what i would have liked to know at seventeen
i'm not one to sit and talk about how i grew up. in my eyes, it was an ugly time, not in a pitiful way, but rather a series of multiple unfortunate circumstances that piled onto each until it began to resemble something akin to my form. writing this now, i think about jenga. as the game went on, i had had blocks removed from my base, and only now and i am now finding that fragile balance to stack them back onto the tower.
after my post yesterday, which i had sent out while sitting in second cup, i got to thinking on my walk back home. again, not in a pitiful way, but contemplatively. i think that as much as growing in the western world pushes you to "be yourself", i think it certainly has it's hidden limits. we have such a distinct feeling of what is normal and what is not, but you don't necessarily know of these borders until you leave them. normal is shadows in a cave until you've stepped out the cave (i know i'm using the allegory incorrectly, but please bear with me).
anyways, yapping aside, growing up outside these borders taught me to become heavily introspective and self aware as a kid. seeing my dad's reaction to me being called gay by a kid in middle school (i spat in the kid's face in retaliation and got sent to the principals office), very much signaled to me that being this way was outside the "normal". somehow in the process of all of this, i had built up this shell persay. not to shield me, but to separate myself from my "abnormality" (i hate this word but i will keep it in). objectively, i was taught from a very formative period of my life that if i continued being the way i was, i was less than, i was flawed, i was guilty for being me.
as much as i hate talking about what society thinks, its important to note that nowadays, we are constantly being expected to work on something about ourselves. we need to fix all these ugly things about ourselves and heal from the bad things. im not here to bitch about it, but its unfair to expect this from a stunted child. and quite honestly, looking to people in similar situations like myself, i've come to understand why gay men in their twenties struggle with issues like intimacy and healthy attachment. you cant graft branches onto a dead tree, in the same way, you need to address your upbringing before anything else.
it's most definitely not fun growing that way, and i dont want to make this into a story of something good coming out of something bad (cause quite honestly, i deal with these feelings often), but over the past few years i've learnt to see where all of this fits into my actions and how i interact with others. while of course, i can sit here and preach about how i've been "healing", but i dont think healing exists. you never heal from things like these. you do learn however, how to give yourself grace and i think that is more important than anything else. being able to operate from that lens of "hey, none of this makes me some abnormal beast, i'm just me" has helped me treat myself and others better.
anyways in recent news, i'm looking for a man with similar levels of introspection to me. or at least a good sense in pinterest memes and music. just something... anything at this point. pls lmk if you know of one or are one.