I'm new. I decided to just start writing, because I feel unheard. This is a really, really, really long post (2500 words)

In my recent hard times, it’s almost cloudy to think of everything that came before. But to understand why I’ve come to the state I have today, I’d like to introduce myself a bit. Plus, how often do I get to tell the story of woe and lament that is my life? Here’s to preaching to the choir. I immigrated to the United States when I was eight years old. Before that, I grew up in a big city in a Mediterranean country. My earliest memories are rather bitter. My first is when I was four years old, and my babysitter took me out to the public playground in our summer house’s neighborhood. There was a girl slightly older than me who was looking at my toys, and particularly my favorite, this little plastic wheelbarrow. And I remember her just taking it, and walking away. I lacked the intellectual maturity to understand that she was just stealing it, until my babysitter yelled for her to stop and brought it back. And that is my first memory in this life. I grew up in a family whose fortune was more than modest enough to survive, and God knows how much my parents each suffered to get to where they were, and to give to us their children what they did. I regret I wasn’t as grateful as a child as I am now. We never lacked for anything we needed, nor were we particularly spoiled- just in a rough setting. My parents worked hard and long hours, and in a city as overpopulated as mine, traffic was dense enough to make transit last for up to three hours just one way. My grandmother helped raise me as did my brother when he wasn’t pulling pranks on me as brothers tend to do. I had a lot of good memories among the tough times I suffered in school where I would often end up in fights. I was spared the brutality of the public school system of my country where fights were sometimes literally deadly, and yet even in private schools, in the place we were and the times we lived, things were just different. In the chance of a lifetime that was afforded to us when our applications for green cards were accepted, I found my life shift to an entirely new world. I was eight years old when I moved to the United States, and I had barely mastered my native tongue let alone English. I had to repeat the third grade and take remedial courses to compensate for my lack of language skills. Even before I had made this transition, I was always simply a different person, with a different perspective. In the country I left, I was never affected by the fervent nationalism nor the religiousness. I simply had different aspirations and wants- the greatest of my desires were simply to be happy and see others happy, and for people to stop hurting me. Those desires persisted when I came here to the States. People still bullied me for being different all through my school life. Even my mother was not spared the prejudice of others. All the problems we met with being in a strange land were compounded by the corrosion of our family as violence broke out in our household in my teenage years when I saw things people weren’t meant to see. I don’t want to cast blame on anyone for whatever happened, but the fights that broke between my father and brother were some of the worst I’ve seen. And when my brother had turned on me, and even my mother, at some of his most troubled times, I endured both heartbreak and violence. I came to become paranoid coming home from school not expecting what scene I’d come upon- whether I would see my regular home, intact as ever, or a sight of sheer horror. Broken glass, blood stains and devastation. I can never forget those years that I saw my home fall apart, out of sight from the rest of the world. I could not function properly. I had few comforts- video games, the handful of distant friends I had, reading books, and just sitting in the quiet alone. What innocence I had left was then buried with my mother when she took her own life, when I was fourteen years old, napping just two floors above the basement where she hanged herself. Another scar upon my psyche to remain for life as my father rushed up the stairs and burst into the living room and woke me and my brother. Another scuffle between the two of them as he tried to explain my mother was sick, and after my brother put his fist through the window, my father took me off in the car with him to the local police station to find help. I don’t know what kind of police station closes at night, but my brother called emergency services upon discovering my mother’s body while we searched for help and we came back to a swarm of police in our house. Still in my underwear, I walked to my house and was denied entrance and offered nothing more than a witness report. And lacking anything to report, the officer who dryly handed it to me swiped it back and seated me in the back of a cruiser with a faint radio on. All I can remember from there is that it was dark when I was put in the hard, plastic seat of the cruiser in my damned underwear and undershirt, and the sun was rising by the time anyone had let me out. And that the radio played “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica, while I conjured a glimmer of hope that maybe my mother wasn’t dead, despite every bit of evidence to the contrary, even as I watched her body carried out in a bag to the coroner’s vehicle. I can vaguely remember the letter she personally addressed to me as she did for each my brother and father. I can more clearly remember that her death would mark the eventual end of the violent fighting between the remainder of my family. And I can remember that the last straw for my mother was the affair my father had that birthed my half-brother, and the horrid woman with whom he decided to do this. You can imagine the regret my father will now carry to his grave. But that’s life. Everybody has their own circle of sorrow. I started drinking pretty soon after that, and it’s a good thing I couldn’t drive legally at that point. I drank daily after school. And before school. And during school. I drank hard and a lot. I just wanted not to hurt anymore and no one really saw how much hurt I felt in all this time. When I got close to a mutual friend one summer, at the very end of my high school, I came to have a romantic involvement with her. I felt so understood for once in my life and yet I was so misguided that I failed to give her the understanding she deserved. Things inevitably fell apart and I took it very hard, yet I didn’t even realize at the time I had no one but myself to blame. I ended up in a crisis center after she called the police out of concern I wanted to take my own life, because, well, I told her I was going to. And at the time, perhaps I really may have gone through with it, but that’s not really my desire now. A series of bad relationships followed her after I took our breakup so gracelessly. Eventually I became involved with a heroin addict who, as you can guess, eventually involved me in her habit. But truly, it was my choice. I was just tired of being in pain. And at first, that’s what drugs did. They killed my pain. And then they encompassed it. I witnessed hell on earth once again. My life turned upside down once again. I saw the worst in humans and in myself, but I was spared the brutality of overdoses or a decades long habit as I quit in a year’s time, even at the cost of another year in recovery. The same way I put myself into that hole with heroin, I dug myself out alone. That is something I can at least be proud of. For a long time, I wandered hopelessly, working menial jobs and just going through the motions. In my time online, I met a woman living all the way on the other side of the world who came to be one of my best friends. At the time, she was involved with another man who lived here in America. All of us played video games together and we were getting along. But as I got to know this woman better, I started to grow fond of her, and became comfortable telling her about myself. And in time, I came to learn about her relationship and its effects upon her. She would tell me conversations with her boyfriend regarding his health, and how distant he would act. It just seemed like he was rejecting her support, always walking away from conversations. He just didn’t realize how much he was hurting her, or just didn’t care. Despite the warm feelings I had for this woman, I resisted every urge to try to steer her any other way than what would make her happiest, and seeing as she loved this man, I advised her to the best of my ability on how to mend the relationship I knew in my mind was doomed to fail. Only until I saw how hurt she truly was did I begin to implore her to distance herself from someone as toxic as the man that threatened to cheat on her, which, in the end, he ended up having done just that already and confessed only upon their breakup. But my friendship with her continued and I never truly intended for any type of involvement with this woman, yet for every effort I made not to fall in love, I just could not resist. She was my best friend. She always listened to me when I needed to, and I always listened to her when she needed me. We gave each other support, strength, hope, positive reinforcement and encouragement. We advised each other with our unique perspectives. We loved each other so much. We laughed and smiled together, and we talked for hours and hours and hours. We would keep on calls even falling asleep, so we could keep talking as soon as we woke up. I can still remember her soft breathing in my ears when she would drift to sleep after telling me some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. Even so far away, she felt so close. We shared so many intimate moments together, and we experienced the love of a lifetime. She told me my mother came to her in her dreams, even before I confessed my feelings to her. She told me she would always love me, and we would always be there for each other, as long as we wanted to be, because we were meant to be. And I’m still not sure why she decided she didn’t want that anymore. She simply started to grow distant, and confessed to me that she kissed one of her old friends when she went out one night. She would tell me later that she decided she needed a change in her life, and that we had become codependent, and that I was too far away. She would tell me later that she doesn’t love me anymore, that she’s sorry from the bottom of her heart for hurting me, but she can’t be there for me anymore. She told me we weren’t meant to be. And now, I am here today, and thinking back to all this pain, I just want to know why I had to lose her too. This woman fit in my life like a piece of a missing puzzle, and even so far away, knowing the slim odds of our success, I tried my best to make things work because she taught me not only how to accept and love someone for who they are as a person, not who they could be, but to love myself the same way. For all the pain she caused me, for all the distance between us, this woman was there for me despite every awful mistake I’ve ever made. She made me feel loved despite every flaw I saw in myself. She was my best friend. Even in the huge time difference between our countries, I never once felt alone when we were still just friends. I took her advice and encouragement to heart and I admired her as she came to make me admire myself the same way. She inspired me to do great things as her voice echoed in my ears in constant encouragement. Before using drugs, I had attended college but only for a year. It was not until I met this woman that I felt the motivation to return my life to its tracks and enroll back in college as I am today. And then she disappeared like nothing, then had the audacity to tell me not to dwell on things, and that her mother would chew me out if she was being like me. All I have left from my jaan now is “I’m sorry, but I can’t be there for you anymore.” And by some cruel coincidence, I’ve found myself in absence of friends as either they endure pains of their own and I lack the composition to aid, or they simply aren’t there for me. I feel derailed. I feel wasted. I feel lost. I feel heartbroken. And I miss my jaan. When I had met her, it felt like every pain I had ever felt before couldn’t compare to the joy of every minute I spent talking to her. Now I can’t even get my friends that are actually here to listen to me. I’m starting to fall back on my academics. I’ve become ill recently, and just had an awful week after yet another friend betrayed me over money. Even though I take medication for my anxiety and depression, even though I still have a loving father and brother that are keeping strong despite all our hardships in the past, even though I have great opportunities afforded to me, I feel like I’ve just lost my motivation once again despite every intention to do well for myself. I just don’t know what to do. And I can neither talk to my mother, nor my lover, because both are simply just gone now. I’m tired of losing important women in my life. It’s just hard to be close to anyone at all when everyone leaves.

[Hidden]

Are you saying you want to settle down?..What is it your looking for..What motivation have you lost?..Im 42 and I'm starting from scratch..

[Justswimming]

Well you've been through a lot and came out alive. Your mom wasn't strong enough to handle the hurt but you are. It doesn't seem like it now but you will find another person to love. First you have to love yourself and take care of yourself like you would a friend. Taking classes in what you like and it won't seem like work and you will meet people with similar interests so you can build solid friendships. Maybe don't open up all at once cause that's a lot to process. Just take it day by day and do little things that make you happy.😊