Soon to be 26(M) So I have memories of having what I now know was anxiety in elementary school. My mom 65(F) has suffered from anxiety for most of, if not all of her life. She most likely passed this down to me whether genetically or it was a behavior I learned from her. Essentially she’s been mentally I’ll for my whole life. I’ve seen her institutionalized a handful of times. My father left us when I was 8. He told us he was going on a business trip to Louisiana. I remember it was strange because he really wanted to buy my mom a car before he left. The next day we found out he hadn’t been paying the rent for almost a year. We we’re being evicted. Had 5 days to get out, and we now owed $10K in unpaid rent. As a 3rd grader, my world was flipped upside down. I was on the playground when I was called into the art room to collect my portfolio. This was really confusing. I didn’t understand why. When I got to the art room, my teacher says “OP! I didn’t know you were moving?!” At that point all that came out of my mouth was “Uuuhhh neither did I?” My mother and I ended up moving to an apartment. I remember one day it was snowing pretty heavily. She had told me she was going to shovel the snow off of her car. I watched her from the balcony window like a hawk. Even though I was a 9 year old, I considered myself the man of the house. Well when she was shoveling, she was approached by a man who offered to help her. She obliged. They started talking a lil bit. I remember waking up to the sound of my apartment door closing and I knew every time that she was going over to his apartment. I was just too young to understand what they were doing, but I knew something wasn’t right. Every time she left in the night, I’d wake up and watch tv. Waiting for her to come home. I’d always make up the excuse that I had a nightmare. One night I didn’t wake up though. Well I did, but she had already come back at this point. Something was terribly wrong. She was throwing up blood and wasn’t making any sense. Turns out she was date raped that night. We had to move again. To an aunts house. I had to share a bed with my mom. Our aunt kicked us out after a year. So my mom felt I was all she had. She began sheltering me from the outside world. I maybe went to a friends house 2 times all throughout middle school. So when a friend of mine invited me to a bonfire the week before my first year of high school, I was excited and anxious but I went. About 5 neighborhood boys attempted to jump me. I ran. I remember hearing their laughs fade away as I got back to my friends house. I remember when my mom picked me up, we had to drive past those bullies, and I laid on the floor in the backseat of her car so that no one would see me pass. This is what cause my anxiety to take on its ultimate form. I ended up missing my entire first week of high school because I was too anxious to go. Anyways I’ve been rambling but I felt context would help. I’m essentially a soon to be 26 year old man, with no drivers license, no car, no idea how to talk to women, still a virgin, and feel as if I’m attached to my mother at the hip as we live together and split rent. She was forced into an early retirement due to mental health issues, so she doesn’t get her full retirement checks. She gets $1000 a month to live on. So here I am, a male, attempting to teach myself everything about being a man, all while never having a true father figure. Neither of my parents ever instilled good habits in me. I feel stuck, and invalidated by people close to me. I don’t know what I can do.