Mikey G Humanity Series #2
I am committed to being vulnerable with others and creating a space for others to be vulnerable. I am creating a series of blogs that help others to see my humanity. My hope is that by sharing some of my deepest insecurities and vulnerabilities that I will inspire others to do the same. It is my honor to bring you the Humanity series.
Who am I?
Who am I? I have asked myself this question a lot, and too often I seem to arrive at the same answer- I am a monster. I look at the totality of what I have caused and created in the world, and no matter how much good I have done, I can only see what I have done wrong. That I am wrong, no matter what I do. This belief about myself permeates everything I do. It invades upon my relationships; it denies others the opportunity to appreciate me. Everything and nothing I do will ever be good enough because deep down inside I feel like a monster, and everything I do is just covering up what I am inside.
I feel like a creature to be hunted down and exterminated. A danger to myself and to the world. I am my own worst enemy, and I have come to realize the greatest war that I fight is the war within myself. I hardly feel human sometimes. So much so that others have often come to regard me as inhuman. To further my fears, I look at the collection of evidence present in my own life. The drug dealing, the callous acts of violence, the apathy towards human suffering, the careful planning and execution of intentional harm towards others. While many of these things have become more distant relics of my past, they still come back to haunt me and cause me to question who is it that I really am?
I think about the people I have hurt. The damage I have caused in my home, in my family, and in my community. I often think to myself there will never be enough amends to restore what I have taken. I could not have enough lifetimes to repair what I have broken. Sometimes it just feels like going through the motions, like it is all an act of futility. I think back on what I have done sometimes with so much shame. Sometimes I survive it through denial. Sometimes I feel like denial is the best thing I can do for myself. It all feels like too much.
I am a monster
I watch movies and television and media that tell me my experiences mean that I am a monster, a psychopath. I remember a childhood that was unlike the worlds of other people. I remember how distant I felt from other people growing up. How other children did not understand me. How could they? What child would understand why I thought it was fun to hurt and torture innocent animals. Why I felt excited and alive when ants would burn under a lighter, and I would watch them melt. Why I would hurt and kill other animals for sport, and instead of offering them a merciful death, just to see how long I could prolong their pain and suffering. Why was it that these things gave me such pleasure while other pursuits caused such pointed disinterest.
I had eventually reached a point in my youth when I decided it was time to cleanse my community. I had decided, at the peak of my self-righteousness, that I was the one who was meant to sacrifice himself to cleanse the world of evil. The evil as I perceived it were all these mean kids in my school who were bullying me and other children. I felt that if there was only one thing I could do with my life that would make it all worthwhile, it would be worth it to give my life up to cleanse the world once and for all of this evil. So early one morning before school began, I sneaked into the school building with a plan. My plan was to fill the lower floor of the school with gas from the Bunsen burners and wait for the students to arrive. As students began to file in, I slowly and dramatically began to strike one match after another. I had made it halfway through the pack of matches with no success when the assistant principle found me hiding behind the desk in the back of the room, surrounded by expended matches.
This is probably where I first learned that I could use drugs to slay the monster.
This was the first time I remember being expelled from school. I remember how I felt like a hero, like I was being rewarded. I got to stay home on vacation while all the other students continued to work in school. When I went back to school finally, the other students were all afraid of me. They would call me the Unabomber, and would hide from me when I walked down the hallway. I got to work with a tutor and stay at my grandparent’s house, as my parents no longer even wanted me in their home. This was another source of feeling estranged from humanity- I no longer even had a home or a relationship to my parents. It was not long before child and family services stepped in, and the string of group homes and placements began. And the drugs. This is probably where I first learned that I could use drugs to slay the monster. Even if only for a while. So long as I could keep it at bay, lock him away, I would be okay. I could keep the world safe from me, protect them from myself. So long as I had drugs.
I believed this for most of my life. I continued using drugs. Even when the monster returned, I was too numb to care. I could avoid taking responsibility. I had the perfect excuse. Selling drugs made my monster more powerful. Gave me access to money, weapons, and people to use or control. I spent a lot of time feeding the monster, giving it power. I never considered for once that I could change. Everything I had been taught told me that I was this monster, and so that was what I became. Every day a fulfillment of the same vision of myself, the same core belief, and realization of my inner truth. That I am a monster.
I still struggle with this identity. It is like an internal battle zone. One side of me fights like hell to hang onto this idea that all I will ever be is a monster. Looks for evidence of it, collects it like other people collect baseball cards or video games. I am always looking for signs of him. Terrified that he will return. Sometimes I fear that I am not strong enough. That perhaps this was not a war I was meant to win.
There was nothing in my recovery that taught me how to be with this monster. There is no forgiveness for what I have done. There is no pretending anymore either. Just being present to what I have caused, accepting it, and moving forward. Perhaps there will come a day when I have let go of this part of my identity. Perhaps someday I will be able to be free of the shame I feel when I think about what I have done. Perhaps someday I will be able to see myself differently, to feel like a man, not a monster. I have hope that such a day might arrive, and the only thing for me to do is to take it one day at a time. In each new day that I create myself, I have a choice-
In each new day that I create myself, I have a choice- For today I can be a man.
For today I can be a man. I am not a monster. This is who I am today.
The other side of me looks at all the good I have done. All the people I have helped, all the lives I have changed. I look at who I am now in the mirror and I often do not even recognize myself. I guess I am still looking for the monster when now I only see a man. Perhaps I am only human after all, and I am only that which I create myself to be. When I am present to the truth about myself, I can move forward and step into a new way of being. Not in denial of my past and myself, but in fulfillment of a new vision of myself. A new being of human.
For that is all that I am- human.
