Hunger

I am often times very hard on myself. I beat myself up over the fact that I beat myself up. I will openly say that I hate myself, i can point out all of my weaknesses before I even take a second to look at my strengths. If i can take a step back and look at how I present myself, I think that there may be a disconnect between my perceived and actual self esteem. I can be insecure, but if I am honest it's not because I actually believe this poor view of self that I have, but it is instead that by being a harsh critic, I know I will force myself to achieve greatness.

I was raised as an athlete. I was raised to be a leader, to be strong, to be unbreakable. I had role models in my early life who were firm practitioners of a "tough love" method of teaching. I was pushed hard, harder than those around me, and was given very little praise for my accomplishments in comparison to the other members of the team. (for sake of argument in this divulgence of thoughts, the world team is going to be used as an umbrella term to encapsulate any time I was doing something where it was possible for me to measure my success and failure against those around me). I have learned as I have gotten older that the tough love approach leaves a certain negative impact on the subject it is used on, a deep seeded ravenous hunger to be the best, to feel like i "earned" any sort of praise.

I wish that I could be comfortable sitting on my couch every night drinking a bud light and watching sports or the news or whatever comedy of the months is popular on some major network. I have probably said this before, and I will say it again. I wish I could not care so much. I wish that I didn't feel like i needed to be the best. I am sure that I have lost friendships over this hunger to be champion. I know I have lost sleep over it, I know I have shaved years off of my life at this point dealing with the stress I incur by not allowing myself to be content with anything below spectacular.

I only wish that when I am tired though. When I am emotionally drained and don't feel like I have the strength to go on. I have written before about the negative hopelessness that comes out of me when I feel like I am at the end of my rope, that is something I truly do hate about myself, the fact that I am even willing to consider giving up. The lucky side effect of my tough love upbringing is that when I am running on fumes, when I am about to just toss my hands up and quit, all of those stern voices run through my mind. It is the sound of me yelling at myself from the inside, stoking the fire inside me, pointing out to myself just how pathetic I am acting. It is at those times when that voice inside shows me all the things I have accomplished, and then called me a little bitch for not living up to my name.

I have heard before from people close in my life that one of my greatest qualities is that I can throw myself up against impossible odds with confidence that I will succeed. There is a healthy dose of fear in there, but in some way I'm stupid and self assured, and don't listen to anything that is trying to tell me I can't get what I want. The pattern is always the same. I go up against the impossible, get beat to hell in one way or another, get let down, am forced to adapt, consider just giving up, then catch a second wind and fight through to the other side. It's exhausting, but I am happy about that part of myself.

Thats really the point of what I am trying to say. I like that fact that I hate myself...because I don't truly hate myself. I just need that fire under my ass to make sure that I keep pushing forward.

I sit and let myself become calm (or calm as I can get in recent times) and consider that grand concept of if I am happy or not. On a simple level no, I'm not happy. There are places I would have liked to be with my life at this point. There are opportunities that I feel as though I missed out on. There are events I wish I could have handled differently. But then I have to ask the question, am I unhappy or am I just not complacent. The thing is I wouldn't want to change the part of myself that is such a fighter, if I did you probably would have never met me, you would never be reading this, I would just be a 300 pound drunk sitting on his couch doing nothing but playing video games.

I have a hunger, and that hunger has made me who I am. The hunger is the reason that I am still fighting today, still looking forward, not letting myself just try to find some way to live the rest of my life comfortably, but instead find a way to live the rest of my life to the fullest.

So no, I'm not happy with my life, and maybe I will never be, but I am happy with myself even though I spend most of my time beating myself up. I want to keep finding new reasons to love, new skills to learn. I would say my biggest goal is to Master myself. I'll get there eventually, I'm sure of it. In the mean time i going to keep beating the shit out of myself on the inside, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.