Who I Am

I don't think I've ever been in the social majority.  Thinking back to elementary school, my friends were few and far between, but they were like me in a way.  Different, not exactly a cut above the rest, but we excelled where others failed.  In logical thinking, memorization, and most things that a child would have called boring.

I picked up an interest in gaming that would soon become the biggest factor of my life.  It started with me playing a game on the computer with my dad and some of his friends from work.  After a few months they all agreed that i was the best player there, and i was pretty shocked to be receiving this kind of unanimous praise, especially from my dad.  I got a coupe systems in the following years, and an Xbox 360 after that.  It was there i discovered that there were others like me; gamers.  For about two years i played with friends, acquaintances, and random people until a group of us dropped our Live subscriptions when we heard about the new system making the Xbox 360 obsolete.  Rather than buying an Xbox One, we turned to our computers, and we’ve been on them ever since.

I had my ‘rebellious stage’ during middle school, which usually consisted of me not turning in schoolwork.  My dad would take away whatever system i had at the time and leave it at that, but he never understood what that did to me.  Video games were a part of who i was, and taking them away nullified what remained of my motivation.  I went through the motions, pretended to care about the grades that would absolutely mean something in high school (they didn’t, and still don’t) until I could play again.  Since then, i think my family has accepted me as a gamer.  Though the constant teasing hasn’t gone away completely, it’s progress nonetheless.

When my brother Chase moved back, he was with his girlfriend, Bridget.  They had an apartment in town that they, Bridget’s son, Adam, and their little baby, Chloe, would live in.  It was about then I started to discover just how dumb people can be.  I couldn’t stand Bridget the first few times i heard her, and the arguments she and Chase would get into on a daily basis were absolutely ludicrous.  They’d go on for hours about when to take Chloe off her pacifier, Chase claiming she was too old for it, while Bridget insisted she knew what she was doing, being an ‘experienced mother’.  It would continue until they took turns calling my mother to decide who was right, and it would only get worse from there if we didn’t choose a clear winner.  With Chase’s lack of restraint and Bridget’s undeserved sense of authority, it eventually led to us taking everyone but Chase into our home for a couple of months, to give the kids a break from the childish squabbles their parents could never end amicably.

This ordeal isn’t what hit me hardest, however.  My dad had always seemed to be this omniscient being with an answer for anything, but I learned he was far from my child views of him.  He gave good advice, and always seems to have an air of authority around him, but he was just as maladjusted as my brother, if only a little better at concealing it.  Through several instances, I’ve seen that he’s opinionated to the point of refusing to accept criticism or compromise, and you’d be lucky to hear a counter-argument at all from him; sometimes he’d just shut down and insist he was right.  A great example would be just a week ago, when we got our new refrigerator.  He wouldn't budge from his stance that we didn’t need a new one, even though we were constantly running out of space in the fridge that was older than i was.  My mom got a used newer model for about a third the price it usually was, and texted my dad what she was planning to do.  His response was That doesn’t surprise me.  You’ve always valued material possessions over our marriage.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or punch something.  The pillar of knowledge I once looked up to had been revealed as an arrogant opinionated zealot, and it helped me realize not to give anyone else the final say-so on my life choices.