I suppose if I'm actually going to go through with this, I'll share my story in "short", point summaries. In this bullet, I'll attempt to explain the thoughts on my mind, but I'm going to introduce the background of how I came to be then really explain the pain in another post later on, so bear with me please...
If you've interacted with me on PS! at all, you could probably guess that I'm not exactly the best with people. Growing up, it had always been that way, and my own parents struggled with people as well. On one end, my father didn't have much of a paternal figure growing up; his father (my grandfather) left him when he was 5, and his mother (my grandmother) was an alcoholic. He also had two sisters (my aunts), one of which has now passed from pancreatic cancer and another who dissociates with my father, taking up the same role as my grandmother who was alcoholic. Often my father was the only one who, at an early age did his best to provide himself with a proper education, but even that led to providing for the remainder of the family as he had to take on the role of having 4 part-time jobs, even using that to support himself through college to which his sisters never entertained the idea of getting that education for themselves, and estranged themselves as a result. My mother on the other hand came from an incredibly large family in the Phillipines; a military family though with my second grandfather being an Admiral for the Phillipine Air Force. However, when she was younger, her father was rather stern and abusive on his children, especially his daughters, essentially training them to stay strong through any means necessary. When it came the time for my mother to complete her graduation, she left to the States to become a nurse, to heal those who have been hurt, though she could never find it to mend the scars of her own past. Take the backgrounds of these two souls, have them fall in love and create me with the same hopeful ideology, mixed with the general distrust of the family that was supposed to be their guiding light, and the fear of being forgotten; well it seems that I've followed suit in those paths.
It was difficult to make friends throughout my childhood; as the general distrust of my parents between everyone else made it so that I had to "pick and choose" who to be good friends with, or else they'd turn their backs on me like "all the rest." Absolutely no fear there, right? It didn't matter for most of Elementary and Middle School though; most of the people I had attempted to interact with didn't pay much attention to what I had to say anyways; just small chatter and they'd go back to their own cliques. The few people I had the pleasure of calling friends though soon turned disinterested in me, had to move, or were generally too busy with their lives to make time to at least, say hello. I simply came to accept it as "the way people are", and kept to myself. Nothing noteworthy came of this early childhood, except my obsession with music. I joined band in 6th grade and picked up a Clarinet for the first time; my teacher considered me a prodigy for my age, but my aloof modesty brushed it off as nothing more than hard work. The other students also could agree, but I doubt so since no one actually came up to me and complimented me on that. Flash Forward to a couple days before I leave Middle School, the High School band director approached our Music class in efforts to recruit 8th graders for the High School Marching Band. By this time, I had auditioned and performed with the All-State Middle School Ensemble twice and was awarded as the principal Clarinetist twice, formally recognized as the Concert Master. At that point in my life, I was never as determined to succeed at anything as I was with my passion for music, but I took a leap and joined that next summer. The costs were high, and my parents didn't have the money to spend, so I started to partake in weekly jobs such as babysitting the neighbor's children and pets, or mowing the lawn for the opportunity to pay off what I wanted. During that summer, I also rediscovered my old DS and picked up Pokemon Emerald for the first time since Elementary School, since there wasn't exactly anyone to hang out with during that span.
By the time I entered my freshman year of High School, it was an unfamiliar feeling. I had completed my first full Summer Band Camp, and people actually cared enough to know who I was. It was still challenging, since no one was still willing to hold a full length conversation with me, but I saw this as progress when it came to people. It would also be the year where I'd actually have my first phone and Social Media accounts (I could've asked for a phone earlier but until then I never found a reason to have one, until I discovered that fast communications between the Marching Band were between Facebook). I still didn't care much about technology; actually I came to develop the idea that this stuff pulls people more apart then it ever does together, so I often had my iPhone sitting in my room switched off most of the time. It wasn't like anyone would call or text me anyways, even though I did get a few phone numbers from the Clarinet section just in case it was ever needed.
It was also this year that I'd be formally introduced to a similar soul to mine (Let's call her Selena; not her actual name). I had known her throughout Middle School through music class, so it wasn't a total stranger, but I faintly remember whispers of other classmates comparing her as my musical rival, playing the Tenor Sax. She came from a similar mental background as me, not having that many connections and feeling isolated from the rest of society. I didn't talk to her that much before then, until we were walking opposite ways on the stairwell when she broke a heel and fell on my back. Selena ended up spraining her ankle and managed to cut my head open, so I ended up carrying her to the infirmary with blood dripping on my face while feeling faint from the open cut. It turned out that the sprained ankle she suffered ended up becoming a stress fracture, and me figuring that it would be the end of that school day for her and I, I used my phone for once to call my parents and tried to see if I could accompany her to the hospital. Neither answered and I left anyways, even though they were a bit upset that I accompanied someone to the hospital in my condition on my own power, without their approval. It was also on a Thursday, which was a Marching Band rehearsal, so I left a message for my section leader describing the situation and explained that I wouldn't be available for that rehearsal evening. It took 15 minutes or so to get to the hospital, and another 4 hours to wait for the doctors to accurately define her prognosis (kinda ridiculous it took 4 hours really), though the time spent when she wasn't getting examined for her fracture, I had the nerve to break some ice with someone for once, just chatting about life, how she was doing, what we were both interested in, how we got into music, and so forth. This kept going until 9 pm or so, my parents arrived to take me home, all the while looking exhausted from their work days. The hospital also happened to be 45 minutes away from the house, which equated to about 2 hours away from each of their workplaces, so they were noticeably angry at me being here.
By the time I got home, I was grounded for about a month and was yelled at for going to the hospital to help someone; it kept me up all night and left me groggy for school the next day. This was around the point where my family and I were seeing eye to eye less as I began the pursuit of who I wanted to become, and we started becoming disconnected from one another. Between my father's hard days, my mother's on-and-off work between a registered nurse (day shifts, night shifts, or both), and my own future and plans to look forward too, it was starting to spell discord between the small family that I had, and showed that their own problems with people had deeply affected their mindset and I was starting to take notice, and I knew that I should change for the better, though I knew it wasn't an easy road ahead. One of the best things about that night, was that at that time, for as long as I can remember, Selena actually enjoyed my company, and was most likely the first "friend" I had, and to my recollection, the first person that wasn't family to say "Thank you" and mean it.
I suppose this is where I stop for now; that just about covers the kind of isolated background I had growing up, but the next post I'll have will really explain the expanse of emotional turmoil that I've felt up to this point.
Thank you for being patient.
. Either way I thought I'd just give an update on the shit I'm going through. A lot was going on. I was stressed about schoolwork, was loosing interest in things like video games and drawing, and was starting to question a lot of the friendships I had. To expand, my teachers were overflowing me with work that I had missed due to my other hospitalizations (as I said in my previous post), and grades were more important to me than other at the moment since it's 11th grade, so college was on my mind. I was also being stressed with video games and drawing since I was constantly doubting my abilities, especially when comparing myself to pros at them. The whole friendship thing has been going on for a while, mainly IRL. I've been finding myself begging for people to be my friend (no, not literally) and I feel like the people I want to be friends with are just doing it out of pity and secretly judge me. Furthermore, I've lost two of my closest friends due to relationship stuff, and I only have myself to blame for it.
