The big problem I have is determining which of my problems are real and which ones are fictional. Which ones I should consider a big deal and which ones I shouldn’t. Now for most of my life, the answer according to those closest to me has been that (insert problem) isn’t one that I would consider a big deal. Too many times throughout my life, I’ve encountered different people and situations I didn’t like which always seemed like they were a big deal. Most of these situations stemmed from me feeling like something wasn’t fair or that I was treated unfairly by someone in a situation, ETC. A lot of the time, most situations I find myself in can be resolved by mom’s input as she will usually make light of whatever the situation is even if I initially thought it was the end of the world and that my life could be ruined over it. Over the years, these situations have stemmed from financial based situations or occurrences where I felt the other person I was arguing with was being unreasonable in his/her side of the argument which I initially thought resulted in the feeling of me feeling like I was wronged. Most of the time though these situations will occur with mom initially having no involvement in it but almost all of the time, I will continue to react negatively, (either by crying or getting really angry. This usually depended on my age,) until mom is made aware of the situation and gives her opinion on it. The problem is that with the exception of a few minor issues, each time I have brought up a situation to her like this, she has taken the other person’s side as I had committed the wrongdoing without realizing it initially. In almost every situation, my bad mood towards the situation will stop regardless of what mom’s opinion is on it. Having said that, this can vary based on the level of anger I initially had towards the situation as well as the feeling that the other person involved should suffer at her hands for putting me in the situation in my mind when I would have been in a good mood otherwise. When this type of situation presents itself, mom will give me a stern warning that what’s done is done and the problem has been dealt with, (in some cases. In other situations where the problem can’t be solved for some reason, it is met with a warning of anger from her if I continue.) This is actually normally what she says in any situation whether it’s been resolved or not. My name is Jeff by the way so I can use my own name to describe this situation.
“Jeff, you need to stop worrying about this or I will be mad at you/we will not do (insert activity) if we had planned one if you keep up this behavior. No one can make you be upset. You choose to act the way you do. You know that some people are the way they are/that you made the mistake and that person had every right/shouldn’t have called you out in what you’ve done…..ETC. It’s time to move on and if it’s not, tell me now because you and I will have problems. You need to let it go.”
This is just a sample of the conversation mom and I will have if this situation occurs. It usually follows pretty much this same format with me blaming someone for what I believe to be a misdeed against me with insistence that mom take action against this person which she almost always fails to do as she points out my side of the issue, (the side which caused the other person to react negatively towards me) with a warning following this that I need to shape up in terms of how I treat others.
To make it simple in my 36 years on this planet, almost nothing has happened where a fight has occurred with someone other than mom that she hasn’t been made aware of eventually. While some of these issues end with her taking my side, more often than not, she will end up taking the other person’s side. I have to say that it’s almost amusing when she points how stupid I’ve been in some cases. When my friends have been present for these conversations, they have gotten a laugh out of them as well.
However, aside from all of those occurrences, if I had to choose one point in my life that I would call “The Hard Years,” it would definitely be my teenage years. Particularly when I was dating my first girlfriend and the aftermath of that relationship. To be honest, this is a story that I’ve told so many times and relived so many times, both to myself and to those closest to me, (and I can honestly say that they are as sick of hearing about it as I am of telling it that I’m not going to repeat myself. For those of you who want to hear the details, I’m sure I’ve written at least 50 articles on how my first relationship didn’t work while detailing what happened and how I feel like it is a possibility that I should have another one on this site. This is a subject that I’ve been discussing with people since she left, getting mad at her seemingly without her knowledge since she left for things she obviously didn’t cause that went wrong after she left, and most importantly like everybody else in my family wondered why I had to meet her in the first place while making their wishes known that I never have another one as long as I live as they are worried that I may spend the rest of my days locked up in jail or worse if it ended up not working.
In a nutshell though, I could probably have just labelled the whole issue as having been stuck in a time freeze. Pretty much I think the biggest issue I had was that the passage of time really didn’t exist and I remained frozen in my mind at the point where she was relevant thus making it impossible for me to move on at least for the better part of twenty years after the last time I saw her or had contact with her. Once I regained some common sense, I finally realized how much time had passed, (if anyone can believe it, this was really just a couple of months ago,) when I realized that I had spent almost 20 years believing her to be relevant in my life when in reality, we only dated five months! This is ridiculous. Clearly, when I think about all the time I wasted, I would have to say that the hard years are behind me now. They’ve actually been behind me a lot longer than I realized.
I think it goes without saying that “The Hard Years” really refers to my teenage years and the 20 years I spent obsessing over a girl I dated for five months when I was basically still a kid because that’s what a teenager is. Five months of love and a harmless high school crush ruined the better part of my adult life. I cannot believe that. This is definitely one part of my life that I would change in a heartbeat. I just hope that if I ever did, it doesn’t take me another 20 years to realize that I had changed it.
By Jefferson Bert
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