I need to tell my whole story in one go

My account here is not new, but I've barely used this site since I created it, so that's still kinda like being new. My story is really heavy, and painful to recite, despite the fact that I've numbed myself to my prior pain, so I can't imagine what it would be like reading it from a fresh perspective. I mention prescription drug use, suicidal thoughts, isolation, paranoia, emotional/physical/mental abuse, and probably more that I'm missing, but I hope this is good enough to cover the warnings.

A bit of why I'm here is that I'm trying to piece together my own mind, and get some things off my chest, as I can't afford actual therapy. I'm a 22yo man from the midwest USA and had a really tough go in my early years. It started fine, but at 6 my parents divorced. Mom moved away and brought another man home who was mentally, physcially, and emotionally abusive to my younger brother and me. Nothing I did was ever correct, and I was always second guessing myself and wondering what I did each day to deserve some kind of 'discipline' and it destroyed my confidence, self worth, and turned me into a nervous wreck around age 8. A few years later, she married this man and had my sister with him, and I was stuck with raising her and being a stand-in parent at age 12. Don't get me wrong, I love my sister, and I hold nothing against her. Anyways, I bounced between custody of my mother and father, meaning I bounced from school to school. I didn't make or keep many friends, and then my mom got rid of the other man and moved further away following the final custody battle that put my brother and I with our father.

In middle school and early high school I lived in the same house with my father, brother, and paternal grandparents. It's an old farmhouse that needs work, but it's more than just run down. This part of my family is a bunch of packrats and the house is filled floor to ceiling with stuff, and things are always in disrepair, walkways blocked, and with wood heat and grandfather insisting on keeping doors shut, the house is unevenly heated in the winter time. Boiling hot in the kitchen where the wood stove is, and freezing cold everywhere else. My physical needs were met, but only to the barest of bare minimums and sometimes not even that. My emotional needs were just too much for them, and whenever I tried talking about them, I would get brushed aside, the topic changed, or a stupid joke would be said, and sometimes the classic "just be happy" and "just stop being sad" lines would make a guest appearance.

In Junior year of HS, I was passenger in a car accident where a semi truck hit our vehicle from behind and I had to drop out of school, and my father became disabled. I lived near a small town out in the rural area where it made me socially isolated. Internet and phone connection were out of the question until years later when DSL service was offered in the area. I had no more friends, and with a mother who lived hours away and never called, and the rest of my immediate family incapable of processing intense emotions of their own, much less mine, and I was left to internalize my own problems. I turned into a recluse, my mental and physical health deteriorated and I gained a bunch of weight. (I'm working on fixing that now, btw)

I cried myself to sleep many nights from the pain and loneliness and depression. I took all kinds of different medications for various reasons and the pain was so bad I almost overdosed trying to make it go away. I dropped all medications, including sertraline, hydrocodone, cyclobenzaprine, and more going cold turkey at age 17, and it almost killed me. I still to this day have no idea how I didn't die from it. I had a constant bloody nose and was bed ridden for more than a week, and I refused to go to the hospital. The reason for that being, that during this whole time since the accident, the doctors looked me over, and because I had no broken bones or life threatening internal damage, they called me a faker, liar, malingerer, and said my pain was all in my head, and I'm just out for an insurance paycheck. The nurses could see it, and they believed me, but the physicians themselves denied my pain. I was hammered, grilled, and berated by lawyers and court staff without any support or guidance, and had my words twisted against me without any kind of defense from my attorney, and nobody to comfort me after I recounted my story in front of a room full of witnesses.

I've been alone for 7 years now, despite being in a house full of people and a quick fling that lasted only a couple months which ended horribly. I have no friends and nobody to turn to, so I continually turned it inwards and repressed my feelings. I can't hold a job because of my injuries, so I'm stuck under the thumb of my controlling father/grandfather until I can find a way to get on my feet. Over the last 7 years, I have contemplated suicide many times, and came very close to following through twice. I've had mental breakdowns, snaps, and fractures in my personality. Old hobbies I once enjoyed are dead to me, and previous art projects I had done hold no difference in sentimentality as the rock in the middle of the street, regardless of how good it was/is. I once packed a bag and started hitch-hiking only to have another snap and come back that very same day. Nobody knew about it. Nobody cared to ask where I was or why I had a heavy bag on my shoulder and was gone for the entire day. Maybe they did know, and their emotional ineptitude prevented them from addressing it. Maybe they were just oblivious and didn't care. I sure don't know.

All this time since the car accident, we have been fighting battles with lawyers and insurance companies to get a fair settlement. The trial was garbage and the appeals process has run its course with no benefits. Everyone I live with is stressed out, miserable, and all they do is scream and yell at each other and the dogs day in and day out. My father has been feeding me misinformation that mine and his case being locked together and that I can't settle out, even though my case was left behind during the appeals process, and I could've collected and gotten out of here many years ago. Maybe that was why he never told me, but he's also convinced of inherent corruption and active attempts against us getting justice. He believes drones fly over our properties and watch him, which he may be correct, but I have yet to see or hear one. He once saw Mars in the sky and thought it was a drone, and swears up and down to this day that it was moving, and that it is not a planet but a high tech drone. He's built me up to be paranoid towards strangers, for fear that they're either private investigators looking to take a compromising picture, or a someone sent to carry out a hit to get us to stop pushing for justice on a criminal level. I don't know if he's being truthful or not. He claimed we had threats made against our lives, but won't say who told him and won't say from whom it would come from. I don't know if there even are any threats or not, and I'm second guessing whether he's the one who's losing it, or if I am.

I got my driver's license at age 20 and my GED at age 21 and when I came home from passing all my tests, I didn't even get a congratulations. No 'great job,' or anything. The conversation was immediately segwayed into an argument and criticism against me. I didn't attend the graduation ceremony after that. I had nobody that I wanted to invite, so I didn't even bother with it. I just got my certificate in the mail and slid it in my important documents folder and said nothing to anybody about it when it arrived. I'm immensely proud of it, but I don't want to hang it on these walls, not for these people to see it.

It's not all doom and gloom though. I took many trips across country, thanks to saving from what little bit I could work as well as other family, and even though one of them had a sour spot, I still enjoyed it. I learned a lot, and grew as a person. My mental health has fluctuated, sometimes better sometimes worse. Overall though, my living situation has worsened, but it's almost over with. I'm preparing to move out before Christmas 2020 and have my own place where I can have peace and security and stability with my 4 months old (as of writing this) german shepherd and my cat. I am redeveloping my relationship with my mother, which is still not the greatest, as she's not exactly the most emotionally sound person either, but we're working at reforging the broken pieces.

Even in this seemingly never ending year of the bad, the worse, and the ugly, called 2020, I was blessed with not just a faithful canine companion, but also a close confidant and friend in the form of my cousin. She has helped tremendously with my mental and emotional health in recent months, and I remain ever thankful to whatever higher being is out there for that, as there were some really strange coincidences that brought our paths to intersect. Just this week, I stumbled across a suggestion for a book that pinpoints where many of my emotional issues stem from called, "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents," and it has opened my eyes to things I had repressed, denied, or simply hadn't noticed before. I've been talking with her about the contents of what I found, and it's been productive, probably for the both of us. Part of my realization is that by being emotionally neglected and reliant on only myself to sort out my emotions, it led me to think that nobody else cared or wanted to hear about what I have to say, think, or feel. I know better now, but the reaction still holds with a tight grip around me. I still doubt myself when I reach out for help, and have constant worries about being a burden, or being clingy, needy, or bothersome, even when I've been told I can reach out at any time for anything. I now know why I'm always helping people even at my own detriment, and it's because of that emotional neglect and mental abuse that I value myself less than others, so I think nothing of sacrificing my needs for someone else's.

To wrap this up, on a whole, my life is improving, but I'm still in need of help along the way. I have my cousin to talk to in person, but for other times, I hope to find an understanding, helpful community here. I started oil painting on canvas, and I'm returning to playing music. I'm back on Facebook and connecting with people I once knew, and I've committed to settling out my case despite the possibility of throwing away a possible case for malpractice. I'm done with legal and lawyer stress, and I want to move on with life. Consequently, this will destroy my relationship with my immediate paternal family, but it is bound to happen eventually anyways. The choice now is between whether I want a clean cut, or a long and painful one. I know now that I won't be alone anymore, and that gives me hope that I just might survive this coming transition.

I want to thank you all for reading. I don't expect this to get a whole lot of attention, but to those of you who did read this, and want to say something, thank you so much.