I don't know where you are now, but would it be helpful to plan to move to an Asian country, Kenneth? I know racism exists everywhere, but perhaps it would be less of an ongoing theme if there was less race difference for you personally. I appreciate it's not simple to organise or fund, but in terms of setting goals, I wonder if it might be a place to start.
I've been bearing this pain for years and plodding on, but I am completely destroyed at this point. The memories were like a disease, spreading through me to kill every fiber of my being.
That makes sense. I agree that it does seem like the memories are the problem, not the events themselves. You survived the racism, you took what steps you could as a reasonable, rational human being, and when those didn't pan out, you moved on as a survivor. The memories themselves are what's causing pain now, as you say. Painful emotions are embedded in the memories. I see two ways to handle this. I'm not a therapist or psych or qualified in any way, so this is just my own thinking. These may not be right and there are other ways I've not thought of. You could try to unpick the emotions from the events. Yes, bad things happened, but those exact bad things are not happening now, and perhaps there's a way to remember those events without triggering the same emotional response that you had at the time. The other is to start to let go of the memories. To consciously decide not to remember. This thread starts "How does one move on?" and that is one approach. It may not be at all right for you, possibly not for anyone else reading too, it's just a humbly-offered idea. You can't know what kind of man you'd be without having survived those events, because they're a fact of your life now. But you could perhaps think about who you would be without the pain attached to your current re-experience of them.
I saw this short video with Augusten Burroughs today, and found it very powerful on the subject of "healing". Not sure if it might speak to you?
MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING: talks about death of loved ones and rape.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c3 ... roughs.cnn