PLEASE HELP: Didn't really have any positive male role models growing up, now I'm in a position where I am being paid to be a positive role model and I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing.

This is going to be long, but it's keeping me up so here goes.

Okay, here is my little life story. So both my parents were in the military while I was growing up, but my dad was a bit of a mess the whole time. Alcoholic, got clean when I was six, got addicted to pain pills and anti-depressants when I was 15.

But he didn't really want to have to do anything with the whole raising a kid thing. He was very easily irritated, and would make sure that I would never do anything that annoyed him in anyway. So if I was being a kid, like any normal kid, doing weird or annoying things that kids do and parents put up with, like reminding him that he shouldn't step on cracks because he'd break Mom's back, or asking random strangers questions in the super market, and he'd flip out. Anytime I would do something he would rather I was not doing he would put his face close up to mine, clenched teeth, grab the collar of my shirt and just start doing the whole do-your-best-to-scare-the-shit-out-of-the-person-you-are-talking-to, full on intimidation thing. And I was a child, like 5 years old. That shit is traumatizing.

There's more! Suicidal depression and general all around craziness led this person to sit me down for a whole childhood of man to mans about how the world sucks, the government is ultimately corrupt, we have no ability to change our lives, and a whole host explanations as to why and how he was going to kill himself. This went on until I was 17, and then his brother came from across the country to intervene on his life and took him away from us.

He has been in the course of his lifetime a professional driver, professional musician, a hockey coach for the base's men's hockey team, and his bilingualism has been an asset to him in a variety of jobs over his life time. He never taught me to drive (I'm 27, still don't do it), never taught me to play, never taught me to speak french, and never encouraged me to join sports. He didn't really interact with me in any sort of a mentoring capacity, except to curb any behaviour that he found to be annoying (through means of over the top intimidation). And there wasn't really any other adult males in my life, seeing as how we moved away from family all the time and my schools were all full of female teachers. This has left me a mostly broken, meek sort of weirdo, well liked by his friends, but terrible with the ladies and generally thought of by others as an eccentric.

And now I'm working with special needs kids, some who are very high functioning and require a positive male role model. I want to be involved in early age behaviour intervention, and this job would be great experience. And these kids really do need the help, there are practically no males in the field and they are dying for male interaction. But the more I'm at this job the more I'm not sure I'm cut out for it, and the more I'm realizing how just how fucked up my early life experiences left me.

I'm really just writing all of this to get it off my chest; I'm obsessing and can't fall asleep. But do any of you have any advice? Anyone go through something similar? Any, I dunno. What the fuck do I do with myself? I feel so hopeless.