Who Am I?

I used to be the good guy. The one who could be the perfect boyfriend and the one you could always trust. I've been slipping. If you were to look back even two years in my life, you would not recognize me. Some changes have been good. Some bad. And lately it feels as though the bad has outweighed the good by a large margin. From someone who would never even dream of having a girlfriend, to someone who cheats on them, even if it is virtually. What have I become? I've been left with a bitter taste towards women and have beaten myself up over what I've done more times than I should have. The lies, the masks, the screw ups; I'm just scared I'm drifting too far from where I was happy. Sure I was an introverted, fat little guy, but at least I knew I was a good person. Now, I'm not too sure any more.

Vikki really screwed me up. I'll admit that I played a role in our demise, but what happened with her has damaged my views towards women and the ones I've met since have not helped my negative outlook. I know a few women read this blog, but I'll be blunt - my encounters have shown me that women, despite the tradition, are just as unintuitive and flawed as men. I'm not saying men are any better, because they're not, but women are supposed to be the sensitive ones. The caring and compassionate ones. Vikki and Jess showed me what it's like to be lied to. What it's like to be undermined and kicked to the curb. To be hurt. Maybe I'm just too damn sensitive. Some days I feel like I'm the most sensitive person in the world.

In these past few years I've been through a lot. It's no excuse for how I've been drifting lately, but I've been through a lot of new experiences which have left me reeling for a way to react. Deaths, suicides, the loss of my family and friends, schools and clubs, fights and love and heartbreak. I've lost weight and grown up and have really started to enter the adult world of university and work. I've made mistakes - huge mistakes - and lost a lot as a result. And I've cheated. Whatever has happened in the last few years I can excuse, but cheating I cannot. Even the most marginal of infidelity I cannot excuse when the perpetrator is me. I continue to come back to that moment again and again. I know the effects of adultery first hand. It ruined my childhood and shaped me in ways I shouldn't have been. And yet I still did it. A girl I was frustrated with in a world that wasn't real. It was set up for me to fail and I walked into it like a fool.

So who am I? As if having my masks wasn't hard enough. Now one of them is not one even I like to wear. Or is it me? Have I really turned into the person I don't want to be? Maybe I should give myself a break. It was a terrible mistake to make granted, but maybe I should stop beating myself up about it. The only one hurt was me; I'm just glad that I was able to learn from it during a relationship I wasn't involved in physically or emotionally, rather than one with someone I really loved in real life. If I've learnt from my transgression and won't do it again, then why can't I forgive myself? I need to know I'm still a good person, and if I keep nailing this cross into my mind, then I'll never get that back. I know for certain that I'll never get involved online again; it's too easy to slip up when you can't see your lover's face and how they hurt, and ultimately, always ends in heartbreak. I never proclaimed to know myself, my capabilities to hurt and be hurt, or that I knew anything in life. Maybe in time this feeling will go, and maybe, just maybe, I'll know what it's like to have confidence in myself and my actions again. To know I'm a good person.