Day One.
I think the most difficult realization of the past few years was that I did everything wrong the first time.
I’m not a writer, and I don’t think that what I write is particularly good. It may seem like false modesty, but my writing voice is indistinguishable from my thinking voice. It’s a stream of consciousness.
When I look back at things from a few years ago, it’s pretty cringe. That’s not much of a surprise because I was pretty cringe then too. I don’t look at pictures from high school, and I certainly don’t read what I wrote. I’ve spent so many years trying to run, fiendishly SPRINT from that awkward past of glasses and fake tans and Abercrombie & Fitch.
The only thing I wanted to do was portray on the outside not what I felt inside. I wanted to look *put together*, confident, self-assured, even though at the time I was a million miles away from there. I didn’t know what was happening to me during those years. Undigested trauma, almost losing a parent, only child syndrome, being told what I was instead of figuring it out for myself, crushes on girls, crushes on boys, and the overwhelming sense that I was like a broken piece of pottery that nobody would ever be able to fix in a sea of perfect vessels.
Since then, it’s been a cycle of breaking down and building up, vomiting previous traces of who I was only to binge on who I wanted to be. Instead of trying on new outfits, I tried on new lives as fashion to see what fit. But underneath that crisp jacket was still the same core: squishy, despondent, soft, fearful, asymmetrical.
I think it’s because of that faultline between oaf and oeuvre that I failed at everything, so much.
I failed at being a good son.
I failed at being a good friend.
I failed at being a good best friend.
I failed at being a good boyfriend.
I failed at building a business many times over.
I failed at so many different types of jobs.
I failed at business school.
I failed at making money.
The typical refrain is for someone to look at that juxtaposed with what actually happened and think – aha! – but you didn’t fail! You did (all these things) because (reasons) which are (good somehow). I know that. But it doesn’t take away what I know to be true – that I failed at so, so many things.
The optimist looks at this and says that now I have the experience to not fail.
The pessimist looks at this and says that people change so little, and I’m bound to fail so much again.
The realist looks at this and says that everyone fails and feels like a failure.
The pragmatist doesn’t have time for this conversation.
Up until now, the pragmatist has won out, because despite being wildly unpragmatic in so many ways (hell if I know if that’s a word or not) my mind works off efficiency and fears that if I start having this conversation, I’ll spiral into a black hole of uncertainty and anxiety and never leave the house.
But I think it’s time to have this conversation. I think it’s time to write.
If I write, if I post something every day, it holds me accountable. It also holds you, the reader, accountable, because I’ll be facing some uncomfortable truths and raising topics that will evoke thoughts and memories that haven’t come to mind in awhile.
Welcome to day one.
