"This Is Hell."

(This is another transparent, courageous email from Lee Willis.)

I've read the posts and could feel a connection. It was reassuring to read that I am not alone in my struggles and feelings. I walk this journey by myself since there is really no one to talk to.

I noticed the other day how church is very difficult. I look at the men in the church and I feel like a freak and an outcast. I know I don’t fit in because I haven’t acknowledged my own sexuality and gender.

Being sexually abused by men, I shut off that part of me. I didn’t relate when I was growing up. I thought when I became an adult that it would go away, but I still feel like I’m the nothing on the playground. So I question my own masculinity and wonder who I am and what I am.

This isn’t life. This isn’t joy. This is hell. How do I endure each day? I realized that I have shut off my feelings. I put on an act for everyone so I can fit in, but it’s not me. Sometimes when I get brave, I say a little something about being abused, but no one wants to know. I don’t think they know how to respond.

Some people know I suffer from PTSD, but they are not interested in how and why. So the lonely kid on the playground grows up to still be the lonely kid on the playground still wanting to be like all the other guys, but knowing something is really wrong. Knowing I’m just a freak.