Self Sabotage 101

Most people go about their lives with a certain clarity which I have noticed that mine doesn't have. I tend to find myself facing one problem after another, many of them resulting from my own actions in some way or the other. So I often find myself wondering if there's something wrong with my nature. A certain school of psychology dictates that a person's nature can be directly attributed to their childhood and upbringing. Personally, I think that's just blame-assignment.

I mean, yeah, I had a difficult childhood, yeah, I faced abuse in various forms between the ages of 6 to 10, but can I blame that for the problems I am going through now? No, not directly at least. However, all those things did make me who I am today. And in a way, whatever new soup I find myself in today is due to the person I am. So I kinda went ahead and crossed my own point there. See what I did?

Self-sabotage.

Some of the biggest decisions of my life have been starkly contradictory to what I actually wanted. And when they started backfiring on me initially, I thought it was just that I had chosen the path less chosen. But now that I am older and have a slightly more mature perspective, I can't help but wonder what life would have looked like had I not sabotaged my life at every point.

Now, you have to understand that it is a bit of a conundrum. I am not happy because I made bad decisions that affected my life adversely. I made bad decisions because I thought I deserved bad things. I thought that because I have really low self-esteem. And that is because of the childhood I had. And I am not sure who's to be blamed for that.

One of my abusers once said that I was "a product of bad blood". I know that she just meant it as an insult, but I feel that she might have been correct. You see my life was doomed from the start. My childhood was awful because my parents didn't get along. They didn't get along because both of them had their own share of baggage, which can easily be traced back to their individual childhoods. Do you see why the bad blood thing makes sense?

I know I've kinda dived deep into the topic without giving you much of a context. So let me back up a bit and tell you how I have been sabotaging my own life (many a time without knowing that I am doing so) right from the age of 11. The year was 2001, my father had just died a year ago and after the last 5 horrendous years that had gone by, finally, things were normal. I was going to a new school.

I was developing this urge to attract attention, which when I succeeded in that, it felt good but in turn, increased my need for attention. Now all kids are attention seekers, there's nothing wrong with that. But when you are inherently a little awkward, your cries for attention tend to be received a little differently. So obviously, I quickly became the butt of a lot of jokes. I was the tall clown in 7C. That didn't do wonders to my self-esteem.

Somewhere in my mind, I longed for a person who would make me feel wanted. That's when I met Neha. Now the cyclic nature of things should be noted here as well. I could have befriended anyone else, but it had to be Neha. Because at that time, only she was screwed up enough to understand me and need me. I have always staged that relationship as the ultimate love story but to be really honest, it was just two kids hungry for attention finding shelter in each other.

But life changes. Things happen. After a few years, when things got a little rocky, I could have broken things off. Instead, I stayed, resenting her. That was a big mistake (my first self-sabotage moment, I think). Because the drama that ensued broke my self-worth down. Have you ever lost respect for yourself? It's a common thing for people with low self-esteem. The real issue is when you start seeing yourself as the villain in your own story.

When that happens, you start acting without a conscience. For the next few years, I went about my life unscrupulously, hurting people on the way, and gathering a shit load of guilt in the process which kept weighing me down. And that is why I can't remember the last time I was truly happy. In the last few years, I have found some incredibly strange ways to make myself miserable. Long distance relationships filled with distrust, and two-timing just to create a life crisis, to name a few.

I am a mess really. And happiness has become a distant dream. I can't help but feel like I have screwed my life up big time and the worst thing is that deep down, I feel like I deserve it. Add to all this the fact that my last living relatives, my uncle and my grandmother are nearly dead, making me feel more like an orphan than I ever did before, and you have a recipe for a man who has all the reasons to feel suicidal.