Writing Here for Therapy in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

I’m writing my Therapy Assignment here so that it doesn’t get deleted by a Refresh on the Therapy page. The assignment was to dig through your past and present to determine why there is such a considerable and fundamental feeling of “less than” no matter what.

There is obvious influence of family dynamics in my feelings of “less than.” Not that it was intentional, but simply reflecting some of what they knew growing up (and in a legitimate attempt to prepare us for the world) I did always feel like there was a level of “Good job yesterday, but what did you do today?” or “You messed up yesterday, how are you going to fix it?” So that establishes an early pattern of “You’re only as good as what you’re doing” but that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
We discussed previously how my brother was an artistic prodigy. He was. He was blowing people away with his drawings and his sculptures and his paintings and his pastels and his charcoals and his photography from a very early age! And the fact that he was praised for it, and it hung on the walls, and it hung in museums, and it was entered into contests, and won him a College Scholarship before he ever went to High School… definitely affected me. It is why I was so dedicated to the theater and to speaking in public and trying to get attention all of the time. I couldn’t produce something that got praise whether I was there or not. All I could do was try to get that attention in the now. Make ‘em laugh! Say something that makes them compliment your intelligence. Do something people think is cute. DO SOMETHING. So… that definitely plays a part.

But it would be unfair and entirely too simplified to think that even makes up for 10% of the issue. Ultimately, there are larger societal elements to it.

I don’t mean to bury the lead by placing this in the middle but I would like to GIANT BOLD AND UNDERLINE this element as I believe this is the one that means the most… this is what has caused me to always consider myself less than:
Growing up, I honestly thought everyone else was dealing with things better. I didn’t know the intense physical pain I was going through wasn’t simply “the human experience.” I honestly thought everyone felt that and I was just dealing with it poorly. A large part of this comes from the eternal “shake it off” we tell boys; as well as the “it doesn’t look like you’re injured, stop being dramatic” which as the pain affected my emotional development became “UGH! You’re so dramatic, and too much! Nobody can deal with you!!” I did not learn that this pain was not “typical” until I was an adult. So a great deal of my emotional development stems from a genuine, sincere, entire developmental stage belief that I was sincerely and honestly simply… dealing with life worse than everyone else.

This belief was not aided by the social constructs of youth. I was bullied. Endlessly. Year after year. I was bullied for being smaller, weaker, not as athletic, more effeminate… in other words, for a solid 5 years, I was bullied almost every day due to things about me that were deemed less than. PARTICULARLY about my height. I was one of the shortest kids throughout grade school. Me and my Korean friend… that’s it. And I loved to play basketball. But nobody picks the short kid unless they want to loose! It wasn’t about passion, it wasn’t about friendship. I was less than, I was a bad pick. This led to me mercilessly training. A defining point in my life? I was given a piece of candy once and it was the absolute worst thing I’d ever tasted. I spit it out (discreetly) immediately. Than I got an idea. Short kids can’t play close to the net. If I could perfect my 3-point shot, even if nobody ever picked me for a sport… at least I would know I could do it. So I asked for another piece of that terrible candy. And kept it in my mouth for the entire morning, practicing my 3-point shot until I accomplished 50 successful 3-point baskets. So I suppose three elements are present in that story: (1) Others have always significantly validated my ‘less than’ perspective; (2) The way I deal with negative emotional issues is to dedicate myself to something singularly; and (3) punishing myself until I’ve proven to myself I’m not less than is a natural and logical thought progression for me.

Than in High School? I had no friend group. It took me until I was a Senior in High School before I had a regular group of friends I could hang out with… and they weren’t exactly kind. Case in Point: We had all agreed to watch Lord of the Rings in the theater. Then, at some point, they had changed their minds without telling me. So I showed up at the theater, bought my ticket, waited around and… saw the movie by myself. Case in Point: There were many nights where they would decide to go do something like Mini-Golf or go to Perkins or something… and they just wouldn’t tell me. Case in Point: After I got out of my very sexually and abusive relationship; they rented Clockwork Orange… and when I asked them if we could watch something else, as I was uncomfortable due to my recent experience, I was told to leave. THIS was my “closest friend group in High School!” I was involved in Choir, Competitive Swimming, Theater, Orchestra, etcetera.... I was in about a dozen different “organized activities” and the only people that ever really accepted me were a handful of people that were in theater and orchestra with me. At the time, I felt simply… aggressively rejected. As hard as it was to have/make friends, romance was worse. Lots of trouble getting anything started; whenever something would start, it wouldn’t last more than a few weeks… including one where one of my closest friends agreed to date me and then called it off 5 days later because (quote) “People found out about it, and (she) wasn’t okay with people knowing we socialize.” SO LOTS AND LOTS OF EXTERNAL VALIDATION OF LESS THAN. Of course, one of my good friends from Theater and Orchestra is one of my good friends to this day, and I finally just asked her what the hell was going on in High School? Why the hell were people like that to me, considering I was kind… listened to them… was friendly with them… but nobody ever wanted to be my friend.... like out of school hanging out… just in school listening to their problems. AAAAAND she told me. She told me that the big question she’d been asked repeatedly after High School was whether I had “accepted myself” and “come out of the closet yet”? Everyone I went to High School with thought I was gay and lying to them/myself about it! NO WONDER! I mean… I graduated from High School in 2002. It was still VERY not okay to be gay then. Especially in affluent white West Des Moines. So… awesome!! AWESOME! That’s why the Theater Kids and Orchestra kids accepted me. Theater and Orchestra it was “okay to be gay.” Everywhere else… especially competitive swimming? Really really not. So… this internal narrative of “external validation of less than” was instead “everyone thinks you’re gay”. Which even to that.... what the hell?? I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t drink, I wasn’t going to have sex before marriage.... maybe I was a dramatic theater kid who loved getting attention but.... I don’t know. I’d figure the stereotype would have been “Oddball Mormon” not “closeted Gay”.

So… that is the 0 to 21 “why I feel less than” explanation. Then from about 21 to 25, I felt pretty good! I was working towards a solid goal. I had started a relationship with this beautiful young woman named Nancy who seemed really into me. Yeah, my friends didn’t talk to me much anymore. I’d had trouble making friends in college, too. Because I wasn’t into football, or drinking, or sex. So, I was the weird ostracized one. So… y’know. Just me, my studies, my girlfriend Nancy, and our nerd hobbies? That was good enough!!

Then I moved back to Des Moines to earn some money before going to Law School. I had dedicated 15 years of my life to being an actor. If I was going to dedicate another 15 years to being a lawyer, I wanted to make sure it is what I wanted to do. (There is irony there that I’ll spell out later). I hadn’t given much thought to Nancy in this. My exact thoughts were: “We’ll try long distance. It can be hard, but if it works, it is meant to be. If not, then it isn’t meant to be.” BUT once again, Nancy came after me. Within 2 or 3 months of my moving back to West Des Moines, she had moved to West Des Moines as well. But after her move… she seemed considerably less interested. More stand offish. More “Just be happy I put up with you.” So much so that, honestly, I tried to break up with her in 2009. My words were essentially “You don’t ask me about my day. You don’t touch me. You don’t say I love you. You simply act like you appreciate having me in your bubble and call it good!” She convinced me to stick around and that she did love me and that she did care about me but had trouble expressing herself because she wasn’t as good with words as I was. So my resolve crumbled.

2010, I’ve been accepted to half a dozen law schools. Nancy reviews each acceptance and gives me her opinion as to where she wants “us” to live. I take her ring shopping just to see if there is anything she might like… a certain style, a certain cut… just getting ideas. The ultimate idea being, “propose before law school; have her keep working in WDM while I do law school; get married when I come back”. Instead, she found not just a style or cut she liked but “absolutely THE RING she needed to have but it is okay if you don’t buy it; it’s just THE RING but it’s fine.” So obviously I bought the ring. We were engaged that year and married in 2011. And had about 5 good months. July was a flurry of Thank You Letters and basking in the beautiful oddity of being married. August was a flurry of moving to Omaha, settling in an apartment, getting Nancy set up at the new Wal Mart, and me starting Law School. September was fun! Law School intros, new friends, new experiences, taking Nancy with me to explore Omaha! October was great! A new law school friend and Nancy wanted to experience Haunted Houses and we would go and it would be fun! November was great! We had our first Married Thanksgiving and it was just the two of us and it was intimate and fun and cute. And then December. My first law school finals. Nancy’s first Holiday Season at Omaha Wal-Mart. And that was the trigger that set up the remainder of the marriage. We’re both stressed and unhappy. How do we deal with this? Which came to be… we deal with this by Christopher taking care of everything because it’s his fault we’re in Omaha to begin with!! And that spirit… with the included refusal of sex, intimacy, I love you, or any kind of love language at all.... lasted throughout law school in its entirety. So that the first 3.5 years or marriage… “I love you” and sex were only part of the first 5 months. Call me shallow but that significantly makes me feel less than!! And it continued from there. With arguments and discussions on top of arguments and discussions about “Nancy, what the hell? I take care of you. I love you. We provide whatever you may want or need. What’s going on?” And her answer typically being something along the lines of “You’ve gotten fat.” or “We aren’t where we should be.” or “I hate our life!”

(Here’s where the irony comes in I mentioned earlier).
So… from 0-21, I had a steady stream from external and internal sources of You are less than. At 21, I decided that I needed to really figure out how I wanted the next 15 years to go. But where I felt that was discerning for Law School, turns out it was different. Because from 21 to 36 (15 years) that’s been my time with Nancy. And while there were ups and downs; there was a LOT of external and internal sources of “You are less than!” there too. SO… 36 years of external and internal “You are less than!” is what we’re dealing with here.