Today's confession; I hate being told what to do. This is one of the main reasons I got rid of my T.V. My disdain for orderly commands probably also explains why I refuse to prescribe to any organized religion as well. We are suppose to be a free people. Free to feel, think, and express our natural selves, but we chose not to. We instead allow others, our families, friends, and co-workers to help us decide what is best for us. Hell, we have gone so far as to allow marketers to tell us what is right for us and how it will make us feel. Said marketers have even crossed the line from telling us how a product will make us feel to convincing us this is how we are SUPPOSED to feel. Pure insanity. Yet, we play along. At least in the instance of marketing I can understand the monetary driving force behind their unwillingness to allow us to simply live our own lives. I can not say I share same empathy for family members and friends who choose to use the same devilish tactics as marketers when asserting their belief systems and ideas upon us.

Rationally, it only makes sense that those closest to us have the largest effect, positive/negative, on us. I think it is important that we understand the power we have to effect others. I grew up under roofs where this power was not understood.Therefore it was grossly misused. I grew up believing that the simple order you chose to do something dictated how the world would perceive you. 

Fag-got – Noun. /fa-get/

Usually disparaging

: a male homosexual

Left sock. Right sock. Underwear. Pants. Getting dressed had a specific order. I never really thought about it. I just did it. The order felt right, correct to me. 

“Only faggots put their socks on before their pants” Johnny reminded me from the top bunk. “Did you hear me, faggot?”

I heard him.

I heard him every time he suggested my preferred dressing method made me a faggot. I understood a challenging retort would end in my physical dismantling. SO I just finished getting dressed and hurried out of the room. I wasn't even sure what a 'faggot' was. I just knew it wasn't a good thing and I never wanted to be one. 

Due to one ridiculous insult, I spent the majority of my life believing that being a 'faggot' was a bad thing, wrong. I allowed a comment, an evil suggestion, to dissuade me from getting dressed in a particular manner because it might prevent me from being something I didn't even understand. At such an early age I had my mind made up that 'faggots' were wrong, which meant 'non-faggots' must be right. Even a 7yr old brain can piece that puzzle together without too much thought or explanation. 

Who knows, maybe had there never been a negative reinforcement associated with this word 'faggot', maybe I would have grown up to be a 'faggot'. The point is, I was robbed of that freedom. My freedom to choose if I wanted to be a 'faggot' or not was taken from me (I will discuss this idea more in future blogs, the blame in this instance does not solely lie on my older brothers shoulders. He was not the lone freedom thief of my youth). No one would ever rationally chose to be something that they believed to be wrong. Humans are not wired that way. We long for acceptance. 

The reality is you can substitute just about any word in the place of 'faggot' and the same would hold true. This was just my experience. My older brother probably could of used any word and I would have clung to as truth because he was my hero. Like it or not, we are all heroes and heroines to someone. For the most part I don't think we really associate heroes/heroines as people who tell us what to do or how to live. I'd argue that the opposite is true. That our role models are walking talking beacons of correctness. 

My older brother never told me what to do, just what not to do based off his understandings of right and wrong. He obviously can not be credited with creating the term 'faggot', so it becomes obvious that he too was misguided on how to feel about 'faggots'. This onion obviously has generations and generations of layers to peel if I am to get to the root cause, but I'd much rather chop this onion up and move on. 

I make it a point to remind myself daily that I am someone's hero.We all are. There is someone out there who is waiting for me to provide them with guidance; help them understand what to do, how to think, and how to feel about the world around them. Assist them as they attempt to decipher what is 'cool' and what is not, what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. I always do my best to choose my words wisely. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I succeed. Conveying to another my understanding of how I believe one should choose to live their life may only take you a few seconds, but the reality is my words may last a lifetime.

In case you are wondering, yes, I still put my socks on first.