Underlying Issues

  Kayla and I were talking about our relationship and she made a point that stopped me dead in my tracks.  I've always known that for some unknown reason I hate myself.  I've explored some of those issues in past blogs.  What she said to me is that all the ways I hurt her are not to hurt her, but to hurt myself.  I mean yes, I started out this relationship hurting myself in many ways, but that wasn't good enough for my deep inner self who hates me.  Let's call him, Ego.
  Ego saw that Kayla actually sees the real me and loves me anyway.  No one I've met in my life was able to see past my various masks and fronts.  Those who did, still didn't have a clear view of who the 'man behind the curtain' is.  That takes a certain amount of care, patience and love that none but my wife have had for me.  She broke through all my bullshit, saw the real me, and understood that I'm just another hurt soul like everyone else. She alone has had the patience to pull back the layers and examine them one by one.
  My Ego has now moved on to trying to get out of the way the only person who actually loves the real me.  He sees that hurting myself only makes Kayla love me more and want to help me.  She has dedicated the last seven years of her life to helping me heal and grow.  If my Ego can hurt her enough that she pulls away in an effort to protect herself, then my Ego has won.  Not only will I be left with the original hate for myself, but I will hate myself even worse than before.  I will know that I was right all along that I could never deserve to be happy or to be loved.  My self hate will be justified because I hurt the one person I loved the most.
  Ironically, I need to stop focusing on making my family happy in order to work on myself.  I can't dedicate my life to them if I myself am so broken.  It's like in Kayla's blog titled, 'Forgiveness', my plate is empty so I can't fill theirs yet.  So in order to fulfill my dream of a happy, healthy family, I must first become a whole person and stop hating myself.

Egobrain

  I can trace back this worthlessness I feel all the way back to 3 or 4 years old.  When my parents were busy with my younger sister, the microwave beeped in the kitchen.  The three of  them were in the bathroom so I went to pull out whatever was done cooking.  I grabbed a chair so I could reach the door.  It was a large bowl of chicken soup.  I started to pull it out, but the bowl was too hot for my delicate little fingers so I dropped it all over myself.  The bowl shattered on the floor.  Through all my agonizing torture, all I could think of was that I'd be in trouble for breaking the bowl.  As soon as my parents came to see what all the commotion was about, I was apologizing profusely  in order to try and avoid a spanking.
  I don't know how the feeling of worthlessness started, but during my formative years, there were plenty of things that didn't help me to feel any more worthy.  I noticed that any time my sister would cry she'd only get in bigger trouble until she stopped crying.  The conclusion I drew from that is that crying is a bad thing and so was expressing your feelings.  I also gathered from that that listening to my parents or anyone of authority was the only way to avoid getting in trouble.
  One day, my sister was crying so hard that my mother was furious.  My sister wanted to leave and have different parents.  My mother told her that she could get new parents at K Mart.  My sister stormed out the door and started walking down the road.  I couldn't stand the thought of losing her so I ran out crying and begged her not to leave.  I threw my arms around her and just held on.  My parents got such a kick out of that they were laughing and laughing at us.  From that I gathered that loving my sister (or anyone) was a bad thing and especially expressing that love or any feelings at all.  In fact, I felt that having feelings would only get me ridiculed and belittled.
  I was in kindergarten at that time and there was a neighbor I went to school with, named Rachel.  I got my first kiss from Rachel.  She said I was her boyfriend.  I finally felt that someone valued me.  But when we were at school, she would act as if she didn't know me, especially when she was around her friends.  I was so confused, but she did still want to kiss me when no one was around.
  Around that time, there was a neighborhood boy who used to gather a bunch of us younger boys and bring us to his house.  He made us get into sexual positions with each other.  He got a kick out of watching us do these things that I didn't understand at the time.  I didn't know it was wrong or bad.  When I casually mentioned it to my parents, they told me I shouldn't go to his house anymore.  I didn't, but who knows how many other boys still did?
  It was also around that time that my sister and I were left alone in the family car one day.  The car was at street level and there was a short down hill slope that led to our house.  I'm not sure how it happened, but the car started rolling down that hill toward the house.  The passenger-side signal light smashed into the corner of the house.  The friction from that impact slowed the car gradually enough that neither of us was injured.  We were not in seat belts.  I was sitting in the driver's seat and my sister was in the back.
  There was another time when she and I were left alone in the car while my parents went shopping for some food during a cross-country trip.  My sister was crying because she wanted to be with them.  I tried to keep her in the car because that's what my dad told me to do.  She was so insistent that there was nothing I could do to stop her.  I couldn't leave the car unattended so I stayed in it while she wandered through the busy parking lot and into the store.  I got in huge trouble for that.  I was supposed to keep her in the car.  What if she had gotten hurt or kidnapped?  My dad yelled at me quite a bit for that one.
  My mom never felt the need to explain any of her reasons for anything.  Her answer to any question was, "Because I'm Mommy!"  I quickly learned to stop asking questions.  As a matter of fact, I stopped thinking of questions.  I stopped thinking all together.  I would just follow whatever it was my mom, dad, teacher, preacher or chief would say.
  The point I'm getting to is that I have never found myself.  All I've found is a false sense of self-worth brought about from the manipulations of my ego.  If there was anyone that I could get to like me, feel sorry for me, help me, do something for me, give something to me or even love me, my ego was stroked.  I didn't value that person as a person, but as an ego stroker.  Everyone in my life has either been an ego stroker or inconsequential to me.  There have been so many people who have genuinely wanted a friendship or some other relationship with me, but I've kept them all at bay.  I've only taken from them what my ego wanted to extract, then I was on to the next one.
  I've never given myself anything real.  I've never known how to accept or cherish anything real that anyone else would try to give to me and of course, I've never given anyone anything real.  Kayla has a true, deep, beautiful love to give me, but all I've done is take and take ego strokings from her.  Now that she is in a place where she can't be around me without fear, I find that it's more than just ego strokings I want from her.  I long to let the real her in like I've never let anyone in before.  I long to give myself to her completely and hold nothing back.  She always talks about incorporating someone's preferences and identity into your realm of experience so that you can share their fun times, their tragedies, their triumphs and their love.  I would love to incorporate her likes, dislikes and deepest desires into my experience so that I can finally truly be at one with her in every way possible.
  I'm trying to get to a place where I do more than just know intellectually that we as people are all one, not only with each other, but with God.  That is what Kayla believes and lives by and what I know in my head.  She believes that God wants to experience everything through us.  We are His eyes, ears, fingers, etc.  What's more than that, we are God.  Before we come into the body, we pick out our race, gender, parents, life circumstances and a lot of other things.  There is no such thing as right and wrong, those are just judgments.  Everything that happens is perfect.  We chose for it to happen so that we can experience it.  Nothing happens by accident or coincidence.
  Once I come to a place where I truly, deeply believe this to the core of my being, I will be able to let go of the anger, resentment, hollowness, worthlessness, judgment, hatred, emptiness, self-loathing and ego stroking.  I will genuinely let people in and care about them.  I will love myself.  I will love everybody.  I will treat Kayla like the special, beautiful, amazing person she deserves to be treated like.

Zombie Evolution

  As this blog has progressed, it's evolved into several things for me.  It is cathartic, therapeutic, meditative, liberating and thought-provoking for me.  I gain insight as I write down my feelings based on my observations of movies, television shows, songs, books and life around me.  This blog has become my way of sharing with the world my deepest inner struggles, triumphs and failures.  It's a diary, a confessional, a journal, a couch and even a playground sometimes.  You have become my friends, my confidantes, my gurus, my priests, my shoulder to lean on and my companions on this journey of self-creation, self-recovery, self-invention, self-discovery and self-examination.  Of course, I also wish to help you, my readers to see things that perhaps you've never seen before.  To think of things, perhaps in a new way.  To understand things from a fresh perspective and perhaps even find yourself through some self-discovery of your own.
  My childhood was filled with trying to feel worthy of love.  To my mother, I was a trophy to show off to her friends.  It didn't matter if what she told them about me was true or not.  It mattered that it made her feel better about herself that I seemed to be better than her friends' children.  She even told her friends that I attended Harvard because she was too ashamed to admit to them that I only went to the University of Arizona.  To my father, I was a pawn to help him feel like a better parent than my mother.  I always knew what I was worth to them.  What I didn't know was what I was worth to myself.
  I never would consciously stand up for myself against anyone who would put me down or in any way try to harm me.  Instead, I developed an ego.  This ego tried to help me feel good about myself any way I could.  I would do good things for people, but not for their sake.  It was so I could feel better about myself.  All they were worth to me was what I could get from them.  It was me against the world.  Take as much as I can while giving up as little as possible was my goal.  I have difficulty finding many things in life I did for purely selfless motives.  I could count them on one hand.  Do you know how much it hurts/frustrates/scares/saddens me to find that out about myself?  It cheapens/darkens/uglifies almost everything I've ever done in my entire life.  That includes this blog.
  What I've come to understand is that I can still do a lot of the things I love to do, I just have to check my motives.  Am I doing this to feel better about myself or to selflessly benefit someone else?  I can still go to work and support my family, sing at karaoke, write music, write novels, blog, walk the dog and take the trash out.  I think a lot of my anger will fade once the empty meaninglessness of my ego's motives give way to love, respect and genuine compassion for my fellow human beings and all of God's creation.  A lot of my anger came out toward Kayla because my ego was threatened by her insight.  I hated myself for being so selfish and secretly not wanting to change.  Who knows, maybe even now I don't really want to change.  Only I hold the key to the answer to that.  I am the one creating this life.  If it's a life full of anger taken out on my wife, that's my fault.  If it's a life full of loving people, starting with myself, that will be my choice.  No one can make me be bad or good.  It's just a second to second choice I make.