How and when did you become a different person?
Bear Blog Carnival for the month of September
Welcome to the very first (unofficial) Bear Blog Carnival. This month's topic is: "How and when did you become a different person?"
Anyone can participate by writing a post about that topic (you can read mine below for inspiration), and sending me the link to it.
You can read more about what a blog carnival is on this page.
Here's the list of this month's entries:
- Coming soon
My entry
I like to think about this question often because it makes me feel emotions that are as interesting as they are hard to describe.
Very often, when I look at my past through this lens, I feel as though my previous "versions" are detached from me, as though they are completely different people. In fact, I sometimes feel as though I didn't become a fully "conscious" human being (that is, self-aware, in the sense that I am led by more than mere instincts) until the latest "turning point", which I will mention in the end.
Awakening
The first of these must have come about the age of three to five. My earliest memories are from that period. However, when I attempt to recollect them, it really feels to me as though I was not fully conscious back then. I say this a bit tongue and cheek, but being a three to five-year-old must be what it feels like to be a cat: Sure. You know what you want, but it's mostly eating, playing, and doing your necessities. I did think a bit deeper about some things though. The question that was most frequently on my mind at that time, for example, was why everyone was allowed to "be evil" and get away with it, but I wasn't?
Childhood
In 1995 I found myself plucked up from my home in the beautiful, sandy and sunshiny beaches of the Algarve (Portugal), and teleported to the bustling metropolis of Munich, Germany, which became my new home until the year 2000. I have very many fond memories of my time there. It was a carefree childhood for the most part. Christmas was my favorite time of the year, mostly for the gifts and the Adventskalender. I also somehow picked up the language in a matter of three months, all by myself. I even spoke without any accent.
Primary school, grades 1 through 4, was my first, real, persistent experience being forced to insert myself into a new social circle and made to figure out how to survive in it. It didn't go too well. I spent at least two years getting into fights almost every day. As a foreigner, I was also at a disadvantage, and repeatedly discriminated against at school. I was still very much preoccupied with the question of good and evil, and thought that I was somehow entitled to justice. That attitude got me into so much trouble, because I would rarely win an argument with anyone, even (or especially) when I was in the right. My parents won all arguments "because we're your parents"; other adults won arguments "because we're adults"; and other kids won arguments by beating me almost senseless. I got bullied a lot. I swear that I tried to fight back, but I somehow was never physically strong enough.
2YK to iPhone
The year 2000 rolls around, and like everyone predicted at that time, some kind of "Armageddon" did place in my life. Toward the end of primary school, I had finally made friends, close friends. One of them even came to visit me in Portugal in 2001, believe it or not. I kept in touch with another one through snail mail for a while. Never mind any of that though. My father hated living in Germany, so we all returned, except that he had to go back to Germany for another five years or so by himself, because there just wasn't enough work for him in Portugal. My mother ended up raising four children (me being the oldest) all by herself for years, while my father was burning the candle on both ends in the country that he wanted to flee from. As you can imagine, neither of them knew how to support me through what would become the most formative years of my life (and both of them now deeply regret ever leaving Germany, in part because they acknowledge that it traumatized me).
There was a significant change that happened in me during this period: I became desperate for any affection.
The first couple of years I again had to push through the daily bullying at school until I finally began to make some """friends""". The beatings were a lot more brutal because I got bullied by kids who were often older and also actively trying to kill me. I'm not exaggerating. I got back home all bruised up at least once every week. Neither my mother nor the teachers could figure out a way to make them stop. We're talking kids ages 11 to 13 who were already spending most of their time on the streets, had been sexually active, had been exposed to tobacco, drugs, and alcohol, and came from very broken households. Yes. We ended up in a very bad neighborhood. I was too soft, "too nice", and certainly not "street smart".
It didn't help that my classmates introduced me to pornography, which I later also got to see more of through a computer with access to the Internet that was strategically misplaced by my parents in my bedroom. Pornography turned my brain to porridge, and my character into that of a wild beast. I was still the soft, defenseless kid who got beaten up every other day for kicks and giggles, but I was now also obsessed with sex. Some kids had lost their virginity already (or pretended to) and liked to mock the gullible ones (like me) who hadn't yet. "No woman will ever take you", I got told over and over again, because I just wasn't "manly" (aggressive) enough.
Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that society came down with such fury on "toxic masculinity". I saw how it was being brewed into the psyche of my male, teenage peers, and I'm sad to say that the teachers often ignored or outright encouraged it. This and pornography completely eroded my innocence and made me unable to have normal relationships with anyone (especially with women) for years to come. I somehow had internalized the idea that (1) being aggressive is what defined manlihood and (2), only by having (pornographic) sex with a woman would I ever experience the feeling of "being loved".
The valley of death
The next turning point came when I had just reached 19 years of age, back in late 2008. I dropped out of college after being there for only two weeks. I felt depressed and demotivated. I thought that my life had no meaning nor purpose. It's a bit of a long story, but I managed to climb out of that rut and experience something that could truly be called "making a 180 turn". This was the moment that I stopped caring about who is "good" and who is "evil". This is significant because, throughout the previous period of my life, I had adopted the belief that people are either born good or evil, and that was that. I kept a mental list of everyone who (according to my standard) was decidedly evil (mostly my bullies), irredeemable, and should therefore be avoided at all costs. Imagine if I had taken that belief with me into adulthood... However, I had now come to the conclusion that this wasn't true (or at least, very devoid of nuance). Humans are capable of both good and evil, and I believe that those who are inclined to do evil acts can almost always be redeemed if we help them (and if they help themselves).
So, I decided to dedicate my life to help people choose to do good. I'm going to skip some details here, but I'll just say that I re-entered college with that goal as a profession in mind.
This was an odd period of my life though. I was both still the beast who had internalized the idea that I needed to be aggressive with people around me and to relentlessly pursue women. At the same time, I kept reading and studying everywhere that those ideas were lies, so I worked hard to improve my character. It bore some fruits, though mostly with the "aggression" part. It turns out, that I just never had a bully in me. It wasn't my personality. I had been trying to make it my character, but thankfully, I still hadn't crossed the point of no return.
Then something that I would have never expected happened to me: I began to become attractive to women. I was what you'd call a "late bloomer".
Between August 2011 and maybe April 2015, I burned through an unbroken trail of ex-girlfriends, one after the other, with each experience being more harrowing than the previous one. I was overjoyed each time when I (thought I) finally had "met the one", only to find out that I was actually still a very innocent boy who had no clue about relationships and human nature. Those relationships taught me many very hard but valuable lessons.
What never fails to amaze me, is that I kept making the same obvious mistakes, over and over, simply because I was desperate for emotional intimacy (which I conflated with physical intimacy). I kept going into these relationships, knowing before they even began that they would never work out. This is why I so often feel like I was a completely different person back then (as in, an entirely different human): How was I incapable of simply saying "no", when that is what I knew that I needed to do? I sometimes pour over some of my memories from that time and it feels as though I wasn't in control of my own body. Someone or something else was. I was conscious of the mistakes that I was making, but I was trapped in my own mind, while some puppeteer moved my limbs and mouth for his perverted amusement. I don't feel comfortable enough openly speaking about these experiences in detail (because, among other reasons, my exes are all still out there), but lets just say that I experienced real trauma that took me years to work through.
The rabbit hole
Some of you will find it funny that my latest turning point took place in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yes, on the Georgia-Tennessee state line, not far from the beautiful city of Chattanooga, is where I first remember becoming "exorcised" from my demons. I was at a different educational institution, with a curriculum that was very much aligned with my goal of learning how to become a better person and become an example to others. One of my exes had convinced me to drop out of the college that I had been to, but I did graduate at this new school. So for that and other reasons, that place will forever hold a special place in my heart. It was a bubble in a way, but it felt like paradise. I met the nicest people, made friends that I'm still close to, and met the love of my life.
There was something really special about this school. My knowledge about so many different sciences exploded in the very short period of time that I was there (1.5 years). In fact, I have never stopped learning since. Character-development (self-improvement, if you will), became one of my favorite topics of study. I am constantly reading some book about it. My journey is far from over but I have traveled a long distance since.
The most important thing for me in this period of my life has become not only to improve my character in order to become a better fellow human being, but also to dedicate my time to help other people in the ways that I naturally can. I'm not a professional, but my favorite thing to do is to go online and give people an ear, especially when they need to vent or ask for advice with regards to their relationships. Since 2016, I've been able to help thousands of people to work through their woes, in many cases, with great success, truly enabling and empowering the people that I chatted with to make significant improvements in their lives.
My wife and I met in the second half of 2015, started courting in 2016, and got married in 2017. For a brief period, we traveled the world until we settled down in late 2018 in her home country: Latvia. Our marriage has probably been the single most impactful experience of my life. This relationship has cured me of my toxic masculinity and objectification of women. The "animal" has finally left my soul. It's not that I don't ever make regretful decisions, but I've made none that have deeply hurt me or anyone else (since 2016). I feel that I am finally a fully-grown human. I make conscious decisions; I know when and how to say "no"; and I'm not led by my impulses.
Happily ever after
Since my wife got diagnosed with leukemia in 2021, a new "transformation" has been slowly taking place in my life. I am more self-aware now than I ever was, so it all feels very gradual. For one, I feel that I am becoming a more compassionate person, more interested in listening to understand than in listening to reply, more dedicated to being "interested" than to being "interesting", and far less concerned with lecturing people than with sharing inspiring stories with them. I'm also beginning to feel "old", both physically as well as generationally. I feel that my time has come to prepare for my inevitable death. It sounds gloomy, but I'm actually excited for it. I feel that I still have the energy to accomplish something with my life, while I also now have the wisdom to see some of it through. Whatever comes next, I'm sure that it will be good and positive.