Isn't it amazing how your circumstances can change in an instant?
One minute your outlook provides very little (if any) indication of improvement, the next minute you find yourself on a collison course with that which you had so tirelessly sought..
Funny really how things can change from one picture to the next...
For weeks now, months, years really I have sought to prove of myself for myself, to learn from myself to learn more of myself, depending solely upon me to do/attain/have for me because I at one point I found myself lost in life, where I truly had no clue of who I really was as a person. I tried to and eventually became the type of person, the type of son, the type of brother, husband, and friend that I felt those around me wanted to be. I lived up the expectations of others, I went outside of my box and willingly placed myself in the multiple boxes that I allowed myself to placed in. Well, I think I'm closing to rediscover something beautiful I almost left behind.
Who was I doing that for?
Myself or everyone around me?
Selflessly or selfishly?
I didn't know...shit...I didn't care...all I knew is that doing so did two things. Made people happy ahd kept people off my back. I found a way to quiet what I percieved as disappointment & rejection in return for affection & acceptance...All the while small bits and pieces of myself slowly started dwindled away. I didn't have to be perfect, I just had to be who and what worked. Keeping myself, my true thoughts, and my truest of feeling as secrets in a way that only I could keep. There were times when I felt ashamed of myself for not being myself, until eventually I began to quiet even that part of myself. Hmmmphhh..I shut off my own voice in order to hear the voices of others that much more clearer.
But why?
Maybe I was afraid...petrified..no...I was afraid and petrified of being the outcast as an adult that for the most part I was when I was a child.
You see when you are a child and you are 'that child' adults around you constantly refer to as "gifted, talented, and prodigy", other children refer to as "special, weird, nerdy", you run the risk growing into the type of adult that other adults consider to be "crazy, cooky, or suffer from one form of personality or physicalogical disorder or another...if not both" for the types of thoughts you have and share.
That child that adults label you as, with those terms, although they may not be aware, have a permanent affect all the into your adulthood. Those labels and terms that once cast upon, you act as both a your shield and your stain forever, change you... permanently. Many people are unaware of what it feels like, to always be the person who thinks like. Few people are really able to fully understand what life is like when you always feel as though you have to live up to some sort of expectation, those expectations. As a result you waste a lot of time finding ways to limit or dosage out who are really are and how you really are.
As a child your childhood is sort of juggling act at a circus. Everything you do, everything you say, every paper/test/quiz/instrument/talent show/sport becomes more than what it is for everyone else. You do good and well that's just you being you, you do bad and everything before is scrutinized and subject to criticism. Equally in a way all of it haunts you. You're grades aren't just grades..there the proof. Your behavior isn't that of a child is that of a functional or dysfunctional child. Your personality, temperament, and actions are almost always subject for review. The child prodigy, that's what you become. You do all you can to not show your friends and other kids because you know what happens to those kids. So you keep it to yourself for the most, show in class and get sent to office while everyone is working because you've already completed the assignment, test, and or homework. You pick on those kids, while knowing you are one of those kids because you know how the game is played. It's even tougher when you have older siblings who are years and grades above you who just look at you as the youngest one of the family, the baby. Little do they know that when they are out with friends, sleeping, or in the shower you're sneaking into their room reading their school books, and sneaking peeks at their homework because you know that if you ask you'll be told you too young to understand....little do they know.
As you grow from childhood to preteen to teenager you spend your time showing, showing, showing them all what you can do. Test after test, subject after subject your focus shifts from what your dreams where to dreaming of more ways of proving. You're not really sure why, you just know that something within you prompts you to do so. You show your parents because you feel that's the only way you'll get them to show you affection. You know the only way to get your dad to open up is to sit right by his side when is tearing down electronics and building them back up, take mental notes of everything he does, every keystroke when he is programming computer codes, learn everything that he knows night after night after night without asking a single question because you know that the moment you do it's off to bed. You hold a grudge against your mom for you dying you the once in a lifetime opportunity to go to one of the best colleges in the state of California if not the world, because she felt that you wouldn't be able to handle it, so you learn, learn everything..everything that everyone around you is doing, knows, and doesn't know. As an act of vengeance you scale back your efforts, do less school work and homework, yet ace every test because you did the math and know just what you need to do to pass. In a way it takes the pressure off...for a little while anyway, that is until no matter how hard you try to contain the way your mind works, it begins leak it out more and more until it's just who you are...pretty much who you've become.
As an adult you feel so compelled to prove, to invent, to create...to fucking do....any and everything you can possibly think of...not for money or fame...but for comfort. Self comfort. You become a person who must have challenges. Challenges in your daily life, challenges in your career, challenge upon, upon challenge. Because without them you start to question and feel as though you are wasting. Question if they were right or wrong. Are you what they thought you were when you were a child? Question whether or not it really was/is a matter of your being intelligent or severely misdiagnosed? Question the thoughts you have, the ideas..where do they come from? Why is it that at times it feels as though you're only person you know like you? Question if you still have "it" or if "it" was just something you made up in your head. And if all those answers are the same as they have always been, have you been and are you still wasting what you were born with.
I firmly believe that thus far each stage of my life has been filled with it's share of highs and lows as a result of what some would consider as the consequential outcomes of improper approaches, guidance and mentoring. However I do not now nor have I ever considered there to have been any lack of such, that I am aware or, and could never lean on such as an excuse for any past, present, or future failures. I really think that at the time, those around me truly did not understand how differently I viewed and understood the world around me. Shit for all I know I could very well have been just as insane and disturbed as a child (now adult), as thought be intelligent, bright, or gifted.
What I do know is that the world is and always has been different for me, people are different to me, life is different to and for me which I it always seems as though I am the one who comes across...different. For the most part I have always had to teach, learn, adjust, and apply my far opposite self in more normal and common manner than most people I have ever met or meet . And for a long time I have felt as though that has both helped and hindered a lot the things that I have done, do now, and will do in the future in all areas of life.
I can tell you that there are times when I honestly do not know. I can tell you that there are times when I wonder what it's like to think like other people. I can tell you that there are days when my mind is so full of thoughts that I am bursting to share while at the same time empty because I have no one to share them with. Almost everyday of my life lately I have sat here at some point dreamt, imagined, and wished that I for one moment...one day I were free. Free to do everything that I have ever thought of, free to carry out every idea I have pictured..written down..typed...shared. If for nothing else but to see what the result(s) would be. Maybe that day will come, maybe it will not. Maybe there is bigger reason and greater purpose that I have yet to stumble across or figure out. I guess only time will tell.
But until then...when I find myself frustrated with a bad trading day, stuck for words to complete that next sentence of one of my writings, or shackled by some other momentary lapse. I'll do what I've always done, sit back in the moment and examine all the ugliness until I recognize once again all the beauty I seek.