[A_Long_ways]

Can't sleep, can't think, can't get my mind off everything. I guess I'll use this time constructively if I can. I for some reason feel the need to just get everything out there. This will be a very long post I imagine, you don't have to read it.

I really don't know where to start, because I really don't know who I am. I've always been the drifter through groups of friends, never really had a best friend. When I wasn't drifting, I was playing the loner. I'd change my attitude to be friends with one group, then put on a different face to run with another group. I've always had this overwhelming need for acceptance and approval from people that don't even matter to me, or even treat me badly. I guess I'll try to break this down into sections, since I have a lot to talk about.

Firstly, I've never really had a relationship with my father. Everything I did, no matter how hard I tried or how much devotion I put into it, was never enough for him. He provided for the family financially, but he was never around, and if he was he didn't want to be bothered. He tried one year to coach my youth basketball team, which consisted of keeping me benched for the entire season because he didn't want me to embarass him. I wasn't even bad, infact I was one of the better players. But since I was his son, he felt like he could keep me out as much as he wanted and play the other people since they weren't his children, like he could just toss me aside because I'd be there when he got home and didn't want to upset the other parents by playing me too much. I know that sounds small, but it was really the one chance we had to bond together, and he blew it bigtime. He also always used to have this stupid joke, no matter what problem I went to him with. I could be hurt physically or emotionally, I could truely need his help but he would always say "Well I guess you'll never play the piano again". I know he was joking and trying to make light of situations, but sometimes a kid needs his fathers help, sometimes a kid needs to have some sort of comfort when something goes wrong. All I ever got was that stupid joke, never any compassion or caring. He wasn't physically abusive, he was mentally abusive. I didn't hear him say he was proud of me until I was 24 years old, when I was working my *** off nonstop. I never had any sort of male role model in my life, since he was either off on business, or home so late I wasn't even up to see him.

I guess the way he treated me kinda shaped the way I look at others. Like I said, I switched groups of friends like I switched socks. I was always worried about which group was cooler, it lead me to hang out with a lot of older people. When I was 14, my parents divorced. My father had been unfaithful to my mother on more than one occasion and she kicked him out. I took this as a blank check to do whatever I wanted. It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was upset about it, but also happy. I was happy I wouldn't have to see my father anymore on a daily basis, wouldn't have to put up with him always putting me down.

Anyway, when they got divorced I really got out of hand. I wasn't going to school, I wasn't coming home, I was out all hours of the night doing drugs, drinking, hanging out with people 8-12 years older than me and thinking I was the coolest guy ever for it. Well, all of the time I was out of school landed me on a PINS petition, Person In Need of Supervision. Needless to say, I was drugtested and failed. They said that since it was my first one no action would be taken and that I shouldn't fail any others. Of course I thought this meant that I once again got over punishment and was invincible. I failed the next test one month later and was given my final warning by my probation officer. I didn't take it seriously and failed a third test. It was then that I was informed that I had two options, check myself into rehab, or go to court and likely get mandated there, or possibly a detention center. So I chose to check myself into rehab, at 15 years old.

The week before I went into rehab, I decided I would do as much drugs and drinking as I could possibly do. I was smoking pot all day long, snorting coke at night to stay awake and drinking to fall asleep in the morning. My "friends" at the time were more than happy to spend all of my money with me on these drugs and of course use them themselves. The night before I went into rehab, I went into my mothers medicine cabinet and found the drugs she was taking for her depression. I took, hell I don't know, a handful of these pills and one by one swallowed them. I was trying to kill myself, I was so messed up on cocaine that I couldn't imagine having to give it up and go to this rehab. I have never told ANYONE at all on this earth about that. I remember laying in bed, my legs and arms convulsing and shaking. I remember being in the bathroom just heaving my insides up. Thinking back, it was a very scary night. Somehow, luckily, I survived and was headed off to rehab the next day.

So here I was, a 15 year old kid stuck in an inpatient rehab. I remember sitting in the intake office, arms and legs still shaking. I remember thinking "Where are all of your friends now?". The rehab experience was one of mixed results. I learned a lot about addiction, I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about others. But there was a problem. Seeing as this rehab was a teenage rehab, they offered schooling on the premises. The school district I came from refused to acknowledge the fact that there was any drug problem in our town, and refused to pay for my schooling while I was there. My school was almost a black market of drugs, you could find anything, yet these disillusioned board members thought that if it was reported that one of their students had a drug problem they would lose credibility or something. So, I couldn't go to school with the other 60 kids that were there. They offered to pay for tutors for me, 3 times a week. I missed out on almost all of high school because of my school districts audacity. So, I sat, alone. All day long, alone. I couldn't really make any friends because I had nobody to talk to. I was singled out as "that guy who doesn't go to school". The loner again. I wanted so badly to go to school with everyone else, but my only response was that nothing could be done.

I spent 16 months in that rehab. I turned 16 in there. I missed out on so much that I can never get back. I won't say it was all bad, I grew up a lot and learned a lot, but socially I regressed. I never felt truely involved since I couldn't just be normal like everyone else in there and go to school. I watched countless others drop out of the rehab and I went on to graduate. Hell, two of the people I was in there with are dead now, and another one is in prison for a double homocide. I lost touch of course with the few friends I made in there. Story of my life. I feel like I was robbed, I know it was my fault that I ended up in there, but I still feel robbed.

When I got out, I stayed straight for about a month and a half. I ran into some of my old friends one night and decided to hang out with them around that time. I relapsed and got high on my first night out with them. I failed the drugtest when I went back for an "aftercare" meeting, lied about it, made it look like I was being cheated and refused to go to any other meetings. It was all downhill from there. When I turned 18, I recieved a check for $10,000. I was bit in the face by a dog when I was younger and recieved the money for plastic surgery. The scar healed up very well and was almost unnoticable. So I was 18 years old, against the world and had a pocket full of cash. Now that I had this cash, all of my friends were popping up again. People were always there to help spend it, to get in on the half ounce I bought, always with their hands out I just didn't notice. I burned through that money in a matter of months. When it was gone, the phone stopped ringing. Just as quick as I had become friends with these people again, they were gone. Abandoned again and a loner again, I became reclusive.

Over the next few years I barely left the house. I was just so tired of being walked on, taken advantage of, hurt, abandoned, I just didn't even want to put myself out there and have the chance of it happening again. My will to trust people had completely diminished, my faith in mankind was non-existant. Everyone I'd ever loved or cared for, besides my mother, had kicked me to the curb when they were done using me. I did have one or two true friends, I was just too stupid at the time to see it and lumped them in with everyone else. Basically my entire life, I haven't known true friendship. I've never had anyone I could call at any hour of the night just because I needed to talk. I've always had to deal with it myself. So, I shut myself off from the world for a while.

When I 24, I met a girl online. We talked, she had been through some stuff kinda similar to me and it was nice to have someone to talk to about it. The more we talked the more we clicked and we decided to make it official and become a couple. I was ecstatic, she was beautiful, smart, funny, had great values and I was, for lack of a better word, smitten with her. We bounced off eachother very well, and we fed eachother encouragement and helped eachother get out of our respective ruts.

One day the phone rang and it was my uncle on the other end. He was calling to offer me a job. I had worked here and there over the years, but never really had a long-term serious job. He was offering me a job in the heart of NYC, right across the street from Bryant Park. I would be managing apartment buildings throughout the city. I was hesitant at first, but my girlfriend really helped me gain the confidence to go do this. So, I did it, tossed all my fears away and took on the most responsibility I ever had in my life. And you know what? I was good at it! I went from barely taking control of my own life, to overseeing 96 units in 8 apartment buildings. I was revived, I had this new surge of confidence, of feeling like I mattered. Making my own money, working hard, it was wonderful. This went on for 2 years, day in day out, waking up at 6am, getting home at 7pm. Then, as we all know, the economy crashed in late 2008. At first, our sector wasn't hit very hard at all by this. Once the banks started reporting all of their losses and places like Lehman and Bear Sterns went under, the financing arm of the company I worked for all but died. This lead the company to have to sell a few apartment buildings and consolidate.

I held onto my job for a long time, until about 6 months ago when I was finally laid off. I took it a bit hard at first, but was out looking for new jobs within 2 weeks. Soldiering on from interview to interview, I kept trying, hoping that "this next application has to work". It didn't, and it still hasn't. And this was the main reason, to my knowledge, that my girlfriend broke up with me. For some reason, all of these things that didn't matter when we first got together started to matter. She told me she didn't believe in me, she started bringing up my past and saying that it was happening all over again. She had lost her job also, and was unable to find a new job, but for some reason me having trouble doing the exact same thing as her was inexcusable. She broke my heart; she, the one person I've had by my side, encouraging me, believing in me, was now telling me that she didn't believe in me, and she didn't think I could change. My objections and pleas fell on deaf ears, and she left me. This only adds to my distrust and disgust with humanity. We spoke the deepest words of devotion and love to eachother, we entrusted one another completely and helped eachother through some very hard times.

Maybe I'm naive in a way, she was only my second "serious" relationship, but for me those words can't be unsaid or forgotten. To know that for her, they can be, it just kills me. It's like I had that one last glimmer of hope in finding someone to make me happy, and it was stolen from me at the last second. Just a few weeks beforehand, we had been talking about where we'd go on our honeymoon. We had been looking at places to move in together, and it all shattered over the phone, and I still haven't seen her face to face since. I feel like there's so much unsaid, so much inside me that wants to jump out but has nowhere to go. I'm forced into submission without any escape. I have to sit here and accept the fact that all of that was ********, it's over with and don't even try to think that it will happen again. I feel like I'm 18 years old again, and I don't want to trust anyone, or open up to anyone, because in the end they're just going to screw me over anyway. Why open up when staying closed is so much easier?

And this is where I am now. Unemployed, alone, heartbroken and going broke. Everything got so good there for a little while, I really thought life was going to start working out for me. I don't want to give up, I just don't know where I'm going to find the strength to get myself going again. I don't think it will be healthy for me to look for my reason for strength in someone else again, it did nothing but tear me down in the end. I keep writing these stupid resume's out, keep applying for jobs, but I can't find a thing. If I don't find one soon and start getting some income, I'm going to have to really consider moving back home with my mother. God knows that's the last thing I want to be doing at 26, I really feel like that will be the final blow to knock me on my *** and stay down for the count. I just feel like life has dealt me a really bad hand of cards. I've made bad decisions, I will own and accept them, but many things have been out of my hands and impacted me greatly.

God, I have no idea how I wrote that much and divulged so much of my personal history in one post. It really felt good though. I don't know where to go from here.

[perpetuallysad]

A_Long_Ways, that was really quite brave of you to reveal so much. Congratulations! I don't have any super great advice or anything, but I wanted you to know I read your post and I am sorry you're having such a crappy time right now. I'm sorry the girlfriend left when everything else was messed up. I don't know the whole story, I'm sure, but I bet her leaving had more to do with her, than you. Living in NY must be incredibly hard, I know its an expensive place.

Anyhow, just wanted you to know someone was listening.

[Rohag]

A_Long_ways, that's quite an autobiography - at least the beginning of one. It seems you've lived several lives already. I regret the recurring theme of neglect and abandonment, but I'm entirely impressed at your finding and excelling at something despite severe problems earlier.

I wonder what your next chapter will be like.

[embracinglife]

Wow, what a life you've had already, and it does seem like you do have the strength and courage inside of you to make it through some difficult times. I hope you do find that strength you need to make it through this rough time.

[lonegael]

(((((((((((((((A Long Way))))))))Wow, old son, that was a lot. I think it is good that you can still differentiate between the stuff you can do something about and the stuff you can't. All too often people get so depressed they think they can take the blame for the destruction of Pompeii.

Seriously, now, I know too many people who honestly believe that if you only try "hard enough" everything will work out. So, if it doens't work out, then it's becasue you haven't tried. My parents were once big time fans of that philosophy. Until I was diagnosed with depression. Until my sister was bullied into leaving her job at the hospital in our town because she made some stupid administrator feel incompetent. Until my mom's best friend did herself in and I was diagnosed as having the same illness. Until my son was born with autism. Suddenly it didn't look like it was only a question of competence or character or the lack there of. They had to wake up to the cruel reality that #¤%& happens inspite of our best efforts, and blame laying is unhelpful. Some people never learn this, hon. See, that way they can look down on those who have it rough and see themselves as just generally wonderfull when things go right.

We all know that it is rough to find work nowadays, or we should know that. There are people who go for very long stretches without work in spite of having good resumés and pounding the pavement. It's not impossible, but it's going to take a lot more time. You aren't going back to the past just because you are having a hard time finding work. Unless i missed something big, it doesn't seem like a fair analysis of the situation. Was SHE working at this point?

Along way, sometimes one does get a bad hand of cards and one plays them as best one can. If that means that for a while you have to move in with your mom for a bit, then OK. It's not a defeat as much as it is a change of tactic to better handle the situation as it is. I am NOT just playing with words. You've come a long way. Please don't beat yourself up until you give up. There is actually a lot of flife out ther for you to live. Huggs, hon, and good luck for reals, now.

[A_Long_ways]

Thanks for reading and replying guys. I don't really know what I was expecting from posting this. I just felt like I had so much that needed to get out. A lot of the stuff I mentioned I really haven't told anyone about. Really feels good to get it out there. Thanks for not judging harshly.