Power, 1

　
There’s a pattern that seems to have started way back when I worked that gas station job at sixteen. The way I made friends.
In my mind the discipline told me to be adamant, to know I was equal. I didn’t count on how lonely the House had made me. So when I made two friends in God‘s Country: B__ and C___, I allowed them to take the lead, to do all the talking, I was careful to stay diminished, so as not to ruin anything.
Then I realized what I’d done, and I felt the only way to fix it was to prove to them I was just as good as them, just as powerful. So at some point when we argued I held my ground, didn’t care what they thought, and shut them out completely.
In that way, in order to fix what I’d done, I destroyed the friendships. I told myself it was worth it. If I had to choose between being their equal or their friend, I chose equality.
Later I would see that I had won their twisted game; that by leaving that job and moving on -- according to their own twisted rules -- I was actually surpassing them out of that dead end town.
The hatred B__ and C__ displayed toward me proved that they never had the capacity for true friendship. Maybe it also set the tone for how I would view future friendships. B___ and C___ thought I was too ugly to be as Real as them -- I was from the House -- and somewhere under there, despite my brutal discipline, I believed it.
I did the same with Mel___, two years later. Again, not realizing how starved I was for human connection, and only listening to my staunch discipline, I betrayed myself and created a friendship that was erroneously unbalanced.
I fixed it the same way, and told myself the same line, relying on my discipline. Mel___ -- a young supervisor who’d figured out my real age -- was considered very good looking, and there were certain very good looking women who were in his circle. Despite his kindness and his wanting to call me ‘son,‘ he had this habit of mentioning my A-sexuality derogatorily.
We fought shortly before I left for basic training. When I returned six months later I was muscular, confident. Those same women began to hang out with me, on there own, and joked with Mel___ less. He noticed. In that way I won, asserting my equality.
I did it to SFC T___. Underneath our friendship he believed that Black was better than White. I’d never been so blatantly confronted with such manipulative, good arguments of racism.
I balked, and, despite my lack of intellectual capacity, we fought; I dropped him. In the end, due to the improvements in my life, I won, because he had implied those improvements could never happen.
The same happened with W___, but that was my fault. I had always pretended to be _number two_ in the friendship, and felt the only way to fix my error was to drop it like a bad habit, which hurt his feelings, and things would never really be the same.
All these friendships, relationships, lasted about a year before I ended them, one way or another.
Lately it’s happening with K___. I listen to my thoughts and they’re all about: You sold yourself short. Look at the life you’re living. He doesn’t see the all stories you are, but just the one, the opposite to his so-cool one.
My thoughts are angry toward him, even though I think the anger is only there because it feels it needs to protect me. I don‘t know from what. Maybe from what he might think, from what I encouraged him to think, or something like that, something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Really, it didn’t begin with B__ and C___, it began with A__. The betrayal. It took a long time for me to see the truth of it, to see how she had never been platonic in her dealings with her little brother.
Once, we shared a birthday party.
_It doesn’t matter,_ A___ said, flatly, weakly, _Everyone’s playing with your present._
_I’ll play with you,_ I said, and I did.
I had forgotten about the Lincoln Logs. Didn’t really know what they were or what they could do till I saw all the other kids playing with them.
I stayed in the background, playing with A__ and her new barbies. In the end I would build houses for A__ and H___’s barbies and dolls. Construct whole sets for their story games. Maybe there was a time when we were innocent.
A___ was considered good looking, funny, impressive. She was the preferred child. Even the relatives preferred her, back when we had relatives. The strong one, the oldest, the leader. Meanwhile she went along with the incestuous atmosphere of the House. I was not considered any of those qualities, which I encouraged, so they wouldn‘t find me sexually attractive.
Still, when A__ began suddenly to be nice to me, I felt the contrast of the House’s opposite definitions of us. Everyone considered us close. She talked to me all the time. She hung out in my room. Sometimes, I sense her innocence. Though in later years her Dark motivation for this friendship -- unbeknownst to her or not -- became sickeningly obvious.
It is true that all my friendships since have mirrored this one.
At times I tried to relinquish myself from A__’s twisted friendship. But with my teeth, and silence, and over-all trauma, A__ was the only person I had in the world, and we both knew it. The only way to be free of her was to become her equal, even to surpass her.
That was the House, not Reality. In Reality I was always her equal, I was always just as strong as her. I had chosen the Abuse over the sexual alternative. She chose the opposite path. I only felt undeserving of her kindness because of how low the Abuse made me feel.
This room, and K___ and mine’s friendship in it, reminds me of those days, seems almost identical to them. There’s a great lie here somewhere.
It occurred to me that due to the constant Abuse of the House my perception back then may have been far from accurate. How I felt then far from my true feelings. Maybe same as it is now, I thought to myself.
I keep trying to read, but every few minutes my twenty five year old legs in black ARMY shorts turn into that twelve year old’s.
I can’t go back in time and explain these things to her. And even if I could it would’ve made little difference.
I never knew to see A___ as anything other than the evolutionarily strong one, and me as the evolutionarily weak one. In the House, it was simply true, obvious -- in their context. It seems strange that in order to see my self truly, I must see her differently, as if our identities are cosmically twined. The idea that we are connected makes me want to vomit.

To know the truth of my history .. The difference between last week and now is still startling.
I know the friendship between K__ and me might end. Maybe it has to. Maybe it was wrong from the start. The idea that the other person is of intrinsically more value, and the way I haplessly agree; not realizing at some deep, important level that I come from Abuse and such natural assumptions are detrimental to my existence.
Maybe that’s why I diminish myself, hold back, don’t show up all the way, live half heartedly; because of a lie so elaborate I still can’t wrap my brain around it.
It doesn’t work to put my power away for the sake of a new relationship, and then claim it later, for the sake of my self. Maybe the change is too drastic, and the relationship won’t survive.
Sometimes I feel angry at myself, for my apparent laziness.
I created the situation I can’t stand.
They say you start the way you’ll finish. The way you finish is decided by the way you started. But I was just a boy ..
__________