I need some help with something here....

[Occulus]

I've posted on this before, but it just keeps eating away at me inside. I'm in therapy; it's not really doing all that much good.

I just posted this at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=653059 but I felt it deserved its own thread. I quite simply don't know how to deal with all of this. Mostly, I just want to know why. While I doubt that that question will ever be answered, I can at least ask you all for your input. Here goes...

In 1994 my mom found out about my homosexuality. My father was out of town. She had asked me if I was gay a couple times prior to this, always with an attitude inherent in the tone of the question that left me knowing she would have punishments for me if I said yes.

I always told her no, and today I maintain that if one needs to ask if their parents are ready to know, then they most certainly are not ready. But that's neither here nor there.

I got home from work at about 8:30 in the evening; it was just starting to rain. I asked her how her day was, and she told me it wasn't very good and would I please wait for her in my bedroom while she used the toilet. I went in, and found all of my (soft-core) porn I'd deeply hidden at the bottom of the drawers under my bed, under a big pile of papers and such, laid out all over my bedroom floor like an accusation.

I lost my home that night. My own mother booted me out into the rain with nothing but a change of clothes, my oboe (I was a musician at the time), and my bike. I had the pleasure of not only losing literally everything I had, but of not being allowed to take my car into town to find a place to stay.

So I biked. In the dark, in the rain, down a country road where many people have been killed by their driving. I very nearly laid down in the street and waited to be killed by the next driver that happened along.

Once I did get into town (and I really don't remember much more about the journey than what I wrote above), I stayed at the home of a store manager where I- and my mom- both worked. He was kind enough to stay up with me all night long, drinking and talking. And believe me, I needed a drink, or a bottle.

The next day I went back to work, and then moved to where I live now. I didn't attend classes for about two weeks- hell, I barely left the bedroom of the apartment my friend here allowed me to use during that time. No family member ever bothered to find out or try to during that time whether I was even still alive.

My grades, predictably, fell. After a year, I moved in with another friend of mine, and after that year, I found myself homeless (please be aware, I'm leaving out a LOT for brevity's sake). My father helped me pack my possessions- one whole single room's worth- into a storage facility.

He knew I had nowhere to go. He knew I was homeless. He left me there.

Over the next couple weeks, I stayed in friends' dorm rooms (at considerable danger to their own dorm status, I might add... they could have lost their room, had I been discovered), under trees on campus, etc. It was, thankfully, the beginning of a semester, as I recall; I was able to drop most of my classes so I could concentrate on simply staying alive.

My GPA had dropped from 3.85 at high school graduation to, by this point, below a 2.5. I had almost failed Econ 101 and Phil 101; this caused my parents to threaten me with yanking out the half of my college they were paying for should I slip any further.

About this time, in desperation, I went back to live with the same people who had nearly destroyed me. Then, they finished the job. They told me my grades had fallen too far (without ever telling me exactly how far 'too far' was), and, so sorry, but they weren't going to waste their money any more. I asked if I could just retake the classes I had done badly in; they told me it was a waste of their money.

So, the dream I once had of being a simple high school band director turned into ashes and floated down into the dirt. I've never been back to school, and I'm just no longer interested in having anything at all to do with music.

Oh, one final thing. I was, according to my high school music instructors, the single best musician to have gone through the school system in their memory.

Did I mention my parents told me- after all this had happened- that they almost started me on the Suzuki Method for Violin at the age of five, but thought it would be too much for me to handle?

I marched drum corps in 1994 with the Madison Scouts. I was cut from the corps (first time ever spinning a flag, hey, at least I got in, right?) and sent packing; my parents didn't even have the common decency to come to Wisconsin and pick me up; they relied on the parents of a friend of mine who was also there to drive me back. My parents never saw us perform, and in fact refused to try to attend a show because they were just too damn busy. For an entire summer.

Yes, they both were/are ReThugs. Oh, and I hate my mom with a burning passion to this very day. I'll be glad when she's gone, because I feel I won't be able to get on with my life until she's in the ground. And I don't plan on shedding a tear at her funeral; I may not even go.

I have a great deal of hatred for both of my parents, and let me tell you, having been adopted as well, I can truly say that I have been abandoned and rejected by literally everyone that has ever "supposed" to have loved me. I think I'm justified in feeling that way.

One last thing: I recently found out, after 28 years of life, that my adoption records are NOT sealed, as my parents had led me to believe the whole time. Both myself and my sister are adopted; my sister just recently discovered that her adopted mom tried to contact her when she was 14 (she's 24 now), and "beloved" adoptive mom hid that from her. Again, mom believed that my sister just wouldn't be able to handle it.

I've been personally and professionally destroyed by them (and that before I was ever a 'professional' teacher). These two people made damn fucking sure my dreams barely even got off the ground. They gave me a taste, waved the cake in my face, yanked it away, and proceeded to buy themselves a Lincoln Town Car.

And they paid cash. After pleading poverty.

(end of my post, slightly edited, from the referenced thread above)

So I ask you, DUers, WHAT HAPPENED?? How? Why? Did these people ever love me even a little bit?

What would cause a parent to tell her child that the reason he's getting picked on in school so much is because he doesn't like doing what the other kids do, and if he's going to be different he'll just have to learn to put up with it? What kind of parents tell their child that they should just "ignore it and it'll stop?"

What sort of parents leave their own kid homeless? What kind of people throw a kid like me, who had never been in trouble- EVER- in school or with the law, who graduated 13th in his class, both NHS cords, on his way to college and a bright future, a career he was passionate about and talented in.... what kind of parents do these things?

I feel abused, neglected, shortchanged, rejected, and abandoned. I feel as though my insides have been ripped apart. Every day I wake up and I'm reminded, by the very place and way I live now, of what happened. I can't escape it, I can't forget it, and for almost a decade I've been trying still to deal with what they did to me. I fear I'll never be able to get past it.

I've totally lost any self-confidence I ever had. I went from being able to get up in front of thousands and perform to not even wanting to go out to the bar after work. Sure, some of that is my own fault, but DAMN.... how deep into the ground can a parent beat their kid?

If you want to be critical of me for handling or mishandling the situation as the case may be... I know all too well that there are things I could have done, but that's hindsight, and you really must understand that they put me into a survival mindset, where I could do nothing but react instead of act. There are indeed some things I could still do for myself regarding education. The problem is, I still feel too beaten to do much of anything for myself regarding desires in my own life. I truly don't know what to do.

I swear, this is the past time I'm going to post on this subject, and I'd like this thread to become something of a repository for all those who went through or are going through the same kinds of things I did. But mostly, I just want to know why.

Does anyone have any ideas?