WEAKNESS The amazing strength

A no bull s**t no sugarcoating writing about myself.

I am going to begin by saying that I am no writer, I am not a genius, and I am not the best educated, but I am a human and I am different. This is a story about myself and it will not be sugarcoated for anyone that may ever read this writing. My name is Shawn and through my very miniscule life span of 19 years I have changed from a weak person to one that no one gets in the way of. Most people would find being independent and strong to be something that most people would strive to be, but I warn all of you that it is not the most pleasant experience to exile the certain feelings it takes to be the strongest. It’s actually quite the opposite to the point that I am scared of the person I have become.

As a child I was just trying to be like everyone else. Fit in to the people around me. I wanted to be the popular kid even though I was scrawny and small. Things easily would hurt my feelings and the most miniscule pains would make me want to cry. At that time in my life I was normal, and at the time I felt so left out because of my weaknesses. I went through my elementary education with the same friends never changing and always doing the same thing. I had screwed up teeth and underwent speech therapy so I could talk normally. Even though I can say the word party now it still sounds the same way to me as I said it as a kid. Potty. Yea, potty like a toilet. Every time I say the stupid word I can still hear how I use to say it in my head. It actually makes me quite happy hearing it to. Reminds me of the times I wasn’t the strongest. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t angered. It’s one of the few things that makes me happy about myself.

Years later I guess is when are started changing. When I reached High school I had grown a foot in about four years. I was not nearly the same looking person I was when I was a young child. I also had gained a lot of weight and going through middle school being big kid or how other kids would say it was being fat it took a toll on me. I didn’t have the guts to stand up for myself. I would just take the verbal abuse and try and put it behind me. As you can guess that is a lot harder than it sounds. Come my sophomore year of high school I was entering playing my second year of lacrosse. My coach asked me to switch from playing attack to being a goalie. I can’t blame him either I was 6’2’’ 220lbs and took up the majority of the net. The only bad thing was being a lacrosse goalie sucks. Getting hard rubber balls thrown at you at an average of 80 mph is hard enough mentally on you as it is physically, but although I was a weak person I was not afraid to go out and try and be the best at things, and my decision to go out and be a good goalie is where my life started to change.

I remember the first practice of being a goalie. I went down to play with the junior varsity team on the other half of the field. I was pelleted by balls. It was the closest thing to being stoned you could get outside biblical proportions. I did not let the pain show. I stayed strong for the next couple hours until I walked into the front door of my house. Then like a loved one had just died I cried. Tears rolled down my face will the constant throbbing of welts rattled my body in pain. It hurt and I was ready to quit the sport all together, but my parents would never let me quit. My parents didn’t raise a quitter.

Now the back story to my parents is they both were raised differently. My father in Wheeling, WV where we still live today, and my mother raised in Mantador, ND a small town of less than 100 people. They both grew up to be strong Lieutenant Colonels in the United States Air Force where they met. They never have let my brother or I quit anything we started. We always had to finish the task. They were relentless on getting both of us involved and educating us. My parents were also very traditional where there was not disobedience that could not be fixed by the large hand of my father’s across my back side. I’ll tell you, you didn’t want to sit down because your bottom would hurt so bad after a spanking that was usually well deserved to my brother or I. In fact, I myself felt his hand print twice if not three times a weak because I still never seem to learn my lesson.

I did not quit. I stuck out my sophomore season with repeated daily bruising. I got over it to be honest. Everything just kind of quit hurting. I realized that it only hurts if I let myself think I am hurt. Sounds really obvious doesn’t it? Then why has not everyone opened there eyes up to this. Everything us as humans feel is just in our heads. For a young 15 year old teenager to realize this phenomenon of the body is unique. Most people at that age will never figure out that you can quit having basic feelings just because you convince yourself that it’s true.

My junior and senior year changed me a bit as well. I became a Christian, and not like I was baptized and confirmed in those years but I truly started believing in God. I was happy then, my life was turning into greatness waiting to happen. My grades were great for my usual standards and lacrosse had taken off for me. I was the captain of my team, people looked up to me, and I would not allow myself to be overcome by weakness. My senior year is when I was offered a lacrosse scholarship at Potomac state college where I currently write this story, my story, in the school’s student government office.

My senior year our team lost in the state semi-finals to our cross town rivals Wheeling Central Catholic. Being the last high school game of my career I was highly upset. That night was our senior dinner dance and I had paid the twenty dollar fee to go but the depression hit me like a brick wall from the game earlier that game. It took my buddy Scatt , one of the other captains for my team, telling me to go to convince me that holding myself in my personalized prison cell of a room wasn’t going to make me any more happy. I went to the dance and I enjoyed it. A girl came into my life that night and it was a surprise to me that things could change so suddenly. After days of continual talking and contact with this girl a quickly found that this girl meant more to me than any other person around me. One person that seeing them can make any sadness go away, but the small feelings of love and affection did not last long for the two of us. About a month after the dance she was back with her old piece of s**t boyfriend that was no good for her and I was left in a dark part my life with the only person that I thought could make me truly happy somewhere else living a life without me. None the less life keeps moving on.

I entered my first semester of college rooming with a teammate from Orlando, FL. I had never met anyone from there before and it sure was a change. Hanging at with my teammates everyday playing lacrosse and living at school but rarely having the drive to pay attention much left go to my classes and listen to boring professors that most of the time would not know who I was because I was sitting in the back of the classroom trying not to be noticed by them. Just skimming by on grades spending more time playing video games smoking the occasional joint trying to fit in with the guys that I was forced to be around most hours of the day. I was the stereotypical college student that was just trying to have fun. I enjoyed the independency, the pot, and oh yes I enjoyed the women. No strings attachment sex just because it was something to relive me of the stresses in my life. I worked harder in trying to experience college then I actually did in the classroom. Life was good but I soon was in for more dark times in my life.

My first year of college went fast and then the summer before my current semester went even faster. I worked and reconnected with my once short lived love Kelsi from the once happiest time of my life where I had someone to actually go to and feel happy with. We became best friends and I was fine with it because regardless of the situation she still to this day makes me happy.

I went back early for college my second semester to undergo my Resident Assistant training. I was on campus with thirty other people training to be a leader of the college. Still managing to find people to drink some whiskey and smoke a little pot with for the next fourteen days. We would sit in front of Davis hall for hours passing the times between our meeting and training up to the point of going to bed. You can say we had a pretty damn good time for having nothing to do.

The semester went on and I found what was left of my feelings of everything began to wither away. Depression once again hit me harder than any lacrosse ball or punch I have ever been hit by. The only thing is this time my depression was not caused by a pitiful loss in lacrosse that could only be changed by the sight of a girl I love but by a girl I loved and fixed by the same girl I loved. She was the one I cared for through this semester. Always being there for her but the stress on me to protect her from the people around her enraged me. Took away from me all feeling for those around me that I did not care about. People dying everyday but I myself could not find one ounce of my body to give any feelings to those or the people losing their loved ones.  I had realized that myself I once happy and loving person had become what in today’s society would be known as a man with anti-social personality disorder. As I said though I am not here to sugarcoat what I am typing and I will not allow a bull s**t sugarcoated term to define me either. I much like what many people are appalled by had become a sociopath that was driven everyday by rage, and to myself I find it beautiful.

I am different just like everyone else on this planet and my lack of feeling are looked up to by others as being strong. To those people that look up to me I do not have the slightest f*****g clue why because in my head the enjoyment I find in myself through rage is scary. My views on people are sickening and the fact that if I was left here alone with just one other person I cared about I would find perfection in life. So why is it that these people looking up to me that know I do not care about them continue to do so? Are they that worthless that they can’t succeed without a role model? In fact why would I ever be another man’s role model? I pray that these people can find out that my strength is what makes my world so dark and there weakness is what allows them to find enjoyment in life. I am not perfect but the way some people treat me like I am actually that much stronger than them is absurd. Some people will reach this point in their life where they find out what strength actually is and when they do they will understand being truly strong is the worst thing for a person because happiness does not flow freely. Happiness in strength is like seeking to find Waldo in a room of red and white horizontally striped shirts. The other twist is Waldo hasn’t shown up to be found yet. He’s not even in the room I am searching for him in. He is somewhere where my weakness can be seen and my strengths ripped from me. A woman I care about, that I love, that I feel for. That is my weakness, and my weakness is my happiness.