Intro

[Sasquatch]

Hello, A little about me. I have suffered on and off with depression since I was a child. It wasn't diagnosed as such then, I was just a troubled child. In 1971 when I was 9, my mother had the first of several breakdowns, the most severe bein in 1975. I am her carer now, and all the issues that I had to deal with as a child involving my mother are as ever present, senile decay being added to the mixture.

I had a complete breakdown in 1986 (aged 24) there are a number of reasons or roots to this. My school life at King Edwards Camp Hill was appalling. I remember once incident when I was about 12 of having all of my classmates (I use the term loosely) baying for me to throw myself out of an upper storey window.

The years after school were marked mainly by an anger, a refusal to comply with anything or anyone (I must have driven my parents to distraction). Part of my problems are anchored in a congenital defect, hypospadias which renders any physical relationship impossible. My story can be found at http://www.heainfo.org/Support-ForMen.html#A_Plea_Not_to_Ignore_the_Condition

After 1986, a pattern emerged, of a period of relative normality, followed by a depressive episode, then another period of normality and so on. The intervals between becoming shorter until 2000 the interval was about 6 months. In 2004 I was retired from Birmingham City Council (after being hounded for whistle blowing) and now normality is a brief few hours here and there. Mom is getting worse and I am so tired of trying, so tired of being like this, so tired of being me.

[silentmist]

I just looked at a picture of a penis with hypospadias ... why is a physcial relationship impossible ? ... go easy on me, I've not researched the issue in detail but the penis I seen still looks good.

It's obvious that you feel terrible over this abnormality and that (IMO) is going to have a much more significant effect on your social life that any penile abnormality could have ... in fact i think there are lots of woman that'll find deformitys arousing, it's just a question of finding them and letting them know you exist.

do you think your depression is centred on your hypospadias ?

as for your treatment from others ... we live in a fallen world where humans are little more than meat and are expendable commoditys to many people who feel they are 'normal' ... if you ask me, 'normal' is a disease. I'm glad i don't have it. most 'normal' people i meet are people not really worth knowing. I parenthesise normal because it doesn't exist in reality however it is a belief system currently widely practiced. The people who practice it tend to be cold, abusive, arrogant and lacking in effective empathy. Savages.

[Sasquatch]

No worries. The defect is only part of the story. The type of hypospadias I have means that the normal development through puberty, so aside from the deformity, the penis hasn't developed either. In some extreme cases (not me thankfully) the condition can result in "micro-penis" whereby the transformation from clitoris to penis in the womb, doesn't take place.

I agree with you about "normal" people, they just don't seem to connect to the world.

[Sasquatch]

I don't think that the hypospadias is a direct cause of my depression, though being 46 and never been in any kind of effective relationship does weigh heavy at times. I prefer the lonliness to the horrors of intimacy.

The real core of it, I think, was the total annihilation of my self esteem, self confidence and self respect at the hands of those I went to school with, Masters and Boys alike (Harry Brown, Woodwork and RE..a REAL christian he was), my late fathers attitude that "Schools don't behave like that" always accepting authority figures over me, the fact that as my mother was ill, doing, saying even thinking anything that could upset her was definitely taboo, my elder brother was emotionally unavailable and we really only started to get on when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I had few friends at school, even fewer at home because I went to a posh school (i really wish I hadn't, the days were long, up at 6.45, on the 7.20 bus to get to school for 9, leave at 4, arrive home about 6. I was knackered!). It was here I learned to distance myself from my emotions, to distrust everyone and to live in books and keep my own counsel.

Where do you think your depression springs from?