The Possibility Directory

A young man courageously shares what he saw in the Landmark Forum for Teens. Here are some excerpts:

There was a key event in my life that has worked more mischief with me than anything else. One thing that I thought was interesting about myself and the LMF was the fact that I had already identified so many problems that had been brought up to me through the forum, I just didn’t know how to deal with them. Although I don’t have the story anymore, the thing that has affected my life the most drastically was my Grandmother’s death. When the news had been delivered to my family that she had died, we’d were all in the lobby, preparing to leave.  My entire family bust up in tears and consoled each other but didn’t bring me into the circle. I felt alone and abandoned by the people who were supposed to be there for me and and decided from then on that I didn’t need my family and that I could do things by myself.

Now just look how that’s affected my relationships with myself and my family since then? I’ve been trying to move out for two years now, I’ve hated my mother for what seems as long as I can remember, I haven’t cared about my family, I don’t even want to keep in contact with the one piece of family I do have and like. I’ve told myself that I don’t need other people, I spend my alone time trying to deal with being sad and depressed about things without anyone to help me. I throw myself whole-heartedly into everything I do so I don’t have to think about how much people don’t care about me but that I care about what I’m doing when really, I might not even care at all.

And how about my friends? One of my problems was that I treat my ‘friends’ as if they’re nothing, abusing them for the things they can give me instead of being with them because I like being around them. Do you not think that the insecurity I’ve derived from this could be the cause of my distance to these people who could otherwise be great people to have around? I think so, in fact, I know so.

While my ‘real’ friends, I put so much into them because I didn’t want them to be alone like I was. I didn’t want them to have an event like mine where they thought no one cared about them. This isn’t to say that I trusted them with myself, but it was trying to fill in something that was missing in my life.

Really, the only thing that I found that didn’t stem from that event was the reason why I was so angry at Quinn. But then again, it really is. The reason why I was so angry at her was because I had decided that she was a liar, that she had told me that she loved me only to please me instead of being honest, and that if she really loved me like she said she did she wouldn’t have dropped off so suddenly. I was relating her to my mother in the fact that she was just doing something to try and please me and really, all I want from people is their honest feelings. But who am I to decide for her what was a lie and what was the truth? I never asked her if she really felt that was or if she was just saying it just because. It’s just some story I made up to replace information that I didn’t know because I didn’t ask her for it.

And for all of these things that were bothering me, once I found out what they were and what I was trying to cover up, I could let them go. I identified what was story and what actually happened. What happened is what happened. The people whom I was blaming things on are not the cause of my emotions, I am. It’s the story I make up in my head which make my emotions go. Once that was identified, it was easy to let it go. It’s not their fault I feel the way I do and it’s unfair to them to blame them for such.

Then I just needed to accept things. I’m scared of being left alone and having no one care about me. I’m scared of people lying about the way they feel about me just because they’re too scared to be honest with me. I needed to be with my fear and accept that it was there and wouldn’t go away, but it didn’t need to stop me from doing anything. Fear is something we have and can’t get rid of. But we can not let it hinder us in what we do. Actors get nervous before their shows and they still do it everytime, willingly and even excited to do so. Even if you don’t view it as a fear, nervous is really just a different word for fear isn’t it? Actors get nervous because they’re afraid of messing up, flubbing a line, missing a cue and generally looking bad. Doesn’t that apply to everything though.

But they don’t let it hinder them, they go on and do their show and afterwards they feel great! Conquering your fears in other places gives you that same ecstatic feeling as you do when you’ve finished your show. It’s empowering.

Now that I’ve accepted these things, I’m forgiven the actions that people have done to me and I’ve forgiven myself for blaming others.

I haven’t felt this good in a long time. 

Go here for Celsius’ whole blog post about what he saw in the Landmark Forum.