One Lonely Life It Is For Me

[Tango84]

Since I hit the age of maturity I slowly  became sexually confused, thinking of myself as Bi  while going through high school, and until a couple years after graduating high school, finally admitting to myself that I am gay. I never had the complete ability to have friends going through school, as I am not a social type of person and everyone else around me was pretty much only based on having a social life and constantly hanging with their friends, anyone knows the type I am trying to describe. So for school I only focused on doing best I could in order to successfully graduate, never did school work at home always had done it at school, so that I would be able to go home and have fun playing computer games since it is mostly all I knew to do without having friends in real life. Even now realizing that I am gay, I can't express that openly to my parents because while my mom would accept me, my father was raised in the 50's and its just the way he is to respond with dislike towards gays, while he is not hateful physically, having lived around him all my life, constantly hearing him express words and disgust towards seeing gays kiss on tv and relationships he may see in life, in his mine what he always says is, its ok if they do it behind closed doors to where I do not have to know what is going on, but I do not need to be seeing that displayed in front of me, as he always says. My parents have the kind of relationship to where they openly honestly and truthful with each other so telling one something, will almost certainly be known by the other some time soon, which is why I do not say anything that is specific of me telling them that I am gay, in obvious fear that my father will have a dislike towards me. Due to my lack of real life friends, not exactly anyone I can rely on in order to openly express my true self toward, and is also another factor to why I am not telling my parents the truth since my family being my parents and brother who is two years older than me, is all the people I know in life, even though I do not think my parents would ever kick me out of the house, its still the only place I know of to be located at, and having no car and just basically no where personal to be, means there is no safe place to be away from my family if I were ever to tell them. The fact that I have no way to even have relationships in actual life currently since I only have the computer to basically interact on, leads to another fact of there being no need to even tell my family that I am gay since it is not that important if there is no reason to tell them, even though I will always have to put up with my father's words towards gay people, there is no need to have to disrupt the loving relationship my family has, since at least for me it is better to be living with his farmless words than to know the unknow truth of how he might respond towards actually knowing that I am gay. A couple months ago in a game server that I actively play, that has some constantly same people playing, I've expressed myself as gay and have so since, at least in the game, and while I can careless about how someone reacts in the game, some people were just a little surprised to find it out about me. for me the best way to make friends is by playing video games, and while they are of course not real friends, they are at least a friend to have when playing a game, but now I am wanting to make friends of which we both can relate with each other and have that friend connection, and be able to constantly talk and respond with each other. The only person I have ever knowingly met that was gay, which was in a game, and while some may think he could have been faking the act, there were just too much to be true from social media and such to which lead me to believe it was who I met while playing the video game. This guy was the first person that I openly expressed my being gay with and the confusion I had, at least at that time, and he responded kindly as would anyone most likely would, we continued to have a small friendship for a little over two months while playing the game together, the one day out of the blue, he decided to ghost communication with me on all forms of contact we had with each other, no explanation from him either, just straight up blocked and unfriended me. Now a little background information on this guy, he is some years older than my age, he being probably around 25 if I remember right, and he is picture model, and from his Instagram, being too much into himself with working out at the gym and always posting pictures saying how he has worked out and exhausted. After all this I probably should have known of course, but figured I would take the chance to make a friend for once, well when he randomly blocked me, did I just understand how the friendship was convenient for him at the time since it was his Christmas vacation from his collage, so while he played video games he decided to respond with me for a friend in the game, then when his real life kicked back in, he without reason ghosted me. That took me over a year to personally get over because well no surprise, I got some issues of my own, and thought I had made an actual friend for once. Just recently I have tried for the first time in my life, use a form of social media, which is an app to meet the kind of friends you wish to make, but its been about a month or so by now, and I am getting indirect confusing messages about the app. It is the only app I know best to use as it appears to be most safe to make friends with except for the fact that so far the 5 or so guys I have messaged with have all pretty much ghosted me, and at least one guy had the honesty to talk a little about the app with me and appears that most people when messaging ghost for no reason, and he says it is a pain but it is what it is, and now while that is life, it is not exactly what I am hoping to achieve especially since even having the courage to attempt to make any friends at all as openly as I am trying to do on the app is literally unheard of from me to do. I am what is called being an observer more than the speaker, which is mostly true, and I do not know how to initiate conversations with people usually unless they start first, but with me I tend to have this issue where once someone gets me talking I just can not stop talking and end up typing out a huge long essay and most likely end up scaring the person away from msging with me as I have the small problem of not knowing when the stop myself with typing. People tend to like msges short and sweet as it is called, but for me I reply with almost a whole entire essay per message  which is what I refer to it as. I do not want sympathy, I suppose I want some help and advice with what you can call life itself, what to say what not to say when trying to make a new friend, and not scare them off before they have even gotten to know me. I once saw a movie which is about the dangers of using apps such as grindr and how meeting someone from the app can lead to cases such as death, which i already knew before even watching the movie, so it is somewhat hard for me to meet people in life if I already have the built up sense of not trusting anyone in person. 

[Monsoon]

Hey @Tango84

Welcome to our community. I'm one of the digital mentors here and I give advice and support to those who reach out to us. 

I'm glad to hear that you have acknowledged to yourself that you're gay; it can be really hard when we are fearful of admitting this kind of thing to yourself, and I hope that it's given you a sense of release. It's good that your mom would accept you. With your dad, I have supported people in similar situations to you whose parents have had attitudes like his, and although they may not react that well at first, they usually come around to the idea. It might take a while, but it usually ends positively. Do you think he could open his mind up to it?

Also, with making friends, yeah, it might be better to send short messages. Try to keep each one to around 2/3 lines. You can say all that you want to say eventually, but it's good to pace yourself because, as you said, big long messages can be a lot to read for people. What do you think? Could you give it a try? 

[Tango84]

While I am sure that my dad suspects me to be gay, it is always one thing to suspect it, but is a whole entirely different situation to know that I am gay. I was riding in the car the other day, when the news happen to mention something that led into the thought of my dad saying to me " do you ever think you want to be gay" word for word what he had say to me, and I just simply said to him, just because I know some information about gay life, does not make me gay, and in my head I thought to myself, that no I don't want to be gay because I already am, but that is something that I should have said out loud but like I've mentioned the house I live in is the only place I know and if I admit to my dad that I am gay, well there is always that good chance that he will respond weirdly towards me, so if that were to happen, its not like I know of somewhere else to go; so while he could possibly allow to see me as gay in the future, it's smarter to keep life as it is, since life is nearly happy already without having to express my personal mind of life to him. I have tried at times to try and keep in mind to write shorter than usual messages but almost always it is nearly impossible to do since I have far as I can recall typed with large amounts of words and normally my mind works in more words for explaining than to think in short word amounts when putting thought to messages.

[Monsoon]

Hey,

I noticed that you typed a much shorter message - that's good

I get what you're saying about how it can be one thing to suspect it, but that it's completely different to know that you are gay. I think that for people like your father, the kind of attitudes that he has towards gay people that you've described sounds like a generational thing. Times are now changing, and gay people are more visible than ever. I've helped plenty of people who have been in a similar situation to you, and almost always, the parent ends up coming around to the news. It can be a shock at first, but they often find a way to accept it, and they do this out of the love and respect that they have for their child. What do you think about this? 

I'm wondering, given what you have said about how you have no where else to go at the moment, could it be good to start trying to think of a way to move out and get your own place? I wonder if once you have managed to do this, that you then might feel more able to come out? It can be quite stressful keeping this kind of thing to yourself, and it's important that we live as authentically as we possibly can.

Speak soon, Tango. 

[Tango84]

well of course it is always a dream to live alone, except there are complications in life such as economical means and the location where i live, is not exactly ideal for obtaining a suitable job for myself which makes being money stable tricky since even if there is a job possible, that money would go towards my current home of living being my parents since they have no income of their own as they have been retired for many years and spent all their money on putting my brother and I through school. So while it is of course a dream to be living on my own to do what I want its nearly impossible to do. I am at least trying to make some friends that i can rely on and trust in life as far as at least a friend can be, takes much time obviously, and not tried it until recently because i know how not to trust many services as i believe I've explained already, only since the app seemed to be more user friendly in terms of making friends, to find out it is another app many gay people use to try and hook up which makes no sense because of how the app is structured, but maintaining some hope since even if i make one friend in the app its better than where I am at currently.

[Monsoon]

Hey @Tango84

It's good to have that dream of living on your own, and I'm wondering, is it really nearly impossible to achieve? Could there be anything you can do to make steps towards that dream, even if they are tiny ones?

Also, yeah, I'm sure you will be able to use the app to meet some friends. It's good that you've been able to reduce the size of your messages here, as people are more likely to reply to smaller ones. How is it going with the app?