Where does the craziness start? When does it all begin? Is it the curiosity that gets to the kid?
Is it the angst? Is it the buzz? Is it the stories we hear about the parties that took place over the weekend? Is this the thing that leads us to wish that we were there?
Or, is it the feeling of being bad? Is it the adrenaline rush?
I think there could be an argument for all of the above.
Is it the attractiveness of being cool?
This is more like going faster than the speed of light and being twice as furious. Add this. Add the need for being noticed or included. Add the rage of a lightening bolt.
Is this it?
Is this why kids like being bad?
Ehen it comes to our personality, maybe there’s a different part that no one talks about.
And perhaps this could be ‘just “me” however, and after spending years with kids of different ages and from different backgrounds; and listening sessions where kids would be safe to talk and after hearing them speak honestly about the pressures they find, maybe this is about safety.
Maybe there’s a different degree of safety in being part of the wild ones.
Think about it . . .
No one ever picks on the crazy kid. Nobody messes with the bad-ass or the tough kid. However, and this goes back to the social food chains and the pecking order of the crowd – there are those who exhale so others can breathe in. Then there are those who inhale to steal the air from those who cannot defend themselves.
Survival of the fittest is real. So, if you can’t be fit then you’ll have to find some way to survive.
Otherwise, be aware of the predators and the prey around you. Or, hope the weaker of the two is closest by so that the rumor factories and gossip mills chew them up first before ripping you apart.
Perhaps this sounds harsh . . .
Maybe it is.
But that does not mean that this is not real or true.
I think the subject of one finding themselves is a subject that deserves to be looked into.
I think that truly mastering the art of oneself or understanding the truth of one’s identity is an ongoing trick. No one talks about this.
But it’s real.
I think it would be inaccurate to say that this type of thinking (or living) is limited to childhood or to the toys we have in the sandbox or the sneakers we wear on the playground at school.
Our toys definitely change as we grow older.
But still . . . Comparisons remain.
Status is real. So is envy and so are the different levels of insecurity. This is equally as real as the idea of keeping up with the Joneses when you move into a neighborhood or take on a new job at a firm. The person who dies with the most toys wins; as in, the one who dies with the most toys is supposedly seen as someone who had a better life – but ah, I have news for you.
Depression or any sort of mental health crisis does not regard your bank account or the color of your skin.
No, that’s just something people do.
No matter how rich or poor and no matter how successful or unsuccessful or what color, what God you pray to, or how influential a person may be, in the end, we all face the same death and we all fit inside the same sized box.
Hence, this is the inspiration behind this entry.
This life by comparison is only a mental game.
This is all a formed judgment in our heads yet this game is for real. Yes, this game can be for keeps. This game could also be deadly – if we’re not careful.
Me?
I wanted to have substance. I wanted to be wanted.
I wanted to be admired and to be worth looking at.
I never saw myself this way. Not at all.
Instead, I swore that I was ugly.
I swore that I was damaged goods.
I wanted to be pure. I wanted to be good and beautiful.
Instead, I saw myself as the opposite.
This is why I had to either compromise my worth by allowing myself to act or behave in a way that would do nothing other than degrade my truth.
I hated what I saw in the mirror.
I was not considered to be commercially beautiful.
I was afraid of being weak.
I was afraid to be the butt of someone’s joke or worse, I was afraid to be the laughingstock or that I would the last one to get the punchline. So, I learned to laugh, even if I had no idea what I was laughing about.
Mostly, I was afraid that in the end, I was the joke.
I was afraid that everyone who laughed was laughing at me.
So, then, I decided to take on a more defensive posture.
I decided to become more outward and out loud, as if to be so confrontational and dangerous that no one would dare to step towards me.
I decided to draw a line in the sand and affirm my boundaries with snarls and wild ideas, like living fast, or being so crazy that I was either revered or regarded. Thus, I would never be a mark or a victim ever again.
There was a night when I was drunk. I was just a kid yet I was aware enough to know that I was sinking down a hole and there was no way out for me.
I tried to break away from the crowd. I hid inside of a field where there was a skeleton of a stolen car, left like a wasted cadaver. I was crying. I was drunk. I was reeking of whatever it was that I drank and reeking from the vomit that hit my jacket.
I was sitting in the seat of a stolen car and feeling equally as robbed.
Out of nowhere, somehow, some of the pack found their way to the field and walked by the car to notice that I was there.
I had to act like I was tough. I certainly couldn’t show them that I was crying.
I allowed their imagination to assume that I had a stash that I was using and that I was more high or drunk and that’s why I split.
But no.
I was crying.
But I couldn’t let them see that.
“What the hell are you doing, sleeping in that car?”
I put on a brave face. I sucked it up.
I pulled out my flip-top lighter and then lit one of my smokes. I stood outside the car with the rest of my local, knucklehead friends. Then, without warning, I tossed the lighter with the flame still burning inside the front seat of the car.
This was my display of defiance. This was my way of incinerating the fact that I was crying and wasting the evidence of my tears, I lit the car on fire.
This was the mask that I hid behind.
No one would ever dare pick on me . . .
No bully alive would try me because if they did, I would revolt against them. I would inflict pain or revenge in some kind of brutal way that the fight I would bring, which would be both physical, hostile, and via the force of mental warfare, I swore that somehow, I would incinerate them too. I would have to find a way that I could inspire fear – so that no one could ever hurt me again.
But it was too late. I was too hurt and everything about me was raw to the touch.
Of course, this is what takes place when people live inside of their own mind.
The truth is, I was afraid.
And sure . . .
The drugs helped.
So did the booze.
So did the posture and the poses and the pretended layers of armor.
All of this helped – or, at least, so I thought.
I slipped into these dazes, long and wild and found myself inside some kind of alternate world, high as ever, on some kind of wacked out trip, for hours to keep my head in a place that was so different from the usual norm that happens inside an 8th Grade classroom with Mr. Paingozza.
By the way . . . I never got out of 8th grade math.
I never really got out of 9th grade if I’m being honest.
But that’s not what this is about.
This mask of mine or this shield and sword; this allowed me to find a place to hide or feel protected.
Think about this for a second.
I hid behind the politics and gestures of names and titles.
Think about the marketing that comes with the names of bottles of Jack Daniel’s or Southern Comfort. Think about the name Johnnie Walker, red, black or blue. Or Seagram’s 7, or the different brands of vodka.
Think about the branding of cigarettes.
Think about the packaging and coolness or the bad-ass feel we incorporate with a pack of smokes, or a carton of cigarettes – and even the lighter I used to have, which was the flip-top lighter that I was telling you about, and think about how all of this is within a certain style, as if to label me as a tough guy.
However, and in all reality, do you know who I really was?
I was a joke.
I was transparent. I was a scared kid and more, I never had the balls or the guts or the bravery to stand up to the world without the need to be defiant or to be influential. I never had what it took to stand out and simply be proud of me because of who I was (or am).
This is why people look to cling to different forms of image or personalities. For some reason, we wear these images and decorations, and we find ourselves dressed in a costume, as if to peacock or parade ourselves around. But more to the point, and in my case, more accurately, I was hiding in plain sight.
I would isolate myself, out loud, as if to be so wild or so insulting that no one dared to approach. To keep people at bay, I fashioned my style like knives, hidden in the lining of my jacket – I swore that I had to do this, just in case someone came too close or found their way through – then I could cut them loose without emotion or mercy, or I could slice them away and stab at the tendons of their own worst fears. I can scalpel at the strings of their weakness and insecurity because yes, and sadly, this is how angry and uncomfortable it was to be in my own skin.
I had to stab you. I had to kill you.
I had to incinerate the truth because otherwise, I would be exposed and worse –
I would be weak.
Where did this begin?
Why?
Was this avoidable?
Perhaps. . .
I have been asked if I had someone to talk to or if there was someone out there who understood or if someone could relate to me or somehow, if someone was around to take the burden away and make it be “okay’ for me to be me – would any of this have made a difference?
In short, my answer would be yes.
If I had a place to go or if I had someone who was capable of explaining myself to me, or if someone could talk in a way that I could understand, or if someone were to make sense, or if there was someone I could talk to who I didn’t have to explain anything and just speak with them – then yes, I am sure this would have been helpful.
This would have changed my life.
Yes.
If there was someone who could speak with me in a way that I was comfortable or that I was not scrutinized or criticized, or if there was someone out there who could have broken through the walls and bullshit barriers that I built to surround myself with; and rather than judge me; if there was someone who could have spoken with me, non judgmentally and in a way that would appeal to my heart as well as my senses then yes, I believe my life would have been different.
There was a class that was given down in Maryland. My reason for taking this class does not need to be mentioned here. However, the class itself was to assist in providing an employee assistance program to people who needed it in the workplace.
There as a presenter who I didn’t like and it was clear that he did not like me.
He disliked that I regarded the people I supported as clients. He insisted that they are not clients. “They are patients!” This was his point. I replied to him very sternly that since I am not a doctor and have no legal right to regard anyone as a patient, I refer to the people I support as clients – also, there is a different level of prestige which comes with the title of being a client as opposed to the label of being someone’s patient.
My role of support is not clinical; but more, I am an advocate and while speaking on a peer-to-peer level, the boundaries and levels of intimacy are different. Also, a client is regarded. A patient is noted as being sickly or in need of care. I would rather inspire and empower than place myself on a level above someone.
I explained that I have no time for an argument over semantics. I also explained my distaste for him, and quite obviously and out loud, I openly explained that this person is partly why I never chose to be a clinician.
“I never wanted to leave the good guys.”
A man sat next to me chimed in and said no.
“That person over there is exactly the reason why people need you to be a clinician.”
Although I appreciated the sentiment, I disagree in part because there is no real importance on me as a person, per se. However, I do agree that there needs to be a change in the dynamic when it comes to the way we speak with people of all ages as well as they way we speak to and treat our kids.
We need more understanding.
We need more of an equally interactive way to speak openly and non judgmentally.
We need to build bridges, not walls. However, we cannot be set up or used either.
At the same time, we need a helpful and understanding ear because yes, while it is our intention to help, there is also an inescapable fact that not everyone wants help.
Not ever person is reachable at the time.
It is also clear that manipulation is real and I can say that there are labels and titles and descriptions that we place on our children or other teens or people of all ages.
We have acronyms and labels and disorders and various definitions to which the glossary is getting bigger each year.
However, I remember being told that I was learning disabled.
Well, then this must mean that I am stupid . . . right?
I can’t learn, right?
Wrong.
However, I found ways to use the labels that I was given such as “depressed” or “emotionally disturbed” which, by the way, what benefit and what kind of doctor tells this to a 12-year-old kid?
(That doctor, by the way . . . if I knew where to find him, I’d give him a piece of my mind.)
I was labeled with different items to define or describe me.
Do you know what I did?
I used them as an excuse. I allowed this to fuel my social, educational and emotional laziness.
I used this in my favor. Sure, none of this was helpful but then again, I truly believed that I was beyond help because let’s look at this through the eyes of the labeled: why else would someone label me as defective?
I used excuses.
But not anymore.
Perhaps if I had someone when I was younger; perhaps if I had someone who was able to inspire me and empower me instead of labeling me; perhaps my childhood would have been different.
But it wasn’t.
Besides, I was just a kid, right?
What the hell did I know?
I knew plenty more than anyone thought. I just lacked the ability to voice myself or speak in a way that would convey my true self.
Perhaps if I had someone who was able to rid my from my own excuses –
maybe my life would have ben different.
But again, it wasn’t.
So, this is why I’m here.
What would I say to a 12-year-old who was told the same things that were said to me?
Don’t listen to them, son.
I know it’s tough. But then again, what the hell do I know, right?
I’m just an adult.
Right?
We’re too far apart to understand each other, is that right?
No, it’s wrong.
We just need to find our common ground.
At the same time, I’d tell the kid –
You’re right.
I don’t know what it’s like to live in your shoes or see life from behind your eyes.
But I do know this . . .
you are more than you think.
I’d say the following:
Please and with all my heart and with all that I have, trust me, you are going to save someone’s life someday.
You are going to open someone’s eyes, just because you were brave enough to be honest about things that no one ever talks about.
You being you . . . this will be lifesaving to someone else.
Nobody dares to be like you . . .
Yet, you do it so well and so easily and never see that this is beautiful.
I’m sorry to see this.
It hurts me, son.
Down to the core.
Now, I want you go out there and live your life without looking back or without thinking about the other kids in the crowd. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here for you. And if someone dares to bully you, I swear this with all that I have –
I’ll bite’em in the face for you, kid –
twice!
Because no one in the world has the right to destroy your beauty.
Not even you.
Understand?
I certainly hope so, kid, because the world needs more of you.
Not less.
The Written Addiction 