Suppy Sup! Do I Have To Say It?

When I was young, I felt pressure to succeed in spite of my youth. I aimed to overcome the boundaries imposed on me by youngness. I often feel the sting of regret—did I do the things a teenager was supposed to do? Did I inhibit myself by striving to self-realize long before I had the tools to do so?

I enjoyed my time in high school! I had many friends, a large swatch of whom are still very close to me both emotionally and geographically to this day. I participated in extracurricular activities, sang in choir, read a lot of books, played video games with my buddies, and went to dances. I believed in myself…possibly a little too much.

But now, I remember my high-school self as grating, annoying, and rude. Once, a friend was telling me a story, a twinkle in his eye. He was excited by whatever juicy tidbits this tale contained. The details have long since faded.

I stopped him mid-sentence and said, “Hey, you know what?”

His face sulked, and he filled in my next words: “You don’t care.” I nodded and he turned away.

Before you doubt me, I can assure you, this is an actual, real thing that I did. I’m certain I committed the atrocious social act more than once, though this example stuck.

It’s bad enough I would stop a friend mid-story to announce how little I cared. It’s worse that he knew what was happening. I had done this often enough that he recognized familiar territory. I was a minefield and he stepped on the wrong patch of land.

This same friend also told me—on numerous occasions—how grateful he was that I made efforts to include him in social events and hangouts.

I tell you that second part 1) to assure you (and myself) I wasn’t all bad and 2) to preface this question: which part do you think I remember more often? Which interaction do you think locks onto my psyche?

Do I have to say it?

Later, I went to college.

Armed with some semblance of freedom, I made plenty of friends. I worked as an RA, a job that justified my favorite hobbies, namely staying at home and playing video games with whomever else was on duty that evening.

I drank a bit, I smoked a bit, but never latched onto the party culture like your stereotypical late-teens-early-twenties degenerate. I endured my fair share of hardships during those years: my grandma’s passing, my mother’s bout with breast cancer and subsequent suicide attempt (both long past; she is in good health!), my parents’ divorce, and the petty side-taking of their social circles that followed. I found solace in my freedom and my separation from those hardships. It took a toll on some of my relationships, and I’ve had to work to do some repairs. That’s a post for another day.

In classes, I deployed a strategy I would later realize was the most called-upon option from my playbook: doing just enough, and not a smidge more.

Classes became hurdles to overcome. Never was this more prevalent than in my creative writing courses—courses directly related to my degree and my long-term goals.

My options:

1. Engage with the material! Learn! Grow! Try things!

2. Do the absolute bare minimum, snag a B-, and move on.

I’m sure you know the route I took by now. Again I ask you: do I have to say it?

Impossible though it may be to distill my adolescence into a newsletter installment you’ve probably stopped reading by now (self-doubt, more of that coming soon), these things, and their relatives, flood my mind with striking regularity.

Now, nearly a decade remove from those formative educational years, I deal with a harsh and sad truth: I do not believe in myself.

Like, hardly ever.

Truth be told, I still feel like a Child. I put it in caps because Lights says it best in her song:

“Seeing life come and go all the time.”

Close your eyes and try to imagine yourself. It’s abstract and difficult, but if you try, you can sus out what your brain latches onto.

I close my eyes and think about myself, and I remember those mistakes and failings. I remember the friend I shut down, the class I didn’t care about. These moments and many, many others bubble and boil in a vicious brew of doubt.

Rather than offering myself forgiveness, I linger on my past foibles and allow them to nefariously shape my present.

When I ponder my past, I can conjure only the stumbles. It’s like looking through a fucked up mirror that shows me only the things I wish to forget.

The result is a man who knows he is capable, who has all the evidence he needs to succeed in spite of himself, but who cannot forgive himself for the in-development identity he has long since outgrown.

I see myself as the sum of my worst parts, and I’m doing the admittedly heavy, trying work of forgiving myself so I can believe in myself.

I am not the same person I was when I made those mistakes. When I need to remind myself of this fact, I listen to Mr. Blue by Catherine Feeny.

“Mr. Blue, I told you that I love you; please believe me.”

I listen to this song when I want a good cry. My wife—the most empathetic person I’ve ever met—wells up when she hears it now, too, reading the moment for sadness. And she’s right, to a degree.

When I self-analyze, I wonder whether I love myself. I know what I want the answer to be. I know what the truth is. Do I have to say it?

No matter the response, there’s always a dash of hope, a pining for belief and for truth.

More often than not, these days, I find moments to assure myself of my own value. Often, it involves siphoning my need for validation from my mind and letting it sit in the outside world.

If I want to confirm that I’ve outlived the shortcomings of my younger self, I need to prove it. I don’t know yet what form it takes, but for the moment I’m assuming it’s spaghetti and I am a blank wall, waiting to see what sticks.

Jim Croce put it best:

“But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find ‘em.”

I don’t want to wallow in that statement, barred by my swirling of self-doubt. I’d rather feel like I used my time to find the things I love, to be creative, and to believe in myself enough to try them.

To discover what I love, and what could restore much of my shattered confidence, I have to take chances. I have to put myself—and my creative work—into the open, where it can be critiqued and (hopefully) understood by someone other than the guy who made it and remains unsure of its value or impact.

I don’t know what shape a lot of this journey will take, but for now I’m focusing on the little things: smoking less weed (another topic I could cover at length in a separate post), giving new things a chance, and trying to produce creative works I would someday like to share with the world. I can’t save time in a bottle, but I can sure as hell make the most of it.

Tonight, I’m making my first leap into the unfamiliar waters of putting myself out there: Write Club. I’m meeting with two friends who want to write and critique each other’s work. I haven’t bothered with such endeavors since college, and I’m hopeful it will renew the creative spark I suppressed as a youngin in favor of “just enough.” And who knows, maybe you’ll get a taste of the work I submitted, a fantasy tale about a fiercely capitalistic magic system and the bard who tries to upend it.

It’s scary. But in the words of Ted Mosby: “If you're not scared, you're not taking a chance, and if you're not taking a chance then what the hell are you doing?

Thanks for reading.