Little Boy

Is it just me, or do we all have things about ourselves that we wish were different-- things that we think we could change if we really wanted?

But then you try to change, and you go through all this hubbub of reinventing yourself, because the self that you have isn't the self that you want. And then in the midst of trying to reinvent yourself, you sort of get lost along the way. You find yourself in a weird half-way point between the person that you were that you didn't like, and the person that you want to be, the person that you think you could like.

And everything about you is up in the air, and you're nowhere.

Then you start to forget why exactly you didn't like your old self, and you start to wish for it back, but then you feel like you can't go back, because no one can ever go back, and all that is to be done is to keep moving forward, but you don't know exactly where to go.

Everyone always told me to be myself. But that's very hard when you don't know who you are.

So when you don't know who you are, you start to listen to everyone else and what they think of you, because everyone else likes to tell you who you are--- both your enemies and your friends. And I didn't like what either of them told me because it wasn't who I wanted to be.

They told me that I have a permeable innocence about me,
that I'm kind
sensitive
youthful
genuine
excitable
impressionable
irresponsible
extremely clumsy
forgetful
and just sort of a space cadet.

For years I've tried to change these things about myself, because my enemies would call me these things like they are bad, and my friends would call me these things like they are good, but I always just took it as everyone thinking I'm just safe, boring, and undependable. Someone you can't really have a good time with, but they love you in a kind of arm-over-your-shoulder, bigger brother kind of way.

I always felt like I was a step below everyone else. I guess this might spawn from the fact that I grew up in a completely different environment from the rest of the world, and so for a while everything was so new and intriguingly foreign to me-- things that everyone else just accepted as the way things were, the things you don't bat an eye at but accept it as just a part of your reality, just like breathing. And these things had me burning inside with curiosity, excitement, and worry-- like a little boy.

Little boy. That's what everyone equated me to. I always hated it. I didn't want to be called little, and I didn't want to be called a boy.

The opposite of this would be a Big Man.

I wanted to be that.

That I liked.

A big man.

Not a little boy.

I guess my response to being called a little boy is very little-boy-like. "I'm not a child, I'm a man!"

And so I wanted to change myself. I didn't know what exactly I wanted to be, but I wanted to be something different. Not the little boy. I just wanted to relax more, to not be so dramatically affected by the outside world, because nobody else seemed to be that affected by it or interested in it, and it was cool to not be interested in things and to be un-impressionable.

I wanted to appear like I could hold my own, like none of this was out of the ordinary. I wanted to prove to myself and everyone that I can function in this world that I still secretly think is a total catastrophic, beautiful mess. And the deepest part of me is still staring at it wide-eyed and is burning for it, because I know anything could happen.

I wanted to be the guy that was happening, the guy that everyone was drawn to for conversation. I didn't want people to put their arm over me. I wanted to put my arm over someone and have them call me big brother.

I wanted to be more badass, is technically what I'm getting at. But I didn't realize that in order for anybody to be a badass, they must first understand who they are and go from there. I didn't understand myself, because I was tired of the self that was available to me, and so I wanted a different one.

So I tried to reinvent it.

 For the last year or so, I've been different, and it hasn't exactly been better. In fact, I've just been more distant. I've found myself not taking an interest in anything. I've gotten tired of people. I've been an observer most of the time, listening to conversation, listening to jokes, laughing  if I find them funny. I stare at people as they talk to each other and I listen to myself think, and I don't take an active part in what's going on, because I've lost the point of it all. I play solitaire on the living room floor and don't talk to anybody. I think this is all because I don't have a self anymore to offer anybody. And when you don't have a self, you play cards with yourself.

That's kind of a lie. I'm sure a lot of self-y people play cards with themselves, and I'm sure they're much more of a Self than I am.

I stopped acknowledging what I want or what I need as a person. I didn't speak up for myself because I had no self to speak up for. And so I do what everybody else wants to do, not what I want to do. And when you do that, you stop.

You drift. You play pool with your friends because they want to. You go out to a bar with your friends because they want to. You don't want anymore. You stop burning, and it's very sad.

But it isn't all lost, because you like your friends. But you just know something is missing in you-- you feel empty.

It's an emptiness like there's a hole somewhere inside of you. But it's not something that can be filled by another person, or an ideal, or a religious figure. It's a bit of you that has disappeared. Gone. Because you let it leave. You made the hole yourself, and only you can fill it back up. And I guess the way you do that is put yourself back. The self that you didn't like, but the self that you can't escape. The self that you will come to love. Because everyone should come to love themselves, because the world is a diverse place and it deserves everyone, especially the ones that don't fit into the technical societal blueprints of what is generically considered cool.

The reason I am coming to these conclusions is because I saw all of those characteristics in another person. And I like that person for those qualities. The same qualities that I hated about myself I loved in another person. A fictional person, no less. A person in a book. Someone who doesn't exist, but they are innocent and good and kind and inquisitive-- not somebody you would find at a bar at two o'clock in the morning living it up with everyone in the world, like how I wanted to be, but am not.

I suppose sometimes to learn to love yourself, you have to see yourself in other people and love them for those reasons.

I just read what I wrote and it sounds very egotistical. I don't know about the things I say sometimes.

So I guess this will be something interesting. I will learn every day to be more like myself, to find myself and nurture myself and let myself grow, because that self deserves it. And the world deserves that self.