Anita,

So, for example, with my parents. My parents have, uh, very right-wing views. From an early age they sort of pushed me to listen to their views and demonize the other side. I remember even writing a paper where I had to pick a side regarding hate speech. My original paper was saying “it should be censored, etc.” and they listened to my argument, and basically said “I disagree with your point and my only advice for you is to change your position closer to mine.” This didn’t make me a lot of friends, honestly. I overidentified with my parents, they treated me well when I parroted their arguments back at them. I’ve come to very different conclusions after some deep work, and now I feel used. Like I wasn’t even exposed to the other side except for in demonizing generalizations. My mother also believes in the “Law of Attraction” which made me miserable. I thought for a long time that I would bring my own misery upon myself and therefore my misery was entirely and utterly my fault and that I was a terrible person for even *considering* that something might not go well. Needless to say, I was not very good at developing my own sense of self, aside from my tastes in entertainment. After that, when they lost everything in the financial crash, they found this MLM that basically promised that they’d have a “residual income” and that they’d found their answer. I was scared, and I got roped in. I was bad at it, because, once again, those things are not designed for you to succeed. They’re designed to sell you as much crap as possible and then tell you you’re “just not quite there yet.”

While in school, I remember at one time for weeks on end we would play “Nickball.” I was always it. I look back at it now, and wonder if they were laughing at or with me. I wasn’t great at basketball. I started in fourth grade, when everyone else had been playing since at least first grade. No, really. I did it because I wanted to be around my friends, and somehow masochistically stuck around with it for two years until I decided I hated it. Looking back on it, it felt more like exclusion than outright bullying. The details are fuzzy some 15 years later. I remember trying to share things that I liked and people smiling and nodding. I hate that reaction. I can’t remember if those kids asked about what I liked because they were interested or because they wanted to make fun of me.

I remember my first girlfriend cheating on me with one of my close friends. I was not a nice teenager, to be frank. I was kind of a prototypical upper-middle class white dude with a chip on his shoulder. Girls didn’t like me. Well, the ones I *wanted* to like me didn’t. And I mean that in the context of the time, I’ve sort of changed and realized that I was doing a lot of judgment based on social hierarchy. I was so incompetent that I looked into pickup artist crap, which both made me feel worse about myself somehow and made me more of an entitled jerk. The only reason my current girlfriend stuck around through the tail end is because she was kind enough to see through that. God bless her, I wouldn’t have had the patience for me.

Please message me if you have questions, it’s hard to dredge all this up on my own.

Thanks,

Capo