Broken People (12 page)

Chapter 12

Dude, you’re creeping me out

MICHELLE
.
Life asks so many questions, but it never provides us with the answers. You have to find them yourself. I have been on this earth eighteen years, almost. In my eighteen years, I have made many observations, and determined a few things. As I have progressed through my years, I have made and modified several notes. I have compiled a list of these findings, and plan on continuing the list as I grow older, and observe more. To date, I have developed a list of twenty two things that I have learned.

Things I've Learned in 18 Years of Life

1) Tru
e love is not something
found
, rather [sic] something encountered. You can’t go out and look for it. The person you marry and the person you love could easily be two different people. So have a beautiful life while waiting for God to bring along your once-in-a-lifetime love. Don't allow yourself to settle for anything less than them. Stop worrying about who you're going to marry because God's already on the front porch watching your grandchildren play.

2) God WILL give you more than you can handle, so you can learn to lean on him in times of need. He won't tempt you more than you can handle, though. So don't lose hope. Hope anchors the soul.

3) Remember who you are and where you came from. Remember that you are not from this earth. You are a child of heaven, you're invaluable, you are beautiful. Carry yourself that way.

4) Don't put your faith in humanity, humanity is inherently flawed. We are all imperfect people created and loved by a perfect God. Perfect. So put your faith in Him.

5) I fail daily, and that is why I succeed.

6) Time passes, and nothing and everything changes. Don't live life half asleep. Don't drag your soul through the days. Feel everything you do. Be there physically and mentally. Do things that make you feel this way as well.

7) Live for beauty. We all need beauty, get it where you can find it. Clothing, paintings, sculptures, music, tattoos, nature, literature, makeup. It's all art and it's what makes us human. Same as feeling the things we do. Stay human.

8) If someone makes you think, keep them. If someone makes you feel, keep them.

9) There is nothing the human brain cannot do. You can change anything about yourself that you want to. Fight for it. It's all a mental game.

10) God didn’t break our chains for us to be bound again. Alcohol, drugs, depression, addiction, toxic relationships, monotony and repetition, they bind us. Break those chains. Destroy your past and give yourself new life like God has given you.

11) This is your life. Your struggle, your happiness, your sorrow, and your success. You do not need to justify yourself to anyone. You owe no one an explanation for the choices that you make and the position you are in. In the same vein, respect yourself by not comparing your journey to anyone else's.

12) There is no wrong way to feel.

13) Knowledge is everywhere, keep your eyes open. Look at how diverse and wonderful this world is. Are you going to miss out on beautiful people, places, experiences, and ideas because you are close-minded? I sure hope not.

14) Selfless actions always benefit you more than the recipient.

15) There is really no room for regret in this life. Everything happens for a reason. If you can't find that reason, accept there is one and move on.

16) There is room, however, for guilt. Resolve everything when it first comes up. That's not only having integrity, but also taking care of your emotional well-being.

17) If the question is ‘Am I strong enough for this?’ The answer is always, ‘Yes, but not on your own.’

18) Mental health and sanity above all.

19) We love because He first loved us. The capacity to love is the ultimate gift, the ultimate passion, euphoria, and satisfaction. We have all of that because He first loved us. If you think about it in those terms, it is easy to love Him. Just by thinking of how much He loves us.

20) From destruction comes creation. Beauty will rise from the ashes.

21) Many things can cause depression. Such as knowing you aren't becoming the person you have the potential to become. Choose happiness and change. The sooner the better, and the easier.

22) Half of happiness is as simple as eating right and exercising. You are one big chemical reaction. So are your emotions. Give your body the right reactants to work with and you'll be satisfied with the products.

Usually, I did my best thinking while lying in my bed. As I lay there, thinking about what Kid said regarding David, I looked at the list. Number five certainly applied to David. If Kid was correct, and I suspect he was, David had a deep fear of failure. So deep, that he developed a homosexual inner being to prevent himself from failing at a relationship. The thought of someone building a shield or shelter with such conviction fascinated me. I struggled with his being conscious of what he was doing in developing his homosexual character.

I started thinking about what Kid and I had talked about.
Broken people attract broken people.
I thought of Kid. We met by chance on the Internet. A one in a 1.2 million chance, from what Kid calculated. I suspect he was right. He was generally right in what he said regarding statistics. He had proven to be a great person, and a great friend, always willing to listen when I wanted to talk. I had spent many nights on the phone with him, talking for hours and hours on end. Most of the time when we spoke on the phone, I hid in my closet so my parents wouldn’t hear us talking. To them, the thought of me meeting someone over the Internet would be beyond what is acceptable. My act of talking to him on the phone would make my desire for tattoos look like nothing.

Kid had demons that he wouldn’t speak of, but
they were apparent. I had spent considerable time piecing together his life, and trying to figure out who he was. I never assumed or thought he lied to me, but it was obvious that he only gave me bits and pieces of his life. The bits and pieces he wanted to. He allowed me to learn the things that he wanted me to know, and didn’t offer to me the parts that he didn’t want me to know. I attempted on many occasions to try to gain information about him on the Internet, but generally failed at finding much. I didn’t even know his real name, and through attempts to track his phone number, found that it was a pay-by-month phone with no name attached to it. He had lived most of his life as a private person, and wanted to keep it that way. Keeping his name a secret was probably yet another way to keep his life with me on a less personal level. 

Some of the things that fascinated me about him were the fact that he gained 140 pounds to shelter himself from people. He was so scared of people failing him that he gained weight to prevent them fr
om wanting to meet him. He became unattractive to the eye so people would look past
who
he actually was. We all have a degree of fear of failure within us, some maybe worse than others. Kid wasn’t excluded from this. He just wants to live his life without failing, or without people perceiving him as a failure. Maybe he was truly afraid of
people failing him.

I asked Kid once, right after we met, about
the incident
, as he calls it. He told me he would tell me some other time. I asked him again, on no less than three more occasions, all of which got me the same answer.
I will tell you some other time
. I had determined that
the incident
, as he calls it, was when he quit drinking, and quit doing drugs. It was obvious that this was also when he turned his life around and decided to start helping people. Although I wasn’t certain, I think it was immediately following this point in time that he decided to gain weight, and to force people to
leave him alone.

During
my initial excitement of meeting him, I told my cousins about him. At that point in time, I had known Kid for about three months. My cousins went crazy. Immediately, they began to question his motives for speaking to me.

“Don’t give him
your real name,” Tiarra said.

“He will find out your address a
nd rob you,” Marianna screamed.

“He knows my name, and where I go to school, and he doesn’t want
anything
from me. All he wants to do is talk to me, and get my opinion about issues that he has with teens. I am a sounding board for him, a means of checking his work, if you will. A teen text book,” I explained.

“Oh my God, yo
u are so stupid,” Tiarra said, looking at me as if I were an utter idiot. “I met a guy on the Internet, and he fucked me over so bad. He lied to me, manipulated me, and used me for money. Block his number. Call the cops. He’s going to steal from you. I know it,” she continued, standing and screaming at me the entire time.

Egyptian families are tight kn
it, and tend to mind each other’s business, even when they shouldn’t. This incident with meeting Kid became a weekly discussion with my two cousins. They constantly wanted to know what he was asking, and what he was doing. Their fear of him wanting naked photos, bank account numbers, and my address continued. Each time I told them that he had yet to request these things, they told me, “It’s just a matter of time.” I thoroughly enjoyed each time my cousins and I met, knowing the questions would be the same, and that I could give an answer that wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Their expectations of him being a pedophile or a thief were unfounded, but I was incapable of changing their minds.

Although I could talk to my cousins about Kid, I couldn’t talk to my brother or my parents about him. Their ability to digest or understand the situation was non-existent. I would be advised by my parents to cease all discussions and communications with him, and then I would be forced to decide whether to listen to my parents, and grant their request, or go against it and keep a line of communication open. I decided that them not knowing was what was best. I had told Brianna about him, and her response was, “That’s just weird. Bye,”

Writing things down when I think makes me more able to understand them. I decided to make a list of similarities between Kid and David. I made a list on paper, Kid on the left, and David on the right. As I
made the list, the similarities were shocking. Kid, used his weight as a shelter or shield from others. He said it kept people from approaching him. I believed that it was to keep him from getting close to people emotionally, and from later failing. David was OCD. He weighed himself constantly, making sure he was at his target weight. If he wasn’t at his target weight, he would exercise and modify his diet until he was. He counted things. He looked at any and all things that he could, mathematically. He compiled lists in his head, and built statistics. He based his decisions through the course of a day on his expectation of the success of the decision based on the statistics that he had compiled in his mind regarding the situation. Kid did the same types of things. Kid weighed himself, and if he fell below his lower threshold weight, he ate to gain weight. Kid feared elevators, planes, and riding in someone else’s car. David used his homosexuality as a shield to keep women away, and Kid used his obesity to keep
everyone
away. As I thought of things to put on the list, I gave up, aggravated, that I had learned what I suspected all along, but never took time to consider.

Kid feared failure. That’s why all of his deal
ings with people were over the Internet. It’s why he only had one actual friend, Shawn. It’s why Kid didn’t actually have a job. It’s why he was fat. And, it’s probably why he gave me little or no information about his past. He feared that I would judge him for whatever he had done, or who he had been, and I would abandon him. This abandonment would be perceived, by him, as failure. The more I considered my thoughts, the more sense it made. His abrasive attitude, sarcastic nature, cussing, and calling people names was just a way for him to keep everyone from even
wanting
to get to know him. Just like the obesity.

I wanted to talk to David about his homosexuality, and I wanted to talk to Kid about
everything. So, I sent both of them a text message. I rolled over on my bed and looked at my list of what I have learned in life. Numbers fifteen and sixteen stood out. There is really no room for regret in this life.
Everything happens for a reason. If you can't find that reason, accept there is one and move on
. And,
there is room, however, for guilt. Resolve everything when it first comes up. That's not only having integrity, but also taking care of your emotional wellbeing
. I began to believe that there must be something in Kid’s past that he regretted, or couldn’t accept as being the way that it should be. I would get to the bottom of this as soon as he texted me.