Double Negative Some people can just be themselves around people. It comes naturally to them. I’m not one of them. I actually hate those people. I wish I could share all my hopes and dreams with my loved ones, the people I care most about. I just can’t. I’m not sure if I could explain why. All I know is that there are certain aspects of my life especially my childhood and adolescence that I can’t tell anyone. I feel like if people really got to know me, the real me, they wouldn’t want to be my friend or be in my life at all. I guess I built a wall around myself to protect myself from getting hurt but it also stops people from really getting to know me. They may think they do, but they really don’t. I’ve created this alternate person with an alternate past. It’s not necessarily a past I would rather have had than my actual one but its one I can talk about because it’s not real and there aren’t any raw emotions behind it. It started with a little lie but then I had to tell more lies to support that one. I want to be honest with people now but how can I? How can I tell everyone that a lot of what I’ve told you has been a lie. That you don’t really know me, You know a variation of me, one that has been embellished. . . a lot. As far as my friends know, I lost someone very close to me at the age of 14 and turned to drugs because I couldn’t deal with the pain. My friends are amazed and proud of me when I tell them that I quit all the drugs cold turkey when my friend almost overdosed right in front of me. It makes me feel good when they say that until I realize that I didn’t go through that. That wasn’t me. It’s at times like that I almost wish I was this other person. I wish I had lived that life. I try not to think about how my life actually was in high school. Having hardly a couple of friends and praying to just get through the day. I wish I didn’t panic every time there was a group project just because finding someone to work with me caused me so much anxiety. I wish I hadn’t don’t things just to cause attention to myself like wearing flashy clothes or trying to be the class clown. In reality all I wanted was to disappear. I just wanted to go through the day unnoticed, invisible even. I’ve built up this alternate self so much that it’s sometimes hard to decipher between the lies and the truth. I sometimes think to myself, Did that really happen or did I make it up. You tell a lie enough times, you start to believe as if it was the truth. I don’t know what I’m afraid of. Would it be so bad if from the time I wake up tomorrow, I would just be myself. Am I afraid that I will have nothing interesting to say, afraid that I won’t be entertaining? Am I shortchanging myself? I may be. I have a good personality, not everything ive shared with my loved ones has been a lie. A lot of interesting things have happened to me in my life and I’m sure there is more to come. I feel trapped sometimes, I try really hard to be myself but this other personality is always there lurking. The lies I have told are brought up again and again and I can’t make them go away. They are some of my friend’s favorite stories that they want repeated. If I was stronger I would let everyone read this, I would make sure that everyone in my life had a copy. Sadly, I’m not that strong, I couldn’t imagine what people would think if they knew the truth. So I will continue on. Every day that passes I try to become a little more real. I try to cut out the bullshit. I tell myself I won’t tell any new lies. At least that way, I will eventually phase out this other personality. The one I have come to admire and loathe at the same time. I think about all the things that happened in my childhood and I realize how much it screwed me up as an adult. Even simple things like how my dad never even threw a ball around with me so I never learned how to play any sports. As a result, I shied away from any athletic activities and when I had to participate in gym class I either sucked because I didn’t know the rules or because I hadn’t had much practice. I realize I was made fun of a lot because of that. I harbor a lot of resentment towards my dad because of that. How hard would it have been to teach me the basics at least? I also realize that avoiding playing any sports just because I didn’t think I would be good or because I had never played just made it worse. How was I gonna lean if I never tried? I can’t totally blame my dad even though I’d like to, it was just as much my fault as it was his. It just upsets me because High school may have been easier for me if I was at least good at a few sports. Maybe I wouldn’t have dreaded and almost failed gym class freshman year. Maybe I wouldn’t have taken ballroom dancing my senior year instead of regular gym just because I couldn’t bear going through another year of disappointment and humiliation at my lack of athletic prowess. There are also things that happened to me that I look back on and realize I could’ve avoided a lot of pain and embarrassment if I had just thought about things before I acted on them. I remember signing up to participate in a hockey game when I was in 5th grade. I had learned how to play center and I was okay. I knew what to do. I didn’t’ know how to play any of the other positions. So the game came and my mom was there of course. I ended up being an alternate and they kept putting someone in for center so I just sat there and didn’t play. After the game I looked at my mom and could see the disappointment in her face and I just started crying. That was when I decided to stop trying. I basically avoided all athletic activities since then. I told myself I wasn’t going to embarrass myself like that again. Of course the only people that know that story are my mom who probably has forgotten and I hardly see anyone I knew back then. In a way its good because no one knows who I was back then but it’s also bad because it make it easier for me to create this false personality. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve started to tell my friends things just to see if they will support me and be there for me. Whether it’s telling them about a tragedy that never happened or about some terrible thing that did happen but not to me even though I make them believe that it did. I don’t know I do that. Maybe as a test to see how they would react if something terrible did happen to me. I want to know that they really care, that they would be there for me. I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t do that to people, especially my close friends. I wish I didn’t feel like I have to test them like that. I just want to be real. I want to be able to share things with my friends knowing that everything I’m telling them is the truth. Sometimes I wish I could pick one side of my personality and totally give in to it. But what would I choose? The former drug addict who has overcome many personal tragedies or the shy geeky guy who had recently suffered a major tragedy but whose life is basically boring. Seriously I would rather have the boring. At least it’s real. I’m tired of living a lie. I’m tired of telling lies and stories just to fit in or to have something interesting to say. But I can’t be that guy. I’d have to tell my friends that a lot of their favorite stories about me aren’t true and that I’ve been lying to them for years. So here I am, alone. I don’t just mean when there is no one around, I feel alone even when I’m surrounded by people. If there was at least one person who really knew me, I would be okay. I would be able to go on. But I cant, I Just. . . can’t. I hope you will understand. I hope you can forgive me for all the lies. I wish I could’ve been honest, Just know that I had good intentions. I wanted to become close with my friends and I should’ve been strong enough to let you know who I really was but I just wasn’t. I was scared and I still am. If there is one thing I can be honest about is that my close friends, and you know who you are, were my family. I love you guys and you made me smile, laugh and sometimes cry. I pray that you forget about the lies but you never forget about me. That was the last thing I ever wrote. I needed to explain things to the people I cared about most. I hope they will someday understand why I did the things I did. Moments later I ended my life. It was cowardly. I know that. I’m not saying it was right. But I’m not saying it was wrong either. In my mind, it was the only way. I couldn’t continue trying to be two different people. I Couldn’t lie anymore, but I couldn’t be honest either. Here I stand at my own funeral, invisible to all. It’s ironic because throughout high school I did everything I could not to be invisible and if only I could’ve been honest about it I probably wouldn’t be standing here right now unbeknownst to all. As I look out and see my friends and family with their sad faces and tears in their eyes, I think to myself how selfish I was to remove myself from their lives. They have to grieve and go on with their lives without me, all because I couldn’t be myself. I couldn’t be real and I couldn’t be honest with the people that mattered to be most. I would do anything to be alive again and be able to talk to my friends again. They meant the word to me and maybe if I told them the truth they could’ve forgiven me eventually. Even if they didn’t, at least they wouldn’t have to go through the pain of losing someone they thought was a good friend. After everything that happened to me, the saddest thing is that nothing will ever happen to me again.
Copyright © 2007 James Fund |