My whole life . . .
I have always wanted to be someone.
Of course, my words may come up short when I say this, but I have always wanted to be someone.
I want to do something more than just live an average life.
I have always wanted to do more than an average or an everyday thing. This is not about pride or ego or needing to be better than anyone else.
No, I can’t say that this is anything more than I have always wanted to “be!”
I’ve always had the drive. I’ve always had passion, but I have also lived a very real life. Sure, I have survived moments that have muted and dulled an otherwise brilliant truth, which is me.
I never told anyone about my love for poetry. I never told anyone about my poems or my desire to be a writer, which I still hope to be—at least someday.
I suppose that my worries and fears about my learning delays, or the fact that I could hardly read well at all, let alone, the humiliation that came when I was stuttering as a kid and forced to read in front of the classroom, or aside from the crippling beliefs that evolve with bullying, or let’s not forget about the common cruelties that I found among other kids, and not to mention the belief that, at best, I was only stupid. If these beliefs were true and if everything I thought about myself were true, then how could I ever be someone that could create anything, or build, or do something extraordinary?
This is my early or childhood trauma, which bubbled over and flooded into my young adulthood, and even my later and professional years.
This is life when life implodes in the mind and insecurity turns us against ourselves.
This is the stressful battles which come from within, which may or may not be real; however, since I believed that all of this was real, then of course, this was all real to me.
I always wanted to be someone.
I wanted to stand up and be counted. Or if anything, I always wanted to count, or mean something. I have always wanted to mean something or to leave something meaningful behind.
But—
Who would care what I have to say?
Anyone?
Why would anyone listen to me?
I suppose life has a way of suppressing dreams and otherwise, I can see how people find it easy to settle or compromise their passion. I see why people take a trade, just to have something, which is better than having nothing at all.
Who would love me?
Who would like me?
Who would listen?
Who would care?
Why would I be able to create something so different?
Why would I be able to do anything extraordinary?
There is a common question that I have heard from people. I have been asked this question, usually from parents who worry about their children.
The question is simple with an answer that dovetails into several parts.
What made you want to get high?
How’d you let yourself get like that?
Again, this is an answer that dovetails into many parts.
However, speaking from the narrative within, I have always wanted to be more. I have always wanted to feel more too, which is not wrong.
Not by any means.
At the same times, I am the man within. I am my thoughts. I am the collective assumptions and the streaming dialogue to which I can either be healthy or sick, crazy or sane.
I wanted more. I wanted to be someone but my doubts that I could achieve anything better than mediocrity were debilitating to say the least.
I never wanted to accept less.
But I never believed that I deserved more.
I thought I needed an edge. I thought that I needed a mask, or something more than my truth or my character, so, I thought that I would have to adapt and embellish and somehow alter who I am or how I felt.
The idea of being a bad ass was attractive to me.
This was something that came after the insecurity took place. This was a defense. Not to mention the image and the stance, or the overall look, or the character and mysterious appeal of being cool—or whatever that means, and the James Dean appeal or to be the dark horse, in all, i knew I wanted to be something.
But how?
I’ve always wanted to be cool. At the same time, I’m not sure if I ever knew what “cool” is.
I know what I thought.
I knew about the different crowds and the different social chapters of people.
I knew that I wanted to be wanted.
I wanted to be more appealing, to which, in fairness, I tried to perfect my stance.
I tried to perfect the way I would lean against the wall or hold my cigarette.
I was never comfortable with the way I look. I was never happy with my body. I never saw myself as ugly or hideous, but more so, I thought I was average at best.
Better yet, I believed that I was only deserving of being average. Therefore, I never believed that I would be able to find love that was better than average. And I would say the same about beauty, and if I did, well?
I never believed that anyone so beautiful or loving would ever love me, at least if they did, they would never be there for long.
What does this have to do with getting high?
Well, in fairness, this has more to do with feeling awkward and uncomfortable.
This has more to do with the misunderstanding of “self,” and even more, this has everything to do with our thoughts, and our thinking errors. This is about our insecurities which creates a belief system that we will never have what we want. By the way, this is why we settle for less or accept a life that is less than average.
This is why we accept less than what we dream for because otherwise, we find ourselves stuck with the fear that we will never have the life we want.
No, at best, we can only have the life we have, which is subpar, and all the while all we can do is pray for glimpses of hope that bubble to the top.
I settled for trades.
I never believed in myself or my abilities.
I still do not do public readings and I am still struggling with old conflicts that no longer exist.
Do you see?
This is why I accepted trades or looked for the quick fixes or the fast-paced adrenalin highs. I took the risks and signed on the dotted line without reading the contract.
This is what happens when we get high.
This is the contract we sign when we do something fleeting or quick, just to get a rush. Let’s not forget the back-end of the contract and the disclaimer, like the lows and the fallouts, and the consequences we face which vary depending upon our levels of engagement.
Little risks return with little rewards.
However, in the games of blood and guts or when it comes to feeling high and the drug culture, or when we talk about something above the low-level or more recreational substances, and as we move towards the more deliberate or the more habitual and dangerous substances, we forget how we signed up for this and we certainly forget about the trades that we agreed to.
There is something to this.
This goes beyond substances or substance abuse and alcohol abuse disorders. This can be said about life or the relationships we settled upon. This can be said about any unfair settlement in life because, somehow, we allowed for a trade.
We forfeited our desires and dreams because we had to fill the void before the void grew any deeper.
This is what happens when we allow our hopes and aspirations to drown in thin air. But more, this is what stems from a poor assumption of self. Hence, this is what happens when we lack the belief that we can achieve our dreams.
This is what happens when we are consumed by the ideas that pleasure is impossible.
Or worse, this is when we find out about the consequences of the contract.
We find out that compromising our dreams will only lead to a resentful outcome to which, one day, we wake up and we look around.
We wonder what happened.
We wonder what happened to our life.
Or maybe we wonder what happened to us.
Maybe we see ourselves in the mirror.
Or maybe we can hardly recognize who we are because we failed to take care of ourselves.
This is what’s called a moment of awareness.
And be advised:
Awareness comes to us in different ways. Had it not been for a series of recent events and moments of awareness, perhaps, I might not have thought about the need to find my euphoria or to begin this journal. This has nothing to do with drugs or being high.
If anything, this is more about being happy.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
I admit that I wasted a lot of time.
But I’m here.
I’m here now and whether I am alone or whether I am starting over, or starting from scratch, broke, rich, or if I am out of place; the fact remains that I took the challenge in front of me.
I chose to face the roots of my thinking. I chose to label and to define them.
I want to understand these roots. I want to know where they go, where they came from, and above all, now that I have found them, I want to uproot them and to rid myself of the weeds that keep my life from blossoming forward.
Are you ready?
Think . . .
Let’s start here:
What are your setbacks?
What causes your doubts?
What triggers the ideas of your deepest insecurity and like I was asked, quite simply and also brilliantly, what do we do to keep ourselves from believing the worst?
There are no shortcuts.
There are no quick fixes and there is no easy way out.
“The only way to it is through it,” or so I am told.
I have been facing down my demons recently.
I still have them and they still speak to me often. Only, they change their accent from time to time, to keep me guessing.
I have been thinking about the eye-opening events which have taken place.
Furthermore, I understand that reactionary living can lead us to treating the heart attacks after they happen. Oftentimes, this means it can be too late.
So?
I don’t want to be too late anymore.
I don’t want to be reactionary.
First
I have to deconstruct my thinking and my thought process.
I have to identify my thinking errors and erase my old and biased assumptions.
I can’t live in the past.
I don’t want to sign the wrong contracts or take a deal, just so that I have something. I have done this before because in the past, I assumed that something was better than nothing —
But this is what happens when you take a deal and settle.
This is what happens when you agree to unfair contracts which come at you with a high interest rate, and an attractive loan. But be careful.
They get you with a flashy offer and they kill you with the fine print because when you hope for more, and you only get less—don’t worry, the dealers come to find you with a new product and a brand-new stack of lies to seal your fate.
Oh, and as for the dealers . . .
I don’t just mean this from a drug perspective.
I mean this from a settlement perspective.
There is always going to be a deal on the table which looks good, up front, and they’ll get to you with short-term promises that seem pretty nice.
But short-term contracts give short-term solutions.
And me?
I want more.
I want the dream. I want to become a writer.
I want to be the person that I have always wanted to be.
I want to be happy,
nothing more,
nothing less.
Know what I mean?
The Written Addiction 