Hello,
I am new here and this is my first post. I decided to share with you one of my life stories.
The kitchen. I was sitting with my girlfriend there and suddenly started to share with her my feelings flooding over me and even perceptions which occurred earlier. I started telling things to her and opened my heart that my biggest discovery is that I am, and that I am here but I still don‘t understand who am I? What am I doing here? Where do I go and why do I go there? It's just not inside me ... emptiness inside ... I do not understand anything except the perception that I do not feel this and do not understand any of this.
Then I remembered my childhood when I could not stand being called by my surname, I just hated my surname, I hated myself and that person who called me by my surname. I felt that it’s hard to say my name when I ought to tell my surname after it. And when I say all this it kind of starts hurting inside and holds my throat real tight. It’s shame for me to say my surname, it seems that I don’t have any rights for this and then I can’t even accept my name…it sounds as if there’s something wrong somwhere in here…and when I switched name and surname between themselves and pronounced my surname first and my name next – I was surprised. Surprised because that hurting feeling inside me was just gone. I felt that now it sounds right for me and I can accept it. It’s like a stone has fallen off my chest. I felt that now I am happy of my surname and I’m proud of my name. It was an unexpectedly strange and very enjoyable experience. And then a thought came that it is right now, the way how it is, - because before I got my name I already had my surname. First came my father with his surname and only later did I come to this life and then I got my name. Father first, me next. I felt easier. I breathed in fresh air…and yet when I thought of my father, I felt emptiness inside me. I do not understand what it means to have a father and after a silent pause which lasted a moment I said to myself that I do not understand not only what it means to have a father but also what that father is.
Till now I have met him only once... I realized that I do not understand what a man is and what it means to be a man... there’s just emptiness inside me. I do not feel it, I only understand how I learned from the environment to mimic a man and masculine behavior. And when somebody is telling me to man up, be responsible, do, act, plant a tree, build a house, have a family, earn, manage, take responsibility and etc. I realized that I just tried to copy it from others and if I did something physically and intelligently, I copied everything in an exact way and I told myself that I was a man by doing it so I did it ... but the reality is that there was emptiness inside me and I did not understand why I did that. I asked myself for what reason did I need all this? I did it only to tell myself, I did it…here I am - a real man ... but I didn’t feel any sign of a man inside me…I didn’t understand what the real man is…I was not happy of what I do. It was all self-defeating and lying because whether I did or did not do it it was all the same to me, I felt exactly the same ... meaningless ... there was no sense for me in creating something and doing it afterwards because - what is the meaning of what I do? Why do I have to do anything at all? I did not understand for whom nor why I did it ... I just did that others would not bother me about that but I did not want all this inside myself... because it did not bring me any happiness because I did not see any meaning in it and I just asked myself: OK, say I build a house, the house is there, so what? Well, I have a family, my family exists so what? I plant a tree, I planted it – so what? I will take responsibility, I've admitted and taken it, so what? What do I need all this for?
When I just thought about trying something, I did not see any sense in that .... just emptiness ... I do not think I realized the meaning of the goal itself nor did I understand the meaning of the act itself ... there was only apathy and passivity everywhere, I lived with them, perceived everything close to me through that veil. I could sleep all the day every day and when I fell into nothingness I felt good ... doing nothing and lying in bed - there was something important in this, I felt some sense by doing this…I felt safe. I hated rough and aggressive men and I could not be among them, not only among them but among men in general, I did not know how to behave and I was intrusive inside because I did not feel like myself and when I was with men I imitated something I learned and I was somebody but this was not my True Self... and it was only when I wrote about aggressive men that I realized that I was very aggressive by myself, too..
When I talked about the fact that I did not understand what a man was and I only perceived the feminine aspect of that gentleness in my behaviour...suddenly my girlfriend said a marvellous idea that came to her mind: "Maybe masculinity is the opposite of what you’re saying about your feminine side?" It was like a thunder from heaven to me... I was deeply touched by these words... all this might seem like a simple sentence like 2x2, but it was completely inaccessible to me inside. Only now it struck straight to my heart and suddenly all my negative characteristics appeared in front of my eyes: wrath, aggression, anger, straightforwardness, passion for martial arts, frequent emotional mistrust and desire to fight. All this just stood in front of my eyes, I felt that there was a lot of energy and strength, there is an act and a movement, there is action there, there is no apathy and passivity... and there is a perception that all my masculinity "lives" in what is negative .... all of these characteristics are the opposite side of my gentle character traits... I was afraid of my negative characteristics and thus I closed them inside me. I saw that the positive in me expresses the most positive qualities that are characteristic of women and that all this negative manifests myself by negative qualities that are characteristic of men. Inside me there was a program that I’m good when I am gentle like a woman and that I’m bad when I am wild, aggressive, angry and want to fight like a man. It’s very hard to write it. It hurts inside me very much. As if I saw two shelves in me and on one of them there was an inscription: Woman is good, whereas on another - Man is bad.
I remembered the past, as my mother kept silent about my father, and only once when she was angry with me she told me with hatred in her words that I should go and live with my alcoholic father. I also remembered how my aunt always talked bad about men and condemned them as if they were nothing worth mentioning... wherever I looked around me all the women unanimously said: men are bad. I realized that I was very loyal to my mother and to all those women around me and to be able to live safely among the women I spoke unconsciously to myself: "If I am a man, then I have to be humble and feel bad” As a child I think I felt that only then I will be able to feel safe and loved.
But I didn’t felt loved at all. I wanted to be with my mom and wanted to be loved by my mother and my aunts, so in my soul I agreed with them that all men are bad because otherwise they would have thrown me out of their hearts as they have done with their husbands... it hurts... it's very painful for me to write it...
When I discovered all this... I started to feel that I feel a man living inside me and at the same time a slight shock, a slight shock in the good sense and an inner joy came to me that there is masculinity inside me and that it was always there but it was locked and I needed to turn myself from it in order to survive among the women in my family and my race so that I would not be able to see my masculinity and observe it…but it always has been within me and existed there as negative characteristics inside me. When I realized that there was a lot of relief and joy and I felt that all that was taboo to me and was not allowed inside but now I’m grown. Now I am safe. I can’t lose my mom anymore. Now I can be different, now I can be a man who may be good. I felt how my hands and feet began to warm. A wave of heat started moving around my entire body, I felt all my body and realized that all the negative characteristics can turn my power towards positive direction: create, act, do, build, protect, defend, enjoy, bravely strive... I just opened the doors inside me which I did not even see before myself.
Now I also have the internal right to go through that door where I found positive masculine fire features reside: courage, perseverance, determination, will etc, and I got the right to meet them, get to know them, make friends with them and let them enter my life.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for reading this. I appreciate it very much.
