One important lesson I learned while working construction is that when you accept a job remodeling, you have to accept that you no idea what you're getting into. The homeowners may simply want to add another room, take out a wall, or repair a leak...but once you start tearing into the surface, you could find a whole host of issues on the other side. In between my arrest and sentencing, I spent a lot of time reading and trying to understand how I could make the changes in my life that were necessary for me to be "better."
I had always enjoyed philosophy and psychology, but I read them for the purpose of weaponizing ideas and human behavior to manipulate, to be the hero, in a nutshell. With my incarceration, I found myself not looking at those topics as weapons I could use, but as a way to understand the ideas as they related to me. I realized very quickly that I was an angry person. No, not angry...I was full of hatred and rage. The hatred I felt was toward myself; my failures, my lack of control, and for simply being born. I felt as though I couldn't do anything right, I couldn't even succeed at suicide, even though I thought about it every day and attempted it multiple times. Little did I know that the remodeling job I was getting ready to undertake was to be more of an entire gutting of the house, leaving just the bare frame, and rebuilding from there.
If you were to ask me back then who I was, I would have answered that I was a son (reluctantly), a (insert whatever job I had at the time), a friend (if I had any at the moment), and a good guy. My definition of who I was, was determined by the world around me and those I interacted with. I thought people were meant to like and accept me, not for who I was, but for the things I did. I needed to be the guy who had all the answers, who you could come to and talk out your problems (I did value confidentiality back then, too), the guy who was always there if you needed someone. I never liked boasting or bragging, and I hate it even more today. I didn't, and still don't, take compliments well, I don't care for accolades. But, back then, my value as a person was dependent on being able to fix things and people, and have all the answers...in short, who I was was determined by how good I made other people feel.
Please do not mistaken this portion of my blog, Evolution, as me boasting or bragging, or attempting to make myself out to be better than anyone else, that is not my intent, nor my desire. I have done some really bad things, and i could have done much worse. There are people, who you could say are more reprehensible than me, and I would counter by saying, but by the grace of God I be him, and he be me. There were people put in my life along different stages, who guided and encouraged me, most without even knowing it, challenging me to grow as a person and to continue remodeling.
There are a couple of theories that helped me make sense myself, both within and in relation to the outside world; the coherence theory and the correspondence theory. To oversimplify things, and for the sake of this writing, the coherence theory is the idea that our set of beliefs can be justified if they are logically consistent and without real contradictions. Although I was not aware of these concepts at the time, I understood that the problem I had was an internal one, a heart issue, my values and beliefs were not consistent...in fact, they were quite contradictory at times.
To be continued with Part 2...