Day 106 – Survival Characters Part 1, Social Survivor.

How did this survival character come into my life, what was it that made me realize in that one moment that O Fuck I have to survive or I will be fucked, what type of survival was this?

I can see that type of survival that this character comes from, it is the social survivor, I have to be socially accepted otherwise I will be fucked by everyone if they do not accept me, I will have no friends, I will be bullied and I will be abused and be the weakest link so to say, and as I have observed within my live what happens to the weakest links is they become punching bags for those that are the strong. 

I am looking back at Memory, as I see and realize that this character is based on fear and the fear must come from somewhere, where I made a connection in my life, thus a memory/experience in the past, It could also come from unconscious/sub conscious influences such as the environment, Parents speaking and the way they moved and acted/behaved that had the imprints, but I am looking for a memory where I clearly made the decision within myself, I have to survive.

My Memory.

I am seven years old, I invited a couple of friends (male friends) to come to my house to play some cricket. 

One of the male friends brought his sister along as he could not leave her alone at home; she was a year younger than us.

One of my siblings who was two years older than me wanted to play with, so we told him he can join in, everyone went to the field and started playing cricket, I stayed behind with the sister to keep her company, we played with teddies and had laughs and fun, I kept on looking out the window at my friends playing cricket, I kept on thinking I should probably join them, but I actually hated cricket and preferred playing with females, they were much more better company. 

I always enjoyed being friends more with girls than with guys, I just never told anyone, so After the cricket all my friends came to the house and asked me why did I not play with them? I was the one that invited them? I then did not know how to reply, they all looked disappointed and like I did something wrong.

brother then afterwards told me that what I did wasn’t right, If I invite friends I must play with them or I will lose my friends.

I then felt a bit bad for what I did, although i did enjoy playing with the girl with teddies, and cricket wasn’t my thing, I felt in that moment that I was now going to be forced to play with the “guys| and what they like, just to have friends and not be an outcast. 

I also then had a fear of losing my friends because without them I will be along at school.

The next Monday at school I got a bit teased for what I did and that I played with the girl instead of the boys and the cricket, I felt less than the other guys and as if I now was identified as a female, as weak and stupid and ugly and gooey, you know how kids are at young ages towards the opposite sex. 

So I definitely did not want to be a girl, I wanted to be a boy, so now I felt like I had to start acting and behaving more like a boy. This happens though observing other boys and their actions and how they are doing it to be accepted. 

This process took me a long time, it did not happen straight ahead in the same year, I had to switch schools the next year for grade two and there was new kids/boys and girls and I had to go through the whole process again of not interacting with the girls and rather with the guys.

I remember in grade two (age eight) I would stand on the side of the fields observing the guys/boys playing rugby and cricket and how they were being guys.

They all went through the same process as me, just sooner as their fathers was really into creating them a certain way, my father was mostly working and he left us to decide things for ourselves in a way.

So as I would stand on the sides and watch them, I was tempted to just go and hang out with the girls, it is so much easier to hang out with girls, you do not have to pretend that much and you do not have to have this male ego the whole time of I am tough and I am cool by being stupid.

But I did not, I had to hang out there, I did not want to be seen as a girly man, I did not want to be seen as weak and a wussy, because that is what I saw happened to other kids my age and younger, and they did not have the physical potential to present themselves differently and thus was immediately forced into a certain category because of that, I was like them but I had a more stable equal physical design at that age to the other guys, so I could still pretend and put masks on to be ‘like” them to not get teased and shunned out and be abused. 

I remember that I was stuck between worlds, I fitted in perfectly with the girls and with the so called losers, I did not fit in with the cool kids – (aged between 7-9) but yet I saw that if I do not fit in with the cool kids now I will suffer like the so called “losers”. This was my fear, not to be the loser, but to be abused emotionally/physically/mentally as I saw it happen. 

I walked in the school ground for years between groups, between the girls the losers and the cool guys and the nerds, I started creating so many characters because I could not make up my mind on which main character I was going to play (choosing a group – the loser one or the cool one because I kew one thing, as soon as I choose only one, the other one that I did not choose will hate me, be against me and I did not want that, so many time I just wished everyone got along with each other because it is/was SOO fucking possible and nothing really stopped it but Mind ideas/beliefs/opinions/judgments which is never real.

Evereytime I was seen with a “loser” I was called names and the kids that was with me was teased and called names and they were broken down, I remember I had a kind of a safety card of not being called that many names or being abuse physical because I also hanged out with the cool kids.

My personality was that of a poor person, of a loser of someone that does not fit in, but my “looks” physically and my hair and eyes etc was that of a cool kid, so I could easily blend and mix and use both. Girls like me because I was already easy around them – because I mostly grew up with my mother being around.

SO I continued to have this secret life in school, for half the day I hang out secretly with the cool kids, with a whole character that I designed with them to be accepted by them and to be awesome and so forth, and then the other half of the day I was hanging out with the losers – also the poorer kids with shitty cloths and smells a bit bad and that just physically also looked different with a character that would fit in completely with them. 

 

There was also the in-between groups that I hanged out with, the nerds, the silent kids, the other cool group just different interest, and then there was all the different girl groups, and I had to make up so many characters for all of them and in the end I created the Gian personality that I became known for in my school(s) and how I got known by everyone. 

Why did I do this is the other question – I had one fear, fear of not being accepted, this led to all groups and all the people, I seeked to be accepted and approved by all groups and types of people.

A major fear of rejection and what it implied – the system rejecting you, as if life was rejecting me.

The social survivor to be continued...