Who am I?

There are always a few things that I have wondered about in my life time, who am I? Why do I do the things that I do? And to what purpose am I driven?

These questios by themselves really have no apparent meaning or order. They in and of themselves are things that people often reflect upon. Though look at through the fractured mind of who is “Me.” In speaking with my sister on various subjects we were on the topic of my earlier years again tonight, and during that discourse we found the several ‘characters’ that I had played through out the years. Allow me to take you back yet again to my past and visit the changes that were brought on to me and how they were wrought.

Who is Joel? Who is Alex?

Alex was who I was before high school. I was a little carefree and had a different set of ‘ideas’ as to how things should work in the world around me. I remember thinking that life would be alright, everything was going to be ‘OK’. I was deluding myself into these thoughts. Alex was a very blind person to the world around him. He thought that everything would be as said above ‘alright’ things would work out to be fine. Time and persistence would see to it that this was so.

Alex was also carrying around a lot of emotional baggage though. He was dealing (although not at the front of his psyche and mind) with the abandonment of his sister at an early age. She had left him for a man who wound up treating her like shit. He knew this was wrong, he also knew that everything was wrong with how his parents reacted to him. The fact that they were doing nothing, was what it boiled down to. At that young of an age I was damaged. I was weak, and floundering. How could I hold myself together to be what I saw as the ‘Person that I was?’ I couldn’t. That is why the development of Joel occurred. Coming into high school saw this happen.

Now let us not say that these are ‘two’ separate people because in a sense they are both me, because they are both my given birth names. Though under each name lies a different persona. For those people who knew me as Alex, I was that carefree and very helping almost nurturing person. I would go out of my way to help you and truly not expect anything in return. My ‘friends’ were very close, and would do anything for me and I them.

High school comes, and then the change. Joel steps in and takes over, he knows that Alex is weak and cannot continue down the road that he is traveling. People would have run him over and in his condition would never have known why, or even how they were. In Joel there was strength, dominance and the ability to use others. He in a sense was the diametric opposite of Alex. That is when I started truly manipulating people around me, using them to my ‘benefit’ and they never knew that they had been used. Joel had no qualms about ’stabbing that friend in the back’ so to speak if he saw that it would be to his advantage. Or rather if in someway he would profit from the exchange, because let me boil it down to these simple terms. Profit is ultimately what we all seek, and in profit is power. Alex lacked the need or understanding to see how he could profit from others.

Now going back to what was said above and how ‘Alex’ related to his ‘friends’, Joel had no ‘friends’ he had acquaintances and many of them. For he never knew when the usefulness of said ‘friend’ would dry up, or when said ‘friend’ would awaken to the fact they were being manipulated. That didn’t happen often but it did occur and there had to be back up plans placed so ties had to be shallow. Because as Alex made very ‘close friends’ with others he would never have been able to turn his back on them and not feel guilty for ‘hurting’ these people. Joel had no empathy for anyone other than his self. He is what mattered. To cut ties with someone because they were either not useful or had found out they were being drug along was a very useful trait to have. Why be emotionally tied to someone you knew you were going to have to potentially give up in the very near future?

Above gives you a very small understanding of the two people I am. Joel and Alex. One in the same when you really begin to look at them. Though they are not. I have often had people tell me that they see a very real difference in attitude whenever I am being addressed as one or the other. My sister and I were discussing this and this is actually why I am writing this because I got to thinking about it. I am essentially to different people. A fractured mind who for the protection of myself has splintered into another person. For example when those of my old ‘friends’ who know me as Alex and address me as such I am more relaxed, open and for all appearances demure. Though when I am Joel and everyone who knows me as thus addresses me I am calculating, cold, distant yet out going. I am pandering to other people’s vanity. I destroy who and what they are and smile the entire time they are falling down into demise, because I know that when they hit the bottom I will offer them that ‘hand’ to bring them up again. They will be reliant upon me, and that is a very useful thing to have in another person when you are trying to get ahead. Without conscience I could easily toss these people to the wayside and not give two shits about how they will fair in life. They have outlived any usefulness that they had for me. They have gotten me to where I wanted to be in life at that ‘moment’…

This is something that I am going to bring up to my psychiatrist whenever I go in and speak to him in a month. Of course until then I will always have theories and a warped understanding that this is wrong, but not caring still that it is being done.

~ by joel trevino on October 19, 2007.