Not sure what to do next

I got my CPTSD diagnosis, so I thought it would be a good idea to post here.

A little bit about me: I am a 33-year-old male, and I have had freeze/flight-type CPTSD for more than 20 years. I had a normal childhood up until sometime during primary school, when life just turned to hell. I had two very strict and empathy-less teachers. I have almost no memory of my time there, but what I heard from other people confirmed my feeling of being belittled and not really seen as a human being. During the same time, my parents were going through relationship difficulties. My mum later claimed that she felt abandoned by my dad, who spent a lot of time at work. She started to develop angry outbursts where she would scream and stomp around. She would say things like it would be best if she weren’t alive anymore, or that she wanted to leave me and my dad. My dad mainly withdrew; there was, however, one time when he almost hit me because I did something he didn’t approve of. While all of this was certainly traumatising, the thing that broke me came at the end of my primary school years.

I had to retake the last year because my teachers thought that would be necessary. I remember how the new class felt like a breath of fresh air, like the feeling of the sun on your skin after a long winter; everyone was cheerful and the environment was playful. I didn’t feel like I belonged in the class, but I was still nice. I wonder what my life would have been like if I had gone to this class from the start instead. But unfortunately, the good times didn’t last. I remember walking home from school with some of my classmates, and there was a girl from another class in the same grade as me. I remember two of my classmates throwing small twigs at her. I didn’t think much of it then, but in retrospect she was probably bullied before that as well. A few days later, another boy from the group and I were called in to speak to a teacher. As it turned out, it was the teacher of the girl who was being bullied, and we both had to listen to the teacher berating us in front of the girl’s class about how we could not bully other people. I then pushed all memories of this event out of my conscious mind and didn’t think about it or mention it to anyone, because I didn’t know how my parents would react or whether they might even take the teacher’s side. I didn’t think about it for 15 years.

If I would have been guilty of bullying the girl, I would have been able to just stop doing that thing and everything would have been fine. But as it was, my subconscious started to worry constantly about things that could be seen as unacceptable by other people. I started to have intrusive thoughts about anything I didn’t do perfectly, up to the point where I couldn’t sleep. I also started to have this constant feeling of needing to be alert around other people in case I was accused of doing something wrong.

Due to the constant anxiety I felt, I started to withdraw. I avoided interacting with anyone and became a ghost. Around that time, my parents realised that they had to start taking care of me again, which is probably the only reason why I am still alive. They sent me to a private school and started to show some interest in me again, even though it took many years for something even remotely resembling normalcy to return. The anxiety never disappeared, but I learned to act like a normal person and wash away any kind of emptiness or grief with TV, books, and daydreaming.

Around 6 years ago, I started to realise that something was wrong and that I had to find out what it was if I ever wanted to have a normal life. This is when I started to uncover the things outlined above. Thanks to therapy, grieving, SGB, and many other interventions, I was able to feel much more in control of my life than ever before. There is still a lot of anxiety and emptiness, but I can function normally. I can go to the gym, I can hold jobs that are not too stressful, and I have my friends.

But despite all of this, I still feel empty and lonely. I want to do some kind of further education, and I do have the option, but it is so easy to lose hope and, with that, any kind of motivation. I remember a time when I was confident that everything would be fine, no matter what I did. Now it’s the opposite. It feels like, no matter what I do, I’ll end up alone and empty.