Deconstructing Vincent Joseph

     I've been a Christian since 2001 June 27th to be exact) and since then I've tried to surround myself with people who I want to be like and keep away from all that I shouldn't have in my life...well I've tried and tried and tried.

     My friends and the people I associate with has been very important because of the bad apple theory, one bad apple can ruin all the good ones around it, and I've carried that in my social media life and I've tried to be both a "good apple" to those who need to see one around me and in the barrel with good apples. 

     The good things about that theory have been evident: I have successfully learned what being a drunk or a drug addict is before falling for any of that, my social media life has been respectful and always at a higher standard, I've at times learned how to keep up with certain things that I couldn't learn with people who are even at my level and I accepted God in my life at a time when  I could have accepted any amount of terrible things. All that was because I got rid of toxic people and influences from my life and tried my best to stick by the people and things that were better than...well, me.

     Then there is the part that is a big ol' pile of...confusion.  There's the paradox that this creates. So being around people who are better than me has had enormous positive side effects on me BUT at a point that started becoming toxic too in a way. I'm not successful, I haven't ever, in my entire life, even known how to try to be successful yet most of my friends have been born and bred to be a success story, they are all inspirationally great in at least a few ways. 

So I become the bad apple to them, which is evident to them when things come up like we go out to eat or they invite me somewhere that requires ID and I do my normal thing and lose mine while they are outside waiting, leaving me to have to walk out and sadly tell them to go without me because I lost the one thing I need at the moment. Situations like that come up on the regular with me and it's not that I don't get to do things necessarily or that I have to do more to keep up with anyone else; it's the part where I have to walk the long lonely walk to go and tell them that I can't go. That walk becomes harder each and every time I have to walk it. 

     So i walk that walk and the part about me is sad and my friends go on...and I go back somewhere alone...feeling like a full failure. And nothing else. It washes over me, it replays over and over, often I create how much I think they're better off without me. They're having more fun because they're good people and they got rid of the bad apple...so I must be the bad apple, right? Right?! And it only gets worse from there. Now this exact situation only happened once but similar things have occurred many times where I had to back out in order for everyone to have a better time or to actually enjoy themselves. 

     And since I have a literal mind that refuses to change that way of thinking, I look at the math of life: if I am the one that they have to wait for, and I am the one that friends have to pay for and I'm the one that usually doesn't understand things common to them and I am CONSTANTLY the one who doesn't have ANYTHING that they all have (families, lives, the importance of others) I do that math and the answer is I'm the problem. 

     So if I'm the problem, then I should take myself out of their equation to make their lives better and I sit alone and beat myself up over and over and over...and over and over. And it was just pointed out to me that when my friends come to spend time with me or try to cheer me up, while they've been in the real world and have been just doing what they do, I have been mentally destroying myself for so long that I don't even think of myself as human anymore.

So they are like, "Hey, haven't seen you i a while. You okay?" all cheerful and calm. And my response looks like I've been in a Taken movie standing opposite Liam Neeson's character. From my point of view, I'm coming out of a terrorizing situation and trying to calm down (slowly because I have trouble changing moods even when it's proven to me that I should) but to the friend, nothing is actually wrong and I bring them down in my slow reaction to their positivity. That in turn makes them not want to be around me or not really be able to handle my intense sadness/negativity...and when they leave or step back, I repeat the mental beating with more vigor than before. 

     This has grown from a small issue that I can let go of to a painful bitter ball in the pit of my stomach to this intense evil hatred that lives inside me. I know I need to change this, I know I need to accept that things are not the way I see them usually and I know that some of the damage that I saw and currently see as irreversibly broken are i fact possible to be repaired...somehow. Somehow...somehow...somehow; that words seems so far away and almost a fantasy of a dream. Someday (another far away word) I hope to understand how to use this deconstruction to fix some of this stuff.

     My goal with this and with my videos on YouTube and with my art and my prayers and my bible reading and my future therapy and my transitioning and everything else i try to do is all to find a way to be okay. I thank anyone who reads this and I hope it encourages you in any way at all. Let me know if it does, I could truly use that if it's true.