Setting the Tone for Everything

So, here's the deal, I'm 28 on Friday and I'll have only had one boyfriend, who never actually said anything about us being together, and we were only together for a month. I know that's shitty in comparison to so many heterosexual couples my age, and in fact compared to all of my friends, but that's what happens when you are crazy and between the periods of deep and scary depression there are bouts of feverish mania with intermittent manic outburst of uncontrollable and terrifying rage. I'm on plenty of meds now, though, so that is supposed to make everything better. How could someone in those circumstances ever expect to find someone that wasn't as chronically ill as they? That's on top of any body issues I have. I'm a thin blondish haired twink trapped in the body of a 250+ pound hairy gay man and have been ever since I can remember. I've always had a tough time with my body, for reasons that are due to abuse and not so much a gradually developed poor self esteem. It makes it crippling to go out and interact with anyone in social settings like bars or even at parties. I went through periods of desperate loneliness, especially as my depressive symptoms grew stronger and stronger, but now I am in a place of quiet desperation as I feel like I've wasted more and more time. You see, I'm never going to be that happy, pretty, young person, ever. I wasn't when I was younger, and I'll never be that as I grow older. That's a tough thing for me to face, especially when I compare it to the brief times I've had some companionship, aside from my parents, in my life and how satisfying I found that to be.

I try not to be bitter about these things, I have accomplished things and I have had friends and seen and done what other people find pretty amazing. Still, it's hard for me to look back and be satisfied with my past since there was such long periods of unhappiness. Now, at 28, I find myself truly enjoying very few things. I find happiness to be fleeting and struggle and heartache and pain to be constant. It's something that some people find melodramatic and I've heard many many people say that everyone has problems, everyone struggles, life is hard...But that's not true. Life doesn't have to be a struggle, and usually its the results of peoples' actions that make them have to struggle, but that's not what I'm talking about...What I'm talking about is the way that truly poor people have no ability to move out of poor neighborhoods, their school systems are broken so there isn't really a viable education available, most young people only see the violence and poverty immediately surrounding them and so they have no ability or even plan to escape that world. That's struggle. People with AIDS who have to manage the world of public assistance, finding a place to life, work, mental health, discrimination wherever they go if people know their status, or how the fear of other people will cause coworkers, etc,... to react if they know, and all of this on top of taking 30 pills a day which often make them too sick to eat.

Those people know struggle. I know struggle. When you can't make yourself get out of bed, when you can't even appreciate the colors of the trees and flowers, laughing children, or good weather, when debating and planning suicide are a constant activity in your down moments or when a TV show or movie can rock you so badly that you are physically ill for days, that is struggle. When you can't go to work because the dreams you have been having have progressively made you more erratic and make you so physically sick you are practically paralyzed for hours, that is struggle, and none of those are exaggerations at all.

Most people don't have to struggle like that. Yes, everyone has problems and life is hard, but not everyone has to struggle like that, not everyone has problems like that. That's why I hate people, possibly with good intentions, who have no ability to really grasp the kinds of things that fuck with me on a minute to minute basis judge me or tell me, you have control over what you say and do...Shut up, you don't know, you have no idea what it's like to be so full of rage that you watch yourself like you are in a movie as you run around the house screaming and with the irresistible urge to break things, or to hurl things at people around you trying to calm you down.

How can I expect anyone to want to deal with that for thirty years, much less weeks or months.