Short version:

I have had a variety of unfortunate and humiliating symptoms for years now. How do I deal with it now that I'm 18, with my parents having given up on me and dismissed my attempts to correct it medically, and with the pressures of adult life looming on the horizon?


Long version:

Whether I overreacted or not is something else, but it did. I'll try not to ramble.

Basically, I've been sexually 'dead' and pretty much sleepwalking for the past three years. I woke up one day to find my healthy 15 year old libido had plummeted, and as time progressed, other symptoms began to set in, such as tiredness and a lack of mental acuity. My testicles have been bothering me in various painful ways for this time and longer (I got a weird sharp pain in one when I was even younger, hopefully just a cyst). My testicles have also remained small, even though everything else has grown like it was supposed to, at least as far as I know.

The worst aspect of all, however, is that I completely lack the ability to feel sexual pleasure. My penis is simply numb to it. The only sensation I've ever gotten at orgasm is a blood rush feeling, mildly nice but hardly ecstatic. It's been this way as long as I can remember.

I am posting this less for ideas on what it is than advice on what I should do next, if anything. For the first year or so, I did nothing, waiting for what I thought was an inevitable physical that never came. So when I was 16, I tried to get blood tested for something semi-related, and that of course turned up nothing, but I did get a lovely food allergy diet out of it. A year after that, when I was 17, I was more direct, telling my parents as much as I was prepared to reveal (IE not that much), and eventually got another blood test after telling a specialist everything. Unfortunately, that test also revealed nothing (my testosterone levels are somehow normal). After that, my parents evidently decided that I was a hypochondriac and promptly put my on anti-depressants, despite my (admittedly weak) protests. I was on them for about 6 weeks, and felt no change for the positive whatsoever. In fact, the only difference I felt at all was an even denser 'brain fog'. After that time, I went off of them cold turkey, and felt a little better.

And that brings me to today (I'm 18 now). My parents are fed up with the idea of anything being medically wrong with me (they rib me about the doctor's visits like I was on a mission to waste their money or something) as well as my attitude in general. I just can't bring myself to do anything. Exertion of any kind (physical, mental, and even emotional) is tiring. I couldn't hold a job before, and now they're pressuring me to get one again, and I just can't get motivated to go through it again. Mostly, I don't care much about this abysmal failure of a life I have. Everything has gone exactly wrong. I'm not even sure if I graduated high school successfully.

So my question is, what the hell should I do now? I've already lost three of what should have been the most important, if not the best, years of my life. And that pains me more than anything. My parents seem to be utterly closed minded to the medical thing, so that nothing short of telling them flat out would convince them, and maybe not even then. But even if I could get the courage to tell them, that would mean that all those years were sacrificed in vain, that after all that, I didn't keep my dignity or any modicum of my pride. And that seems almost worse than the alternative.

Anyway, thanks for reading that (assuming you actually did). The way I see it is, either I just live on the way I am and try to get out of the mindset of waiting for a 'rescue' that will never come, be much more direct with my parents and suffer the humiliation, or try my best to get motivated enough to get semi-autonomy and try to deal with it myself. The problem with the latter choice is that I'll be on my parents medical anyway, so they'll still know. If anyone has a better idea, I'd love to hear it.