Own Your Failures. Or, How I Learned To Stop Giving A F*ck After Giving Too Many F*cks To Give.

[MCheetah]

https:// imgur.com/a/sZP5m

This is a MyTake I don't expect anyone to read or care if they do. It's pretty much just for me. Before typing, I'm sure it will be a jumbled mess.

I've recently starting reading a new book. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. In it, they talk about owning your failures and everything that makes you unhappy with yourself and that you despise to your core.

My entire adult life, I've despised every single aspect of myself. Like, to the CORE. And only recently have I come to learn that all of these feelings of inadequacy and failure stem solely from the messed-up society we live in and how awful they make most of us feel on a daily basis. I developed something called "The Island Mentality" where I say the best life I should be living is one as if I was stranded on a desert island and only had to worry about my survival. Sometimes I add a dog in there with me. And while I can't walk around naked all day long in real life, it's made me realize that all of our feelings of fears and insecurities are fabricated from the society we live in, no matter how objectively factual they may be in their existence or not. What I mean is, how we FEEL about things that make up who we are, is all a product put into our head by other people. Even if the things we hate about ourselves and feel deathly insecure about, are true.

I'm 34 and only discovered this simple fact of life merely three years ago, give or take. Although, I've been severely depressed since age 18. I'm much "less depressed" now, since I don't think it ever goes away, but I still have my dark days. This post is kind of about that, as well as letting go of that depression that I've held onto for so long.

For myself... I've always only ever wanted three things when I was young: 1) A happy loving attractive wife, 2) to feel powerful and physically strong about who I am and what I can do, and 3) respect and influence in society, typically from an important job that's helping to make the world a better place. All three of those things I will NEVER achieve in life.

When I first realized that, it was devastating. My life literally had no purpose after that. Hell, it kinda still doesn't. Lemme explain. Basically, the old me; the young me... Wanted all those things. And when he discovered he could never achieve those and that it was too late in his life to have those things he wanted, he died. That's legit how I see it. The old me died at age 21 or so. And this "new" me is like the carapace leftover from that death. The shell of a bug that fell off the original and is walking around as if it's the real thing. The original me is dead. And everything from there on out has been what I refer to as the "afterlife." Once my dreams died, the old me died with it. Hence, the depression for so long.

My biggest insecurity in life came from the fact I had something called Precocious Puberty when younger, thus much shorter than I should be. It means, you start puberty younger than normal, but that it gets severely stunted. I legit didn't even know it had a name until a few years ago, but that's what happened to me. I think I started it around age eight or so. By age ten, I was the same manlet-as-fuck, short, shitty, F-grade, fuck-off height that I am now. Meaning, I quite literally never grew up. I've been the same short-ass height for 24 years now. That doesn't happen to other people. I didn't know it even had a name and medical terminology until like four or five years ago.

There's a lot I could go into about this, but basically, I was an athlete in school and tall for my age, and was considered 'cool' for it. My entire identity evolved around being the biggest, strongest, toughest bad-ass around. I had three "sidekick" friends; Dave, James, and Courtney. David was an obese Indian American kid. James was a pseudo-intellectual wise-ass Asian who kinda thought he was smarter than everyone but also skinnier and scrawnier than everyone. And Courtney came from a trailer park and everyone made fun of her for essentially being "white trash." In school, I was basically a king and my three best friends were seen as my "lackeys." *I* never saw them that way, but I knew that's how other people saw them. As I said, my whole identity basically evolved from this, especially since I came from a deeply abusive home myself, and didn't exactly ever have a loving mother or any kind of real "family" or anything. So it's not like I was getting love from home. EVERY positive emotion I had came from essentially being the school bad-ass and Mr. Popular. And as I said, I was this 'tall' ever since I was ten.

And then... Everything froze. Precocious Puberty failed to help me grow and evolve. In the 4th grade, this wasn't an issue. But by high school, when your three "sidekicks" all start mentally and literally outgrowing you, this became a problem. David ended up being 6'4"/193 cm and took weight loss and exercise seriously. By adulthood, he was basically an Indian Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. James was merely only 6'1"/186 cm, but started to develop confidence and stopped being a bitter asshole to others. And Courtney became a 6'0"/183 cm tall successful adult film star. And here I was, still short as shit, still no better than I was eight years prior, and basically "un-evolved." This is what is called "a fall from grace." And I did NOT take it well.

James, Courtney, Me, David

In the 9th grade, I was still the cool popular athlete. By 12th grade, I was voted Most Likely To Be The School Shooter. I developed depression and developed it HARD. Literally, my entire identity had been taken away from me, because my body failed to grow. My three "sidekicks" had evolved beyond me. And i had no home life to gain support from. My entire sense of worth and being came from being big, tall, strong, athletic, and the smartest student in school. Once it had dawned on me that I was almost 18, the final age men grow, and would NEVER get the growth spurt I had already been waiting on for a few years now, I... Did not take it seriously. To say I treated Courtney, Dave, and James like a piece of shit in what I did, would be an understatement. I felt intense feelings of sorrow, pain, anger, and betrayal. The Trio went from being "weak little losers" to being superior and more confident than me. To me, if you weren't big, strong, cool, popular, tough, athletic, smart, etc, you literally didn't matter. You were objectively WORTHLESS. And the fact that they not only were gaining new friends, new popularity, and a newfound sense of confidence, while I was losing ALL of that for still essentially being a kid, made me feel like it was all their fault.

On the night they went to prom, I confronted them. I didn't go, but I knew they were going. I stayed at home and literally cried. Then I got up and went there. My mission was to beat the fucking shit out of Dave and James - and possibly Courtney, too - so badly, they'd never forget that night their entire lives. Like, I was out for blood! When I got there, I confronted them about their betrayal and "leaving me behind."

Now, this part of the story is hard to explain. And while I am certainly not the most reliable narrator, from what I can gather, here is how they saw things:

They saw me being less and less happy each year. In the 8th grade, Courtney had got hit by puberty like a rocket and was already 5'9"/175 cm and had DD cup breasts. She was depressed about it because it happened over a summer, basically. She once confessed feelings of loving me and wanted to take my virginity. But I turned her down. Courtney was like the sister I never had, and you don't sleep with your sister. She took the news pretty hard. James had always had a secret crush on Courtney. This caused a rift between our friendship. By high school, Courtney and James had already been seeking other friends, when for the longest time, the four of us were all we really had. David stuck by me and was "loyal," but as I continued to not grow, he started becoming more and more intimidated by me. All three of them were. I can't really fault them for that. My entire life's purpose was depending on this one thing that still never happened: growing up. By the 11th grade, shortly after the SAT's, I stopped caring about schoolwork and got my first C on a report card. By senior year in high school, I was depressed, moody, and highly irritable. I also showed obvious signs of bitterness and envy towards The Trio's "growing up" while I never grew myself. Courtney stopped at six feet tall, as I said, and the fact that she once loved me, and was now dating James, really felt like a double, if not triple, betrayal. While I was feeling angry and depressed for losing my identity, everyone else on the outside started to fear and avoid me. And from their account, they never judged me on my height, or lack of it. I was still, in their eyes, extremely strong, a skilled fighter, and could easily hurt someone.

In other words, they didn't avoid me because they felt like I was pathetic, inferior, or no longer worth their time. They avoided me because they were legit scared of me. And it didn't help that I was about to hospitalize Dave and James on prom night. If Courtney hadn't gotten on her knees in front of the two, begging me to hit her first if I was going to do it, I don't know what I might've done. I wasn't above hitting a woman, but I wouldn't ever do such a thing to Courtney, the "less callous" of the three. From what I can recall, the three of them never saw me as "inferior" and never stopped trying to be my friend, even though I was 100% certain they were done being around "a child" and a small little weak-ass bitch boy who was now smaller than they were. From what I understand, my height, size, physical dominance, etc, was a non-factor, and they even stated to be terrified of me and what I could do, which to me, made no sense, because who would fear a mouse of a man?

All of these thoughts were in hindsight, years after the fact, but at the time, I didn't accept their apologies, and didn't forgive them, or "reestablish the friendship" like they wanted. It took years after the fact before I realized I was the asshole of the story, even if I had good reason to be. Even though I was never friends with Courtney, James, and Dave after that time, my feelings of inferiority didn't end there. The Trio were among the tallest in school, even if I didn't think they were that tall, but when I got to college, things felt worse.

She's only 180 cm.

On a university campus, it wasn't uncommon to see women nearly my height and taller, and most men taller than me. Anytime I saw ANYONE shorter than me, it not only made me feel worthless about my own situation, but made me despise them, as well. I wasn't so violent by then, but I still hated their guts, as I projected my own inner hatred out towards them. To be fair, I managed to often hide it well. Being in my early twenties, I still sought to date, find ONE woman accepting of me and my situation, and to love me as I am, a short little bitch-boy who never grew. I had done online dating, at the time, since the typical out-of-state college women on campus where not only typically 5'9"/175 or so, but were also already dating someone, and wouldn't be interested in me, anyway. In hindsight, online dating was a huge mistake.

Sites like Match.com and Plenty of Fish (POF) only exacerbated an already difficult situation and made it way worse. Now, I had women on the daily rejecting me because I was too short; either telling directly in a message, or indirectly by leaving me on "Seen Unreplied." And what's worse, not only was I being rejected for being too short for 99.999% of the women I spoke to online, but was getting told other things too, like "You're too dark for me," I don't date your race, I don't date outside my race," etc. And "You're ugly" being the second-most common reason why I got rejections from women. And I was using these sites daily.

Doing simple math, I sent out messages to about 34 women on average, every single day, and talked to women regardless of location (since the chances of me finding a girlfriend within 10 miles was very low). This means I wrote to about 1,000 women a month. Out of those 1,000 women, I would get only one of them willing to actually respond back with anything other than a No. This means I literally had a 1 in a thousand chance of meeting someone, on any given month. Which, in my early twenties, meant better than the 0% chance I had assumed I already had.

Back then, it wouldn't be an unfair assumption to think of me as a simp. Or a cuck. Or any other wimpy male you want to call me. And yeah; considering I had literally never been loved and had lost my lifelong best friends a few years prior, and had not really gained any new ones, and had lost my entire sense of identity and reasons why anyone would want to like me or hang around me because my own fucking body betrayed me by leaving me a little manlet bitch-boy, it was completely justified that I was looking for an external source of love. Damn fucking justified. The fact I even had the guts to go online and put myself out there is more than most would probably do in my emotional state. But I was desperate, yes. I was willing to do anything to feel loved; something men who came from loving households probably never had to deal with. And this meant, unknowingly selling by dignity and self-respect (what little I had left) to bitches who would treat me as less than dirt because I was universally "too short, too ugly, too dark, and too chunky" for their approval. In other words, I was seeking female validation as a substitute for a mother.

This is legitimately how more than 99% of women I spoke to felt.

To recap, I was a short little shit and every single male friend I had was taller than me. Like 10-20% of women out there were my height or taller, depending if heels were a factor or not, and to top it off, I had NOW been told my skin color, face, and overall physical appearance was inferior and 'unworthy' as well.

In my whole entire life, up to even right now, I had only ever had THREE women and potential love interests give me positive feedback about my looks (and I still, in the back of my mind, think of them as crazy, even now). I've only dated nine women in my life, and only two out of those women had any respect for me or weren't using me for their own means. Out of the only three women I've ever had say nice things about the way I looked: One was a veterinarian student from Indiana named Jen and she called me "a 9 out of 10." Which, if you know me, still sounds batshit insane, to this day, and I was a hell of a lot thinner back then. Jen lived too far away and was too busy for grad school for things to work out. One was a plus-sized blonde I was dating named Ellen who gave me a shot, but I never felt genuine love from her. I also found out she was "bisexual" about a month into the relationship and felt devastated and disgusted by that, leading to me ending things with her. The third was my most serious relationship I had ever been in, Kaitlyn, who was a 6'3" and a half walking ray of sunshine.

Kaitlyn portrait 1

Kaitlyn is probably the one good thing that's ever come into my life when she did in October 2011. But I wasn't mentally ready for her, yet. I was still too un-mature; still too paralyzed by fear and doubt implanted in me. The funny thing is, she could relate to me in that regard, in that she has a 5'9" little sister, a 5'10" mother, and a 6'3" father, and was half an inch even taller than her father and always wished she was a "more dainty, feminine" 5'6. She was also quite voluptuous and thick, and used to want to be thin as well, but always struggled with her weight (although I found her body to be one of her best, most attractive non-mental features). She had gone through the fires and back, and besides us arguing, we had amazingly effortless chemistry. Like two pieces that just fit perfectly.

However, like most straight women in existence, she was deeply attracted to confidence, something I lacked severely. Our only disagreements and arguments came from my lack of confidence. She would insist there were so many good features about me and that "It makes no sense why you *wouldn't* be confident! Look at you; why do you let jerks make you feel like this?"

But I always took that as "You're mediocre; you need to be an Alpha Male, and that's what I want from you to stick around." I took great offense to her expecting me to be 'perfect,' as if I could make myself taller, or better looking, or change all the physical flaws about me, in order to have that allusive "confidence" she always talked about.

Kaitlyn portrait 2

We had been together for 11 months and by Fall 2012, we agreed to get married. Not too long after that, she passed away from smoke inhalation in an intense neighborhood fire. I was not there, and she was asleep, at the time of the fire. I was upset at her death, but somehow not surprised by such horrible news. She felt too good to be true in many ways. In hindsight, I believe she had the best advice for me after all, but it was extremely hard to believe, or even comprehend, at the time. Also, in hindsight, I'm not sure if we ever would've made it to marriage, if I couldn't "overcome the confidence issue."

In 2013 onward, one of my biggest problems had become a reliance on others for self-worth and validation, that I had almost never gotten. As a child, I NEVER had any kind of loving family, except maybe my grandmother who had her hands tied with other grandchildren, who were my rivals. In school, I got self-worth and validation from my physical prowess. When that all went away by my body stagnating and me ending up a short-ass adult, I lost everything. All sense of belonging and importance. This caused a feedback loop; first from my former friends outgrowing me. Then, from better-abled, healthier university students. Then from single women, who all wanted super-tall, Alpha males from online dating sites. ALL of the sources for that unhappiness came from other people. Which I then (and this is a word I HATE using), internalized. From 2013-2016, I kept feeling like shit. Then, I came to this realization. That, put simply, I give too much of a fuck what other people think of me. And not what *I* think of me.

I am still a work in progress. I am still not 100% complete. But ever since 2016, I don't hate everything about myself. I realize, I *do* have some good traits, as well (even if they're all personality based). After all, Kaitlyn wouldn't have ever been with me if she didn't see SOMETHING in me, even if I didn't, at the time. I still don't think much of my body. But maybe I can admit that, if at least three women out of the thousands I've talked to, could think of me as 'good looking' on some minor level, I might not be 100% bad.

I recently posted two questions on here. One made me feel even more like dogshit about my shitty 181 cm girl-height. Almost everyone basically said "no, you're not good enough [to be tall]." The other was slightly less brutal.

What would you consider "tallish" height for a man, and for a woman?

Girls, what would you fix about me?

But I'm done caring, at this point. I can't fix me. I can't change me. And I accept I am done seeking others to "accept" me as I am. I need to start accepting MYSELF as I am, even if it's extremely likely no one else, especially other women, ever will. I'm ready to lean all-in. I'm ready to own my flaws and failures, disappointing-as-fuck, beta, manlet height, included. Once you learn to engulf yourself in the flames, instead of running from them though, do you become the Phoenix who rises from it... Or just the guy who stops giving a single fuck, as if he was on a deserted island all alone. Either one is better than hating yourself literally every day. I can't afford a single fuck to give. I've finally run out of them.

[Jjpayne]

This is quite a lot but it is always good to get something off your chest like this!!! It's good to journal and reflect on your life!! That book sounds pretty amazing!! And thank you for sharing this with us!! I think it's also cool to see your pic and you actually look really attractive!! This might not mean much coming from me, but I think in the right setting at the right time, you will find a girl, I'm pretty sure of it!