Looking for My Real Center

Last year, my then-girlfriend-now-fiancee and I saw Rise of the Guardians. It was a refreshing take on all those childhood figures we've come to know and adore. Despite the fresh characterizations that seamlessly told a tight and cohesive narrative, one part about the film that really struck me is when Santa asked Jack Frost a deceptively simple question: what is your center?

Santa, with a thick. Russian accent, went on to discuss how he is viewed as fearless, giving, scary, et. al by way of a Matryoshka doll. Each doll represents a layer of his personality, and as another doll is pried open, another layer is revealed inside it. At the very center of the Matryoshka doll is the smallest and final doll that represents what the person really is.

All this time, I thought that kindness is my center.

All my life, I believe that I went out of my way to make others happy, to be content playing second fiddle, to simply be part of the background. Because I want the people whom I truly love to benefit from everything that I can do for them. As much as possible, I try to give my 100% for them to prevent them from feeling angry and negative. At one point, it is what made my relationships with people work.

Although this may not be your definition of kindness, this was mine, at least at that time.

Until this past couple of weeks where everything unraveled in front of me that really rocked the very foundation of my existence. In other words, my center was crushed, destroyed, and disintegrated right before my very eyes. I wasn't kind at all.

All that I held onto all along was a false center, one that gave me this identity that leaves me frustrated when things don't go my way, or leaving me feeling empty even after I've given so much, a hallmark of kindness.

I owe everything to my sheltered past, even my failings and problems. It is my upbringing, where everything was handed to me on a silver platter, that ultimately is the cause for my success, as well as my inability to express and communicate what I really feel and cope up with the trials of life anew.

With this realization, I had to go back and rethink who I really am. I had to trace back my years growing up that led to certain decisions in life until I reached to where I am right now, a man with relatively great experience and an even greater worldview. All had a common denominator - perseverance.

I failed hard before, tried to learn from my mistakes, and yet failed for the same reasons. I've done lot of mistakes, deliberately or accidental. I said stupid shit that got me into trouble. I didn't say anything at all, suppressed my emotions, and just shut the fuck up, but still wound up getting into trouble. I've disappointed people that I loved and made them cry countless of times. I've beaten myself up for all these.

And yet I'm still here.

With all my shortcomings, inabilities, and insecurities being layers of me as a Matryoshka doll, this is the best I can come up with. At the core of everything, I accept my failures and the stupid shit I say even if people don't. I strive to live and find ways to be believed in, respected, and looked up to, even if, at the end,  people wouldn't respect me at all. I die with the knowledge that I tried and never gave up. Perseverance. Because for every bad thing that happens to me, I still want to believe that all roads lead to a better and brighter tomorrow.

Perseverance.

This new center feels right and not right at the same time. But the important question is, is it my center? I'll try to figure things out the next few weeks.

Communication Breakthrough

So I got to chat with a psychiatrist this morning. She confirmed my greatest fears - that I've become a spineless windbag and I need to stop saying the opposite of "no" and just. have. some. balls. She didn't say it that way, but I'll elaborate the entire conversation as I traverse the steps that led to this epiphany that's actually been hiding at the back of my mind for so too long. It only took three hours worth of talk for my unfortunate realization to submit to my consciousness. I can already imagine the epiphany raising his hands with a wry smile painted on his face. "Okay, you got me. Now, fix this fucker and make his life better now. Like how he always wanted to live his life."

Minutes leading to the consultation, I was having reservations on how I would go about this "problem" of mine when ordering food from a local coffee shop where we met. What if my problem, like 99% of the population, is just make-believe? That I'm merely putting too much importance on myself rather than look into the bigger picture? What if this is just a colossal waste of time and that it'll just put me in a deeper hole where I'm currently wallowing in mud and clay?

Turns out that I'm right and wrong at the same time.

The entire discussion centered around my inability to communicate what I really, really want. Ever since I was a kid, I was trained to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid and just see things a certain way, not my way. And I never really got my way in life completely. Sure, I was in a band, had a great education, and lived a secure and somewhat sheltered life. But if I were to go back and do things again, knowing that I am my own man with my own thoughts and opinions, I would have done things much more differently.

But I was scared. I have gotten used to the comfortable lifestyle that cradled me back and forth and told that everything's alright that I cower from every hint of anger and argument. Because that's not the person I am. I just bend sideways and take everything in the ass. Figuratively, that is.

This attitude has caused me great unhappiness. Because I thought I can't control my fate, that the only way to live is to live off from other's decisions and opinions and build on from those. But it's not. I told my fiancee that If I were put in a different situation in life, the actual difficult life where conflict is real and not mopey-dopey shit reality that I have preconceived for myself, then I will have probably have killed myself. I don't know how to make myself better, and I definitely don't know how to make everyone around me feel better.

So yes, it's a really shallow problem under the pretense that it's common sense to have a goddamn conviction and, you know, exercise it once in a while. Given the nature of my lifestyle, I failed to see this as life is served on a silver platter in thinly sliced portions and fed to me by jamming a golden spoon to my mouth, as I'm forced to say that it tastes sublime when, in fact, it tastes like St. Aquinas' bowel movement.

But it's a problem I'm grateful to have, regardless of the painful steps that led me to this revelation. It's not easy to be true to myself and others when I have to unlearn years of orientation. But I have come to believe that everything is a gradual process towards becoming the person that I have to be, and by realizing that this is not a stupid problem but, rather, a great opportunity to redeem myself, to make myself happy not just for others, but for me. I owe it to myself.