What Changed in 2016

Last night, I had a really nice talk with a Singaporean JET named Jessica. She’s struggling with life in Japan in some ways. I told her a little bit about me and about my story. How much of it is real and how much is me creating a coherent narrative to explain my own experiences is hard to say. Often times, when I make a story and place myself as the hero of it, it’s easier to find the motivation to do things. Still, I think that this is likely more or less true.
In ‘09/‘10 my life finally collapsed. My two best friends weren’t speaking to me, one by choice and one by circumstance, I was in an incredibly unhealthy relationship with a girl, I had lost out on my only consistent dream, I was working jobs I hated, I had no career prospects, I was living at home, and my theater –the one thing that had been able to consistently give me a sense of self worth– was gone. I mourned one dead relationship and entered a premature one, with all the gasping for air, fighting for life, and feeble incomprehension of a premature creation. I had no basis for my self worth, no arena in which I could prove myself. I had lost my circle of friends. I had lost the emotional and moral support, to say nothing of the advice, of the two people that could have had the most impact on me.
And so I went to China.
It was more complicated than that, but, in ‘10, I’d have accepted anything that got me out of where and when I was. I was in the process of joining the Army when I got the call to move to China, and I took them up on it. I was miserable. However, I found distractions enough in my first year, especially with June, and, when June left, Tristan arrived. And that was a comfort beyond words. Then Evangeline took up time. Then I left that horrible teaching company and took about a zillion jobs, working myself to the bone. I loved it. I loved being constantly entertained by working. I loved to be always active, always moving, always pushing. But, I never really dealt with the fundamental, underlying, structural problems that had helped to cause the collapse of ‘09/‘10. I didn’t need to.
When I returned to the US, I had a miserable summer. I was fat and sick and directionless and sad. Rekindling things with Amber didn’t become miserable until October/November, and started in July. So, really, from April, my arrival, to July, things were pretty miserable, but, in October, things got a lot better. I was Holmes onstage, and did a good job of it. I’d gotten an amazing job as a beertender. I was doing pretty well. Life was pretty good. But, again, I wasn’t dealing with a lot of my difficulties. My focus was mostly on getting myself physically well after a total health collapse in China.
Then I came to Japan.
It wasn’t what I’d wanted or expected. I was as isolated as in China. Maybe more. I was in a completely dull town, however beautiful, with no real prospects for friends within my age group. Dating was out of the question. Even male socialization was unlikely at best. There were no places for entertainment, and my coworkers could not be looked on for much outside of work.
It was miserable.
And that is one reason why, for so long, I struggled here. I struggled here because, once I’d grown tired of video games, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to distract me from the facts of my life. I’m a fat nearly thirty year old who has accomplished NOTHING that he wanted or desired to beyond the act of getting to Japan, something that he’d planned on doing seven years before he did it. Not a pretty picture. And I was crushed under the weight of years of failure. I felt worthless. I felt like I’d had my chance, that I’d blown it, and that everything was more or less over.
Then, Shige-papa came into things. I don’t know if he caused a change, or if he catalyzed things. It also could have been going off of sleeping meds. It could have been divine intervention. I don’t know. What I do know is that after that meal with Shige-papa, things changed.
As an insomniac, I am a connoisseur of the ways a person can be tired. There was a certain heavy, deadening, dulling, numbing, crushing tiredness that had overtaken me. It’s gone. I’m still exhausted. It hurts to keep my eyes open as I type this. But it’s not the same. It’s so much easier to bear. This may be a non sequitur, but I don’t think so. I think it’s just a symptom of a change.
Shige-papa and Hama-mama were the first new people to really care about me in years. And their open, kind, warm, welcoming, kindness has just been beautiful and transforming. I felt like a person. I felt like I had value. I felt like I meant something. I felt like a part of the family. Sure, a distant part, not quite like a fourth son, but more like a nephew who’s been away for a long time, sorely missed, and is being returned to the side of an adoring uncle. For the first time in a long time, I felt like a real person.
And, in a way, that’s what I need. That’s something that I had in ‘07 that I hadn’t even realized that I’d lost. I need to focus on my problems in a different way. I’ve got to build myself up. I’ve got to focus on my own internal world. Well, I’ve been navel gazing forever, what’s the difference?
Because right now, I feel like maybe, just maybe, I matter a little bit.
When you feel worthless, when you feel insignificant, when you feel like there is no value in you or your contributions to the world, then there’s no motivation to improve. It’s much easier to just give up, to sink under the weight of your failures, because there’s nothing to push against them. Any change is doomed to fail. But when you’re a real person? When you matter? When you have value and add to the world and do yourself? It’s a very different matter.
I’m turning inward, and I’m focusing on improving myself. I attempted this in ‘14 when I came back from China, but I did it with the plodding methodical, spiritless, drive of a robot. I was numb. I was dead. I was clawing my way towards being a better person partly from fear, partly from desperation, and partly because of physical pain. Who had the power to give me value? Amber.
And that’s where I lost my confidence in ‘07. My existence, everything that I was, that I believed, that I did, and that I stood for, was contingent, in my own mind, on the approval of somebody else. Rachael was what mattered. What I did had no meaning outside of her. In the past, in high school, even in college before Rachael, I’d been the focus of myself. I’d never let a woman control me. I’d been the dominant figure, and I liked it. After Rachael? I lost my sense of self worth, and, I realize this for the first time as I type this, I lost my sense of self worth because I made my self worth dependent on the external approval of another person. I was no longer my own arbitrator. I was no longer my judge. I had somebody else to answer to. I wasn’t pleasing myself, I was pleasing somebody else. And, once you fall into that mindset, it’s really hard to get out.
I am, by nature, a people pleaser and a showman. It’s just a part of me, and it’s a part of me that is very dear to me. That having been said, my value is not to be decided by my access to the lips of a face. My worth is not to be determined by women. I had become an impressive man, and, because of this, women flocked to me in those days. Then, I defined myself by the women, a side effect, rather than my pursuit of selfish personal improvement, the cause.
Where did it go wrong? I forgot to be selfish. Yes, I wanted people, yes, I wanted and I wanted and I wanted and I was pathetic in all of my wanting. But I had forgotten myself. What I wanted from these women was not them, it was me. I wanted the approval that they could give me. The validation. I wanted to feel like I mattered, and only they had the power to make me feel that I mattered. I’d forgotten that my opinion of me is more important than anybody else’s.
So, that’s where I am. It’s time to grow. It’s time to expand. It’s time to remember that NOBODY gets to tell me who I am or define my worth. That’s my job.
What changed? I remembered that I’m a person.
Not because anybody said so, but because I am.
And, as a person, I’ve an obligation to myself, to history, and to humanity, to be the absolute best I can be. And I will measure myself against the best, knowing that I will fall and fail, but glorying in my charge into the valley of death.