TRANSCRIPT
For reasons that I don’t understand, I was born different. And as a child, I was different. I didn’t quite fit in. There was always something about me that just was a little bit different, or a lot different. And what I came to realize as I got older is that I hated being different. It wasn’t something that I liked at all. And the reason was is that I came from a world, a family, a school system, a culture, a society that didn’t like difference. And it didn’t like my difference.
And so I thought there was something pathological about me because I was different. I thought there was something inherently wrong with me. And I really, really fought to change it. I fought to hide my difference. I fought to push it down, to disguise it, to live in camouflage, to strive for the ideal of being normal. I so wanted to be normal.
And it wasn’t until I became an adult that I began to realize, with some objective perspective, that the differences that I had not only were really there, but they were actually really good things—objectively good. I was talented. I had a different level of consciousness. I had a different level of connection with myself, a different level of authenticity and honesty. And that those things that were considered pathological by my family, by my school, by my world, by my society were things that really were very positive and special qualities.
And yet, because I was in a system, in a world, in a family that had so much power over me, because I was so much more of a small, vulnerable, young, needy human being—all very reasonable and normal and expectable things for a child to be—that I had to believe them in that way. I identified with the aggressors. I identified with the people in power. I had a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. I was a hostage in this world of captors who had power over me. And so I believed what they said about me. I believed their narrative. And all that was there for me to believe was that there really was something wrong about me.
And so I really didn’t like lots and lots and lots of parts of myself. And yet, and this is where I feel really lucky, there was some other part of me that was bigger than all that and still thought for myself anyways and couldn’t kill off those parts of myself. It was like I wished I could have. I wished I could have just taken his scissors and cut off all these parts of myself that had rough edges—the parts of myself that had insight, that had deep self-love, that wanted to fight for myself against these bad adults who were all around me.
And I tried, and I tried, and I tried to beat myself. And I tried to hate myself into submission, but I couldn’t succeed. And in that way, I survived. And once I got into adulthood, I was screwed up. I was confused. I had ugly history. I’d done a lot of bad things to myself. And in all my years and years and years of self-hatred, I acted it out toward others. I’d harmed other people. I’d done cruel and nasty and unpleasant things. And I had to live with that. And I had to look at it. And I had to process it.
But in coming back to myself, I realized I wanted to look at it. I wanted to process it. I wanted to come up with the absolutely true narrative of who I was, of what had happened to me, and what I had done, both good and bad. And in creating that narrative, in really fostering, developing, fighting for a more honest relationship with myself, that made me even more different because I realized, as I looked around, the world is not saying this is a good thing.
I remember telling my friends in college about some of those bad things that had happened to me and bad things that I had done. They didn’t want to hear this—”dude, why are you talking about that?” And when I went back and told my family, they didn’t like it. They didn’t want to hear it, except when I talked about some of the bad things that I had done, some of the unhealthy things that I had done. They liked hearing about that, and they wanted me to tell more because it furthered their narrative of me as a pathological person.
And through that process of sharing these things about myself, I learned, “use discretion, Daniel.” You have to be careful when you tell other people about unhealthy sides of yourself because they can use it against you, and they will use it against you. I learned that with therapists also. You’d think you’re supposed to go to therapy and tell them all the bad things that have ever happened to you, all the bad things that you’ve ever done. Well, and that’s gonna help you heal. And maybe if you get a really, really healthy, mature, good, loving, honest therapist, and ethical therapist, they will do that—not the ones I had.
I realized by telling some of these things in my life, these really unhealthy things from my past, it didn’t help me. They didn’t use it for my good. They used it as further proof that I was pathological, just like my whole childhood experience had done.
And so how do I handle my difference now? How do I look at myself as being different in this world and use it for good? Well, the main thing, first of all, is to try to get away from unhealthy people. Yet at the same time, I realized that I need to live in this unhealthy society. There is no society out there that’s healthy. There is no world out there that’s suddenly just gonna love me for being totally real and authentic and honest. And yet, I can try to create little pockets of truth, pockets of healthy relationships, pockets of maturity and honesty and authenticity.
I feel like my YouTube channel is one of these pockets, and I feel so glad that I have that. I also have a few friendships out in the world, or lots of friendships in all sorts of different ways—small ones and people that I meet out in the world, sometimes when I’m traveling. People who are just more honest, more true. People who have differences that are similar to mine that can really honor the differences in me as something special, something healthy, something super—not something that’s so disturbing.
The other thing is I’ve gained great—I’m very, very sensitive to people who look at me as pathological for my healthiness, pathological for my gifts. And those types of people are everywhere. I’m very, very sensitive now, or more sensitive than I ever was, to those types of people. And with those people, I’m much more careful about sharing the whole truth of myself because they would do to me what my family did to me. They would do to me what my teachers did to me when I was a kid in school. They will put me down. They will break me down. They will want to shear off the wild sides of my personality and just make me a soft, round, little normal thing.
The problem for me is, as much as I tried to be normal—and I did my best to just be a normal, soft thing that bothered no one—it did not work for me. It made me hate myself. That made me feel my life had no value, and I couldn’t live that way. And yet, it was so confusing when I looked at other people, people all around me, my parents even, who really seemed in so many different ways to be normal. And they seemed okay with it. They seemed happy with it. I wasn’t happy with it. I wasn’t okay with it.
I could never live a life where I really felt my life was of purpose and of meaning and of value if I was just normal. Normal was not me. And so now in my life, I really fight to honor the differences in myself, to honor the truth of me, the real self that for some strange and unknown reason life created me to be.