I have been experiencing some definite sad emotions over the past few days. I’ve been looking at my life and examining my place in the world, and frankly it has made me extremely depressed. My wife is scared of me. She is afraid to confront me on common household issues. Am I such a monster, such a horrible being that the woman I love is scared to discuss difficult issues with me? I’ve been looking into what I may have done to her in the past that has caused her to think me such an unresponsive person, such a argumentative being that she can’t even ask me to clean the house with her. When did I become such a beast? I believe that it started at a young age. My childhood was no exactly the normal typical, Leave it to Beaver kind of experience. My father was not around much, and when he was I was the child that he avoided. My father has his own issues and I’m sure that having a son who excelled in school (he had never made it out of 5th grade) scared him a little. He has admitted to me that he never knew how to handle me and had more in common with my brother. My mother on the other hand, treated me with distain. It was always my fault for everything because I was the oldest. I had to be the responsible one. Well I just wanted to be left alone to read and create, write and draw. I didn’t want to watch my brother or sister.
All of this negative treatment just built and built. I retreated in the fantasy worlds I created and when D&D became popular I had the perfect outlet. I withdrew more and more. I had a select few friends who I played with, and got in trouble with. It was nothing that a normal kid my age didn’t do. Shoplifting, spray painting my name and art on buildings, and getting into fights with other kids. At home, I more and more wanted nothing to do with my family. As I grew, even though I was a “bad boy” a trouble maker, my grades in school were great. When we were placed in the middle school I was put in honors classes, with a whole group of kids I didn’t understand. Their families had money and were supportive. I became friends with a few but never understood their home lives. Mainly because it was so alien to me. When we moved when I was just about to go into high school that was more culture shock. We moved from the city to a rural town. I really didn’t fit in there. I have friends from high school, many of who I am still friends with today. Their home lives were still very alien, but I was getting vindication from my friends. Things like, “Dude your mom is crazy.” “Why does she treat you that way?” were just a few things my friends would tell me when we were away from my house. The last bit of my rebellion against my parents started when they would gush over my brother and sisters grades and dismissed mine. I was still doing well in school in some of the highest class levels, where my brother would take tech classes and get B’s and my sister would get D’s and C’s in the lowest grade levels there were. They were praised and given the love I sought, and it was just expected that I would come home with A’s. As usual, I was the one that was there to help my sister with her homework, and still get blamed when she failed because she never tried. I felt like my life was so bad that I must have been destined to be a horrible person. My life sucked.
So I withdrew and withdrew from family. I would go over my friends houses and feel completely out of place. I didn’t understand, still don’t really, what it was like to have a normal family life. even when I met my wife and we started dating I felt awkward around her family. They were supportive and caring. I never got that at home. To a point, I still don’t get the support. I would love to take the time everyday to write, but I feel that if I do I am being selfish and taking away from my family. Plus I feel like my wife would resent me for taking the time for myself. I just feel like the world just wants me to drink it’s Kool Ade and stop being me. I should just conform to everything. Part of me wants to, part of me says to withdraw, the best self defense mechanism that I have had. I just don’t want to alienate my family. They are the only things that keep me from just secluding myself away on a mountain and disappearing from the world. Now I find that I scare my wife, that she can’t talk to me. I don’t know what I did, but I’m sure that my fucked up existence has had something to do with it. I just don’t want to stop being creative. I don’t want to lose the things I love but I don’t really know how to do it. I’m just confused as hell. Maybe I should drink the Kool Ade and just disappear into obscurity.
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