Hello everyone. I am 29 years old and it honestly feels like Ive been facing battle after battle since I was a child. I feel like I am never given a break. Sometimes I get so weak from being over burdened by life's many challenges. People always tell me how strong I am for having been through so much but often times I just feel so weak.. weathered by life's hardships. It is the hardest thing in the world to be strong. Are there any others out there that have been through the fire and can relate? Any type of encouragement would be wonderful.
Absolutely.
When I was a kid, my dad left, then I lost some of my close family to cancer, never really got time to grieve then because I was moved away to a whole new place -- new school, violent neighbourhood -- and I suffered a lot then. I was bullied as a kid, never had many friends. My family didn't have a lot of money so we struggled for most of my childhood and adolescence. The other kids would be going out together, coming into school with new clothes and fresh haircuts and I never really had that. I wore hand-me-downs and never had any money to do anything with the few friends I did have.
When I was a teenager and moved to secondary school I was bullied there too. My self confidence plummeted and the more disconnected from other people I got, the harder it became to make friends, keep friends, and keep trying. I got into alcohol and drugs, used to stay out late, and my family never really understood me. I was the smartest kid when I was young, they even wanted to skip me up a few years, and by the end of my school life I was severely mentally ill and barely scraping by in very way: socially, academically, emotionally, mentally, financially.
At 16, after all those years of struggling to cope, my family decided it was time I got a full time job and started buying my own clothes, paying for my own travel and financing my own education if I wanted one. When I was in my early twenties I was on pretty heavy duty medication for severe panic attacks and depression. I had my first long term girlfriend at the time and that ended disastrously. I kind of got over the panicking, I managed to finance myself for university and I've been studying a master's degree for the past year. But honestly? It feels like a constant battle.
I still struggle to make and maintain friendships, and my family, well, they've never really understood me and they still don't. I know they try as much as they can, but they are all pretty depressed and down people, too. My mother has few friends, she has these disproportionate anger outbursts all the time, and my other family members are the same -- not fun to be around. That's why I moved away.
I've only got a handful of friends and I don't really see them that much. I've tried a lot of different things -- counselling, throwing myself into work and study, even went abroad for a year -- but I realized that even when I change my circumstances and my surroundings, it doesn't change the way I feel, which is disconnected, sad, kinda hopeless really.
My experiences taught me that most people are self interested (including me), and honestly I struggle to maintain my composure in the face of a world that I haven't found my place in yet. It's difficult. The only thing that really gets me through my day is hope that maybe things will change if I keep going -- perhaps it's naive, to be honest, it probably is, but without that, I would have given up years ago.
I've been through more in the last 20-odd years than most people ever will, suffered abuse, neglect, bullying, violence, maltreatment, addiction, mental illness, self doubt, self hatred, depression, anxiety, financial ruin -- and people are always telling me how strong and admirable I am to have gone through all that and come out the person that I am, but honestly, I don't feel strong, or admirable. I feel tired, exhuasted even.
I never really had that person in my life who understood all my experiences as I did. People only see the end, but not the means. They don't want to understand how difficult it is, how hard it was, how much it has hurt, they only want to know that you've survived it, because it makes them feel good: "Look at this guy, he's been through so much and he's gotten past it. It can be done".
And true, it
can be done, but it comes at the heaviest of costs. I would much rather have had that one person in my life who comforted me, empathized with me, whom I knew without doubt, with total certainty, loved me continuously and daily without conditions. Unfortunately, I've never had that person and because of that, I have had to learn to cope with everything that life throws at me, by myself.
People get a kick out of that, like "wow, that's strength", "that guy is unputdownable", "nothing can break him". What they don't understand is that, so many times, I wanted to just give up. There were countless times where I was inch-close to breaking.
When you go through these kinds of things, alone, for so long, you learn to life on a knife edge and it doesn't make you feel powerful or resilient or strong. If being so independent that you can't have a meaningful, open, genuine, honest relationship with another human being is "strength", than I'd rather be weak.
I'm sorry if this wasn't encouraging, but I have to be honest, it's not a bed of roses. The only consolation you might take from this is that you aren't alone in it. There
are people who have the ability to be your "one person", people who
can understand and who
can relate to what you've been through and what you feel.
Thank you so much asking. Im leaning on God everyday and covered in His peace. 
