Retiring From Reality

Life is so strange. Many times I look back to days gone by and think how it all seems like several lifetimes ago. I wonder if that is a universal feeling that comes with being human? It seems I hear many people say very similar things.

Jumping right in to what’s on my mind today… I’ve been troubled for a couple of months now with my breathing. It seems I am always having to take a deep breath and it never quite seems enough. Anxiety? Something else that I suppose is also anxiety — I can’t stand anything to touch my skin. Clothes, sheets, it all seems scratchy and uncomfortable. It’s not all the time, but enough to drive me a little batty. I’m going through a time where anything out of the ordinary, I am chalking it up to anxiety, my lifetime partner. I went through a period where I self-medicated for this, but it only made things worse. I’ve also tried other things over the years that have been prescribed by a doctor. Klonopin (a benzodiazepine), the antidepressant Zoloft, and a few other things. The benzo is something that helped until I needed more and more. Over the years I question how much “wrong” with me is actually emotional and how much of it is brought on by longterm use of Klonopin. It’s hell to get off of that crap and after all these years, I still take about .5 a day. I hate it, but it keeps any withdrawal symptoms at bay.

There was a day when I was always ‘going’ – always out and about. If I wasn’t working hard, I was playing hard. I did whatever I felt like I had to do to fit in and not ruffle feathers. Expectations — always expectations.

I’ve always wrapped myself up in my relationships. I admit to not feeling whole without a young lady on my arm — or at least in my bed. I like to think I have grown up and grown out of all that, but I haven’t. I’ve always been consumed by relationships that are more than just flings. I’ve never felt completely secure in any romantic relationships. Dating others in ‘the business’ seems to be the only way to maintain any kind of solid dating life, mainly because they also know the challenges of this life. Such as it is. I’ve tried a couple of relationships from the outside, one with a girl I met in a bookstore and another with a girl I met at a cast dinner and she was a waitress. For whatever reason they didn’t last too long.

I have a tendency to blame many of my emotional issues on my inability to relate in a healthy way to the opposite sex. I’m a straight, white, male, with no apologies. I am what I am and am somewhat put off by the culture which seems to glamorize all things not straight, not white, and not fill-in-the-blank. These days of identity everything wears me out. It’s such a phony world of virtue signaling, isolating and segregating, which is completely opposite of the world I thought we all hope for. But, being straight in my profession comes with a need to say, “But I embrace everyone…” Even when I don’t get that same feeling in return. But, I am what I am.

My sense of self, and any security that comes with healthy relationships, was dealt a blow at age 11 and 12. Two years of molestation by a gym coach. I don’t think it was any one action, it was the threats to keep quiet, my own confusion, and his acting like a completely different person around others. Nobody would believe me, or so I thought at the time. Where things went completely off the tracks was the day he told me a girl, all of 11 years-old, wanted to “mess around” with me and let him watch. If I was confused before, I was completely bumfuzzled at this expectation of hyper sexuality at such a young age. That same day I ended up completely nude with this girl in the coach’s bed at an apartment he kept away from his family. It was like being directed in a movie. He was telling us exactly what to do and how to do it. He forced each of us to perform oral sex on the other. It felt really good. I felt so horrible for thinking that. This kind of molestation is especially heinous because it takes advantage of two children, innocent and pure, who don’t even realize what we are doing – and taken by surprise when something feels “good” and feelings of shame rush through. I am pretty certain that many of the things “wrong” with me began with that initial molestation by Coach J and that particular day when I, along with another child, were merely entertainment for a troubled man.