My Life story pt 1

This is going to be a long, detailed account of my life. I really need to talk about some things, that I don't tell very many people. I am trying to work through some issues so that I can move forward with my life. I would understand if you decide not to read the whole thing. I'm going to break it into smaller post to make it easier to read. I posted some information about my life in the “Introduction” section. Since I don't know who all read that, and to be honest I don't really remember what I posted, I'm probably going to repeat some or most of it here. First let me give you a little backstory of some things that you will need to know to understand a lot of what I'm going to tell you. First, my Dad is a very distant person, he has no emotions, it's not that he doesn't show them, he just doesn't have any. To give you an idea of what he was like, when I was four or five, I finally got my own room. And, as a lot of kids that age, I was scared of the dark, Mom bought a night light and put in my room. Daddy saw it, and pitched a fit, he was not going to pay for the electricity for that thing, I needed to grow up and stop being a baby. Because of my health problems my Mom was always a little, I don't want to say overprotective, or overbearing, but I was never far from her sight. We lived out in the country, our closest neighbor was a mile away, and the closest child my age was about five miles away. My sister who is seven years older than me, always thought she was better than the rest of us, and was actually embarrassed to be part of our family. My brother is ten years older than me, and was always the school bully. He was even worse at home, I always had bruises from him. When I was born I was legally deaf, and had to have seven or eight ear surgeries before I could hear somewhat normally. I still have problems hearing today, and ear infections are common. Once my hearing had been established at five years old, I had to spend three years in speech therapy to learn how to talk, because I pronounced words the way I heard them. I also had severe allergy and sinus problems, and at least five or six times a year I would have a major sinus infection.  I can remember back as young as six years old, having problems with pain and fatigue. I knew that I was not able to play as hard as the other kids did, because I would start to hurt, and get tired so easily. Until I was about nine years old, I thought everyone hurt the way I did, and could not understand how they could play the way they did when I couldn't. From the time I started first grade, I had problems fitting in. I couldn't talk correctly, and I couldn't play with the other kids. I did not like sports of any kind, I couldn't play them without hurting so I didn't want anything to do with them, I was the youngest, and smallest child in my grade. I was an outcast, I had very few friends, and most of them were outcast also. I not only got picked on, and beat up by the bullies, but I got beat up by some of the girls. I was called all kinds of names, freak, weirdo, queer, and everything else you can think of. The next few years were all the same, I got beat up at home, and school. Just a handful of friends, and a lot of those friends only played with me, when they did not have any body else to play with. I felt like my Dad hated me, and I knew my brother did. So by the time I entered the fifth grade, I had major depression, and self-esteem issues. Then I finally realized that not everybody hurt the way I did, and not everybody had the fatigue issues I did. Realizing this only made me feel worse about myself. I began to feel that I did not deserve to be happy, or loved. Because of the way I felt about myself, and since I did not have a man in my life I could count on, I developed an intense need to be loved and accepted by men. Then at the beginning of the fifth grade, one of the guys that sat next to me in class, befriended me. We helped each other to understand the work we were doing. We also started hanging out some. Sometime in the spring of the year, he invited me to his birthday party. The plan was that I would ride the bus home with him on Friday, and spend the night. We were going to spend the night in his treehouse. After leaving school, he informed me that Greg, Steve, Mark, and Jason all lived in his neighborhood and were also spending the night. What you have to understand is that Greg, Steve, and Mark were three of the biggest bullies at school and hated me worse than anyone else, Jason hung out with the bullies but had never been mean to me. I was so mad, and terrified, I just knew that it was going to be horrible with them there. But, Brad insured me that they had all promised to be nice to me, so I said OK. We had pizza, and cake then headed out to the treehouse. We goofed around and played games for a while. Then sometime after it got late, we started playing poker. Everything was going good, they were all behaving, and I had gotten comfortable, and for once did not feel like a freak. After a while we had started to get bored playing poker, then one of them suggested we play strip poker. I was like Okaaaay, but everyone else liked the idea, so I said why not. Things progressed from there, and since I was dealing from the bottom of the deck I was winning most of the hands. They were all to eager to get “friendly” with each other, and me. What I found funny was that I was no longer the smallest guy there.  We got to school on Monday, and Jason became on of my best friends, Greg was no longer mean to me, and actually protected me a few times, and Steve and Mark almost became my friends. For once I no longer felt like I deserved to be treated badly. I also realized that I could have the friendship, love, and acceptance from a man that I desperately needed, if things got sexual between us. Once I figured out that other people did not have the pain issues I did, I started telling my parents what was going on. My Dad, told me I was just lazy, and if I would start doing things, I would get to where it didn't hurt when I did do something. Mom finally carried me to a doctor, actually over a few years she carried me to three or four. They all said the same thing, “growing pains”. I can't really blame them though at that time fibro had not been heard of. But, I was just told that I would grow out of it. After sixth grade, I changed schools, I just could not take being treated horribly any more. So I went to the school operated by our church. There was only 12 kids in my room, which was 7th, 8th, and 9th grades combined. I was no longer treated badly, matter of fact everyone was friendly toward me, they just ignored me, and left me out of everything. I stayed there for three years, then changed schools again. This time I went to the city school, instead of going back to the county school. Things were even worse at this school then they had ever been. Shortly after school started that first year, I got home from school one Friday, and got a phone call from one of the guys at the Christian school, a bunch of guys were going to their deer camp that Saturday, and having a cook out, canoeing, and just having fun, and I was invited. Years later I was able to tell him that his phone call that day kept me from committing suicide.