Josh is thinking about the quality of his life...
...in my life. I keep putting things off because some how I tell myself, “that it doesn’t really matter. Things will always be the same, or that there’s nothing I can do to improve things.” Or I tell myself, “why bother, things are not going to work out anyways , or you’ll just fail.”
I think a lot of this came from my dad. He’s a good man and a hard worker… but he’s also a “my way or the highway” kind of person. He had a temper (never was abusive physically or verbally… never said or did things intentionally to hurt your feelings… but he’d just get mad easy and you didn’t want to set him off), and I would constantly be telling myself growing up that whatever happened didn’t really matter or if he’d want me to do something I wanted to do or didn’t want me to do something I wanted to do I’d tell myself the same. Growing up also affected me because I saw anger as a personality flaw. I saw how it made everyone else feel. I knew what it was like to walk around on egg shells, so to speak, to keep from starting the anger.
So over the years I learned to control my own anger and frustrations… but at a cost. I’ve grown to be almost completely non-emotional. It’s not that I can’t express the emotions… I just don’t seem to have much of them anymore. I don’t blame him for this part of me because I think in the end we all have to be responsible for our own actions and lives. I just know this was an influence on how I see the world. I was like most children, I really looked up to my dad as a kid, and then as a teenager and in college I went through that anti-dad stage. But since then I’ve learned that he’s both the good and the bad. As I mentioned I was never abused in any way, it was just the emotional tension that affected me. I don’t want to come across as someone with “daddy issues”. I’ve come to see him as a human with flaws and value. I love and respect him, but I also realize that if I’m going to improve in this area I have to first recognize that I have a problem and if I’m going to fully understand that problem I must know where it came from. It’s really sad (which is a start) and now I’m trying to learn to be more in touch with my feelings and learn to care more.
