Ed Edd and Eddy is one of my favorite cartoons of all time. It's a simple story about 3 different boys coming together to achieve a goal, usually revolving around money to get massive amounts of jawbreakers. It seems so simple at first glance, but as an adult, I see that it served as the model for how I think today. To a kid, it just seems like 3 kids having fun. But to me now, I see three people who had three different and unique skill sets. Eddy was the smooth-talking salesman, Edd was the brains and the voice of reason to counteract Eddy, and Ed was the brawn that did all the heavy lifting when it came time. Individually, they were incredibly ineffective but as a team, they always achieved their goals. And while all the other kids in the neighborhood were annoyed by their presence and antics, they ultimately came to respect them and even came together to achieve things at times. I think that the emphasis on teamwork and working hard for something is something that is lost nowadays. I inspire to find creative ways to make money not because I don’t like working a regular job, but because a regular job bores me to death. Being an entrepreneur and having an entrepreneurial spirit has been very important to me recently and this show reminds me of why I have that mindset today.
(Repost) My struggles with self confidence.
Confidence means a lot of different things depending on whom you ask. It may be the courage to ask a girl on a date or go try to talk to someone with power or influence, or just speak in a commanding, clear tone.
For me, it's all 3.
I lived a very sheltered life growing up. My mother, having experienced and survived growing up in New York City in the 1970s, '80s and '90s meant that she wanted to protect her only son from the dangers she knows the city to have.
What I believe, however, is she didn't really understand what she was doing or how much new york city has changed since the '90s. Don't get me wrong, it was still very rough and I still have very clear memories of seeing some fucked up shit in the South Bronx. But nowhere near what my mom tried her hardest to protect me from.
I love my mom and appreciate everything she has done for me. She instilled a lot of the great qualities that make me such a caring and giving individual. What I learned as a kid from her laid the groundwork for everything I work for now. Without her, I wouldn't be here writing blog posts, let alone have a vision of creating a platform for creators to express themselves together. That being said, this would have been absolutely phenomenal if I had a chance to go out into the world and apply my lessons among people I was growing up with. But I didn't. My mom protected me from these dangers for a very long time. In fact, it wasn't until I was 19 and my mom got married that she started to relax and let me do my thing.
But what is "my thing"?
I'm still trying to figure that out to this day. I really try not to blame my mother for this, but I believe that time I didn't spend being around people in high school is still having very detrimental effects on me. Video games became my ultimate escape because I was never judged playing games, especially online where people like me found comfort in being. Around each other in a virtual world. I essentially had to be home before 8 pm all the time, so this meant no hanging out with friends unless they were riding the train home, no parties on Fridays or Saturdays, none of that. On top of that, I had incredible envy of those that did because I saw them excelling socially in ways I couldn't even comprehend because my talking skills in a social environment were so weak.
Compounding this issue was the fact that I couldn't talk to women. I just sucked because most of my interactions were with other males who were a lot better at talking to girls. I thought having a very well paying job in high school would help out a lot. My kind and giving dispositions meant that in reality, many girls just put me in the friend zone then lead me to believe that I was getting somewhere. During that process, I spent A LOT of money for nothing. From about my junior year of high school through my first 2 years of college I experience very crippling depression which I originally thought was caused by the fact that I don't know why I am here especially when I feel so sad and lonely constantly. It took about 2 years of self-reflection and a lot of expensive therapy sessions to reach a calm point.
Today I am 24 years old, with a loving girlfriend and a career that I've invested about half my life into thus far. So why do I still don't feel confident in myself? Well, that is why I am sitting in bed at 8 AM writing this.
While I can easily just blame my upbringing (which I've almost taken pride in doing so), there comes a time, as my girlfriend says, I need to man up and just do it. To that, I usually blame my upbringing and how my kindness was abused, to which the response is that I need to let it go.
Can I let it go?
Of course, I can. This year has been a success in terms of being less socially awkward and building my confidence, and that is in part due to the fact that I let my past go and not let it define me any longer. But I still deal with the process of growing socially a lot later in life than most people. I still don't take initiative and I still have a lot of missteps when I speak to people. This is my struggle, but I'm going to work through it. I decided to write this because I know I am not alone and I hope someone can relate to my struggle and maybe share a bit of their struggle. After all, it helps to talk to more people to build your confidence.
(Repost) The walls are closing in.
This is my first real attempt to put into writing the pain that I feel daily; let's see how this goes.
I am depressed. I'm so depressed that I need to yell at myself both in my head and out loud to just get even the simplest things done. I have no drive to talk to people and I have a generally downer look on my face a lot lately. The smallest thing just triggers a wave of pain. Mental pain. Mental pain is the worst cause you can't just put a band aid over it. You feel it in your soul and it doesn’t go away. Only way it goes away is by sleeping, which I've been doing a lot of lately.
So why do I feel this way?
I wish I knew why. The only thing I can think of is that I have felt like I have had a long series of things not go well at all and these things compound themselves over and over and over again. Before it was things such as my grandpa losing his battle with throat cancer or my little cousin drowning in a pool in Africa that weighed heavy on my mind. I learned to suppress these feelings as I know that they both would not want me mourning the pain of them not being there and be the best person I can for them. From that point however, I have just had every and anything go wrong and every new event just triggers the pain.
I realize that it may seem like I'm being a brat because things aren't going my way, but It's not quite that. In fact, I've been working on my life in spite of the fact that I really want to give up and quit on life. This resolve to keep going despite the pain only makes me question why I even try when I do get down. This is also slowly breaking me down as I am struggling to even deal with the simple problems in my life. What's worse is I don’t feel as if anyone can understand me. I feel alone, even though people around me try to understand what's going on with me. I don’t want their help. I don’t even know if I want help at all.
And that’s the fucked up part. I feel as if there is a voice in my head and its screaming "destroy yourself" and I'm happily obliging cause I'm so blinded by the pain I feel inside. That pain is crippling me slowly. Despite all of this, I still have some optimism that things will get better. I don’t know how or when, but I know it does eventually; I just cannot let my desire to give up overpower my optimism. That’s easier said than done.
(Repost) slut shamming has to stop
[Part 2] He was a virgin too, so we both didn’t know what we were doing, but for us to be too blind mice we seemed to really know what we were doing. The air was thick, our breathing was heavy, and our palms sweat nervously. It was the moment all the cool girls talked about at lunch. It was the moment our parents told us to hold on to, you know the “Wait til marriage” speech. But right here right now I was going to lose all my innocence to someone that I’m not even dating. So we did it. And honestly it didn’t hurt like all the rumors indicated, and that whole “popping of the cherry” bullshit was all a lie. I didn’t enjoy it. I remember thinking to myself, this wasn’t even worth it. Why do people over hype this? So many disappointing thoughts circled my head. We laid there, staring at the ceiling, and talked. I walked differently on my way home, I walked with less innocence and a tad bit more maturity- not really but it felt like I let go of something I held so dear to my heart.
Days later a rumor surfaced around my school. Everyone knew that I lost my virginity. I guess when you go to a Catholic School, what else can you expect. But the rumor wasn’t entirely true, they were claiming I slept with half of the senior boys. I remembered being pulled out of the hallway by a friend and asked: “Did you sleep with so-and-so because everyone is saying that you gave him head in his basement!” Each word lingered in my head. I quickly said “No!” and she then went on to tell me who she heard this rumor from, and it was the guy I lost my virginity to. He told everyone.
Days went by and the rumors just thickened, and as much as I tried to ignore them, they started getting to me. I wasn’t myself anymore. I would lash out at teachers, classmates just everyone would catch it. The final straw was when I was in my locker, alone in the hallway until I was approached by one of my classmates, she asks me, “You know what they’re calling you?”
“No, what ?”
“That you're a slut.” I slammed my locker door closed and looked at her and said:
“Well, then I guess I am!” I was fed up. I wasn’t willing to deal with the bullshit anymore. I stopped caring what people were saying and instead used it as a way to become stronger.
When I finally asked the boy why he started the rumor he said, “Because if you were a virgin why didn’t your cherry pop?” I was so disgusted at the fact that he would assume me to be lying.
“Because thats not even a real thing. Not every girl's cherry pops, dumbass.” I couldn’t believe I lost my virginity to such a childish, so self-centered person. I was molested when I was younger, but I didn’t want to tell him that. I felt like he couldn’t be trusted. I stopped talking to him after that. We didn’t reconnect until later on in life when we both were no longer in high school.