Yes, big time. 6 years ago I was 20 years old, backpacking around Australia with my girlfriend at the time. Long story short we got into an argument over something horribly trivial, and she ended up throwing a mobile phone (nokia brick) at me, hard. It had the grave misfortune to hit me in the cock/balls. Pain worse than you can imagine followed...and didn't end. It caused nerve damage, and now more than 6 years later, I'm still in almost constant, often severe pain, in my dick, every day.

As you might guess, the psychological side has been even worse than the physical side. I went from being an adventurous world traveller to a near-recluse, didn't work or do anything really for years. My confidence hit rock bottom. A great deal of anguish and self loathing is usually present in my mind, the complete opposite of before. This year I've started to push past that, but day-to-day life can still be incredibly difficult.

The nature of this thing means I can't really talk openly about it. But you'd never know anything was wrong to look at me - I look like a young, fit (eventually, after years of neglect), healthy guy. So a lot of my social interactions feel like a pretense - I have to pretend to be happy and normal, when on the inside my brain is screaming PAIN, and I'm depressed, unhappy, often suicidal even. Everything just feels wrong.

I suppose one good thing is I've become a lot less hot headed, although that probably would have come with age anyway. I've also come to view a lot of the problems people have (including myself) that they consider to be a big deal, as completely trivial. That in itself is problematic as people see it as a lack of respect or caring - but it's basically impossible to have any other opinion after what I've been through.

I'll never know who the person I normally would have become is. That kills me - I feel that I had a lot of potential, and now it is gone. But for the moment I'm not going to give up.