I was trying to be nice. I am making more of an effort to understand and hopefully help the many lonely, angry, mentally unstable young men who show up here.
Yes, really. You're clearly a young, lonely, and very angry dude. People like that don't get much respect in this culture, and a lot of people of that type show up here. Instead of banning them or watching them flame out, I figure it can't hurt to try to talk them out of their delusions and create a safe space for them. The problem is that, here, the inmates FAR outnumber the staff. LOL
I have two kids and am on my second marriage. I've lived in a foreign country and had three different careers. Not that any of that is particularly noteworthy, but I can tell you the typical member here is a never-married young white male, angry, highly intelligent, and not doing well financially or career-wise. You're all of those, and that was me 20 years ago.
Oddly, accurate. I'm a restless, white, unemployed, afraid to go to school, straight A's in high school male. Antibiotics screwed up my gut and destroyed my skin. Lacking a developed inner life, my ego was crushed and I ran away, to suffocate in my own sorrow and grief. That coping method left me with the real kind of pain. I met rock bottom.
However, the point of this post (and my life) is to develop an understanding of this life from that experience. First, I developed a spiritual life. For me that meant, learning to ask for help and to understand we are all weak- for we all die. Patience came next, as after 2 years of antibiotics and another of deep emotional turmoil, my body has not healed quickly. The value of family followed when I allowed myself to come home and spend many long hours with my grandpa. Next came eating all meat, then mostly raw meat, and I finally stopped have diarrhea. I try to eat plants to establish a healthy gut biota, but it is hard for my to handle most of them, and the pain makes me feel so depressed.
Life's next lesson came slowly. It is about the internal doctor. You see, I regularly have thoughts about getting tested for parasites, or hormones, or blood, or my gut microbiome but I now am afraid of all hospitals and doctors offices. And I have been tortured with those thoughts until I recently found the playful movements of Qigong.
I do not know how I stayed alive for this long without it. I finally found something to ground me: to do more than walk through the pain. As I purge the blocked energy, the empty places have started to fill with love. So I no longer crave help from "doctors" because my stomach, and my skin, and my body are not under my control. Instead I focus on my attitude and my acceptance of myself, which I certainly control.
Yet in the visible world, I am still a "young white male, highly intelligent, and not doing well financially or career-wise" and I want to change that. Clearly, I am not alone and perhaps others have been here before.
