Consume Product - Arete Network

My mom was a “single mom” I guess you could say, I had two stepparents growing up but I think that was even worse than if she was completely single because they sucked. No elder men in my family wanted to guide me or be in my life other than a July 4 BBQ. So many lessons I had to learn about becoming and being a man I had to learn in the absolutely hardest ways possible.

Usually by experiencing catastrophic failure and then learning how to adjust, figuring it all out on my own. My relationships with other adults, friendships, romantic relationships, and pretty much everything was set up to fail, and did, before I learned on my own. For example in my romantic life I failed because I was always taught any problem is based on the man’s inability to recognize it and solve it, so I stayed with so many relationships for far too long with toxic people thinking it was because of me. Luckily that’s fixed. Also early on in preteen/early teens I was picked on a lot for plenty of different reasons I guess, but mostly I figured for looking and acting weak and being an easy target. It wasn’t until something clicked in my brain 6th grade to join the JV football team - it was rough I got made fun of for even saying I was going to join and then once I did being on a team full of my bullys was not easy. Everyone did whatever they could to make it as hard has possible, even Coach, to get me to quit … but something inside me made me refuse to quit no matter what. Eventually they realized I wasn’t going to quit and the torment at football and in school pretty much went away.

Next year I went to a small private school and I played football and eventually started every game the next few seasons. I never let anyone bully me after that even if it meant punching the biggest dude in the face and getting some punches in my face back. I got respect because of that and if I’m wrong about that at the very least they knew I was not an easy target and even if they could win in a fight against me there would be one and they would get hit, win or lose.

But to be fair I went too far with that mindset and ended up getting beat down by gang of people and almost died… So I had to learn that lesson on my own too.

Yeah plenty of crap I had to learn on my own and probably still learning, and I figure I was lucky because I was resilient and self reflective and able to figure things out. Plenty of people are just fucked I guess.