My God Complex

I remember when things started going bad in my family it seemed like my world was coming apart and nothing was manageable. The alcoholism in my house mostly took the form of quiet neglect which left me a lot of time to think. I was only in sixth grade at the time and I remember feeling like I could only be disappointed if I relied on other people for something and they didn’t deliver. I don’t remember exactly when I made the change but by eighth grade my thoughts and feelings were completely separate from the emotions of others (with a few rare exceptions). I had made the decision that I could only rely on myself and that if a solution was not forthcoming then I must not be working hard enough. My character armor was to convince myself that I could do anything and that I never needed any outside help. I got to the point where I wasn’t afraid of failing at anything because I didn’t believe it was possible for me to fail. This was a very effective survival tool inside my alcoholic family but wasn’t a sustainable way to live.

One of the many problems with this approach is that when I didn’t get something or it didn’t work out just the way I wanted, it was because I was lazy or unmotivated. The thought that something might be out of my power was not an option I could comprehend. I started to test myself by pushing for the hardest thing I could find. I became a 3 sport athlete, I got into a great college, I joined the military, and I tried to become the most perfect person possible. By the time the wheels started to come off my express train to disaster I had no idea what it felt like to do something that made me feel good.

I could blame a lot of things for making me the way I am, but no one forced me to treat myself like shit for so many years. Even though I may not have known better, most of my wounds are self-inflicted. This was such a liberating thing to learn because I immediately stopped doing the things that were killing me the fastest. But that doesn’t mean I am to blame either. I can’t change anything that happened to me or anything I did in the past but trying to place blame will not help me heal. My happiness, serenity, and well-being are what are most important to me now. Finding something to blame is the same thing as finding a place to focus resentment, and resentment isn’t something I choose to have in my life.