note this is all second hand accounts as obviously I don't remember anything since I was a baby. This is not a sob story either, please don't feel bad for me because there are other kids who are faced with far worse and ultimately fatal conditions that never get a chance to grow up and be a cynical druggie who treats people like shit on the internet out of boredom. This is just simply me being an amateur psychologist and doing what I do best which is think to myself.
When I was born I actually had a heart defect where one of the valves was not functioning properly. I'm not a doctor, but all you need to know is some shit was fucked up, and they weren't exactly sure if I was even going to make it through the surgery, let alone back to my home.
I just can't help but wonder if maybe those events left a bit more of a mark than the scar on my chest.
For one thing, it is a widely held belief that the first few years of a child's life are by far the most influential in their development, and using that logic, you could surmise the first few weeks are especially important. As an infant, all you can do is trust your care to the people who are raising you and the hospital staff where you are born.
But if you are immediately removed from your own parents to be placed into surgical care, you lose that chance at feeling the unspoken bond of trust that all parents naturally form with their children at birth. And if the people who are supposed to be taking care of you need to cut open a hole in your chest within two days of entering the Earth, well you run out of people to trust pretty quickly. Of course, if I had known the situation I would have trusted the doctors, but we don't know anything as an infant besides physical senses.
To make a long and obvious ending short, the surgery was successful and after a month in an incubator I was finally released from the hospital and able to go home. Of course, as anyone who has had children will know, you are never too far removed from a hospital visit with a newborn, especially if there were any complications at birth. Not to mention the damage had probably already been done by that point.
"Why should I trust these people if they let me be put into that situation to begin with?"
is probably how an infant would rationalize the new world around it, if I had to guess (again, wasn't exactly keeping a diary at the time).
Now don't get me wrong, I had a perfectly fine childhood, and my parents were always there if I really needed help with something and I am honestly forever grateful for that. But at the same time, I just don't know if I ever quite got over that first month somewhere in the deep inner workings of my brain. They say first impressions are everything, and I'd say that includes our lives as a whole. If your first reactions are ones of discomfort and isolation, you are probably going to grow up looking at things negatively and avoiding interaction with other people whenever possible.
Not that I can't talk to people, I'm actually pretty damned good at putting up a front of friendliness, I just don't go out of my way to do it. And the sad part is this applied to my family as well, especially my brother. We are basically total opposites in a lot of ways but we do have some similarities in that we both think we are right about a lot of things and can be incredibly stubborn at times. And I'm gonna go ahead and confirm that statement by saying that, in actuality, he is not usually right about much at all. When your best talent is the art of bullshitting and deflecting blame for things, you generally don't have a sense of how people truly see you in life.
He is an eternal optimist, despite having a pretty slim selection of things to be optimistic about. I am an eternal pessimist despite not really having much to complain about. This leads to conflict naturally, but because of my pessimism I was actually pretty good at avoiding it. I knew when it was and when it was not going to be worth my time to disagree with him, and a lot of the time I simply said nothing to avoid having to get into an argument I knew neither of us would win due to the reasons I stated earlier.
He likes to talk to anyone who will listen, and I hate listening to people's problems when they are the own person's fault (see: all of his). So basically, unless I avoid him completely I get sucked into a trap of his myriad of complaints levied at anything and everything he finds offensive to him. And I do that as well to be honest, but I just keep it to myself in real life (maybe not so much in the lounge, sorry but you shouldn't have made it out to be such a dark place tbh, first impressions and shit).
But it's not like I hate my brother, I just don't really feel any emotions towards him. I wish him luck in whatever he chooses to do in life, but I just don't really want anything to do with whatever that may entail. And the more I think about it I kind of feel like that towards a lot of people, and I can't figure out why. I guess it all stems back to that trust issue, but you would think positive life experiences would help me get over that. And now im gonna sound arrogant here, but I actually had a lot of people who wanted to be my friend growing up and I just kind of... didnt extend the same level of friendliness. Not that I was rude, but very much avoided any invitations of furthering the process of getting to know each other.
And now that I think about it, that's a problem that is my own fault, and im doing exactly what my brother would do in writing it down for anyone who will read this. But the difference between me and him is I really don't need other people to keep myself occupied, whereas he cannot stand to be by himself.
But there's really not much else more to say about our relationship, it is pretty much one of saying "whats up" in the morning and "later" when we leave each other's company, so I won't go on about that.
At the end of the day, I know there is a lot of good people in this world, and I am certainly not very high on that list. But at the same time, there are a lot of bad people in this world too, and I would rather be able to avoid them at the cost of avoiding some good people as collateral damage rather than have to deal with bad people.
And the term "bad" is so subjective but to me it basically encompasses anyone who doesn't think similarly to myself, which I have found to be somewhat hard to find replicated. Mostly because nobody thinks the same so I am really just setting everyone else up for failure by holding them to an impossible standard that isn't even really a good standard to begin with.
So, again, I am causing my own problems here but I'm also figuring out the cause of these problems on my own and have already solved them by simply accepting the fact that I will probably always be a pessimist.
And some people might say that is a sad way to live but at the same time, life can be sad sometimes and when you are considering every negative outcome that may happen you are not phased when they actually do happen.
So I don't know what exactly to really do anymore besides to just keep on trucking and get my jollies out of saying "I told you so" to people and hearing the ever occurring "you were right about that".
a lot of times I think I would be better off if I was more like my brother since ignorance really is bliss. And the sad part is I think he wishes he could be more like me in a lot of ways too.
If we could swap out some genetic traits to each other you could probably build a great human being, but I'm way too much of a cynic to think anything is great, let alone something as innately flawed as human beings.
I just wish I could learn to accept people for their flaws, and trust that it is not being done purposely with the intent to negatively impact my life.
But like I said earlier, that thought is still deep in my brain somewhere
Who can you trust?
and as of right now, it's a pretty short list
When I was born I actually had a heart defect where one of the valves was not functioning properly. I'm not a doctor, but all you need to know is some shit was fucked up, and they weren't exactly sure if I was even going to make it through the surgery, let alone back to my home.
I just can't help but wonder if maybe those events left a bit more of a mark than the scar on my chest.
For one thing, it is a widely held belief that the first few years of a child's life are by far the most influential in their development, and using that logic, you could surmise the first few weeks are especially important. As an infant, all you can do is trust your care to the people who are raising you and the hospital staff where you are born.
But if you are immediately removed from your own parents to be placed into surgical care, you lose that chance at feeling the unspoken bond of trust that all parents naturally form with their children at birth. And if the people who are supposed to be taking care of you need to cut open a hole in your chest within two days of entering the Earth, well you run out of people to trust pretty quickly. Of course, if I had known the situation I would have trusted the doctors, but we don't know anything as an infant besides physical senses.
To make a long and obvious ending short, the surgery was successful and after a month in an incubator I was finally released from the hospital and able to go home. Of course, as anyone who has had children will know, you are never too far removed from a hospital visit with a newborn, especially if there were any complications at birth. Not to mention the damage had probably already been done by that point.
"Why should I trust these people if they let me be put into that situation to begin with?"
is probably how an infant would rationalize the new world around it, if I had to guess (again, wasn't exactly keeping a diary at the time).
Now don't get me wrong, I had a perfectly fine childhood, and my parents were always there if I really needed help with something and I am honestly forever grateful for that. But at the same time, I just don't know if I ever quite got over that first month somewhere in the deep inner workings of my brain. They say first impressions are everything, and I'd say that includes our lives as a whole. If your first reactions are ones of discomfort and isolation, you are probably going to grow up looking at things negatively and avoiding interaction with other people whenever possible.
Not that I can't talk to people, I'm actually pretty damned good at putting up a front of friendliness, I just don't go out of my way to do it. And the sad part is this applied to my family as well, especially my brother. We are basically total opposites in a lot of ways but we do have some similarities in that we both think we are right about a lot of things and can be incredibly stubborn at times. And I'm gonna go ahead and confirm that statement by saying that, in actuality, he is not usually right about much at all. When your best talent is the art of bullshitting and deflecting blame for things, you generally don't have a sense of how people truly see you in life.
He is an eternal optimist, despite having a pretty slim selection of things to be optimistic about. I am an eternal pessimist despite not really having much to complain about. This leads to conflict naturally, but because of my pessimism I was actually pretty good at avoiding it. I knew when it was and when it was not going to be worth my time to disagree with him, and a lot of the time I simply said nothing to avoid having to get into an argument I knew neither of us would win due to the reasons I stated earlier.
He likes to talk to anyone who will listen, and I hate listening to people's problems when they are the own person's fault (see: all of his). So basically, unless I avoid him completely I get sucked into a trap of his myriad of complaints levied at anything and everything he finds offensive to him. And I do that as well to be honest, but I just keep it to myself in real life (maybe not so much in the lounge, sorry but you shouldn't have made it out to be such a dark place tbh, first impressions and shit).
But it's not like I hate my brother, I just don't really feel any emotions towards him. I wish him luck in whatever he chooses to do in life, but I just don't really want anything to do with whatever that may entail. And the more I think about it I kind of feel like that towards a lot of people, and I can't figure out why. I guess it all stems back to that trust issue, but you would think positive life experiences would help me get over that. And now im gonna sound arrogant here, but I actually had a lot of people who wanted to be my friend growing up and I just kind of... didnt extend the same level of friendliness. Not that I was rude, but very much avoided any invitations of furthering the process of getting to know each other.
And now that I think about it, that's a problem that is my own fault, and im doing exactly what my brother would do in writing it down for anyone who will read this. But the difference between me and him is I really don't need other people to keep myself occupied, whereas he cannot stand to be by himself.
But there's really not much else more to say about our relationship, it is pretty much one of saying "whats up" in the morning and "later" when we leave each other's company, so I won't go on about that.
At the end of the day, I know there is a lot of good people in this world, and I am certainly not very high on that list. But at the same time, there are a lot of bad people in this world too, and I would rather be able to avoid them at the cost of avoiding some good people as collateral damage rather than have to deal with bad people.
And the term "bad" is so subjective but to me it basically encompasses anyone who doesn't think similarly to myself, which I have found to be somewhat hard to find replicated. Mostly because nobody thinks the same so I am really just setting everyone else up for failure by holding them to an impossible standard that isn't even really a good standard to begin with.
So, again, I am causing my own problems here but I'm also figuring out the cause of these problems on my own and have already solved them by simply accepting the fact that I will probably always be a pessimist.
And some people might say that is a sad way to live but at the same time, life can be sad sometimes and when you are considering every negative outcome that may happen you are not phased when they actually do happen.
So I don't know what exactly to really do anymore besides to just keep on trucking and get my jollies out of saying "I told you so" to people and hearing the ever occurring "you were right about that".
a lot of times I think I would be better off if I was more like my brother since ignorance really is bliss. And the sad part is I think he wishes he could be more like me in a lot of ways too.
If we could swap out some genetic traits to each other you could probably build a great human being, but I'm way too much of a cynic to think anything is great, let alone something as innately flawed as human beings.
I just wish I could learn to accept people for their flaws, and trust that it is not being done purposely with the intent to negatively impact my life.
But like I said earlier, that thought is still deep in my brain somewhere
Who can you trust?
and as of right now, it's a pretty short list
