I think I may have figured it out. Why it is I don't like myself.
I remember when I was little that I always liked performing. I actually did. I wanted to be a great actress or s singer... I even wanted to be a magician or a puppeteer... or even play an instrument. I guess you could say that I've always been an artist at heart.
The problem was that I was never encouraged in that direction. Oh, when I wanted to play violin, Mom let me take lessons, but the problem was that I didn't like being told that I HAD to practice. Mostly because the reasons I was told to practice was because... well, my parents shelled out all this money to rent a violin so I could TAKE lessons... Oh I'm sure that they probably actually wanted me to perform well, but that was never what I heard.
My parents, instead, encouraged me to play sports. Now I'm not saying that I didn't LIKE playing... for a long time I did. But I guess part of me always felt like it was more of an obligation to do something they would encourage success at... even though I was never really any good. And towards the end, I didn't like who I became when I played. There was an anger... a rage that came out when... when they actually put me in a game that scared me.
But sports always took precident over everything else. I'd sign up for a dance class and end up missing half the sessions because I was either in practice or at a game. I even signed up for a modeling class once and ended up missing most of THAT because of sports... of course my leaving for the lake and missing the last part of class didn't help much either. I guess... over the years, the performer in me just slipped into the shadows and went away. And when it tried to make a comeback Senior year and in my first year of college, all it ended up getting me was slipping grades and disapproval from my parents.
Hell... my parents didn't even question me about what I wanted to do after high school until just before junior year. And THEN it became more of an interrigation really. I had to know exactly what I wanted to study (oh and it had to be something useful; something I could make a good living out of), I had to know what colleges I wanted to go to, I had to know what careers I could make out of whatever degree I chose. It was like I had to have my life planned out right there and then. And I guess part of me started to wonder whether or not I was working as hard as I was for my parents or for myself... But it was just a small voice at the time.
High school, definately, was when it started though... No... maybe, earlier. I was watching "Inside the Actor's Studio" last weekend at my parents house. And Mike Myers was on. And they started discussing the death of his father.... And something he said hit me... He talked about how his father had always delighted in the things he did. But as he started to get sick (Alzhimers) that just wasn't there anymore. And how not having that made him (Mike Myers) realize that if no one else was around to delight in him, it meant that he was going to have to start doing what he was doing for himself.
I think I mentioned earlier that it was my grandmother who was the one who always enjoyed having me around without trying to make me into something else; without trying to change who I was. I was in the eight grade when I started to lose that. Oh it wasn't obvious at first... that took 5 years... maybe six as I watched my grandparents' health start to decline... I watched Oma lose her memory... I watched Opa slip further and further into some state of dementia. I tried to deny what was happening, of course. Even when they were moved up to a house in Carpenteria, I tried to deny it. But I couldn't because the one person I always ran to when I was really upset; the one person who always encouraged me was going away and there was nothing I could do about it. And if there was no one there to encourage me to do what it was I wanted to do, then what was I working so hard for?
So now, with Oma almost 7 years dead, I guess I'm having to figure out how to encourage myself to go after what I want. Heh... It's funny... most of the problems between my sister and my parents started after Grandpa died and I even yelled at her once for blaiming her behavior on his death... I guess I just didn't understand at the time...
But there's something else...
All my life (I think I mentioned this part too) I've been told that I should be careful who I say things around because I might give people wrong impression; I should be careful of who I hang out with because I might be associated with the wrong people... oh and I should be careful about hanging out with boys because I didn't want to screw up my life by "getting involved" with the opposite sex.
And so the warnings were drilled into my head and the defenses were built around them. (Not that I had to worry much about the third part since boys were never actually interested and I was too busy). Add that to being picked on and ignored mostly. I guess a large part of me has never actually been sure if the people I think of as friends actually were my friends or if they just let me hang around because they were being nice.
When Esowolf and I started talking about all this a couple weeks ago, she mentioned that her people and my people weren't the same kind of people... or something like that. The truth is that I've never really had any people. I've always felt like the outsider... even with a group of outsiders! LOL!! But at least with THAT group I felt like they actually liked having me around. It's funny though... Esowolf prides herself on how she's the one who broke me out of my shell... Sometimes I wonder if Plato made a mistake.
decided to ignore the fact that I can't afford the extra gas and went home for lunch today. Got there and spent about 5 minutes laying in The Chair, staring at the ceiling while Big Geek downloaded my email. I made several mental notes to myself to remember to take money with me when I left, but by the time I was at the gas station filling up, I realized that I left home without cash again.
I then proceeded to not realized I'd passed Panda Express until I was almost at work... Grrrr....
So after bumming 50 cents from Sejik and decided that my lunch would consist of a bagel and Cracker Jacks. That's when I realized that I still had meatloaf in the frig, but upon warming it up and stomaching a few bites, that I really couldn't eat nuked food today and returned to my original lunch plans....
Fun, huh?
Which brings us back to last weeks spewing of guts and closet skeletons... you'd think that with all that shit, I'd be able to locate a reason why I don't like myself... WRONG!!
First, let's set the records straight by saying that I don't hate myself... I just don't like myself right now and I haven't for a long time, I'm coming to realize. I don't actually think I'm capable of truly hating anything....
But let's just put all of this in some sort of perspective...
I was always the quiet one. Mom always tells me about how she used to watch me playing in a corner by myself and worry about me. And when I wasn't in a corner playing, I was usually being dragged around the playground by a girl who was a year older than I was.
In retrospect, I don't think I every really thought of myself as smart or intelligent in anyway... I just did what I was told to do, stayed out of
people's way, and stayed quiet. Mom always tried to encourage me to go hang out with other kids... even to this day she worries that I'm turning into a hermit.
The problem was that I liked being by myself a lot of the time... mostly because I didn't think that anyone noticed that I was around. Let's face it, when ever I went somewhere with a group I could wander off somewhere and no one would even notice I was gone until they were all trying to leave. So I basically knew that no one really cared if I was around or not... at least not until they needed me for something. And I think I got to the point where I didn't really care if they cared or not.
Pretty much the only person I always knew liked having me around was my grandmother. And I always knew that she didn't expect me to be anything other than myself.
This was my first lesson in confusion though... and it split me in two - the part that wanted to be left alone and the part that wanted to mingle amongst people. Only problem was, when I began to interact with people, I was always in the background, again no one seemed to notice.... Unless I did something brilliant, or scored a higher grade than anyone else.
And the cycle continued for as long as I could remember... I was the butt of all the jokes, I was ignored, I ran slower, I was picked last for teams in anything from kickball to soccer, I did my own thing and was made fun of for it... And, of course there was that one time in junior high when this asshole asked me out on a date and then broke up with me 5 minutes later, and later I found out that it was all a joke that apparently the entire 8th grade class was in on.
Typical odd person out story, right? I rolled myself into my shell, built up my fortress and that was that.
To be continued....
So... my neurosis...
Frankly, I don't even know what it is... It's not like my parents have ever taken me to a shrink or anything... They always thought I was completely normal... very quiet; reclusive; not liking conflict; but otherwise normal...
Actually, that's not true... my parents DID take me to a counselor once... but it wasn't really for me. They were having problems dealing with my sister and I was brought along to a session because obviously, being in the same house, all the fighting affected me as well.
I don't even know when the trouble started really. Was it when I was 2 and listening to Mom and Grandma screaming at each other in the driveway? Was it all those years of listening to Dad, Sis and Mom yell at each other. Was it watching Grandpa die and learning that yes, this was the way things had to be? Was it all the years after Grandpa died of having to listen to Grandma's bleeding heart syndrome and her thinking that just by being around, misery happened? Was it when Mom and Grandma had their final blow up on Mom's 40th birthday and then the years of having to listen to Grandma's "Good Christian" bullshit and blaming Mom for her own pigheadedness until if finally realized that it was okay to wash my hands of it? Was it the realization that I didn't have any actual friends until my sophomore year of high school and then having to listen to Mom tell me that they weren't really my friends, they were just using me because I had a driver's license and a car? Was it losing both Opa and Oma while I was away at college? Was it realizing that every path I wanted to follow in my life
always seemed to turn into a way for my parents to say "Yes, I could do this, this and this with that," or "You don't really want to do that because of this, this and this," or "What would you do with it if you succeeded"?
Or was it all the psychological conditioning? All the times I was told that "this" was the way things had to be. Or "you shouldn't get so excited about things." Or "You should be careful about who you say what around because someone might get the wrong impression. Or this is the real world, those things don't happen...
It's the last one that really gets me... Thanks to that last bit of training, I believe that I actually do have a pretty good sense of what is
and what is not reality. There's only one problem. I don't like the reality. See, Mom can believe in fairies, ghosts, whatever, but if I tell
her that I actually talk to them, well that's just not real. I'm making all that up. How do I know I'm talking to them and not just to myself? I
adamantly refuse to believe in a world devoid of magic. I actually think it sucks that I'm stuck in a world where magic isn't so potent in the
environment that you can smell it in the air or feel it against your skin. Deep in my soul, I know that were I anywhere else, I would be able to do things that defy all laws of physics... that there are things that I SHOULD be able to do but can't because I'm limited to THIS reality...
I'll continue this later... I have to get back to work.
I've been mulling over some stuff Esowolf and I've been discussing the last few days....
Mostly having to do with why I am the way I am...
Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into detail about it all right now... This is basically a place holder to remind me that, as the anniversary of this incarnation of Versemix comes closer, I've realized that once again, it's time for a re-evaluation of what's going on in my life and exactly why it is I'm so miserable...
Hey... I figure that if the Wighead can do it, so can I... Problem is I'm beginning to think that I'm maybe just a little more messed up than she is... and a LOT more messed up than I normally would like to admit to myself.
Basically what it all boils down to is trying to figure out when, exactly, it was that I stopped liking myself... or if I ever did... because I seriously can't remember a time when I had no regrets about how I've lived my life right now.
More on this later... Maybe tonight... maybe this weekend... definately, hopefully before I start PMSing and turning into a basket case again because I'd like to try and do some mulling of all this while I'm not in the middle of some huge hormonal imbalance... because that only makes things worse.