Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Inferiority Complex

A little over three years ago (November 2008), I wrote up a random not-in-any-order list of 25 things I wanted to do before dying.

1. Bungee jump
2. Get a sport motorcycle
3. Finish my book trilogy
4. Publish my book trilogy
5. Be a consultant on the films that will be based on my book trilogy
6. Use the money from my books/movies to build a house with its own secret cave, skylit tower, and moat.
7. Kick someone's boyfriend in the face (I'm not picky; anyone will do)
8. Figure out how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop. (the world will soon know!)
9. Figure out what String Theory and Quantum Theory actually mean.
10. Chart theoretical 6th-dimensional continuum on a 2-dimensional graph.
11. Send a terminator back in time to assassinate the person who created "Survivor."
12. Dig Captain America out of the glaciers of the North Pole.
13. Learn Northern Shaolin Kung Fu.
14. Actually start watching Lost.
15. Quit watching Heroes.
16. Sky dive.
17. Catch someone trying to steal a lady's purse
18. Rescue a kitten from a tree
19. Invent a viscous, elastic molecular adhesive.
20. Put someone's stapler in Jello.
21. Jump off a railway on a three-story building. (and not die)
22. Tape someone's cellphone to the ceiling so that they run around the room trying to find where the ringing is coming from.
23. Get a Great Pyrenees dog. (those guys are awesome.)
24. Get invited to Skywalker Ranch.
25. namin meleth (wouldn't you like to know! :P)

A lot of that is still true, actually. Anyway, after I'd posted that on facebook, one of my blunter female friends commented: "Really Aaron, you have an inferiority complex." Knowing her, it wasn't sarcasm.
Thing is, she wasn't wrong.

I'd imagine she was looking at these specifically:

6. Use the money from my books/movies to build a house with its own secret cave, skylit tower, and moat.
7. Kick someone's boyfriend in the face (I'm not picky; anyone will do)


13. Learn Northern Shaolin Kung Fu.
17. Catch someone trying to steal a lady's purse


Lemme see if I can rewrite those with less clever covering.
6. I want to achieve more.
7. I wish someone wanted me to be her boyfriend instead of someone else as usual.
13. I wish I were more special in some way.
17. I want to do something worthy of being called heroic, mostly so I could feel better about myself.

Ever since I was twelve or so, part of me has always felt a little inferior or inadequate. In a few things, I was always the best. Writing. Knowing things about Star Trek. Playing Super Smash Bros.
...Okay, so I was good at writing.

Thing is, I always kind of felt like I was less important or less wanted than everyone else.
When I was fourteen, my best friend and I both liked the same girl. I think she (kind of) liked him, but she deliberately didn't reciprocate his affections because she didn't want me to feel bad. (and because she didn't want a boyfriend at that age, but that's another thing)

Later, when I was seventeen, a similar thing happened, only it ended up way worse. I came pretty close to being heartbroken. Suffice it to say that I definitely felt like the pathetic boy that no one wanted but everyone felt bad for.

When I took one-night dance lessons for my Senior Prom, my friends and I were in an odd-numbered group, and I think the entire crowd of students there was odd-numbered as well. I managed to quickly grab one of my female friends so I'd have a dance partner, but after a while it was time to let her dance with someone else, so I was left with... no one. Literally, no one. Out of maybe 300 kids, I ended up as the only person leaning against a wall and trying not to look like I wasn't totally dejected.

Once I got into college, most of my friends stopped talking to me for no reason other than they were just moving on with their lives and didn't have much interest in me anymore. And the more I tried to keep in touch, the more they got annoyed, until finally I became a blubbering mess of twisted emotion (rejection, mostly) and they ended up basically writing me off as an over-emotional crazy person.

And all the while, since my teen years, I've gradually gained more and more weight. Fortunately, because I have pretty broad shoulders, I don't look AS overweight as I actually am. But that doesn't make as much of a difference as you'd think.

I used to spend a ton of my time fantasizing about swordfighting, to the point where I'd imagine ridiculous battles where I'd epically defeat some random jerkface, and the girl he'd been dating would suddenly realize how great I was. My iPod was filled specifically with songs that had epic dramatic rock moments that I could mentally choreograph with those fantasies.

Things are better now. I don't listen to a lot of the same music that I used to because it just seems too dark and angry now. I generally prefer to listen to music that makes me happy. I can't really force my brain to fantasize about those epic battles the same way it used to; I'm a little too rooted in reality now and there's no girl I'm swooning over. I have friends now. Not a lot, per ce, but enough. Thing is, I still have little hints of that stupid inferior feeling. If I see this one girl on facebook, it's sometimes hard not to still feel bad because I know there's probably nothing I could do to make her ever think of me as something special. I kind of feel a bit ashamed of the fact that I was in such a bad state a couple years ago that I actually flunked out of two college semesters in a row, and most of my friends (even the ones younger than me) are already graduating while I'm still a couple years away.

So yeah. Inferiority complex. It's something I deal with.

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