About Me
7-4-15
I have spent most of my life not letting anyone get close to me.
A saying I heard when I was young, “Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”.
I looked at that saying a little different. People have always liked me and thought the best of me, I never understood why. I believed “if you really knew me you would not like me”. So I never let anyone in.
Before that, in third grade maybe, I remember reading a story about how to be a good friend. It said to be a good friend you need to share something personal with some one that you would not just share with anyone. I remember thinking about this, what would I share? Nothing, I could not think of one thing that I would share with one person that I would not share with everyone. I felt like everyone knew everything about me. Rather I felt like I had nothing to share.
Years later, in my 20s, I had worked with Ben for a few months. We ate lunch together every day. He shared things in his life with me, I just listened. Then one day he had to move, out of state I think, so we would not be working together any more. When he said good bye to me he said “thank you Carl, you have been a good friend” this really confused me. I had never shared one thing with him that I wouldn’t share with everyone, how could I have been a good friend?
I don’t trust what I know. If one of my Kids, or my wife was missing I could not give a good description of what they look like for fear of doing it wrong. I think this comes from one day as a kid being out with my Mom. I don’t know where we went or what we did or with who, I only remember I had a great time. That evening when a neighbor came over I was excited to her my Mom tell the story of what we did that day. My Mother likes to tell stories and I loved to listen to them. She would often tell stories about books she read and pretend stories about trips she took. I did not know she embellished the true stories.
As she was telling the story of our day I was excited and listening very closely. But she did not tell the same story of our day that I remembered. As an adult I know she just embellished the story a little, but as a kid I was devastated. Was my Mom lying? No she never lies. I must have remembered wrong. To this day I don’t trust what I know.
In my thirties I worked with a guy who just had his first kid. One day he was talking about how he could not wait until his Son grew up so he could teach him all the things he had learned in his life. His comment stood out to me because I remember thinking “what have I learned that I could teach my kids?” the answer was nothing; I had nothing to share that I knew I knew.
In the book The Success Principals Jack says it takes a lot of energy to hold back our truth. I want to take off the emergency break as he says in the book, so I have decided to share a part of me I wish no one know.
As I start my mind is jumping around about where to start. So I’ll start with.
When I first met my high school sweet heart I did not remember anything about my child hood, maybe a few minutes of a day here and there. When we went out to dinner or something she was very quiet and I am like my Mother and felt like I needed to fill the empty silence, so I talked.
As I talked, and it did not matter what I was talking about, sometimes out of the clear blue a memory would just pop in to my head. Usually it came just a few minutes at a time and totally unrelated to anything else.
As the months went buy I was remembering things that happened to me when I was a kid. One day when I was six maybe, less than ten anyway. I remember walking out of my front door, and across our front lawn. I do not remember what just happened in the house or who was there. I remember as I walked across the lawn, in about the center of the lawn, all of a sudden I felt this felling that I can’t describe; only that it consumed my whole being and that it grew in intensity. In my little kid mind I imagined it must have been some kind of a space ship focusing some kind of beam on to me. What else could it be?
My High school sweet heart became my wife; we had a great marriage for many years. I gave her my life; I would do anything for her. I gave up the kind of clothes I liked to wear, the kind of music I listened to, drinking, drugs, dancing (I loved dancing). Anything she wanted I would do. I believed that to be and do what she wanted was loving her.
As it turned out she needed a guy who would be a dominant take charge kind of guy. Maybe even a little abusive. As a little girl she saw her then alcoholic, abusive father do things. I could never be that kind of guy.
She could not just leave so she started drinking and doing drugs then screwing around… Yes I know it’s a lot more complicated than that, this is the condensed version.
One day after knowing without any doubts what she was doing, I remember feeling that same feeling I felt as a kid walking across that lawn. I still can’t describe the feeling, but now I know what it was, it was pain. Intense emotional Pain.
I won’t go into all the details, but as a Christian I felt like I needed to forgive her. That was a huge struggle for me that lasted many months with much time in prayer. Finally I did forgive her, really forgive her. And to my amazement I found that I loved her even more than I had ever loved her. I didn’t know how that could be because I thought I had already loved her with all my heart.
But that was short lived because it wasn’t long before I realized she was still doing what she was doing before and then some. Over the next few months I learned to hate her, really Hate her.
It got to the point that I hated life; I wished I had never been born. I would rather be dead than have ever met her. I thought about suicide but as a Christian I could not. Months later I did decide to kill myself then spent weeks thinking about how I would do it. I wanted to make sure I’d kill myself not just maim myself, or end up in a mental hospital.
When it came time to do it I though “what about my girl friend?” my answer was she could find a new guy easily. Then I thought “what about my Mother?” my answer was she has lots of kids (silly I know, I’d be devastated). My next thought was “what about my kids?” I could not do this to my kids. So I didn’t.
For years I hoped a truck would run me over, or something else would kill me.
On the outside I was happy; I don’t think anyone knew I was far from it. When things went wrong, my business partner use to say, “well it’s better than being six feet under”. I would think to myself “no it’s not”. I wanted my tombstone to say life sucks I’m glad I’m dead. I believed the joy in life is not worth the pain you have to go through to get it. I would have gladly given up any future joy if I could also give up any future pain.
I hated life, I hated people, and I often thought if I had to be in solitary confinement, I’d like it. Even as a kid before all this pain my dream was to be a hermit when I grew up. I have always liked being by myself. I think I felt inadequate most of my life.
As a kid I was not allowed to hate, hate was a sin. So I learned to suppress how I felt. I suppressed how I felt, good or bad.
Life worked for me when I did what I was told. My first real job I didn’t screw around I always worked hard and did more than my share. I started as a dish washer and was assistant manager when I left. When I worked In a warehouse I got privileges others didn’t. I always got raises even when others didn’t. In construction sometimes I was making close to twice what the guy next to me was, I loved piece work. As I wrote this I remembered I was called Quick Carl from High School until my divorce when Quick Carl died. One guy I worked for made me a partner, paid me very well, and is my closest friend. He is my closest friend but I think we are distant compared to others.
As I’m going through the book The Success Principals I’m learning a lot and changing how I think. Right now I think doing the appreciation exercises has had the most profound effect on my growth. Today I love life, I love where I live, I love what I have and what I will have, I love my wonderful wife more deeply than I ever have. I love my family, I love driving around in my slow golf cart. I am probably happier than I have ever been in my life.
I am excited about how I’m changing and how I am happy and about where I’ll be in a year. But I have one more thing I feel I need to share. It was not on my list when I started this but I am aware of it now. Ever sense I can remember I dreamed of punishing evil people, mean and rude people. I hate injustice. Physically I could do nothing but in my mind I would beat the crap out of those deserving of it. Sometimes I’d imagine being a good lawyer and winning in court, but mostly I’d imagine just beating them, hard. Even when I have my gun I’d rather beat them. Hate is a sin so I could never show this feeling, I think I’ve done a good job of hiding this, I am aware of only two people who have even come close to seeing how I really feel. I learned that I could hurt myself if I acted on my anger. One of the first times I was working in the restaurant as a cook. It was early and I was the only one there. I don’t remember what pissed me off I only remember thinking about it, no one was there, the cheese grater was heavy duty metal I was pretty sure it would not break, so I slammed the cheese grater hard on the shelf as I put it away. However it got hung up on the shelf and as I forced my arm forward over the stationary grater my arm got chewed up. I don’t believe I have ever told anyone that story. It was a long time before I let myself let go of some of the anger I had inside me. The second time I broke my hand, even after careful thought about what I was hitting and how I hit it.
Most of the time I am not even aware of the anger deep in my soul. But once in a while when an idiot driver does something stupid I feel it and I bite my cheeks. If I’m around people the anger rarely shows itself, it’s when I’m alone that I feel it coming up. I don’t like to watch shows that have evil people in them, when I do I dream of beating the bad guys.
Writing all this down has really given me something’s to think about. For one I thought thinking of suicide was what I don’t want anyone to know about but in fact it’s the anger that I did not want to share.
I still don’t remember much of my childhood. I always blamed it on all the drugs I did in High school. Now I feel more like I got hurt as a kid so I shut down as a way to not feel the pain.
Started this 7-4-15 finished 7-28-15