Regression

I've had a couple of moments over the last few days that reminded me of issues from my late teens/early twenties that I struggled to come to terms with for years afterwards. First of all, I was waxing lyrical (as I thought) at the dinner table on Sunday evening about a subject that interests me - the exact subject isn't really relevant, but it wasn't interesting my wife and daughter much, as soon became apparent, as they rather glazed over. It brought me up really short, taking me back to the vivid memories of a night on a beach on the Kent coast the day after my 18th birthday, when my best friend at school, no doubt with the best of intentions and in response to my being depressed to the point of tears, told me I'd never get a girlfriend unless I changed the things I was interested in, because they weren't the kind of things that would interest anyone else, especially girls. Had he but known, part of the reason I was so down was that the person I'd been infatuated with for the previous 2 years had absolutely blanked me earlier that evening (and indeed never spoke to me again), and that the person in question was a 15 year old boy who went to the same school as us and who I'd known since primary school, albeit not very well until that 2 year period. The odd thing was that my infatuation was totally asexual - I can honestly say that I didn't even fantasise about him, still less actually do anything with or to him, my feelings were limited to a totally sexless 'crush', for want of a better word, which I guess he'd finally recognised, hence his overnight change from being a close friend to hating me.
The second element of my being pitched back to 30-ish years ago was reading a post in a blog which I don't follow, but that I look at from time to time, where a gay teen said he was thinking of finishing with his boyfriend because he didn't feel he was good enough for someone so wonderful. That was exactly the position I was in at 20, except that my 'significant other' was a girl, who'd been a really good friend for a while  and who I then gradually became closer to, but I just didn't have the self-confidence or self-esteem to allow myself to think that she would ever become my 'girlfriend' as opposed to my 'friend', because she was 'obviously' much too good for me. Naturally enough, she wasn't going to wait for ever for me to get my act together, and when I moved away from home with my job soon after, she found someone else (who she subsequently married) who was more proactive. I still saw her occasionally - she had been one of my closest friends, after all - and, when it was all too late for me, she let me know that I'd been wrong about how she would've reacted if I'd been braver (my word, not hers). To say I was gutted is an understatement - it took me more than 10 years to get over it, and then only because I was lucky enough to meet someone else equally special, who I married, and am still married to, nearly 20 years on. All's well that ends well, to coin a cliché, but that didn't stop me wasting most of my twenties in self-hatred and feelings of worthlessness, something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Hindsight, the most useless commodity known to man.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B