Reality checks

This topic was created in the Miscellaneous forum by HeavyEntertainmentShow on Sunday, August 19, 2018 and has 24 replies.

HeavyEntertainmentShow

@HeavyEntertainmentShow

Signed Up: Jan 30, 2017
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I hope someone somewhere learns from all this. When they say we're our own worst enemy, they couldn't be more right. Even moreso, the denial we choose to adopt as an approach to every difficult situation in life. The little white lies we tell ourselves so we can feel better do far more harm than good. Because, reality is set in stone, and sooner or later it will slap you in the face like a cold fish. When that happens, you better hope you are sitting down.

Once you conquer yourself by facing every teeny weeny dark corner in your mind and your heart, seeing exactly how it all looks beyond the denial and the white lie-rationalizations we make to lessen the blow, the awakening you experience is indescribable. My explanation for my emotional inconsistency went mostly like this:

It's easy for anyone to make assumptions when, on paper, we're complete opposites. You're a 21yo beautiful, fiercely competitive multi-talented 5 star athlete, and I'm a 33yo (ridiculously handsome) damaged introvert. You were literally just a kid when we met, yet we got along like a house on fire from day 1. I'm your first serious relationship and you're my third. So theoretically I'm supposed to be the more experienced one, but that's definitely not the case. For starters, all 3 of you are completely different people. So experience automatically goes out the window.

I was just your age when I fell in love for the first time, with Matt. I was only 23 when I got my heart broken. And when I got raped, it was the straw that broke this camel's back and I completely shut down. I was just 24 with my whole life ahead of me, but instead all I could do was emotionally shut down to make sure I wasn't the next mass shooter people read about in the papers. You've already seen what happens when I "pop off".

It's one thing to withdraw from the world when you lose faith in people after a failed marriage, it's quite a different thing to be shocked into it by experiencing one of the worst possible traumas there are. I didn't get to have a proper childhood because of my fucked parents, and this robbed me of my 20s. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. I'm not making excuses for myself, I'm simply stating facts.

It's easy for people to say "yes all this did happen but noone forced you to do anything at gunpoint later on, you chose to withdraw from the world", to which I say unless you've gone through the same thing yourself you couldn't possibly understand how it affects the way you think. The fear & the uncertainty are overwhelming. Your entire world disappears in a flash and it's replaced by a much uglier place. What you thought you knew no longer applies, you become a very suspicious person and you feel like every person you meet is a demon in disguise. You have to harden up if you want to survive.

It's extremely hard to shake it off and find a reason to keep living, but that's exactly what you were and still are to me. I was no longer as withdrawn as I was the first 2-3 years, which means I wasn't as fired up as I used to be, which means I no longer had that willingness to go on. Once that anger and that fire is gone, what else is left? I was just an empty vessel, until the day a beautiful young man walked into my life looking for music material to play around with.

Even though I'm 33 now, my emotional development stopped at 24. Beyond that, all I experienced was anger and bitterness. So I'm hardly an expert on handling other fluffy feelings. Even as a kid, I couldn't fully explore and express myself when I was a gay boy in a family of homophobes. So when I feel, it's unadulterated and full-on, almost like my heart is making up for lost time.

Beyond that, I'm just like everyone else.

I can be an adorable cherub

and I can be Lucifer

but it's the side that we choose to nurture the side that defines us. You've known me long enough by now to know what you're in for. I'm not perfect, noone is. It's upto you to decide if my good outweighs my bad.

I'd like to be able to say this was easy, but dissecting yourself never is. You can only hope you're strong enough to handle what lies beneath all the layers. What I learned from this extremely difficult experience is that being true with yourself is how you can really move forward. If there are aspects of yourself in need of improvement, then you need to take a long hard look at them. Downplaying it only makes it worse.

I wouldn't call my violent side something that needs to be fixed, because we all have the right to defend ourselves. And I'd rather defend myself and my loves ones than let myself and them get hurt. Wind blows, fire burns & I bite when poked. Beyond that, it's not like I walk around smacking people. I'm pretty chill for the most part. I don't have much of an ego, and I just want to be appreciated & treated accordingly. It's not much to ask.

I do love pretty hard though. I feel everything. But, is it a character flaw or a character feature? Therein lies my homework.

Reality checks

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