I need to go back to the idea we talked about in the beginning. I need to go back to that question I asked in one of my Sunday morning empowerment groups.
Do you remember it?
If you could go back in time and give your younger self a piece of advice, what age would you pick to revisit and what would your advice be?
I think about this question often as well as the answer from a young man who had a legitimate gang affiliation.
He chose the age of twelve.
His advice: Listen to your Mother!
I am sending this entry to the kids out there who find themselves alone or misunderstood.
I offer this to the ones who believe in the impending doom that takes place in their head and how this will always be impending, or that nothing gets better, or that life is just too fucked up to handle
or deal with . . .
I offer this to the kid who is silent yet they have so much to say but for some reason, they lack the ability to explain themselves or the words to describe the thoughts in their heads.
I write this for those who deal with the daily ideas of loneliness or for those who find themselves in the snares of their own thoughts that betray them, or to those who think that nothing makes sense, and everything seems to be heading in the wrong direction.
Always . . .
I write this for the kids who find themselves on the constant verge of catastrophe, or who worry all the time, and for those who anticipate the worst to the point where anxiety is all they understand—and this is also for the ones who want to find help, but lack the ability to reach out to anyone or they fail to open their own cage and set themselves free.
I would like to offer this:
I want to offer the idea that the things that grip you, or hold you back, or the things that are tearing you apart inside or the ideas in your head that assume everything is a tragedy are more temporary than you think.
The things that grip you now cannot grip you or hold you forever.
Everything turns and changes and the ideas in your mind or those “worst case scenarios” are going to change. Trust me.
I remember when I was young . . .
Mom always tried to tell me these things.
But I would never listen.
My Father was less patient with me about this. He was a man’s man, or so they say.
He grew up differently. The Old Man came from hard times and lived in a time when the world was a much different place. So, in my best assumptions, The Old Man could not relate to me. Not at all. Besides, how would they know what it felt like to be me?
How could anyone possibly understand the thoughts in my head?
There is a saying which I have adopted as my own –
“They can’t kill you forever!”
I had to take this on and let this put steel in my spine.
However, at one point in my life, I would have disagreed.
I would have begged to differ.
Maybe no one can kill you forever, but they certainly can try.
I swore that all the intensities and all of my problems would never stop, or that there would always be something to deal with or some kind of tragedy on the way.
I never believed in the ideas of peace or living peacefully. No, I thought I was always doomed. Thus, my ideas always kept me in preparation for war.
This is anxiety.
Or is it depression?
The question is no different from the age-old, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
I had doctors who told me that I wasn’t depressed and that I was anxious, and because I was anxious, I was depressed.
Then, I had other professionals who assigned my problems in another direction. They said that I was depressed and that I was anxious because I was depressed.
I had no idea which came first, the chicken or the egg.
I just knew that I couldn’t live like this.
I was always in the red and always in high-alert.
This is when the committees in my head take on the assumptions of danger.
I’d think:
The sky is falling.
The world is coming apart.
That sort of thing . . .
The mind is a crazy thing. Then again, maybe it’s not so crazy.
Maybe this is more common than we think.
Maybe?
I have gone through different parts of my life and entered my thoughts in different journals. Each time, I find myself moving towards a better level of understanding and more, I find that there is a disconnect between us as people.
I think there needs to be a new dynamic in the way we treat each other.
We need to listen more.
I think that first and foremost, people look to say the right things or act as if they know or understand.
I think people listen to have answers instead of listening to hear.
People want to be “the one” who gets it and meanwhile, there’s no reason for this.
No, this is more self-serving than helpful.
This makes another person’s crisis about them and shifts the focus of importance on them—and not the person in crisis.
And kids?
As old as I am and with gray hairs to prove my age, I’m still a kid at heart.
But that’s not my point.
Kids . . .
They have hard times too.
Just like us.
They have moments of shame or bouts with chaos.
They have a core just like adults have a core and the same as we want to be respected and validated or heard and listened to, kids have the same needs.
I have been asked if I had someone like me to talk to when I was younger, would I have listened to me?
My answer is yes.
I can say this because there was a time that rehabilitation was mandatory and while my problems were at the adult level, I was still just a kid.
I was still wet behind the ears.
However, the people who helped me the most are the ones who talked the least and listened more.
Everyone has a need to be right and to be heard. However, when you’re a kid or when you find yourself interacting with adults who think they know better—because they’ve obviously been there or done that, it’s hard to be honest or open up to someone who cancels thoughts or feelings by telling people what they know.
It’s hard to speak with someone when you’re expecting to be spoken to be someone of authority—and meanwhile, there is no person-to-person conversation.
There’s nothing relatable, just directional.
But how does this help?
Why speak to someone if there’s always an assumption that “I’m wrong anyway,” right?
In my times of need, I needed someone to listen to me. I needed someone to help me. I needed someone to help me come to my own realizations and conclusions—but at the same time, I spoke to people who were telling me what to do or what to think and how to feel.
That was a problem for me.
I was speaking with people who would either dictate or determine what I should say, think, do or feel.
Yes, there are times that I wished I listened to my Mother. There are also times that I wished I listened to The Old Man. However, in the worst of times, I wished that there was someone out there who listened to me.
Get it?
I believe that people do have the need to be heard. I think that people have the need to be right as well, which means that nobody wants to be wrong.
Rather than direct me or dictate and determine my thoughts or feelings and instead of preaching or speaking to me (rather than with me), I needed to be heard.
I needed to be acknowledged and understood.
I needed to come to my own understanding.
No one else could do this for me.
The problem was –
I had too many people telling me that I was just a kid.
I’m not a kid anymore.
I have never told anyone that they’re just a kid.
And I never will.
The only thing I’ll ever say when someone younger opens to me up about their wars or private battles is this, “They can’t kill you forever!”
I am not as worried about the things that I was afraid of at this time last year. No, I have different fears but equally, I have different successes too because somehow, I have successfully stayed on my own two feet—even when I swore that I could never take another step.
What does this make me?
Does this make me strong?
Well, maybe.
But more than anything, this makes me human.
This makes me someone who is capable of learning.
Everyone is going through something in their life.
It doesn’t matter how old they are, or where they come from, what they look like, or whether they are cool, popular, an outcast, or stigmatized with some kind of diagnosed label.
It doesn’t matter how old we are. It doesn’t matter what we know or what our experience has taught us.
Yes . . .
I should have listened to my Mother.
And to my Father.
And to a lot of people.
But at the same time –
I needed someone to listen to me.
Know what I mean?
The Written Addiction 