Did you know me? Do you know me? you only know what I want you to know, you only see of me what I want you to see. There is so much more to me than the face I wear or the shell called a body I occupy. There are thoughts and feelings I have never shared with any other living being some are so dark that you may think me insane if I was to blurt them out. I am for the most part very open and will tell people how I feel or think if they ask me or I feel they really need to know. I share my life stories not to ask for pity for the things I have gone through in my life but for the purpose of letting others know we all have pain and we all stumble along the way. Maybe just maybe my story is read by someone who has been through something similar or even worse in many cases. Maybe my story will let them know they are not alone or a strange outcast because of the things that have happened in their life or the feelings they are having. We all have things in our past that may not be so called proper conversation in polite society but I feel that many have been silent for far to long and in doing so are causing major damage to their inner peace and that of others.
I once was very guarded with my life experiences and would never dream of sharing them with one person let alone spilling them to anyone who took the time to read them. I have spent so much time and effort in my past trying to appease others and respect their feelings but in the process never demanded the same in return. I have often in the past let other peoples problems and feelings rule the way I lived my life. Living to only please others is no way to live and along the way I lost myself and allowed my dreams of life to fall to the wayside. I have learned that I must make me happy, and no one person or thing can do that for me it is my responsibility to do that for my own well being.
Do not get me wrong If I can help another person I will do so but I have also learned that they need to help them selves and I alone can not save them from themselves. I can only give them a hand along the way but in the end it is their choice to sink or swim. This sounds harsh but most of you know I speak the truth and almost all of us have tried to help someone and are left feeling lost when the person just keeps sinking. Often my kind of help was only enabling that person to continue on a path of going nowhere and blaming the world for their demise. I once wanted or needed to lay the blame for my problems on someone else and I found it was easier than taking responsibility for them and owning them. I did not realize that by blaming others for my mistakes and shortcomings I was doing damage to myself and in effect holding myself and my life in a sort of limbo. Once I learned and am still learning that fact and started owning my life and all the things I have done in it and working to correct what I can, things seemed to run much smoother for me. Holding anger or hatred for those who had wronged me in the past only served to make my life and my path harder than it needed to be. Yes I still hold grudges and have anger because after all I am human and in no way perfect but I am working to let those things go. Those that will tell you that their life is perfect are either robots or fooling themselves life is not perfect and would be a big snore if it was. The highs and the lows in life let us know we are alive, think of it this way if a heart monitor has a flat line that means your are done so how can we expect life to be a steady line and never fluctuating?
My family and friends are often shocked by the fact I speak freely about my feelings or my addictions and my many many short comings and they act as if I should never speak of such things. I guess I am shocked that those truths shock them and their reaction in the past made me feel like a was a weirdo and that I was the only one who felt this way or had done such things. We as a society have chosen to keep things secrets like Rape,Molestation,Drug use, and many other problems in society and in doing so have allowed many of these things to keep happening in the background unseen and unspoken about. Opening lines of communication for victims of those or other things inflicted on them may help to bring it out in the open and help them deal with those things and feel better in their lives. When you are told not to talk about something it makes you feel as if it is bad or that you are bad for speaking about it so we internalize it and there it sits and eats away at our inner peace, or that was my experience I should say. Some things should be kept to ones self but being to secretive can cause harm in the long run. So yes I put it out there and tell the stories of my life those stories that many others would fear to talk about but it is to me a way of cleansing and letting go of the things that hold me back. The way I do it may not be for everyone and that is fine but I do think if you do not have some sort of outlet or a way of dealing with life's problems you will sooner or latter explode and when you do it will more often than not be in a very unhealthy destructive manner and harm those around you as well as your self.
I do find humor in just about every aspect of life and that has gotten me through some rough times and yes I can often take that humor to far or use it at inappropriate times. I have learned that humor became part of my personality as a defense mechanism and as I did with the drugs used the humor to ward off things I could or would not deal with. Although I would much rather laugh then cry I found sometimes I needed to let myself cry and not try to make a joke and cover my true feelings. There is a place for humor in my life and is a large part of my personality but I am learning to use it correctly and appropriately. I hate to see others suffer or feel depressed so I lead off with a joke and try to get them out of their funk but I am learning that is not always the best response in every situation some times people need to feel those feelings so they can work through them. So I will still lead with a joke but if I see that is not what they need at the time I can be compassionate and a good listener and let the humor wait for a more appropriate place and time.
Anger as a child was a problem for me when I showed it I was chastised or punished and was never taught how to let it out or how to deal with it so I taught myself to hold it all in. This was not good because it would boil and fester until it would erupt and come out in an explosive rage. I would get so mad I would black out and lash out and afterward I would have no memory of what had happened. This was a scary feeling to lose control in that way but I had no clue how to keep it from happening. My Mom would often have to hold me down until I wore myself out. I know now that this was not the best approach to deal with my problem but at the time she felt it was the only way. I would after feel embarrassed and ashamed of my actions but also hated being held down and that anger never left and the holding down would only drain my energy, trying to fight my way free from being held down but the anger was still there.
I still have moments when my anger comes out in ways it should not but it is much less often and more controlled than it was in the past. When I stopped using drugs that anger was one of the many things that came back to haunt me being that I had never dealt with it in a healthy manner so as a grownup I would be forced to learn like a child to deal with it. That was hard when you are grown and you are throwing basically a childish tantrum in front of fellow coworkers or friends and I am sure looking the total idiot to those viewing the meltdown. They would look at me as if I had lost my mind and in a way I had. So that was one more thing to add to the list of things to work on and learn how to control. The list would grow and grow and often feel overwhelming and at times I felt like giving up and going back to the way I had always dealt with life masking my feelings with some drug. I am glad that I was given the mental tools in rehab to see that the past drug use had not gotten me anywhere so going back was not an option I wanted to go forward and not backward. I have come a long way in this area and for me my higher power was the one thing that made it possible for me to find some inner peace and let some of the built up steam out in healthy ways. I think the reason I loved playing football so much is because it was a legal way to take out all the built up bull shit on another human being. Not that I wanted to hurt anyone else but it felt good to smash into another person as hard as I could and not worry about hurting them or getting any flack for it. I never thought I was any good at football but in later years I was told by more than one backfield player that when they played college ball they missed me blocking for them on the line.
I see so many younger people taking the same path I had taken in my past and I cringe when I hear them talk about their drug use in such a nonchalant manner. I also know as I did they will have to make their own way and learn their own life lessons all I can do is hold up a caution sign by telling about what it has done to me. I say that and laugh to myself because I heard the same stories from grown ups as precautionary tails and I still did it my way their stories fell on deaf ears. I think back to those After School Specials that tried to reach kids with the hip music and the hip talk and a life message that made most kids laugh because the hip music or hip talk was over done or so outdated it was laughable. The stories in those specials were often so trite and over the top it was much like watching a B Horror flick its just so bad but you just can not stop watching. To be fare there where some good ones but one stuck in my head that was so bad with Scott Baio as a teenage who turns to hard drugs I think it was called Stoned the lingo in the movie was over done and the whole thing to me at the time was so unrealistic. I mention all this because although they tried to reach kids with a message the stories and the feelings were written by grownups and maybe unknowingly had interjected their preconceived notions and views about being a young person. The makers of many of those films I often wondered if they had contact with teenagers at all it was as if they just assumed that is how they talked and acted making the kids in the roles look so unrealistic that the message was lost in translation.
When I speak to a younger person I do not try to be hip < dated word or speak as if I know what they are going through or feeling I just tell them the path I took and how it effected me in my life. It may fall on deaf ears but maybe a few things will sink in and help them to avoid some of the pit falls I experienced. The old saying when I grew up things were blah blah blah is used often but the thing is it is not the time I grew up things have changed and the world is different in so many ways I can not fully know how a person growing up now feels I can only assume based on my own life experiences.
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