It’s taken me a long time to understand how to take responsibility for myself, to be a true man in the true sense. Looking back, I was – choice by choice – numbing, selling out and destroying myself in the process of ‘living’ from boy to ‘man’.
As a boy going into my teens it was all about the constant harassing of girls to get them to kiss us. A gang of twelve year olds would bully the females in our year group to give us attention. The pack, which I was too afraid to stand up to, tormented girls who were attractive and those who were not – the attractive girls were harassed sexually, those less attractive were humiliated, bullied and persecuted because of looks, clothes. These devastating behaviours were considered normal for us as boys: it was just what we did.
DRUNK, DRUGS & DISORDERLY
Mid–teens, it became about getting so drunk at a ‘day party’ while my parents were at work that I vomited all over their bed, whilst the other rooms in the house were filled with school-aged peers getting drunk and disorderly in the name of fun and cool ‘adult behaviour’. This was perfectly acceptable to those on the adult threshold. This is how we grew up. It was ‘normal’.
By my late teens I was subscribing to the lie that drugs were less harmful than alcohol, yet I was using both. I was once taken to hospital because the images that I was seeing, after abusing pints of lager and numerous bongs, were so fear-inducing I could not handle the space I was occupying. Known as ‘a big night’ that went off track, it was perfectly acceptable to my college peers and we all joked and laughed about it for days afterwards until someone else’s night went off track… letting me off the proverbial ‘piss-taking’ hook.
My twenties were all about music and ecstasy: a Class A drug that took you completely away from reality. It was perfectly acceptable to work all week and then go out on the weekend and ‘lose it’ in the name of music and hedonism… everything was accepted as long as the experience was ‘far out, man’.
SELF ANNIHILATING
By my thirties it had shifted again and with more money came ‘seemingly’ more power. Large amounts of cash earned ended up in fine wine, restaurants, the cocaine dealer’s hands and while the scenery had shifted, the activity was the same. In the end I felt trapped. Responsibility was calling and the question was how much longer was I going to avoid it? There was no joy in that struggle, no love, no care for me or for others, just a self-annihilating existence that grew bleaker and bleaker.
How is it possible that the natural, tender, beautiful boy I was born, turned into anything but that?
Screaming at the world through behaviour that was effectively saying: “I do not want any part in feeling this world”, devastated at being told by the world every step of the way: you cannot stay that joyful, loving, deeply caring boy – you have to choose/exist ‘this’ way.
RESPONSIBILITY & TRUE FREEDOM
I discovered there was another, gentler way to be a man, and that I could make lasting changes to my life simply by making different choices. I struggled with self-doubt and it took me a long time to overcome my resistance to making choices that would support (not destroy) me – I could feel this self-worth stuff coming up. Over time, I began taking true responsibility in what I chose for myself through:
- absolutely claiming that the relationship I had with me was loveless,
- making the choice to take care of myself in gentleness,
- knowing that I deserved more, that I deserved love.
Although there were many times when I just wanted someone else to do it for me – someone to pick me up and dust me off when the momentum of my self-harming choices would come crashing in and tear everything apart – I kept taking responsibility.
Now, the old days of living a life that seemed ‘free’ have been well and truly surpassed by a truly free life, where my only responsibility as a man is simply about living lovingly in my day with me.
My relationships feel warmer and more honest: no roles to play, no job to ‘wear’ and no lies to ‘live’ in.
From the choice to BE all of me, without perfection or critique, my way of life has become responsible and this is where freedom truly lies. Now, it is a joy to be me – the true man I am.
By Lee Green, Awesome Man, Perth
571 Comments
Thank you Lee, adding to what you have shared is when we understand responsibility it comes with appreciation, and thus that the appreciativeness is we are more than this vessel and can reconnect to our Souls. Our Soul would have naught to do with anything that would distract us from being in that innate essence we can all equally connect to.
Lee I feel that once we can be honest enough with ourselves and claim that we actually do not love ourselves and have no idea how to be loving with ourselves or others as it’s such an alien concept to us. Then we can start to heal and deal with the self worth issues and all the other issues we bash ourselves up with that our minds feed us as a constant backdrop of negativity. These all come up to be looked at and dealt with and this can be done when we learn how to be gentle with ourselves which builds the foundations to loving ourselves. It is an amazing journey to take and one I highly recommend to anyone who feels there must be more to life than trying to obliterate it.
“My relationships feel warmer and more honest: no roles to play, no job to ‘wear’ and no lies to ‘live’ in” Going through a leadership contest at present here in the UK for the position of Prime minister I would love politicians to want and have relationships that were honest and they had no lies to ‘live’ in”.
The choice to live and be who we truly are is always calling.
We have all seemingly sold out as you say Lee by numbing, selling out and destroying ourselves in the process of ‘living’ from boy to man or from girl to woman the innocence we are born with is crushed. We grow up thinking we are living a ‘free’ life when energetically we are bound and gagged by a force that we cannot see that has us believe that the ‘Free’ life is all there is when actually it is anything but free and we have totally sold out to this unseen energy.
Mary I agree that the energy that we have sold out to is indeed unseen but it is felt, it is felt by us all and although we can say that we can’t feel it, the truth is we can because feeling energy is something that we’re all doing all of the time. So there are choices being made all of the time, it’s just that it doesn’t suit us to admit it, it’s suits us much better to say that we are unaware. And so on we go choosing to align to an energetic source that will not and can not deliver us to truth. And this is fine, it just means that things will continue to intensify , which they will and it’s going to get like a pressure cooker down here on Earth for us all. But we need that, we need things to intensify before we’re prepared to take a look (more than just a peek) at our part in what’s going on.
Alexis I guess what I’m trying to say that if something is frozen there is no way it can feel. As the thaw starts to happen then feeling comes back. That’s what is has felt like from my personal experience. The more I connect to my body the more I can feel. But when I first started going to the workshops and presentations of Universal Medicine I could not feel anything as I was so removed from my body. This made sense to me because years ago the psychiatrist I saw for years told me that it is possible for someone to leave their body if they experience severe trauma when young. I was so used to being out of my body (Numb), I had no idea that was how I was living my life. When the psychiatrist told me this they were not able to support me to re connect it wasn’t until I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine that I actually found the support to come back to my body.
When we don’t deal with the root cause as to why we drink and take drugs in the first place we will always look to other vices to hide our hurts.
Absolutely, food became a replacement in many lives and can dull us as much as drugs. And do not forget sugar as it could be placed on the drug list, as it is extremely addictive.
Annoymous, you have hit the nail on the head as they say. I know when I started drinking alcohol it was because I wanted to fit in to a social crowd of work colleagues and to be liked by them. I thought if they liked me, I might be able to like myself. I never thought to ask myself the question why don’t I like myself, it was a forgone conclusion. It has taken years to peel back the reasons for not liking myself, but the journey has been so worth it.
I did so much SELF ANNIHILATING when I was younger, and I can see the same traits in far too many teenagers around me.
This trend and behaviour has to stop it is literally killing us.
Le I agree with you in some ways it is quite despairing to see the teenagers behaving in much the same way as the older generation, where we have normalized drugs and alcohol as a recreational enhancement. We also have all this modern technology at our finger tips, but it means nothing if we cannot support the younger generation to grow up with the self confidence to not want to use drugs or alcohol to dull themselves because they can feel that so much is out of balance with our society.
When we become aware that we deserve more, more love in our life we make a call for it to happen; how it then unfolds is taken one step at a time.
It is very sad and devastating hearing about such loveless and abusive behaviours that occurred for you Lee, and still do today in the name of being identified as part of a gang/group, or having a “fun” night out with the boys, at the expensive of others. How could this possibly be seen as normal and acceptable behaviour?
This article is tragic and sad for what it shows in your life, and even more so for the fact that so many young men today are still growing up in this kind of environment with no one there role-modelling that there is a different way, a way of choice and freedom from the long lasting damaging affects of drug and alcohol abuse.
A slippery slope and where does it end, is what I see with teenage alcohol and drug taking. As you said Lee, it’s all so ‘normal’ everyone is doing it and if you’re not then you have to put up with the backlash of stepping away from the norm. The peer pressure can be very obvious or completely subtle and teens think they are calling the shots, it’s something that they want to do. But, by taking responsibility we see our hand in it all and what we are really getting out of it. Thanks for your absolute honesty and openness. So gorgeous to read of your return.
It is sad to see how through our disconnection to who we naturally are within, our behaviours become more and more wayward, abusive and self-destructive as we enter a vicious cycle which we seek to sustain as it offers us a false sense of identification and a relief from the tension of the truth of the unsettlement we continually feel. We become trapped in living at the mercy of the world around us and for identification and relief, all the while feeling lost. A dismal representation of what ‘normal’ is. You share so beautifully how all this can be turned around and we can live the power of who we are, simply by connecting back to the inner qualities within us, honouring the love we are and being our true selves.
I agree with you Carola, we are constantly in cycles and one of the worst ones in my personal opinion is the vicious cycle we can get into and just go round and round in. But now there is a way to get out of that particular cycle as I have discovered for myself with the support of Universal Medicine.
You describe a veritable prison, one of drugs, alcohol and seduction – how can we ever think that this is normal?
Yes, why is this so common, what are we doing wrong as a society, ‘How is it possible that the natural, tender, beautiful boy I was born, turned into anything but that?’
What is so revealing in these words – “I was – choice by choice ¬– numbing, selling out and destroying myself” – is that whatever the state of our lives, it has been created by our choice, nobody else’s. From this realisation comes that fact we are not the victim of some random event, or because of someone else, it is simply the consequence of the choices we have made; the quality of our lives is undeniably our responsibility
Many people fall for the trappings of so called freedom when we are adolescent and we corrupt this relent-less pursuit of free-dom-ship but we are being dom-inated by an energy that keeps us from reconnecting to our essences. Understanding as one does from that essence. Bring a different quality of energy and Love becomes ones claiming and power-full this is.
And indeed nothing more, as simple as that.
Living life responsible offers us freedom, connection and joy. It also means setting standards that you don’t drop below, because if you do it effects every aspect of your life.
Living life responsibly offers us freedom, connection and joy. It also means setting standards that you don’t drop below, because if you do it effects every aspect of your life.
‘knowing that I deserved more, that I deserved love.’
This is so beautiful! We all deserve true love and no less!
Lee it’s an amazing return you have made to yourself after being in a cycle that took you so far from your natural self. There are currently rumblings in society that all is not well with men, the term toxic masculinity has become popular, and from your story and as a general indication of how men are socialised this term is valid for good reason. We need to stop imposing on each gender and moulding people and instead let the natural essence we are born as be nurtured in its expression throughout life.
A joy to be you. What made us walk away from that? A loveless creation.
We create our own struggle, our own nightmares trying to be something that we are not and to let go of this self-made dilemma we need simply to come back to being our self.
Your raw and honest account of growing up as a young boy to a man is not a one-off story as there are so many men who followed the same disregarding path. In the past I may have been horrified to read it but today I totally understand what happens to young men to propel them into a life of total disregard for themselves and others. And that is simply because as young boys that were told to harden up to be in a world that was not going to support them to retain their tenderness and their sensitivity. What a huge punishment that was for these precious beings, no wonder the frustration of not being who they truly are explodes out of them in all these forms of un-loving behaviours.
We as a society have just about everything upside down, were our standards of what is ‘normal’ is the absolute antithesis of what is truly natural for us, and what is worse is that we champion this and encourage our children to walk this unnatural way so as to not accept the responsibility of what we have left behind and as such avoiding the fact that this is what we live in hurt of. Our behaviours in general reflect that which are abusive, to ourselves and to others, and the only way this can change is to live in connection to love, to that which we naturally are within, and that which is what we all seek to freely live.
The fact that we have arrived at a place in the time where the scenarios you have shared are considered to be normal, is quite shocking and very sad at the same time. To me, the sort of behaviour you describe is simply one long cry for help from young men, and often young women, who do not know who they are, have never been supported to honour themselves and who have very little sense of choice and the subsequent consequences. But as you have discovered there is another way to live, one that is based on love for self and others and self-responsibility.
I was talking with some colleagues the other day and we were discussing how life had changed for us and what we value now was quite different to 10 years earlier. Previously, our lives reflected a recklessness and irresponsibility but now there was a greater settlement and responsibility.
So much of this is through society saying it is normal to act reckless and irresponsible at certain ages and stages of our lives. If we had it that teens and twenties were no different behaviour wise as being of an older age then we wouldn’t need to recover or ‘come back to ourselves’ or find our way.
Many of the behaviours that society deems ‘normal’ are anything but. We humans are a strange species, hell bent on causing damage to our own bodies if it allows us to escape a reality that we ourselves have created. Your experience shows that we can live a life that is true if we choose.
It’s so important for us as Men to reflect and appreciate how far we have come, as you do here Lee. With this foundation of knowing how God has touched our life how can we go back to a mundane view of ourselves and of life? We are multi-dimensional beings of Love first, before any job, title, role or gender.
We all have so many ways to avoid our own love, drugs are just one of many things we use to dull our light so not to shine bright in a world where most others have also dulled theirs.