I started writing the below post 33 days ago, but couldn’t finish it because I wasn’t happy with it. Now, I’m pushing it out anyway. Between the “~” is the original post. Below that’s my commentary since the birthday has come and went and I’ve asked the opinion of my sister and my Father.
~
With a 15 year age difference, living apart for most of our lives, and different mothers*, my brother and I have quite a bit of a gap between us, without accounting for any ability to get along or not. And the last four years, I’ve not gotten along the best with my brother.
My opinion of him has oscillated between outright hating his guts (briefly) and being glad I have an older brother, even if just one. At this point though, I feel that my sister’s (then fiancee and now) husband’s been more of a brother to me than my own brother has.
The long story short, is that most of the time, my brother and I just don’t get along well. It’s been hard to bridge the gap. For the last four years, I’ve been focused on his side of the story. He did this. He did that. He married this women, of whom I’m no fan. At moments when I was angry, I was ready to cut him out of my life.
But I still call him every now and then. To keep in touch. I called him today and when he asked if I could make his birthday, I told him I couldn’t because of work. Then he told me that no one was showing up for it. Not his best friend, not my sister, not her husband, not me. His 40th birthday. I’m not even sure if his wife will make it ( they don’t live together yet, because of work circumstances).
The 40th birthday is a big deal.
I was talking to my sister about it, who is about to be in the same situation with her 30th birthday. I made an (in hindsight) insensitive remark about how no one was there for my 24th birthday, but she patiently pointed I was missing the point and explained that while my brother has been difficult, he has shown up. Whereas not many family members have shown up for his events. She asked me if I was going to show up to his graduation (he’s about to get his masters) and I had no idea when it was; never gave
Now I’m wondering if I’ve been the bad brother all along.
~
My father’s been trying to impress upon for me for the past couple of years, in between listening to me complain about my brother, that family is forever. Family will show up, when it’s important, even if they’re mad at you from last Saturday. Family will still pick up the phone when you call, even after it’s been months, if not years, since you last spoke. Family, generally will have your best interests at heart, if at least, make sure they don’t step on your toes. Family is the original safe space™. It’s why my Father still keeps in touch with his sister, despite her giving him plenty of reasons not to.
After talking to my sister and my Father, I’ve decided that I haven’t really been a good brother myself. I’ve been so caught up in how my own brother’s been wronging me, that I’ve not been receptive when he’s done me right. I’ve not made any real effort to build any inroads myself. I’ve made to no real effort to bridge the large gape that exists between us.
Neither of us has been a terrible brother.
I still call him about once a month, and I’m happy with that for now.
But once he gets his housing in order, I plan to visit him once a year. Perhaps in Spring.
(Go ahead, I dare you. Read the post with the song playing)
I was discussing from one of my friends who I have helped unplug from matrix and get exposed to the manosphere things I’ve noticed about myself and others. I discussed some of my past how I’ve gone from socially maladjusted to socially competent to the point where I game nearly everyone.
We talked about several topics and I could not help but notice patterns, patterns that we both notice or share. In the interest of keeping him anonymous and exploring my own thoughts because I want to, I’ll withhold the patterns he shares.
I often feel like I’m on a different level than most people I know. I have a purpose in life and I have plan that gets fleshed out more and more as time passes and I come upon new opportunities. I have always felt that school was relatively easy or that there was someway to game it. When I was middle school in military school, I made straight As with three-year average GPA of 96.7 which made me the middle school Valedictorian. I was concerned that school was too easy and I missing something that would inevitably lower my grades by several degrees. Before military school, I never did homework but always did well on tests.
Throughout middle school, high school, and university I’ve never felt truly a part of any group. At most I have a group of friends who I am very close to with similar interests, but they are a level removed from my highest ambitions. I hope to bring them into the fold in the future, but they are doing just fine as it is. Accompanying these outsider feelings is my ability to hang out with almost any group of people and make friends with everyone. I frequently get along with a wide variety of people such that when hanging out with one group, they’ll denounce another group people I hang out with as douche bags or losers. Sometimes I play along and agree. Mostly I keep quiet or just laugh. I’ve got different levels of friends and I tell varying amounts of information to different friends. I rarely tell everything to any one friend, but spread my news, and if I may be so human as to complain, my complaints between my friends. A lot of the time I direct most of the controversial stuff towards my parents so my friends neither worry for me or think I complain much if at all.
I also noticed with my friend that I could help but notice that I felt some people were incredibly stupid. Accompanying these thoughts are feelings of superiority. I almost feel superior in intelligence, drive, and ambition to most people. I say almost because I dislike feeling superior to the point of being arrogant as I feel I am just waiting for hubris to derail my plans or my life, as it has many a great man or nation before me. I also recognize that people are not on the same level because they do not know, cannot see, and I better use my breath helping them see than mocking them from afar. I want to be the man with whom people rise up, not just one to take people down.
I used to have problems in my past due to bullying from different people at school to being belittled as oblivious, retarded, and unfunny as the youngest in my family. Parts of my Thal nature manifested themselves in how I viewed the world, confused with how it worked, and how I dealt with it. As my social competence increased and my natural understanding on how to manipulate my environment around me increased, these symptoms I experienced decreased and decreased until they faded from memory. I wondered last night why I couldn’t remember much of my childhood before sixth grade, before eight grade and I now think I know why. Somehow my new identity has repressed my old memories and feelings so that I do not regress to my old self. I almost refuse to read old poems I wrote for girls I liked because when I read those poems I feel the exact same feelings I felt when I wrote the poems.
In high school I went through a rebirth and transformed myself into a different version of me. I wore contacts in ninth grade and played contact sports. I was no longer self-conscious about my looks or my physical capabilities as I became know as the best tackler on the school’s JV and later Varsity Rugby team. I realized I could mold the world around me to my desires or benefit when I learned how to act towards teachers, faculty, and staff so that I got in little to no trouble when I got caught breaking the rules. I could walk around the dormitory drunk and the house parents never did anything because they either couldn’t distinguish whether I was drunk or being myself or didn’t care because I made good grades, stayed out of trouble, and was friendly with everyone. My last year, a girl who I got heavily involved with and I silently became the star couple of the dorm while it lasted.
I’ve gone beyond making my parents proud with my grades and my personal growth. I’ve never really been a problem child due to my innate nature and learning quickly from the mistakes of my siblings. And when I have been in some sort of boarding school environment since middle school, my parents are always happy to see me when I come home. Because I’ve never had to stay home for long periods of time (excluding some summers), I realize that I’ve never had to come to terms with any of the dysfunction in my family. When I do come home and see pieces of it, more obvious now that I have gotten older and can recognize it, I am at liberty to let it pass or deal with it as I please. I also realize that while I have an ability to fix some things, I cannot fix them all and I won’t try. I have come so far since my younger days that to deal with some older things would be to regress to my old self again. Today I realize that my family is not perfect, but I am happy with it. I enjoy the parts I like, avoid the parts I don’t like and know that with time, some things will get better.
Now I’m going through another transformation. I’m becoming more aware of the world around me and more comfortable in my ability to assess it for what it is and navigate it. My vision of my ultimate dream in life, to live on forever in human memory, is going from the abstract to reality and gets more tangible everyday. I am just starting on the precipice of getting where I want with women and getting where I want go further. Though I have much to learn and a huge journey in front of me, I look forward to it all. My transformation will not only be about women, though I will undoubtedly have large focus on them due to my libido. With a few new topics coming to the fore of my mind, ideas and opportunities that blow my mind, my development will be quite multifaceted.
With the state of my development and the development in the state of the world I both look forward to the future and dread it. I feel like I am in a race to realize my true potential and implement my designs before the world as I know it ceases to exist, and the rules change once more. The old Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times” rings truer than John Donne’s Bell, which tolls for us all.
