As I get older I know it is inevitable that I will hear now and then of the passing of family, friends and people I have known in my life. That knowledge does nothing to make that fact any easier when the news of their passing comes. When ever I hear so and so passed I get that feeling of (But For The Grace Of God Go I) as they say. In my life I have almost killed myself with drugs, Cancer tried to take me down but I made it through so I ask why me? Why me yet they are taken? I was not one who asks why me? when bad things happened to me I ask why when the good came for some reason. I functioned better when it was all falling apart but when it came to the good stuff that's what freaked me out and made me uneasy. How strange that I was more comfortable with the bad happenings than the good ones.
Over the years many people have come and gone in my life some stayed and some where only around for what felt like a brief moment but each left an impact or impression on me and the person I would become. There are conversations I have had with people that have stuck in my head some good some bad but an impression was made none the less. I remember someone making a comment one time about my nose and how big it is, I knew it was but them saying so made me more self conscious of that fact. I remember in grade school a teacher saying with me being in ear shot of her that she thought I may be mildly retarded when reading over my homework. I never really thought about how our words effect others as I was growing up. It is only since I have gotten to a stage of reflection in my life that I started to realize just how deeply our words and actions can build others up or tare them down.
I started to realize how deeply words by others had molded me and effected me on my journey through life when I checked myself into a rehab for drug addiction. I know I talk about this a lot in my blog but I feel I have good reason for doing so. My drug use and that dark and also bright day I turned to Rehab was a big part of my life and was like a rebirth for me. I had to learn how to do everything without the drugs like a child taking their first steps. So if you feel I drone on and on about it that is why. Everyone has milestones in their life and most like to only revisit the good stops along the way as if they have lived a lily white life with no bumps or pot holes along the way. I have found for myself I must never forget where I have been or the dumb things I have done so as not to make the same wrong turns.
I would learn in Rehab that although I was effected by things and people in my life in the end I and I alone made the choices. Learning this fact did not make things easier let me tell you it pissed me off to think I had done so much damage to myself and wasted a large part of my life doing so. I spent all that time worrying about how I looked to others or what they thought of me. My Father RIP was a major figure and cause of many of my problems and bad feelings toward myself. Many of his words and actions had stuck with me and most were not good. I wanted so much to feel he was proud of me and did everything I could to get that from him only to be disappointed at every attempt. I would learn later he was not equipped to show his feelings in the manner I wanted. For what ever reason the universe placed us in the same family and we were like fire and ice. I have since come to terms with that fact and stopped blaming him for my choices but as I said words and actions can effect others way past the moment they are spoken or done.
I have been to more than my share of funerals over the years and in listening to a eulogy you only get a small idea of the deceased persons life and more often than not only touching on the highlights and omitting the bad. I would hope who ever reads my eulogy will also tell the lows I hit and the wrong turns I made because after all I am or was only human and yes I made mistakes. Like the photos of smiling faces in family albums at first glance it looks as though the family never had a bad day and their lives where full of good times. Most never place any photos of bad times in their albums because most like to forget they ever had any bad times. I have learned for me to stay sober and clean I can not forget the bad times but I must try not to wallow in them and if I revisit them it is only to reference them as a warning for the future.
I look back on things I have said or done to people and wonder how it effected their life or if I had any impact at all? I would hope that the bad I did to anyone did not stick with them or sour their lives in anyway. It may sound as if I have a grandiose opinion of myself that anything I said or did had any effect on anyone but I know for a fact I have hurt people along the way with my words and my actions. Taking responsibility for my past and owning up to the fact I have done wrong was a big milestone for me. For some reason I felt I had to be perfect and if I made a mistake that I was a looser. This started very young I remember trying to write my alphabet and I did not like to use an eraser so if I made the slightest mistake I would toss out the whole page and start over. I would spend so much time trying to do everything perfect the first time and end up being frustrated if and when I could not get it on the first try. If I could not do it perfectly then I did not want to do it at all. I have never pin pointed why I was that way, maybe I was born that way or it was taught behavior but I do know it would cause havoc in my later life.
If I could not do something perfectly on the first try I would act as if I did not care or had no interest in what ever it was. This would become a bad habit within my future self effecting my schooling, job performance,and my relationships putting on a hard ass attitude of I do not care but inside feeling defeated because I could not let myself make mistakes. It would also make me fearful of trying new things and in many ways fearful of life itself. It became easier for me to walk away from things than to show any imperfections. If i did try new things I did so in private when no one was around that way if i did it wrong there was no witnesses to my failure. In Rehab they had us revisit moments in our past, those moments we had tried to numb away with the drugs. It was difficult to do but a much needed step to maybe finding the reasons why we turned to the drugs in the first place.
One such moment came out for me and though it sounds trivial now, for some reason it was a big deal to me then. I was about 9 years old and my Dad and I stood watching as they built a new house next to ours and there was a kid maybe 12 or 13 operating a backhoe. My Dad went on and on about how smart that kid was and how he admired him for being so young and knowing how to operate such a big piece of equipment. For some reason I took this as a put down to me seeing that just the day before he was showing me how to drive a tractor and I was not catching on fast enough so he got angry with me and told me to go in the house. I walked back to the house after him yelling at me feeling stupid and like a huge failure. So when he kept going on and on about this kid I felt he was doing so as a dig to my inability to master the tractor the day before in a timely manner. I still do not know if this was his intention or if he was just really impressed with this kid but I took it that I was a failure as his son. I did not realize how that had stuck with me or how deeply that one small interaction with my Father had effected me until it came forth in a group rehab session. I kept thinking to myself how stupid it was that I had hung on to that one moment and filed it in my brain. I would dig back and find many interactions with my father that had effected me deeper than I had thought.
It would take me many years and I still work on building myself up and praising myself for the good I do but not in a manner of becoming full of myself. Excepting my imperfections and saying to myself it is OK to make mistakes and I do not have to grasp everything on the first try is an everyday battle. I have stated in an earlier post that my Dads Dad had come to live with us for a time and he had a calmness to him I never saw in my own Father. I often wondered how my Grandfather who was so calm and easygoing had not influenced my fathers way of dealing with things more. My Dad never talked much of his upbringing other than to tell me how hard he worked at my age or what he knew how to do at my age. With my Dad not telling stories of how he played or anything fun I assumed he was never a kid growing up he was born an adult who popped out with knowledge of all things or at least to hear him tell it. I suspect this is where my fear of making mistakes came from but can not say for certain.
Another moment that came out in Rehab was something that had happened in grade school. It happened in 2nd grade, the teacher was teaching something I was not grasping, so instead of asking for help and looking stupid, I started acting up and disrupting the class. Soon she had had enough, and sent me out in the hall. She left the door open and put me in a desk alone in the hall. I started making faces and bouncing around pulling my shirt over my head in full view of the class, and still even in the hallway was disrupting the class. Little did I know, the Gym teacher was watching this from the end of the hall. Now I know to this day, I was wrong but what he would do to me, was uncalled for and stayed with me for years. The gym teacher who was watching the show I put on, came down the hall grabbed me by the back of my shirt put me on top of the teachers desk, and told me to put on the same show I had been doing in the hall. He lifted my shirt up over my head and the whole class was laughing at me. I started to cry and wanted down but he forced me to stand there in front of the class, with me shirt over my head and me crying my eyes out, gave the class room full of kids much pleasure in pointing and laughing at me. I hated school from that day on and made up my mind that school was not a place I wanted to be. As I say, I know I did wrong, but in not wanting to look stupid I ended up look even more so and I hated him for doing that I hated myself even more for letting it happen.
I hear people say often how resilient kids are, and how easily they rebound from things that happen. I laugh to myself thinking just because they do not show outwardly they have been effected does not mean that inner emotional damage has not been done. There is a child inside each of us people say, the problem for me is that the child inside me is in constant fear, of making a mistake or revealing any imperfections, and being viewed as stupid. The fear of being stupid or viewed as such, would crate anger inside me and I would lash out, in fits of anger at whom ever was in my path at the time. I am sure my teachers thought I was a brat, and that I gave them much grief, but I was actually crying out for help in the only way I knew how. I only wish I had had the teachers in my early life that I was blessed with in the latter. My first grade teacher must have understood me and knew how to work with me, because I never felt stupid in her class. My second grade teacher was very young, and seemed to like to humiliate kids in front of the class, if they did not understand the lessons. Humiliation was not a good teaching method with me, and only made me pull into a shell like a turtle and give off that "F" it attitude.
I know kids do not come with instructions, and grown ups are far from perfect but in looking back I have to say second grade was a turning point for me and not for the better. By the time 5th grade came around, I could care less what grade I got or if I learned anything, or at least that was the attitude I was putting out. Only one teacher ever reached me, in the years of 5th grade to 7th and she was a much older teacher who taught History. She taught history in a way that I felt like I was there experiencing it, first hand. She had such enthusiasm about history, that you could not help but get infected by it yourself. I would never have another history teacher that made me feel that way about it. I would still love history on my own, but hated learning it in school. I would read about history on my own, and the things that interested me, I would soak up like a sponge but could never get into dates and times of events, and that was what we were often graded on. My history teachers from that day on, were very stoic and would just drone on and on then give a test, I was bored and hated spending time in their classes.
I think if I would have been taught in a way I understood, I may have not felt so stupid and acted up as much. Who really knows if that would have made a difference, and it makes no difference now. as that is all in the past. I only mention it because in my work to fix the wrongs of the past, I found not everything was my fault. But I must say also, I can not use that as an excuse, not to better my self now or work past what was done then. Each day I move a few steps farther forward, and all though I still have bad days and make mistakes, I do not feel as though I am moving backwards or standing still anymore. I do know I would not wish the things my drug use did to me on my worst enemy.
No comments:
Post a Comment