The Anatomy of a Troubled Youth
I was a good kid, I said please and thank you and did as I was asked to.
I got good grades, listened to my teachers and didn’t talk back to adults.
I had plenty of friends and never really got picked on or bullied.
I was good at spotting the troublemakers and usually steered clear of them.
Then slowly but surely, something inside me began to change. I don’t know if it was bitterness or boredom. Typical teenage angst or bottled up and unresolved anger I had been subconsciously repressing for years.
I always said growing up without a Mother in my house — as my parents weren’t together — never bothered me and believed it to be true myself.
But then one day when I was about eight years old, a friend who lived a few doors down from me, my younger cousin and I were wrestling and at some point my neighbor hurt my cousin and wouldn’t get off of him.
I basically saw red, tackled him off of my cousin and kicked him in the head — before standing over him and proclaiming “nobody hurts my family”.
While in theory, that’s a good principle to live by — to say I overreacted would be quite the understatement — but that anger must’ve come from somewhere.
I’m all about getting to the root cause of the issue or problem. surface solutions have never sufficed for me. I believe that’s the true path to healing.
I had a good life at home, as my Dad and I always had everything we needed and then some. He always somehow managed to make sure I had a great Christmas and Birthday. On the outside, things were good — but inside of me, maybe not so much. The problem is, I wasn’t aware of it.
By the time I was thirteen I was smoking weed regularly and drinking on weekends with my friends. Shortly thereafter, we began experimenting with prescription narcotics like Xanax and Valium and then party drugs like Acid and Ecstasy. I lived through a far from average adolescence. I see kids in my family at ages fourteen and fifteen and look at what they’re doing compared to what I was at their age and literally thank God they’re nothing like I was.
My point is, experimenting with pot or having a few beers here and there as a teenager is pretty typical and not really a big deal, in the grand scheme of things. But what I was doing extended far beyond that and was anything but normal. To go from the kid who always did what he was asked and never talked back to who I was by age fifteen, something went really wrong somewhere.
While I don’t believe in living in or fretting over the past, I do believe answers to some of our most profound questions lie in our own personal histories, narratives and journeys.
By my mid teens, I had a very misguided view on what life was all about and what my future would look like. I was never really able to visualize life as an adult and wasn’t certain I’d live to see the day I’d become one anyhow.
As morbid as it may sound, I always pictured myself dying young. And I basically lived my life accordingly. I never planned ahead.
I lived for the moment.
“Laugh now, cry later” was one of my favorite expressions.
I took all of the easy ways out and was always in search of the cheat code to life, so to speak. I was pretty sure selling weed was a sustainable career option and never planned on working hard at a nine to five.
Like the kid from “A Bronx Tale” — I viewed the working class man as a sucker. They were people who foolishly bought in to a non existent American dream. I’d watch shows like The Sopranos or The Wire and envision life atop of a criminal empire.
This is literally what I planned to do with my life as a teen. I was delusional.
I was motivated by all of the wrong things and looked up to the wrong people.
I was using my above average intelligence in all of the wrong ways and was letting my legitimate talent go to waste. I was headed nowhere fast.
In the Summer between my second sophomore and junior year of High School, I met the girl who would eventually become my motivation for settling down and changing, even if only temporarily.
By Spring of our Junior year, we were madly in love and got an apartment together right out of high school. I got a decent job as a contractor and paid our rent on time every month, with money I made honestly.
I finally learned to grow up, if even only a little and for a short time.
We were together for four years and lived together for over two of them.`
My contracting job eventually became a nationwide gig, to where I was on the road 5 days a week and sleeping in a different state than my girlfriend most nights. This eventually took such a toll on the relationship, though I can’t solely blame the job as we had our fair share of problems — we ended up breaking up in April of 2008. On our four year anniversary, to be exact.
Just before we broke up, I had a falling out with the company and ended up leaving the job a few months before my relationship ended.
The company and I went through a nasty battle over unemployment compensation in court that dragged on for months.
The end result was me winning and being rewarded with three months worth of back pay for the time they had spent disputing my claim.
The check for a few grand arrived on the same day my girlfriend told me she couldn’t do it anymore and asked me to leave.
The sudden loss of the future I thought I had secured and the disappearance of everything I had worked so hard for sent me spiraling.
To top it off, I was receiving an unemployment check for 80% of my weekly wage when I was working nationwide — for doing absolutely nothing.
The emotional loss, financial gain and newfound free time was a dangerous combination. Her and I were still seeing each other here and there but she wasn’t mine anymore and being with her tended to just make me sad.
Then one day she basically just stopped answering my calls and I’d soon thereafter come to find out about her new relationship on Facebook.
I’d come to find out about her moving her new boyfriend into what was once our home and her pregnancy that followed shortly after, in the same way.
I was beyond devastated, it was more than I was able to swallow or stomach.
I spent far too long on a bar stool, quietly feeling sorry for myself on the inside while pretending I wasn’t hurt on the outside. My ego wouldn’t allow me to admit I missed her and how much I wanted her back. I Couldn’t want someone who no longer wanted me. But the thought she no longer wanted me was soul crushing. I always assumed we’d eventually work things out and get back together but once she got pregnant shortly after she stopped answering my calls, any hopes of that were completely out of the question. In fact this once again filled my heart with anger, resentment and hate.
The truth of the matter is, as intelligent as I may be, my way of thinking has always been off. My reactions and responses to life’s worst happenings have so often been unhealthy. It took losing everything and bouncing off of rock bottom for me to gain enough self awareness to make me want to change.
It didn’t happen overnight but I eventually began putting my life back together again. Recovery, reading, running, writing and a higher power helped. Acknowledging how powerless I am over so many of life’s happenings was an honest relief. It meant I could stop trying to control everything around me.
I don’t know whether it’s genetic or if it was chemically induced but it feels like the hard wiring in my brain is backwards and not like other peoples.
Some days, it feels like I’m incapable of living a normal life, one made up of a typical nine to five job and a healthy happy relationship.
It’s like I don’t have what it takes to make either work and neither are in the cards for me. Then I remember how far I’ve come from who and where I was and know anything is possible. Our pasts don’t determine our futures. My story is far from over yet and I’m certain the best has yet to come.
The Anatomy of a Troubled Youth
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