The Story I Tell Myself- How to Heal?

[MisterMan]

Hi all.

I’d like to share this story as i am currently in the process of coming out of a a drug addiction that spanned 16 years.

Let me start of with telling you a little about my parents as most of the issues i have stem from the resentment i have for them that i refuse to let go of.

My partner is pretty sure my old man must have some form of Border personality disorder. I was an only child and my parents were extremely hands on and controlling. I don’t know where to start.

So I’ll start the time i was about 6 and my father took our friends grandmother who was visiting from another country to the city. I was with a friend of mine, any way we were in a shopping mall and my friend wanted to deviate from the adults and check out some cd’s that interested him at the time. I was very adamant that we would get in trouble as we would get lost.

Ultimately i gave in and followed him, it wasn’t far as the store was an open store in a shopping mall so we walked in looked around and when we came out parents were gone. I can’t remember how long we were lost for but i was very nervous as i already knew how my father would react. Our surrounding never mattered to him, he would always cause a scene by disciplining me no matter who or how many were around. Eventually i see my father and we lock eyes. He is about 10 to 15 meters away and he runs up to me, drags me all the way by grappling me in the arm back to where he was standing when see saw me and just started to belt me by kicking me in my arse as hard as he could in full swing, moving his body to get the most possible momentum to make sure he was doing a good job in punishing me.

As I write this it seems he was relieving all his emotions on me.  To be honest it didn’t hurt as much as it would have looked, It was the constant humiliation that would do more damage. As i grew older i would find myself reliving similar humiliating beatings in front of others.

I remember being no older that 5 saying something non chalantly that my father did not work, i remember my father then walking away and standing in the corner, talking to my mum "bloody shit he says i dont work! bullshit!" my mum would say "he doesn't know"  my father would be fuming. Mother told me to apologise i didn't really want to but was made to and then he just let loose, yelling face to face " you don't know anything!,you're just a little boy! You will never be a (insert tradesman profession he did)!!! You know nothing! spitting in my face yelling at the top of his lungs like you would yell to lose your voice at a 5 year old child. I have little sympathy for him

 

I can’t remember when, but i developed serious tics as a child.

*Grunts

*Grimacing

*Blinking

*Head jerking updown/side to side/ diagonal

*Moaning

*Sticking tongue out and grimacing

*Just the tongue out

*Neck stretching (move head up)

*walking with twisting my foot every 1,2 or 3 steps

They would change, morph. It got very sever and lasted like this until i was 18. And i learnt to hide it well. I Still clench my jaw, which has fucked my teeth, and blink occasionally but it's much lower. I do make sounds when alone but out i have learnt to disguise things. I don't really care anymore but still the feeling of ridicule, and shame resides deep within.

This ensured i experienced constant humiliation, daily. From moment to moment, I cried a lot at school. I would draw parallels to a young girl wearing having a period with white pants and it showing.

Imagine being at high school, whichever age, whichever day, you have a crush. You want to look good, you're young your mind is very basic. You think you're pulling it off, then you tense your eyes, show your teeth like a dog showing his teeth at you crush. She looks at you, tries not to piss herself because it is funny. I sit there going ok, you don't deservee anything. At this point your too worn out and tired of being angry at yourself, so you just feel bad, humiliated. Like a victim. Exactly like a victim.

The funny thing is, if you hide behind tourrettes syndrome, you're alright. Grew up int he 90's primary school and 2000's high school so there was still "fa*****" talk and that around, and bullying was much less a mainstream issue than what it appears to be today. People would ask, if i had tourettes trying to understand my condition. Since the doctors told me i hadn't even though every moment i'm doing somehting absurd that is what i told others. They would reply with a smile "then what's wrong with you". My parents and doctors said nothing was wrong so i said nothing i just have tics. So to everyone else i was fair game, i wasn't at a disadvantage and therefor did not deserve sympathy or really it was pitty. I experienced very little, but when i did experience others being nice, it was pitty. And i welcomed it, it was beautiful. People could be nice!

When i got older around 16 i began to see that if i just said i had Tourette’s people would be more ok with it than if i just had tics. People would see me as less weird if i had tourrettes than just having tics. They would be more understanding.

I developed, or was naturally talented at playing soccer at a very young age i could just take on the whole team and the first time i did i had never played the game. This feeling of being good about something became my first refuge. And my first addiction. I continued to pursue this sport and when older naturally i wanted to become a professional soccer player.

When i was 15 my father had a connection who was a coach at an under 16’s super league team. The best league in the area i was in for the age. Elite i guess. The problem is this connection had invited me by telling my father for me to come on the last day of trials. I was the best player on field, but naturally as i came at the end of the trials i missed out. I cried so hard.

I had played for poor teams up until 16 when a friend of mine who’s older brother really admired my abilities snapped me out of my self criticism and i joined the “super league U16’s”. The same team my father had connections with the coach which i’m wondering now if he deliberately told me the last date.

My friend at the time played for the club and was so positive and influential in inviting me. In fact he said the coach of last year had gone and a new coach had taken the position. He has remained at the club to this day, He played for his country and qualified for the World Cup, it was the first time our country had done so. He was our coach, this was a big deal.

I will never forget the things my parents said to me when i told them i was trying out.

My mother said something like “ah you won’t make it, why even bother, you won’t make it just like last year. You have a club already and the coach wants you, forget about it you are wasting your time”

My father echoed the same sentiments but really getting to the heart of it ” you are not good enough, don’t even try, you are wasting your time”.

I was a bad student, i didn’t care about anything. All i cared about was football, everywhere i went people would say they had never seen somebody do this trick or that trick. I was so desperately attached to the sport because it was the only source of me being a valued person. It did feed my ego definitely. But i digress, I got in. I wasn’t able to be at the last trial session for some reason so i turned up to the next session trained with them and then at the end nervously asked if i had gotten in. He said yes and laughed.

It was the best day of my life. I took such pleasure in telling and proving my parents wrong. My mother made nothing of it and my father had another connection from a coach in another sport that he wanted me to come to see him. So that he could tell me, that my achievements had meant nothing. And that the reason my coach said i was a good player was not because it was true but to boost confidence. All my life i has searched, begged, argued, discussed with my father why i couldn’t be a pro. Because i wasn’t good enough.

I wanted to be a professional so bad, i would look at national team photo’s and cry and the immense pride they must have felt. Deep down the words my parents beat me down with always made it feel like an outside chance. Once i was 17, alcohol and drugs entered my life until then i had stayed away because as bad as a student i was. A student of the sport i was a good kid. Stuck straight until then.

Year 7 i was one of the best playes in the year level, went on holidays with my parents i and i swear to you. National Lampoons, was nothing to what we got up to.

My father made me urinate in public because he didn't want to find a toiled in public in the middle of the day in Paris while my mother and father stood in front of me. We would urinate and take shits in the same cubicle because you had to pay. He stood there and yelled when he saw how much toilet paper i was using, don't use that much! it is fucking ridiculous! and when somebody tooted him, his thought process was "look at my number plates, I'm not from here, why are you tooting me I DON'T KNOW THIS PLACE I DON'T KNOW THE AREA" and he would fly into a rage, we'd be in practically still traffic in say france going around a town square somewhere in france. People everywhere, and someone tooted him he would hold the horn down for 5 mintutes. I'm not lying, and we're pretty much standstill middle of the day, Tourist traffic back to back creeping slowly and he's holding down the horn for 5 minutes or more. I was so embarassed i'd have to hide under the blanket not to be seen. I played football there everyday, got my first century juggling the ball in Italy, and would eventually reach 3,500.

I came back to school, and my team had qualified for the next round. They all voted me out the team except one because "i didn't deserve it".

But i’ll talk about my addictions a little later. Every Christmas dinner, i knew there was going to be a event. My father would sit at his seat on the end of the table with all the visitors present it was important for me to keep a good face not to be humiliated. I could just see my father bubbling in his corner, face going red not saying a word just stewing in his head how i’m not doing good in school and i should be better. All the while he was getting more and more angry until someone would say something and he would explode. Sure enough he always did. Every dinner 100% he would explode ‘SHUUUUTUUUPP, YOU’RE NO GOOD” and then we would proceed to explain in detail every little i had done to the others and that how hard he was trying and that i have no respect. Every dinner he would tell me i would never achieve what i wanted because i just wasn’t good enough.

This i admit, i had no respect for them and the older i got, the stronger i got and the stronger i got, the less he acted out because i tell you. I was my fathers son, and i had zero patience for his antics. As soon as he started  i took great pleasure in approaching and threatening him if he does not stop, i won’t either.

Many heated arguments where all they would do is threaten to call the police after they initiated everything, come into my room yelling at me, and at that point i just stopped paying attention. Because i did this they would escalate things until i reacted, then they would threaten to call the police i would get very angry. Then they would start laughing at me that i was so angry. Patronisingly. So i would sit there, disconnect, and just hate them i hate them i hate them i harte them. Every week. Every day my mother would complain about me to her friends and i was always percieved to be made fun of by them most of the time whilst speaking down to me.

I was offered little support and only criticism, i developed a way of interacting with them which was very distant, serious/agressive like you need to walk a fine line with me now or you will pay for it.

When i first met my partner my parents had a unit at hte back where we stayed shortly. My father went through the rubbish, found a bank statement of hers. Because he’s old school he got her surname looked it up in the phone directory and got a few addresses. And sent the bank statement to each address with the idea that he was returning the bank statement to the person but didn’t know who to send it to. And the idea was then whoever replied was her relatives then he could make contact and talk  to them about my personal story. About my addictions and how i should stop. I was 30 at the time.

He would turn up at my friends parents house uninvited and the early hours when my friends had already moved out years ago and talk to them about me, even though they had never met. This happened constantly when i was growing up and it was just another thing that helped isolate me further to others.

He always made it his purpose to dictate what i should do and was a wall when talking back to him even when begging him to listen. He was just waiting until you would stop so he could then say whatever he wanted. He is so self interested that his goal of being the provider meant that my mother couldn’t work or do anything unless it didn’t make money and i had to do everything his way. Which i can’t tell you how much hate, opposition i have for this for his impact on me in life.

My addictions just like my tics morphed through the years, from marijuana to alchohol where i was a skinny lad and ultimately got to 110kg when my normal weight would be 80kg. This happened in my 20’s as alcohol was the main player. I was a mess and still am in ways. Currently addicted to opiates i have never forgiven my parents for  being so self entitled and interested only in their beliefs and goals to the point i believe they don’t really care about me because they don’t know what true care is. They fulfilled their contracts with goodness and the hell with me, my ideas, feelings, beliefs and goals, that was irrelevant. It always was.

To this day, i have dreams during sleep of returning to the club i played for, but i’m ashamed because i just left to pursue drugs with not even saying bye. They let me train again, i get back into things and start playing. I’M BACK! Then i realise it’s a dream and i cry and i cry and i cry. This was not always a dream i was aware of but i have come to be aware of it to the point now i can cry of these things in waking life. But there was a time i was so detached the only was i could cry and it still rings true is in my sleep.

There were times when i smoked so much bud got greened out, honestly thought i was a retard. Ticking all the boxes in social identification. I legitimately wondered would i be able to get my drivers licence? As i had been treated like a outcast and pittied just like disabled people but less protected by teachers i thought adult life would be the same.

I made pacts with myself when I was younger that i would kill myself if i had not achieved being a professional player. And that i deserved all the self hate i could get. I would constantly disrespect myself, as i failed myself and didn't deserve my own love.

Stuff like this carries a large burden over me. I could go on by i think i’ve said enough.

THANK YOU to any one who cared enough to read.

If i don’t meditate daily, i will relapse as ultimately i just want to feel good about myself. And all i have as an option are drugs or my program that depends on instant gratification. Any ideas?

 

Edited January 19, 2018 by MisterMan

[Jamie Universe]

great story! Part of the problem sounds like you can't let go of the past, and I don't honestly know anything about that so much. But I remember Leo making a video about it (I haven't watched it.)

But otherwise I know that want to just feel good. But see I don't think the problem is the need to feel good. I've felt a want for something good and craved it desperately, but (at least right now) I could feel crappy but I wouldn't have the need desperate need for something good. 

Its less your requirements for ultimate satisfaction and more your belief system towards it. I think I saw a ted talk on how your relationship towards stress makes the entire difference of your physical health. But in my experience at least, not saying this will be true for you necessarily. If you recognize your pain as not a lack of the stuff you want, but rather the reason your so unhappy is because you want shit so bad.

Leo talks about life purpose and how to seek success and all these physical practical stuff. But he also talks about self-deception, enlightenment, all these things which contradict life purpose. As I see, how you see thing is a choice. And most people underestimate this.

 

I personally change my mind about something whenever I realize its wrong/true. Which is why contemplating is so useful.  

[Nahm]

@MisterMan

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3eOJaprDCDA