Just to give some background, I am a 22 year old gay male currently in my third year of studying. I am not exactly sure what is the best way to go about this post so here goes nothing...
As this stage in my life, my self worth and confidence are non-existent and this due to several issues that have occurred during my childhood. I will try and describe each briefly and explain how all of them fit together to result in the person I am today.
1 - Cerebral Palsy
I was born three months premature with Cerebral Palsy, the exact type I am uncertain. To my knowledge, only my physical body has been affected. Ever since I was young, I was told that I should avoid any physical activities such as partaking in sports or any heavy weight-bearing exercises. When it came to PE in school, I always had excuses to exempt me from participating. At the time, it was awesome as didn't have sweat my butt off or whatever before literally rushing off to the next class. I also did not partake in swimming or other water related activities as I was already extremely self-conscious of my appearance and also due to the above of avoiding having to rush and change before and after the session ended.
2 - Asperger's Syndrome
My diagnosis of Asperger's occurred very late during my late school years. Up until that time, I honestly literally had no idea that I was mildly autistic. I knew something was wrong but I could never quite place my finger on the reason why. Before and even after the diagnosis, I battled immensely with socialisation, in other words, I suffered. I only had my best friend for company but looking back, he didn't give a damn about me. Eventually I became so desperate to make friends that it began to show. I faced rejection from my peers because I was considered "weird", "obsessive", "clingy", "pedantic" etc. As a result, I missed out in a lot of valuable opportunities to improve my social skills by meeting up and going out with friends other than during school time. Within context of social media / dating platforms, whenever someone demonstrates even the tiniest act of kindness towards me, I immediately latch onto them and call them my friend. This behaviour is so destructive and emotionally brutal. When the person leaves me, I feel like I've just broken up with a partner or spouse.
3 - Sexuality
When I started high school, around 15, I had begun to explore my sexuality as prior to this, I had not even taken notice of it before. Unfortunately, during this time, a very nasty sexual fantasy / fetish began to develop parallel to my sexuality discovery process. I was extremely naive and did not realise this until several years later. In my stupidity looking back, I decided I wanted to confide in the people I called "friends". Long story short, everyone freaked out because they were under the impression I was some type of sexual predator. I was accused of verbal sexual harassment despite the fact it was not my intention at all. The school nearly expelled me but I managed to convince them it was major misunderstanding and that I was genuinely sorry for what I had done. Today this fetish has permeated and infected my thoughts. No one wants to date today because I'm carrying the fetish around like dead weight and I can't move on from it.
4 - Self-conscious Issues Related To My Appearance During School
Now in my school, we were forced to wear a uniform. Now I'm sure most of you are wondering how does the hell does a uniform fit into this. I will explain.
When I was about 12, I started feeling extremely embarrassed and self conscious when wearing a school uniform. I felt and looked so ugly in it that I contemplated leaving school... quite a stupid notion, but that's how strongly I felt about it. It was over really silly things like for example, I looked like a complete idiot with a tucked in shirt, so ever since then, I always wore jerseys / pullovers to cover the tucked in shirt, even in the middle of summer.
I also became paranoid that my male appendage was visible through my pants. So I tried to use the jersey to cover my crotch area all the time so they ended up very stretched and I looked even worse after that. I always battled to find school clothes that fitted me properly so for example, my pants, which were shorts at the time, where slightly shorter than everyone else's as I had a slim waist but I was tall. So this also made very embarrassed.
Referring to the fantasy mentioned above, I remember I had started to stare at the boy's pants bulges, which also made me feel even more insecure about how I looked in the uniform. Now comes high school where for us there, we wore long grey pants throughout the whole year. Unexpectedly, this made everything a hundred things worse as these ones fitted me even worse than the shorts did. Also with the fetish now firmed entrenched in my life, school essentially became a live porn show. So now I experienced frequent erections which were nearly impossible to hide. Now I knew there was a chance people could see my erection.
Next came the blazer same issue but here I tried to go for one that could cover my crotch area when standing or sitting. However this was bad because they aren't meant to be so long so once again I looked like a real idiot. So then ever since day one of high school until the last day, I ALWAYS wore a jersey and blazer all the time even in summer. I experienced a few near miss fainting accidents but that didn't deter me. I avoided all extra curricular activities which could have resulted in me being called up on stage in the hall as I didn't want people to see me. And to make things worse, I was very naive at the time and I told the wrong people about my fetish and they teased me all the time by putting glue sticks in their pants and flashing me with it or they leaned back in chairs to show them off to me, to make me feel uncomfortable. I have so much regret today for not doing any of the things I wanted to do and achieve, all because of a uniform.
So in summary, I feel like I have lost out on so much of my valuable childhood because of these silly issues. I am sitting here today 22 years of age, and I feel like I've achieved nothing of significant value to warrant my continued existence. I know everyone is going to say that what you achieve in school does not really matter in comparison to university or in the corporate world. I understand their logic and they are correct, but emotionally, those lost achievements or opportunities have value to me, which have now been lost.
Lastly, I would like to include a contextual update to this post as well. My university hosts a yearly competition which revolves around several subject fields, most notably IT. High school students are invited to compete against others and are judged per grade by pairs of judges (lecturers and senior university students). I decided to enter as a judge this year and was assigned to the senior high school participants. In a nutshell, I felt on edge and extremely nervous the whole day, probably due to the fact that there were a sh*t ton of high school guys around me. I felt like I did not enjoy today because of this unnecessary stress I experienced. I'm glad was able to keep myself together today... I'm not trying to insinuate that I am some kind of creeper or danger. I would never lay a hand on any individual without their permission.
In conclusion, all of these issues have majorly impacted upon my happiness and self esteem, as already mentioned. I apologise for the long post but I just wanted to get everything down in writing that I am feeling right now.
I thank the readers of my post for their time and effort in offering their advice. My sincerest gratitude offered in advance.
Kind Regards,
Nathan
