I had a conversation last night with my mom about something that was said to her at my cousins wedding. I didn't attend the wedding, so it had nothing to do with me being there. It did however raise a topic that I have been meaning to write about for a while now. Something that I feel I need to explain.
Just what I am.
Let me start off by telling you a story. In 3rd grade, at the end of the year we had a vote. There were different things that we all had to vote on. Who was the best athlete, the smartest person, etc. and we all had to vote for another person in the class. I remember that one of the categories was "The funniest person". I had it in the bag. I knew I was going to win it.
I didn't.
I won the "happiest person who always has a smile".
I was pissed about it. I didn't want to be known as the happiest. I wanted to be the funniest. I couldn't believe that people didn't find me funny. I thought that being the happiest was a horrible thing to be. What was funny to me was that I wasn't happy. A lot of my childhood I battled depression. Even at a young age. I don't know why. I look back on it now and don't even know a lot of the reasons why I was unhappy. I was a happy child though. I had a good life. But I struggled with one thing. Friendship. I was never happy with my friends. I took it really personal when friends fought with me or did things to me. We were just kids, but I took it so personal. I never had a vengeance towards anyone. I never wanted to fight with friends, I never wanted to do things to other people that could make them upset or sad. It was a thought process that just didn't exist. I wanted to have fun with my friends. I wanted to play. I wanted to have adventures. I wanted to dream. I didn't get angry or mad when friends betrayed me. I got sad. I got hurt.
After the end of my 5th grade school year, one of the most devastating things in my childhood occurred. I moved to a new town. I had a really hard time with it. I didn't want to make new friends. I didn't want to be in a new situation. I was scared out of my mind. I had never had to go out and MAKE friends before. My sisters and I had grown up in the same neighborhood as long as my memory allowed and played with the same kids, knew the families, etc. Moving to a new city really frightened me. Then I got braces. It wasn't turning out to be a good 6th grade year. But then I found out I wasn't the only new kid in my class. There were a couple. Some fear was relieved. But I still struggled with creating friendships. This was also when I obtained my first bully. But I won't go into that because I will save it for a later blog. It remained this way for a while. After a year in 6th grade at an elementary school, I was to repeat the process by moving on up to Jr. High.
Fast forward to the end of my junior year. My parents were struggling financially and we lost our house. My dad had lost his job. My mother had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis a year earlier. We hit it rough. I was comfortable with my life at that time, I still struggled with friendships and such, but I had it under enough control for me to be ok with it. That's when my past came back and hit me. My parents informed me that we would be moving to another town. A small town. Before we had just moved to the next town over. It was a 10 minute drive to my old neighborhood. Now we were moving an hour away up in the canyon. I was going to be far away from everything I found familiar. I didn't react well to the news. I took it and held it in for a while, until I bursted into rage and emotion and tried to fight my dad. I physically tried to get into an altercation with him while bursting into tears and yelling. He would just block my arms and try to grab me and hold me tight. Looking back on it now, I feel terrible about it. I probably said awful things and was being very selfish about the matter. I didn't see things from his point of view because I was a child. He lost his job. Lost his house that he spent over a decade saving up for. His wife, and my mother, had a terrible disease that was unknown and new to all of us. The years she spent going to college and finally had a great career she had to quit because of the disease. They lost so much. I was just losing my comfort zone and being exposed to a new situation that I didn't like. I don't blame myself too much, because I was just a kid. I was 16. So let's fast forward again.
I didn't graduate high school. I worked really hard trying to make up for the bad, well not bad grades....non-existent grades. I wasn't able to make up enough credits to graduate. So I failed. I had started being close friends with a band that I had met before I moved. They became best friends. We moved back to my original hometown and now as an 18 year old, I wasn't bothered with school. I did what I wanted. I found a job, and then quit that job to go on tour through the midwest states with the band that I had become friends with. We were kids still. The youngest in the band and I became super close. He was still in high school at that time. I was older than him. But we still had the maturity of kids. Just teenagers. Even though we were close friends, there were some flaws in the relationships. I was their tech guy. I was their bitch. I helped them out. They were the stars. They were on the stage. I was behind the scenes. Because I was there for them, I was also the butt of their jokes a lot of the time. I didn't take it too personal, but it did have a lot of effects on my self esteem and my own confidence. I had a falling out with them and was "friendless". One of the reasons why I struggled with this was during those teenage, young adult years was because of the females. It was hard to find a girl who was interested in me. The social situations that I was in, involved girls being interested in the band friends. Another hit to my confidence. After this falling out with those friends, I hung around a female friend who helped me gain confidence. She was an only child and had a different view on a lot of things. She helped me see things from a different perspective. I gained a lot of self confidence and self identity. I started viewing myself and my role in the world very differently. This friend of mine is very important to me, and it can be confusing to people about our relationship considering they are of the opposite sex. But it never was a romantic relationship. Never has either of us ever wanted it to be that. We were close like brother and sister. She was the first person to really treat me how I expected to be treated as a friend. She had a lot of respect for me and I for her. This is not to put any of my past or current friends down. I am not saying that. So please don't get offended.
I started living life differently. I began looking at things different and going after things I didn't use to think would be obtainable. Whether that be friendships, jobs, ideas, girls, etc. I was unstoppable. I had a lot of self confidence. I saw that I was a happier person because of that. I was super confident with girls. But I was real. I wasn't cocky and just went after them and disrespected them. I was down to earth, genuine, and formed relationships with girls. Even if I had sex with a girl without the intent to date that girl, I still was friendly, genuine, and didn't make them feel used. It was something that happened between us. We became close, became physical, and that was the end of it. There were a lot of girls that I became interested in, got physical with them once or twice, but realized we were better as friends and still have that possibility to be.
So I became confident in me. But I learned a lot of things from my past. I was used to being the butt of the joke, but not comfortable with being the butt of someone else's joke. So I started to make the joke on myself before anyone else could. I began to laugh at myself. I sort of always did this, but in the past I did it to hide my depression. So I was a happy kid on the outside, because I was always trying to get others to laugh about something I said about me. But it wasn't until I was older that I was able to behave and notice it at a different level.
I will always put myself down before putting anyone else down. I will make a joke about myself first. Always. I took away a lot of filters that I use to cling to. I live by shock value. My dad hates it. But in my head, I take uncomfortable or new situations to get people past that. So many times people have told me that when introducing new people to me, that they had to "warn" them about me. Not in a bad way. I'm just not what people expect and when meeting people for the first time, or when a group of friends and I go to a new setting or situation, I am the one of tries to ease that tension. I will take all the tension upon myself. Sometimes I do that in shocking ways. I don't use the best language. I travel into subjects that people avoid. I have no filter.
That doesn't mean I do not have respect.
If you know me, you know what I meant in that last paragraph. I will never say or do anything with the intention of hurting someones feelings or offending someone. Though my words or actions may be shocking and out there, if I were to offend or hurt someone I would do everything within my power to fix that. I do things to make other people comfortable or to laugh. Do I think I am funny? Of course. I am the funniest person I know. Do I expect others to find me funny? Not in the slightest. My goal is not to be the funny one. My goal is to have people around me be happy. To enjoy themselves. I try to remove negativity from situations. A lot of people get offended by this behavior. It saddens me. The reason why it saddens me is because I do not think they are truly accepting of allowing people to be themselves. We have expectations of people. And some people have such high expectations of people to where they do not allow that someone to be themselves, because that person may not be living up to the expectations. It's human nature. We all do it. The key is too let those go. Let me give you an example.
I had a friend who was engaged to a girl. He loves his Playstation. He loves playing games and getting into them until he conquers them. I know the guy and know that he is a responsible adult. He doesn't put off things in his life like school or work because he is addicted to a game. It's just a hobby for him to unwind and the enjoy. When he was engaged to this girl she told him once they were married that she would not allow any gaming console in their house. She had these expectations of him that were attacking parts of him. Was he telling her that she had to give up scrapbooking or something? No. But she had expectations of someone without allowing that person to be. Granted, if he was playing for hours on end, every day, missing work or school, etc. then she definitely had reason to demand such a thing. But you have to accept people for who they are. Even if you don't agree with things about them.
I may not live up to your expectations of who you think I should be. I may use language that you would never use. I may do things that you would never do. I understand that. But I still accept you for you. So let me get to the point of this. The comment that was made at my cousins wedding by another cousin was, "Some of his posts on Facebook are....extreme", and he was correct in saying that. If that cousin said an eighth of the things that I say, I would be shocked. I don't expect him to say those things. I came from a LDS family. But I don't live to those values any more. That doesn't make me a bad person. But I made a decision to start living my life and stop trying to censor myself to please people. If you are a friend of mine, you know who I am. You know a lot of my views, opinions, etc. I wanted my profile on a social network to be me. It's a profile of me. I am going to say things that I want to say. I am going to post things that I believe, love, hate, think is funny, etc. I am going to voice my opinion. I don't expect you to agree and I apologize if you see things that you may not want to see (like language, but you are going to see that in the world regardless.)
I have a lot of religious friends on my friends list. I can easily get offended or think religious related posts are so stupid. I read their posts. I understand my friends have different beliefs than me. They have different lives. I respect and love them for that. I don't delete friends because someone is posting a lot of stuff about god or religion and that's stuff I don't want to see. I know who you are. I just want you to know who I am. I love you. You are my friends and family. I am always changing, trying to grow, and attempting to be a better me. But I won't apologize for anything unless I need to. I'll own up to my mistakes. I have a lot of pride, but I am not afraid to push it to the side to help a friend that I may have offended. I won't intentionally go out and attack you or do things that I know will piss you off. For example, a childhood best friend of mine has EXTREMELY different views than my own on just about everything. It's highly uneducated, but I still accept him for his beliefs. I'll debate with him all day, every day about stuff but I do so with RESPECT. I posted something about something I believed in and he commented on the post telling the people I was sticking up for to go kill themselves and was incredibly offensive. I deleted him from my friends list and sent him many text messages him telling him to, well, lets just say he was told to "fuck off". The things he said held no substance or value. He was disrespectful and degrading. Not just to the people in the topic, but to me. He came on my account and instead of sharing his beliefs, disrespected me. He knows I have plenty of friends that would see his post and get offended. He didn't care. That was wrong.
See the difference?
I'm sorry if you get offended by the things I say. It's not my intentions. You can unfriend me, not follow me, etc. I'm sad to see you go. But I can't cater to people wanting me to behave a certain way to please their expectations. I don't think that is right. I love my friends. I love making friends. Thanks for reading.
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