Philosophy of a Dumbass

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

A recurring comment I'll hear from my family members (more specifically, my mother and grandmother) is that I have a tendency to jump head-first into relationships, and make no mistake, I am aware that I'm a little impulsive when it comes to romance, but I feel like there's a more underlying reason than the typical "I hate being lonely" answer.

See, when I was growing up, my parents had countless fights with each other. Instead of talking it out and communicating like rational adults, they would scream, yell, and throw things until either one of them left the house, my mom would go into the bathroom to cry, or, by some miracle of God, it would just stop (this was a very rare circumstance, but it had happened before), and recently, I came to the heartbreaking realization that this may be the cause of my anxiety.

During these fights, I had nobody to show me the love I needed; apparently, my emotional wellbeing as a young boy was not as important as whatever they were fighting about. I would wake up in the middle of the night to their muffled shouting coming from the basement, and each time, I had a difficult decision to make: either I stayed in my bed and used my pillow to drown out the vocalized rampages my parents were on, or I went downstairs to intervene. After a few times using the latter strategy, I discovered that I was, in a sense, a special weakness for the both of them - by going downstairs in the midst of an argument, I inadvertently halted the furious disagreement simply by being present. For once in their angry, Godforsaken lives, they would finally stop yelling and cursing at each other and acknowledge that they had disrupted me at a very bad time (I mean, come on, awakening a sleeping child is a very risky thing to do; children's sleeping schedules are considered sacred and best untampered with).

My mother has also taken notice of my tendency to falsify stories (especially when the odds are against me), and while I understand that, as a mother, she wants me to always be honest with her, I commonly find myself hesitant to come clean about certain things. This is because of a sort of fear I possess. You see, when your single mother who is quick to anger pressures you to openly acknowledge sensitive information that you believe is best kept quiet, you begin to fear the unknown (will she yell? Will she kick me out of the house or disown me?). For the sake of this chapter, I will refer to this feeling of lingering dread as "teenager's intuition."

For example, imagine you had depression and anxiety, and while your depression may cause you not to care enough about things, your anxiety causes you to worry a lot (this is something I personally deal with myself). Now, imagine that, while you're struggling with these "inner demons" of yours, a person at school has started bullying you - be it physically, emotionally, or otherwise. You find it much to difficult to properly handle these emotions, and you don't want to let your parents know because you're afraid the bully will find out and subsequently make your life a living hell, so in a spur-of-the-moment decision, you decide to start cutting. As the number of scars increases over time, you begin to worry about how your parents will interpret it. You worry that they'll scold you, yell at you, try to convince you you're "just doing it for attention" (this is a very dangerous assumption to make when faced with these situations). As a result, your anxiety tells you to stop cutting, but your depression overwhelms you and you cut more. I may not cut, but I feel unable to safely and confidently communicate with my family because, from my perspective, it seems as though they have a tendency to either misinterpret what I say, overreact when they shouldn't (ultimately making things worse), or just downright ignore me, depending on the situation.

My family will also tell you that I don't have very good friends. This comment stems from incidents I've experienced that these "friends" had orchestrated. The most obvious of these incidents is the time I was pepper sprayed.

Now, I suppose pepper spraying me is only one thing on a pretty long list of things this "friend" has subjected me to (he had also introduced me to marijuana, which - I'm sorry Mom and Dad - was a pretty cool experience), but this one sticks out simply for being both a spontaneously irrational and extremely dangerous stunt. At that moment in time, I was genuinely afraid of going blind, and while I may not have 20/20 vision, I'd much rather not lose my eyesight entirely to a stupid prank (if you can even call it a prank).

I have a lot of friends with whom I joke around. We may call each other names, say something insensitive, and blurt profanities, but that's just in our nature. As teenagers, we're going to express our gratitude using childish humor and jokes that would likely get me publicly hanged in some countries without a second thought. There have been, however, times where I found myself questioning the authenticity of my friends, and sometimes I was reading too much into it, but other times, my suspicions had proven to be reasonable.

Now, regarding the friend who pepper sprayed me... I can't bring myself to hate the guy. Why I still consider him a friend, that isn't a simple question to answer, but I suppose it's because I see a little bit of myself in him. A semi-rebellious teenager, striving to be the best he can be and doing his best to make something of himself and enjoy life to the fullest.

As I pointed out in the introduction, I have a fear of other people's personal opinions of me. This makes it somewhat difficult for me to make new friends and expand my friend group; my fear is that somebody may have an opinion of me that isn't quite positive, but hides it and pretends to like me to make me feel good - I'd really prefer they don't, because in the end, that's only going to make me feel worse about myself.

There are people who despise me with whom I'd really like to make up; in fact, there's one specific person who's held quite a grudge against me since the fourth grade, and I honestly can't blame them - I despised my fourth grade self, and quite truthfully, I still kind of do. In case that person is reading this, I want to issue a sincere apology for my absolutely ludicrous behavior. They did not deserve to be subjected to such treatment, and if they'd rather not forgive me, or even acknowledge me as an existent human being, I completely understand. I can't directly change anybody's personal outlooks on me as a person - the only thing I can change is myself and hope for the best.

Perhaps a formal apology will not suffice, but I don't see the harm in trying.