My automatic failure mechanism

I'm honestly starting to feel sorry for my readers at this point. It's probably not much fun looking in on someone's life when all they see is a repository for bad shit. However, if you think reading this is a downer, try living my life. This is part three of four examining my childhood. I promise the fourth post will end this retrospective on a high note. 

The butterfly on the windowsill makes for a pretty picture but is trapped and will die unless someone lets him out. No, this is not a post on monarch mind control programming (though there are eerie similarities to how I was raised), but there's plenty of information out there if you'd like to deviate from this sadness to another sort of sadness. 

No, the butterfly is symbolic. It is a symbol of my childhood. You see, there was an actual butterfly. When we still lived in the town I was born in, I tooled around on my bike quite a bit. It was freedom from the adult world where I was tethered to places or cars or people who didn't want me around. One beautiful day I was down by the river and noticed what I quickly recognized was a chrysalis. I snapped off the reed it was glued to and carefully took it home — all while riding my bike. I was on the other side of town, so it was no mean feat to get it home intact, and we lived at the top of a hill. I took great care to get it home.

I put it in a jar but so it could still breathe. And I waited. And waited. The chrysalis turned from opaque to transparent. I was excited to watch it every day. And then one day I was greeted by an empty jar. Where was my chrysalis? Where was the butterfly? It turns out my older brother, Jon, had seen the butterfly shortly after it emerged and opened the top, letting the butterfly flutter up to the top window of our house where it died, unable to escape, and me unable to reach it. I was devastated. I planned to let it go outside after it emerged. I would have seen it in all its flaming color and wished it well as it fluttered on its new wings to some great destination. Instead, it stayed on the windowsill up high where no one could reach it, a dead reminder of my brother's callousness. 

There are other stories of him and my oldest brother basically crushing my dreams over and over again. But I won't dwell on them much here. My first pet was a turtle named Scooter, who I would take to the backyard and turn the hose on so he could enjoy the labyrinth of rivers and ponds I created for him. I honestly thought he loved doing that. He seemed so free. But when I was called inside one time I asked my brother to watch Scooter. When I came back, Scooter was nowhere to be found. Years later my brother confessed he let the turtle go. Do you know the sadness of a child experiencing the loss of their first, beloved pet — even though that pet is just a turtle? It's a profound sadness. And over and over again I endured profound sadness at the hands of my brothers. 

They crushed me at every opportunity. Taking my concerns to my parents was out of the question as well (and still is). It's not like they were around anyway. I had four people arrayed against me going back to my earliest memories, who wanted to stifle me, handicap me, silence me, break me, and crush me underfoot. And that is not an exaggeration. To this day, I cannot talk to certain family members because I am quickly cut off and told I am wrong even though they didn't even hear what I had to say because they cut me off before I even had a chance to say anything. Honestly, why would you treat your family like that? What is the point? What is wrong with you people?

The youngest child is automatically at a disadvantage, and an unexpected, unwanted child even more so. Yes, I was not wanted. In fact, my father didn't want to have any kids. Somehow, I think that would have been a good idea. But God wanted me here, and for reasons I have never understood, as my life has been one great sadness after another. There was no warmth in my household. I survived on meager rations from the very beginning, finding meaning and love wherever I could. Often I found it outside, in a book, or playing with my Legos on the floor while everyone watched tv (notice they're all solitary activities). The strange thing is, I was a good kid and stayed a good kid. My childhood didn't make me a mean person, though I do flash a wicked temper from time to time. It was my choice to remain kind. If I can endure a shitty childhood and still remain kind, then there is hope for the future, as well. Everything is changeable. Nothing is written in stone.

What does this have to do with me today? It's what was put in me — what I call the automatic failure mechanism — from my childhood. This was mostly the doing of my brothers, but my parents had a hand as well. It's hard to describe how exactly it was put in me. Is there some diagram I can cough up? Not really. It was everything, all the time, constant. I was treated like I could not compete with my brothers: I was too small, too slow, not smart enough, not interesting enough, not athletic enough. Really, just not enough. If I ever did out-compete them in some way, I was throttled. My reward for doing something well or better than them (even if it was merely in my own mind) was I got my ass kicked. 

So, as life unraveled, there were examples such as these: in middle school, we were doing situps in gym class and one kid had set the record for most situps in a minute. I was after him, so I knew how many I needed. I could have beaten his number but slowed down in the last stretch so I could tie him instead. I didn't want to be a target for a beating. Again, in middle school, I was running the 800 and came from behind to catch the frontrunner, but slowed down at the end to tie instead (actually, I may have let him win). Again, I didn't want to endure a beating, even though there was going to be no beating and perhaps praise instead. Again, during a basketball game, the other team was hurrying up, trying to score again but had to bring the ball inbounds. We had them a little off their timing. I was covering a kid and another teammate had the other kid who were supposed to bring the ball up the court, but my teammate and I switched at the last second to throw the inbounds play off, and sure enough, the kid throwing the ball in threw it right to me, and I bumbled it on purpose and it went out of bounds. I had an easy layup and probably the winning score. As it turned out, we won anyway, but it wasn't because of me, even though it was a decent defensive play on our part. I simply had no script or template for success.

I passed on the girl of my dreams for the same reason. She was the best. She was amazing. I didn't want to get my ass kicked, and I didn't deserve her anyway. I always had in the back of my mind that there were other guys vying for her (and there were, of course, and assuredly still are). I was willing to let them win because I couldn't comprehend success anyway. That was more than 20 years ago, when I actually had a chance to be with her. But with the automatic failure mechanism, failure was assured. I would have fucked it up anyway, so it was better I didn't try. I simply didn't have a clue how to handle success. At this moment, I still feel the same way about her. Often, I check on her ex on Instagram just to see the man who beat me in the end. He bested me all those years he had with her, and still today, he remains triumphant. Sometimes I even tell him, "You beat me, but that's okay because you deserve her and I do not." I shrivel even as I type this because it may seem to my audience I'm making this up. I am not. I actually talk to his dumb pictures. 

I'm not going to spend the rest of this post exuding my love for the girl I can't have. Everyone is probably tired of reading that. But that's a scenario I am comfortable with. Why? Maybe it's my fear of intimacy or actual inability to be intimate. I seem to always choose the girl I can't have, and even married one. The more inaccessible, remote, or far-fetched the scenario that she will return my love, and that's the girl I want. What on earth is that? It's an automatic failure. I've already chosen a scenario that cannot possibly end well for me. 

So the question will now enter readers' minds of, "How is Cindy any different from that scenario?" It's quite possible she is not. I don't want to go over this again, but I will, and hopefully for the last time. I would have moved on two and a half years ago when she ended our relationship. But in Dec. 2017, I felt God told me to do something else instead. So, I will do that. Once I have done that and the scenario remains the same, I will admit I did not hear God's voice at all but was deluded somehow, at which point I will continue to love her and my life will remain the same. Or I did actually hear God's voice. Either way, the whole thing is out of my hands. I just have to wait and see. That probably sounds like madness, but that's my life. I accepted defeat two years ago, but God's words have stayed with me. I'm sorry I don't have a clearer explanation for all of that. I will keep loving her either way, so it really makes no difference to me. That's not a good answer for an audience, but that's all I have. Trust me, I know I look like a buffoon saying these things. If you're patient like me and wait, maybe you'll get to see a miracle happen.   

So, here I am, 42 years old and have accomplished jack shit in my life. Failure was assured so I didn't even try. That's a piss poor way of living, my friends. I've gained confidence, though, the last few years, that I can make progress and do well. I will always shy away from the spotlight, as there is only so much a man can change about his upbringing. But I see now I can be successful, even though it doesn't look pretty. I can change. But here's the thing. My confidence is not in myself. It shifted to God. So, whatever I accomplish, I know it's because He rescued me and today leads me. And that's all I need to know. 

Clearly, I have some pretty deep wounds from my childhood. And my behavior bears witness. When I pray and bring things to God, He makes wonderful things happen. Outside of that, I'm not comfortable with my own decisions. That's okay; that's better than making bonehead mistakes. I just pray a lot these days. 

Here's the funny thing, though. When a man does what God tells him to do, he's automatically successful! It doesn't matter how his actions are perceived by other people, either. So, as I sit here on this cold, October morning with the feeling in my chest of utter failure, I am actually successful. I have done what God has told me to do, and that's all I need. My life may not look pretty on the outside, but growing inside my chest is so much hope and joy it's nearly impossible to even set those words inside this little post because they simply don't belong next to these sad words.

If I had not given this whole mess to God, who knows where I would be today? Even though I may not understand where He is leading me sometimes, I know His way is better. So, I will end this diatribe on that high note. If there's any fixing the mechanism that was put in me through childhood abuse and trauma, it will only happen through God's grace. Perhaps the only way to change the script I've been given is to give it to God.

Thank you, once again, for following along. God bless you.