The world is not so black and white.
I think this is one of the most important things you can learn in life.
We as humans love putting people into little boxes,
and I know it's cliché,
but it's true.
It's much easier to "understand people"
if we refuse to acknowledge that they can be multifaceted
and instead define them by a few basic interactions
so that all future interactions are looked upon
as if with an overlaid Instagram filter.
It's much easier to "understand" someone if we refuse
to acknowledge that they can be multifaceted
and instead, define them by a few interactions
so that all future interactions are looked upon
as if with an overlaid Instagram filter.
Darkening the darks, or increasing the lights,
blowing up the contrast in contrast to the reality.
The easiest example of this is good and bad.
See, I do this all the time.
You think back to four weeks ago and a video I made about Jennifer,
and you might think she's the most vile person alive
as depicted by the numerous stories I told you of.
But that'd be discounting her so much as a person.
What of the positive memories?
The playing video games, the getting scared together,
the cooked dinners, the close moments.
All of these are now just an uncomfortable reality
that I refuse to accept as real because they don't align with this evil person that I pinned her to be.
They don't fit in this box of bad that I've put her in.
But these bad memories are most recent and most strong
and it makes it so difficult to view her outside of this box, as the complex individual that she is.
And this is the same thing that happened with my dad.
They say you should always love your family, 'cause in the end they're all you've got.
And i kind of get that, but I kind of don't.
To put it simply, I've never had the ideal family life
that so many of my friends have and take for granted.
I've never quite had that loving father, mother, brother relationship.
I think most of my nurturing made me feel alone and very much into myself,
the fact that I couldn't really, fully trust anyone.
But that's not to say I've got bad parents or a bad family,
it's just that, families are made of humans and humans are flawed.
Something I owe my dad: my life.
I mean, without my dad i wouldn't be born, so thanks pop!
But, then what?
The other day my mom found a drawing I'd made, when I was in kindergarten, of our family.
There was me, my two brothers, my mom, all smiling.
And then there was my dad, angry eyebrows and a frown.
And this was when I was six,
this was the impression I had of my dad.
This box I put him in developed at a very young age.
I remember, my dad used to drive this diesel truck that was so loud
we used to say you could hear it from half a mile away.
Which was good, because by the time you heard it
that meant we really had to rush around the house
to make sure everything was in order so we didn't get yelled at.
But in the end, it didn't really matter,
by the time he came in the door, he'd always find something to be angry about.
I think of times like these, and times during the divorce,
when yelling and screaming became the norm of communication.
When weekends at my dad's were simply a powerplay to hurt my mom.
When other women would be over, for either selfish reasons or extra motivation to egg on my brother and I
to come home from our court-enforced weekend at my father's
to tell my mother how uncomfortable our time had been.
Most kids age thirteen would just cry and blame themselves,
thinking they were the reason for the divorce. And they wouldn't want their parents to get divorced
because for most kids, I mean, family is the one consistency they have.
But as I recall, at that very age, I told my mom she needed to leave my dad
because it was obvious he wasn't making her happy.
He would go from screaming to crying an apology,
to yelling and bellowing at my mother, to breaking down in sorrow.
He did not seem to realise that no matter his tantrum my mom had made up her mind.
And that was probably one of the roughest months of my life,
living in the same household of two people that clearly do not want to be together.
And you know, life was a little bit rough after that.
The small apartment down the road, my mom working two jobs,
myself complaining that I had to leave my hometown and all my friends
to move to a literal middle of nowhere spot on the map where the nearest mall was a half hour drive away.
But I got through, and I continued to see my dad every two weeks but it was always the same.
You know, I think I learned a lot from my dad about how not to be.
You see, even when my parents were together and I spent time with my dad,
it was always through non-action.
When he took me on a camping trip with the scouts he just fished the whole time.
I didn't get to do any of the activities that the scouts had prepared for us, just fished.
Whenever he used to take me to work I would just sit next to him in the truck
and play Gameboy or read Harry Potter,
and sometimes he'd quip something or other but for the most part it was silence.
And as sad as this sounds, those are some of my happiest memories with him,
are actually just being in a truck and him not even talking to me, and just allowing me to do
what I want to do.
Towards the end I still went to my fathers every other weekend where all I'd do is sit on his computer playing
Civilization, or playing Halo with my brother while he did nothing.
Sometimes he wasn't even there, he never even tried to join in, in fact the memories I have of him
playing games with me are quite bad.
I remember once when all I wanted to do was play Super Mario World, but my dad was like "No you can't
play that until you beat me at Tetris" which was his way of saying 'You are not going to be playing that game.'
He wanted me to get better at his favourite game Tetris 2,
but what he didn't realise was that I was already really good at Tetris 2 and I had been practicing
when he was not home, and so I beat him at a game so he said "You have to beat me 2 out of 3".
It went on like that until I literally beat him at 7 games in a row, to which he threw the controller,
breaking it in a rage on the ground, and when I turned to him and said "Can I play Super Mario World now"
he screamed "No" at me. No "I'm proud of you son.", "Congrats son, you're better than me, you did well"
like "Go play your game", nothing.
Just anger. So many of these memories I have that have just been locked away in a box in my brain
that I've never told anyone,
and when I turned eighteen and I didn't have to see my dad anymore, I just stopped.
I had University, I had a job, I moved to England, I had to make videos, I was busy.
He'd try and reach out to me and add me on Facebook but I would just block him,
his Facebook was full of crazed slander against my mom and it was embarrassing.
Over time he tried adding me with six different accounts, and I blocked every single one.
I was protecting myself, I didn't want this person in my life anymore, I didn't need them,
I had now surrounded myself with new friends and family who loved me for who I was and never made
me feel uncomfortable.
But none of that matters anymore, on October 20th 2016 my father passed away.
When I heard the news I had just stepped out of a sauna of my hostel in Stockholm, Sweden and I saw I had a
missed call from my mom, and the only emotion I could feel at that time was weirdness,
it just felt so weird, like I didn't feel sad or upset or angry, I literally just said "Oh, that's really weird."
You see, for eight years of my life my father had basically been dead to me, so when he actually
died, there was not much of a difference. Out of all my skills, something I'm really good at is
is controlling what goes on in my brain, I can avoid thinking about anything with enough focus
so I didn't really think about it until just now, in fact I've been using his death as a sort of dark humour
type thing, someone says something mean to me I'd be like "Hey man, you can't say that, my dad just died"
which is such like an "oh my god" type of reaction, people go "Are you serious?" so I'm like "Yeah"
'Cause I don't know, humour has just always been my number one coping mechanism.
The weirdest thing about everything is that two days before, October 18th, I was having dinner
with Dodie's mom and we were talking about family and stuff, and I literally said "If my dad were to die
tomorrow I wouldn't feel a thing."
Two days later, I didn't really. That's how much I'd cut him out of my life, and then two days later
it happened and it wasn't until two weeks after that until I actually felt anything, when I just happened
to look at his Facebook and unblock him and see photos of him from the last eight years, that, some of them
I didn't even recognize, I don't think I'd be able to recognize my own dad and some of them,
he had the same smiling face that I remember.
You know, from the good memories that I've had.
But, there was so many that I just, that I missed out on, because I just didn't have him in my life for so long.
So it wasn't until I saw these pictures, saw my dad the way I'd never seen him, that I finally began to feel
something and cry, and I feel like this video and scripting this and figuring out what I want to say
is probably the most therapeutic thing that I could be doing for this situation.
No matter any of his flaws, no matter what I disagreed with him with, he was my dad and I was his son,
I cut him out and now he's gone.
There were positive memories, happy times that I had with my dad.
But I chose not to remember them, because they didn't fit into the little box I'd made for my dad.
But nowadays, he's in a different type of box
and I don't think he's leaving that one anytime soon.
Don't be me. Please.