Struggles of the Past

Throughout life there are many struggles. Some big, some

small, and the size is really all relative to where each person is in life and

what other types of struggles they have faced. There are times when the

struggles people go through can turn into a metaphorical pissing contest, if you

will. One person feels their struggles are more or harder than the others. Like

I said, struggles are all relative, you may not have gone through the same

things or struggles that society would deem as better or worse than any other person,

it comes down to how it affected you and what you chose to do about it.

Over my years I have dealt with my fair share of struggles.

Some could be considered small, others large, and in the grand scheme of things

all learning lessons no matter what way you look at it. As the oldest child, I

know there are many out there that probably can relate, there are some aspects

of life that you inherit whether you like it or not. The challenges and

struggles with the first born may not be intentional but many that I talked to

and lived all are very similar. Once there are more children in the family you

become kind of an example. Good or bad, you have been placed in a role of

having your younger siblings look up to you. You kind of set the standard. This

comes with its own level of pressure and in a way, competition. You are no

longer the one that is the main focus, the younger ones now needing the

attention, what was once yours now slip. This is the way of things. There is

not necessarily anything wrong with it as long as you are not completely

abandoned. Because of this, many first-borns quickly learn how to be self-sufficient;

they learn how to entertain themselves or find ways to get attention. As you

grow older the competition doesn’t stop, no matter the family size. Being the

oldest you often experience things first, first to make the mistakes and these

are seen by the younger members of your family. They see and learn what not to

do or how to get away with it better as they saw what happened when you were

the one doing it and how you may have screwed up.

Later on, at least in my case, there was always competition about

who can do things better. Sports, school, games, it’s always there. Once I hit

high school, well, even before that but we will focus on high school, there was

always the pressure of success. You need good grades to get a good job, need to

succeed to become successful later. With me there was also the struggle of how

my brain worked differently than say my brothers. I knew the material, knew the

facts, could work a majority of it, participated in class, often called a know

it all or teacher’s pet for my ability to retain the information, but come test

time, all gone. I couldn’t test well; I struggled to get things pulled out of

my brain. I’m not saying I failed a lot. But my test grades didn’t fully

reflect my understanding of the subject. On the flip side of that, I had

siblings that didn’t even need to open the textbook and would perform better on

homework and tests. The struggle to keep up with that and the pressure brought

from feeling like I was slipping and not meeting expectations grew. The

struggle of wanting to fit in, be seen as someone doing well, was always there

and continued for years.

One of my other biggest struggles in high school was the

desire to fit in, be accepted. As I grew, the friends I had had for years also

grew, many going in different directions, finding different groups to be in,

finding themselves. I never felt I did that. I had friends and people I hung

out with, but with my issues I had of feeling like I didn’t fit in with others,

and my adjusting who I was depending on who I was with, really was a start and

precursor to my struggles later with not being true to myself and losing who I

was. I would go through the routine every day, talk to those who would talk to

me, but always had this feeling of being alone. I was struggling with body

image as well, being overweight, having bad acne, and a few other health

issues, I was pretty self-conscious. In the massive school I was in, it wasn’t

hard for the quiet nerdy kid to get lost in the shuffle. some days I liked it,

others it added to the struggles of loneliness.

So far some may say in the grand scheme of things that these

struggles and feelings a small compared to the atrocities others have had to

live through, and in many ways they are correct. But like I said earlier

struggles are all relative. For someone like me these impacted and redirected

my life in many ways. After high school I went off to college. Thinking the

move away was a fresh start. In some ways it was a chance to be out on my own

in many ways but problems you ignore have a fun little way of following you.

The drive to want to be successful pushed me to go to school despite not having

any plans of what I wanted to do at all. Adding into that the self-esteem

issues and the onset of depression added to my struggles. I again followed many

of the same ways I did in High School. Find some people, adapt/modify my

behavior to fit in and run with it until time came that I needed to move on.

This is also where my struggles with relationships really started. I hadn’t

dated in high school because of the struggles and situations I listed, so once

in college and the opportunity began to present itself I latched on. Looking

for acceptance from those willing to give it whether it was healthy or not.

This very much set a pattern in motion. As one relationship ended I wouldn’t

sit with it, the pain, the lessons, the reasons it ended, I would quickly be on

the lookout for another place to find acceptance. Never fully understanding the

reasoning or the desire to find out I just pushed forward as one does. Like I

said this was a pattern that I didn’t see, nor wanted to see. I just wanted to

fill the void in me for acceptance. It wasn’t until much later I realized the

void wasn’t because of lack of others' acceptance, but my own. I was not being

true to myself. I wasn’t happy with who I was so I looked to outside sources to

find it. A common problem many people face.

It's taken me many years of ignoring the lessons life has

been trying to teach me before I was finally able to start sitting with things.

Being pushed to look deeper and see what was really going on. Part of it was me

not wanting to talk about my feelings or struggles as I was a man and that’s

not what you do, others was me not recognizing things as a pattern or problem.

I would bury it, ignore it, in hopes it would just go away. Something I did

often with a lot of problems then and to some extent continued for many years.

The overall effect of my struggles lead me down a path that lead to heart

break, pain, self-loathing, and the loss of who I was and wanted to be.

I am relatively new to the growth and healing game but have

very much begun to understand that it's difficult and a struggle in and of itself.

It challenges you, pushes you, and makes you revisit the hard times. Even in

writing this blog a number of thoughts and feelings are coming up in memories I

have not thought about in a long time. I know this is kind of all over the

place and only really highlights a few things as far as my struggles go. I plan

on getting into more of them at a later date as I plan to "open up"

more in my blogs on a more personal level. But overall I just wanted to show

that struggle is real for all of us, it comes in many different forms and regardless

of how big or bad it is, it affects us all. It’s what you do with the struggles

set before you that matter, and how it can take years to get to be at a point

where you can sit with them and understand better why you struggle and what the

lesson it was meant to give you.