The Human Experience (Part 1)

Preface:

I've been sitting on and developing these thoughts for a very long time, it's pretty run-on and maybe too personal for your tastes. If you're reading this as a stranger, just know how much I appreciate you for being here.

As a child, I lived relatively carefree, without much cause for concern or trouble. As a teenager, I began to struggle deeply with myself and my surroundings. I'm not sure every person experiences growing up this way, but for me, it was so. Perhaps it's arrogant to make assumptions like this, but from personal experience, the worst scenario any child can go through is their parents divorcing. Now I don't want to go blaming past suffering on my parents, they love me and stuff - but looking back at this today approaching 30, I think it's interesting how in the developing brain of a child, I quickly lost my internal balance from this thing I didn't even fully understand. When we are young we tend to learn directly from observation. I remember as a kid putting my finger in between the metal prongs at the electric outlet, it hurt and I pulled my hand away. Handling the emotions of going through the divorce with my parents is odd to me because it's not like anyone was forcing me to suffer with them. I want to believe I as a child could have just chosen to tone out the noise the same way I chose to avoid the pain of sticking my finger in the outlet, but I think I was too interested to not pay attention. I grew up trusting my family in a loving home, and perhaps this was my first experience of being "rugged" before even turning 10 years old. Family was the walls, floors and ceiling of my mind, and this is likely why in the years ahead I would grow incredibly close to my grandparents. Naturally I'd choose the place where I felt free to pursue a life of joy and wonder, away from the looming darkness ahead of the break up. It was great really, because my grandparents really did their best to shelter my mind from that. I'll be sure to touch much more deeply on how positive of an impact they had on my life later on. Getting back to the agony, parental custody of course complicated everything even more, with visitation schedules and the likes. It really wouldn't have been a big deal, but the breakup was nasty. Both of my parents would say the other is a liar. You could imagine how this erodes trust in the mind of small child me. I did what any child would do - Prefer the house which provided me the most distractions. I loved video games before this all happened, but they took on a brand new role at this pivotal point in my life. Would I have put thousands of hours into Pokemon games as a kid if this all had not happened? Probably. But I certainly felt incentivized to focus on these activities more deeply. I started to under perform in school due to how intensely I focused on games, and of course get in trouble and have the games taken away from me. Not to brag or anything, but I had a lot of glittery stickers next to my name on the speed math tests in elementary school. I was kind a big deal, lol. School was never hard, but the motivation to stay on course was fleeting.

Hate to abruptly cut myself off here but that's about it for this post. I'll continue when I have the time. If it feels like a cliffhanger then maybe I'm doing a good job lol.