I think now the bitterness comes more from a place of loneliness than it does me thinking I am undeserving of being in a relationship. I think I realised how tough I was from that exprience, I didn’t tell anyone for months because I thought I deserved whatever pain I was feeling (including Adam guilt tripping me and sending me mixed signals for 4 months)  and it showed me how considerate I was, because another person would have blamed everyone else for what happened (even though I was taken advantage of.)

Sometimes I cry so hard

I drown in my own tears

Then come back to life

And do it all over again

Well, for me at least, those were the feelings that came up when I wrote this line in particular. But it’s okay if you didn’t get that from the song, I think I was writing with expectation more than intention again.

Thank you Anita. I try to write at least once a day, even if it’s a line or half a song. I’m trying not to be too hard on myself as I’m just starting out. And I guess the quote kind of echoes what I said in my post about people being attracted to me when I’m just myself and don’t conflate being considerate with trying to meet everyone else’s expectations.

Well, I was very talkative around people I was comfortable with, but I didn’t really have trust issues until after I was outed by my Mum to my homophobic Dad. I’m not sure, I just think I was really chatty as a child. And yes, I just think that if you’re going to call someone out of their name behind their back, make sure you’ve made clear that you don’t like them to their face. Let me reiterate that I’d rather people not gossip at all, but if you’re going to, at least be consistent.

I think there’s a part of me that understands that (intellectually, but it doesn’t live in me, if you catch my drift) but I think I take the MLK Jr. quote “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” quote a bit too literally sometimes. But I was asking about how I stop coming across as “easy.”

I understand Anita. Are you saying that I should only assert myself to people who have done things to directly affect me personally?

An example of a time I’ve asserted myself or an example of a time I felt I came across as “easy to manipulate?” One time I asserted myself was at the end of my first year at college (roughly 2-3 months ago) and I asked that we stop constantly gossiping about people we do not like in the class (I was doing an Acting course, I passed with flying colours, and it’s nigh on impossible to “not work with” people you don’t like, because you’re encouraged to work with everyone, not to mention your grade being contingent on others a lot of the time) whether they deserve it or not. I did not like the people they gossiped about either, but some of them had not been in for over half the year. They also constantly talked about someone they saw as “too PC” and did things that were quite unprofessional, but who so happened to be my friend, and all of these people were leaving and were not coming back this following academic year. I was hit with “it’s just a joke” and that “if I don’t like it I should be mature and leave” but this person then turned around a few minutes later and said “Well Myles, 4 people said you’re wrong so you should drop it”2 and the funny thing is, our teacher implored us not to form cliques. That’s clique behaviour from where I’m standing. I was then told I think I’m better than everyone else and that I’m telling people that they’re not aloud to speak. Keep in mind my class likes to indulge in dark humour a lot, and one person in my class slipped in a anti-Semitic joke every chance he got and was very quickly asked by the teacher to stop making jokes about missing children like Madeleine McCann, yet no-one was yelling about censorship then. Sorry if it’s coming across as a rant at the moment, to this day, I’m trying to understand what I did wrong and I just hate how people hit you over the head with the “free speech” hammer anytime you simply ask them to stop doing something. It made me more afraid of speaking my mind about things because I don’t want to come across as “unreasonable” or “just trying to cause trouble.”

Well Eliana, like I’ve said before my parents have a legitimate grievance most of the time but it’s the way they go about it (and also, as I’ve said, I must take some of the responsibility too.) I also don’t think they are bad people. What my Dad actually said was “I will kill you if you ever say you’re gay again”, and I understand what you mean by talking it out Eliana, but this all happened 3 and a half years ago, and my Dad has barely budged on the issue since then. He’s either in denial or has said he “disagrees with it”, which I understand but I don’t want to have a relationship with someone who thinks that way. As I’ve also said in my previous post, I angrily brought up the fact that, when my Dad was emotionally abusing me, I was tired of being spoken to like dirt. I understand that I said this harshly, but his response was to slap me, kick me in the back of my legs. I then said something else and he slapped me across the face another 2 times and asked me if I was trying to get on his nerves, or something to that effect. The reason he threatened me when I was outed was because the gay thing disgusted him, not because I had done something to anger him. Then there was them almost putting me into foster care during the week that my Mum had outed me and forced me to log into my Facebook to see who was “influencing me to be gay.”

I appreciate your input, but at this point I just feel like the sooner I am living on my own the better. I don’t really feel close to either of them, and oftentimes, when they have said something that has ticked me off, it’s more of my ego saying “Why can’t I say something back” than “These people are supposed to care about me and what they have said contradicts that.” My siblings have attempted to talk to my parents over the years about grievances they’ve had (most recently, my sister posting a status about feeling “underappreciated” by Mum and Dad, who bring up my other 2 siblings who have cut them off completely when talking about chores, even though they have a very “They’ll learn someday” attitude towards them) and no, this was not the most mature way to express her feelings, but my Mum seems to get defensive regardless and posted 3 comments about how my Sister hasn’t grown up at all, that she’ll learn someday etc. A lot of the stuff I currently take issue with when it comes to my parents would probably become a distant memory if I was away from them.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Myles.