Brutal Competition

I have memories as a child of playing board games with my family and having fun doing it. I have memories from my childhood of playing wiffleball, kickball, and football with my family and with kids in the neighborhood and having fun with it. But at some point, the friendly competition of my youth changed—not only with friends but also inside my family. The competition went from being friendly to being rough, if not, in some cases, emotionally brutal. I no longer know what friendly competition means.

This bumps up against another problem that stems from my childhood: seeing people as competition for attention and love. Somewhere along the way, I learned that for me to be loved, I had to be loved alone. I could not be loved along with someone else. If my mother loved me, she couldn’t love my father. If my father loved my brother, he couldn’t love me. I’m not sure where this came from, though I’m sure it will become clearer to me at some point. But as it stands now, these two things are killing me and my ability to have friendships with other men.

I’m not sure I can continue to live with another person at this point. When I moved in with my housemate, my therapist told me that through therapy, we were slowly peeling the Band-Aid off many wounds in my spirit, soul, and mind. He told me that moving in with someone else, specifically with another man, was going to be the equivalent of ripping the Band-Aid off and having to deal with the whole wound or all of the wounds at once. I knew this seemed like a big deal, but I had no idea it would be so difficult.

Everything passes through a filter of competition. If I’m friends with two people and they are also friends with each other, I feel threatened. How can they love me and that other person? How can they be friends with me and that other person?

I have to be better than. I can not be better with. So, I have to be the best hairstylist, manager, writer, speaker, and friend, or, in my mind, I am nothing. So, I avoid most friendships, community, parish life, and sometimes even family gatherings. Not because I think I am better but because I believe I am not. If I’m not, then I will lose the client, the friend, and the family member. This brings pain, so I learned to avoid and isolate, which brought even more pain.

How do I fix this, I ask? Exposure therapy, which is what I am living in and it is brutal not because of Brian but because of my distorted understanding, the wounds that understanding grew from, and the demons that are aware of the wounds and poke at them whenever possible. I live in a testing chamber. I live in a furnace. I don’t know how long I can take it, but the words of the shmaltzy song I Want to Know What Love Is sum up where I feel I am. “In my life, there’s been heartache and pain. I don’t know if I can face it again. Can’t stop now. I’ve traveled so far to change this lonely life.”

The pain of rejection, real or perceived, I’ve experienced has traumatized me. Some people could go through what I’ve been through and react differently. For me, the pain has been excruciating. I cut relationships off, so I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of holding on to people, earning their friendship and love, and being number one. Despite that, I moved in with my housemate Brian, knowing I would be challenged but having no idea the challenge would be this intense. Now, I have to choose between quitting and returning to a lonely, dull, constant pain or sticking it out with living together and embracing the sharp, cutting pain of learning to love without competition.

Written 2/15/21 AD

Human-written, AI spell-checked

Image from DirectMedia on Stocksnap.io