The last 24 hours have been emotionally exhausting, illuminating, painful, and strangely important all at the same time.
Yesterday I nearly went home.
I was sat alone in a hotel room crying, convinced I was a burden to my friends and that I was about to ruin their weekend simply by existing near it. In my head, they deserved better than dragging around a traumatised, anxious, emotionally overloaded 50-year-old man who can’t seem to relax and enjoy himself like everyone else.
Instead of disappearing though, I finally did something I almost never do properly.
I explained.
Not the polished “I’m having a rough time” version. The real version. The version where I admitted that I’m struggling badly mentally, that trauma and fear shape almost every social interaction I have, and that I often feel trapped between desperately wanting connection and simultaneously being terrified of it.
To their credit, my friends listened. I think they genuinely heard me.
And today I stayed.
I walked in Pride with them, with the Leather Men.
That sentence probably sounds tiny to most people. To me it felt enormous damn near overwhelming.
I was uncomfortable for a lot of it. Not because anyone was cruel to me, but because my nervous system still interprets those environments as emotionally dangerous. Everywhere I looked there were confident, beautiful, sexually expressive queer men and women who seemed so free in themselves. Free to flirt. Free to touch. Free to exist visibly and unapologetically.
And honestly? I envied them.
Not just sexually.
Emotionally.
I envy the people who can exist in those spaces without their brain constantly screaming:
- you don’t belong here,
- you’re unattractive,
- you’re awkward, weird
- you’re too damaged,
- everyone else can see it,
- don’t embarrass yourself,
- don’t inconvenience anyone,
- don’t become a burden.
That voice never really stops.
I stayed longer than I thought I would. We went to the pub afterwards and I managed one drink before I quietly retreated back to the flat to decompress because everything had started becoming too much internally.
The hardest part is that from the outside, people probably just see:
“The fat, weird middle-aged bloke went home early.”
They don’t see the war happening underneath.
They don’t see the hypervigilance.
The shame.
The grief.
The fear.
The calculations.
The social paralysis.
The exhaustion of trying to appear normal while your nervous system is screaming danger every few minutes.
At one point before I left, there was someone I wanted to say hello to. I should have. I wanted to. But I froze. His friendship group were all beautiful, confident, socially fluent men and suddenly I felt very small and very aware of my body, my age, my fear, my awkwardness and all the ways I don’t feel like I belong in those spaces. My head was screaming that they would push me away, make comments, ask him why he wasted his time on someone like me. Sigh. Shut up trauma.
By this point I was feeling uncomfortable, and inadequate. So I left quietly. And that’s the tragedy of trauma sometimes. Not that it makes you incapable of wanting life. But that it can make wanting something and reaching for it feel emotionally incompatible.
The frustrating thing is that I understand exactly where all this comes from.
Childhood grooming and rape taught my brain very early that emotional pressure, expectation and vulnerability were dangerous. HIV, disability, body changes, failed relationships, grief and years of feeling emotionally useful rather than genuinely held all layered on top of that.
I know why I’m like this.
That almost makes it more frustrating.
Because underneath all the fear there is actually a very sensual, playful, kinky, affectionate person trying desperately to exist.
I don’t want to become some emotionless sex monster. I don’t want to lose the softer parts of myself. I don’t want to stop caring deeply about people.
I just want the fear to stop controlling the size of my life.
I want to flirt, or just simply talk to someone without panic.
I want to go to queer spaces and stay present instead of internally collapsing.
I want to feel desirable without immediately distrusting it.
I want to be able to speak to attractive men without feeling fundamentally lesser.
I want pleasure without shame.
Connection without terror.
Freedom without guilt.
And despite everything, maybe today still mattered.
If any of this sounds painfully familiar to you, I think there are a few things worth remembering.
First: fear lies by sounding protective. It will tell you that staying home is safer, quieter, easier, less humiliating. Sometimes that’s true. But sometimes all it really does is slowly shrink the size of your life until loneliness starts feeling inevitable.
Second: people often understand far less than we think unless we actually tell them what’s happening. I spent years expecting people to somehow notice I was struggling while also desperately hiding it. Those two things don’t work well together.
Third: stepping away when you’re overwhelmed is not weakness. It’s regulation. There’s a difference between abandoning yourself and giving yourself space to breathe before you break.
And lastly: you do not need to become someone else entirely to deserve connection, pleasure, intimacy, or joy. You don’t need to transform into the loudest, hottest, most confident person in the room before your existence becomes valid.
I know all of that intellectually.
Emotionally? I still struggle with it every single day, and so far none of it has worked.
I still compare myself to other people.
I still hear the voice that says I’m too much, too awkward, too damaged, too old, too frightened, too undesirable.
I still retreat.
I still freeze.
I still mourn the parts of life fear has taken from me.
But maybe healing sometimes starts with simply refusing to completely disappear.
Because I didn’t run away completely.
I stayed.
I marched.
I was honest.
I survived it.
Maybe that counts for something after all. Doesn’t it? Please let it, please I beg.
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