Good evening,
My name is Gary, I’m 19, and today I finally came to grips with something I’ve always known. I’m a shitty person, and nothing can ever undo my actions. To know me is to be constantly lied to, and my connection with reality is tenuous at best. Most days I’m barely aware of who I am, drifting around on autopilot, telling the same shitty lies over and over again. The pain is constant. Not only to myself, but especially to those who are close to me. I can’t begin to tell you my whole story here and I don’t want to either. However, to help you understand where I’m coming from and how I got here I will give you some key details and events . Some of it is disturbing, but it’s my story so owning it is a must.
A bit of background:
I grew up with my maternal great-grandparents (grandmother’s parents) after my mom relapsed on methamphetamines in 2005. Nobody knows who my dad is except her, and he didn’t even stick around for the news she was pregnant. So half my family was gone before I was more little more than a clump of cells. She never made a real attempt to regain custody, and ended up having two children with someone else, essentially leaving me behind and moving on with her life. My mom’s mom lived with us too. She’s the black sheep of my family for a variety of reasons, and her role as an outcast is well deserved, but that’s another story all together. My whole family is just really fucking broken to say the least. Toxicity, abuse, cover-ups, you name it. And I was placed in the middle of it all, expected to make sense of a terrible situation.
But this isn’t supposed to be a sob story about how I’m the victim in all of this. Although it’s hard not to feel like collateral damage from a messy situation that existed far before my life started. My home was, and still is, extremely strict and overbearing. Coupled with rampant mental and emotional abuse (which has gotten less extreme as my folks have gotten into their mid to upper 80’s). I learned at a young age that lying not only deflected violent verbal outbursts, it allowed me to break away from the controlling environment I lived in. It kept me safe and essentially put me in control of most situations that would arise. It eventually became easier to lie about literally everything than to tell the truth. Which naturally progressed to theft.
My personal possessions would get constantly gone through and I started doing the same thing to them. My excuse was always “Well they did it to me, so it’s fine to do it to them. They crossed the line first.” Obviously it isn’t, and regardless of what they did, what I did was wrong and objectively worse. My theft was innocuous at first, small items nobody would really miss. It eventually led to stealing money for drugs, and eventually prescribed painkillers. It started bleeding into my other relationships. Family members, neighbors, friends. I stole from all of them, and lied to their face with a grin afterwards. I was able to act as if nothing had ever happened, by and large most of them still don’t know. I’ve always questioned my gender identity as well, and this eventually led me to stealing some undergarments from a couple female relatives, and one of my neighbors as well. I used my amphetamine and psychedelic abuse as an excuse for this at the time, but it wasn’t one at all. This one in particular haunts me the most, because insane and depraved doesn’t begin to describe what I did. I still can’t fully explain it.
The peak of all of that was about a year ago, but it follows me to this day. Constant guilt, shame, regret, self-loathing, and a pervasive desire to just end it all. I can never come clean about this. I still rummage through my great-grandparents things out of habit, but I wouldn’t take anything if I found it, I hope. It’s partially an impulse control problem.
On top of this insane behavior (theft, drug abuse, constant irrational lies), I was maintaining the facade of a normal life. I had a regular friend group, participated in drama and band at school, even had a job and volunteered places. Nobody really knew the extent of my sins, and the facade continues to this day. But it’s starting to slip. I’ve lied and tried to manipulate a close friend of mine into sleeping with me, even pretending to be in love with her over the summer. She recently cut me off, which is best for the both of us. I don’t want to hurt anymore than I already have. My current girlfriend is convinced I’m some one-of-a-kind, wonderful guy. She doesn’t know I based our entire relationship of off lies. In fact, most of my relationships are. People are starting to get sick of me, and I keep alienating myself to accelerate the process. I want them all to hate my name, so that when I die, people will be relieved to see me go.
I just keep hurting important people in my life, and harming myself similar. I keep abandoning those close to me in exchange for immediate gratification. I keep lying unflinchingly to maintain the facade of normalcy. And sometimes the scariest part is, I really don’t care about the pain I cause other people. I just care about myself, how they’ll perceive me, what’ll happen to me in the end. I’m going to kill myself, because I’m too toxic to function and too stubborn to change. I just want to be free from my mistakes. I just want to die.
My name is Gary, I’m 19, and today I finally came to grips with something I’ve always known. I’m a shitty person, and nothing can ever undo my actions. To know me is to be constantly lied to, and my connection with reality is tenuous at best. Most days I’m barely aware of who I am, drifting around on autopilot, telling the same shitty lies over and over again. The pain is constant. Not only to myself, but especially to those who are close to me. I can’t begin to tell you my whole story here and I don’t want to either. However, to help you understand where I’m coming from and how I got here I will give you some key details and events . Some of it is disturbing, but it’s my story so owning it is a must.
A bit of background:
I grew up with my maternal great-grandparents (grandmother’s parents) after my mom relapsed on methamphetamines in 2005. Nobody knows who my dad is except her, and he didn’t even stick around for the news she was pregnant. So half my family was gone before I was more little more than a clump of cells. She never made a real attempt to regain custody, and ended up having two children with someone else, essentially leaving me behind and moving on with her life. My mom’s mom lived with us too. She’s the black sheep of my family for a variety of reasons, and her role as an outcast is well deserved, but that’s another story all together. My whole family is just really fucking broken to say the least. Toxicity, abuse, cover-ups, you name it. And I was placed in the middle of it all, expected to make sense of a terrible situation.
But this isn’t supposed to be a sob story about how I’m the victim in all of this. Although it’s hard not to feel like collateral damage from a messy situation that existed far before my life started. My home was, and still is, extremely strict and overbearing. Coupled with rampant mental and emotional abuse (which has gotten less extreme as my folks have gotten into their mid to upper 80’s). I learned at a young age that lying not only deflected violent verbal outbursts, it allowed me to break away from the controlling environment I lived in. It kept me safe and essentially put me in control of most situations that would arise. It eventually became easier to lie about literally everything than to tell the truth. Which naturally progressed to theft.
My personal possessions would get constantly gone through and I started doing the same thing to them. My excuse was always “Well they did it to me, so it’s fine to do it to them. They crossed the line first.” Obviously it isn’t, and regardless of what they did, what I did was wrong and objectively worse. My theft was innocuous at first, small items nobody would really miss. It eventually led to stealing money for drugs, and eventually prescribed painkillers. It started bleeding into my other relationships. Family members, neighbors, friends. I stole from all of them, and lied to their face with a grin afterwards. I was able to act as if nothing had ever happened, by and large most of them still don’t know. I’ve always questioned my gender identity as well, and this eventually led me to stealing some undergarments from a couple female relatives, and one of my neighbors as well. I used my amphetamine and psychedelic abuse as an excuse for this at the time, but it wasn’t one at all. This one in particular haunts me the most, because insane and depraved doesn’t begin to describe what I did. I still can’t fully explain it.
The peak of all of that was about a year ago, but it follows me to this day. Constant guilt, shame, regret, self-loathing, and a pervasive desire to just end it all. I can never come clean about this. I still rummage through my great-grandparents things out of habit, but I wouldn’t take anything if I found it, I hope. It’s partially an impulse control problem.
On top of this insane behavior (theft, drug abuse, constant irrational lies), I was maintaining the facade of a normal life. I had a regular friend group, participated in drama and band at school, even had a job and volunteered places. Nobody really knew the extent of my sins, and the facade continues to this day. But it’s starting to slip. I’ve lied and tried to manipulate a close friend of mine into sleeping with me, even pretending to be in love with her over the summer. She recently cut me off, which is best for the both of us. I don’t want to hurt anymore than I already have. My current girlfriend is convinced I’m some one-of-a-kind, wonderful guy. She doesn’t know I based our entire relationship of off lies. In fact, most of my relationships are. People are starting to get sick of me, and I keep alienating myself to accelerate the process. I want them all to hate my name, so that when I die, people will be relieved to see me go.
I just keep hurting important people in my life, and harming myself similar. I keep abandoning those close to me in exchange for immediate gratification. I keep lying unflinchingly to maintain the facade of normalcy. And sometimes the scariest part is, I really don’t care about the pain I cause other people. I just care about myself, how they’ll perceive me, what’ll happen to me in the end. I’m going to kill myself, because I’m too toxic to function and too stubborn to change. I just want to be free from my mistakes. I just want to die.