourself.