I remember vividly two of the worst events of my life. Both irrevocably shaped how I perceived myself and interacted with the world. I became riddled with self doubt and the irking sensation that life wasn’t worth living. In earnest, I wish to underscore that nearly everyone endures trauma, disappointment, rejection, bullying and so forth, but the more empathetic and rounded person emerges at the end.
The first memory involved a picturesque summer day on Delray Beach, Florida: a light breeze to ease the spirits, no clouds dotting the skies above and the jovial sound of splashing from nearby pools. A wistfully unaware third grader, I approached the day with the typical energetic and optimistic attitude anyone my age would, embracing the idea nothing could befall me. Today, my father would be teaching me how to ride a bike. He took a particular sense of pride in getting me to understand the tricks to balance without a guide and understanding the freedom that came from riding a bike, a notion which surely came from him riding through the streets of New York in his youth. To that end, he set the stage with copious Tour de France viewings, demonstrations and odds-and-ends equipment to help out.
But no matter what my father or I tried, whether it be training-wheels or guiding me as I rode, I couldn’t seem to get a grasp for it. By midday, after several repeated failures, my father’s patience ran thin. Honestly, I could not have cared less of my inability to ride a bike. I’d never been athletic, so it didn’t matter to me.
Yet, to this day, I can still see his face bereft of empathy, supplanted with disappointment gazing down at me on the sidewalk. I can still hear the aggrieved hate in his voice when he said, “You are an utter fucking failure and disgrace. If you can’t even ride a bike, what good are you going to do in the world when all you will do is just fail and disappoint everyone around you.”
The lesson was over for the day, and I just sat crying on the sidewalk. In my mind, my father’s words remain the most perverse and horrific thing any parent could say. Those words emphasized a parent who had blatantly lost their faith in their child.
My second formative experience came from everyone’s favorite period of life — middle school. But instead of a singular day of reckoning, my middle school woes lasted an utterly excruciating two years. Every bus ride home, I was relentlessly bullied by a gaggle of kids, while others looked on and were reluctant to act. Sometimes their criticisms were over my dress — where I favored jorts and polo shirts rather than in the vogue style of Nike hoodies and sweatpants. Other times it involved the faint mustache appearing on my face.
Periodically, my bullies took a dig at my Greek ethnicity, whether it be on the names of cuisine or more discernible characteristics like my bushy eyebrows. Occasionally, they also questioned my sexuality. To them, my unwillingness to divulge personal details indicated that I was gay. But, perhaps, the moment closest to breaking me was when I was peacefully reading the news but got accosted and spat at by the ringleader for being a weirdo with no friends. Bluntly living life day-in and out was a hell on Earth. Only by an intervention by a close friend did it finally stop before I did anything drastic to myself. Even then, the punishment for them was soft, and their sudden silence dubious.
Whether I liked it or not, these events came to define my life. Perhaps, for me, answering who I am includes acknowledging events like these, events which I have struggled to get beyond and strained without success to forget forever. First, it meant being honest about my perpetual sense of inadequacy and self-doubt stemming from incessant expectations and ridicules from my father. The nagging sensation that I simply wasn’t good enough permeated every single test score or the emerging sinking pit in my stomach every time I felt I failed the expectations of my loved ones. More broadly, it meant acknowledging that despite all my effort to prove otherwise, sometimes there will be times I can’t handle everything life throws my way.
Though most importantly, answering who I am involves casting off a faulty version of myself. I’d propped up as an idealistic piecemeal front to appease everyone I met, which led to nothing but an excruciating depression that weighed down my normal bubbly self. For too long in my life, I pretended to be something I wasn’t, refusing to accept my ethnic heritage at the behest of not being bullied, skirting around familial difficulties not to profess my father’s absence, and feeling embarrassed at my lack of interpersonal skills and otherwise. Simply, the loneliness from being a walking imposter led me to a dark place, adrift in the wind like a leaf, not really sure of the direction to take anymore.
Credit where it’s due, I couldn’t have gotten there by myself. My friends and family are most responsible for shaping who I am today. Within my family, I fondly think of my mom’s moral support softly echoing with a warm aura, my aunt’s intuition to find thoughtful places to go and one uncle’s hilarious jokes and the other’s ringing inspiration. Among my friends, I appreciate the Fishers, the Lilys, the Bens and all the others who’ve helped me wrestle with life’s troubles, whether over a game of MarioKart, cooking pasta in their dorm or sharing a simple cup of tea. Each has done me a service I can never repay by helping and empowering me to be my most authentic self, faults and all.
Essentially answering who I am involves recognizing my traumas, embracing my character flaws and accepting them as events on my life journey and facets of experience; thus, it means accepting myself for who I am, personality quirks and oddities all. At the end of the day, I know who I am because of them. I’m not damaged goods, I’m just Demetrios. I’m human like everyone else, and to be fair, everyone else is probably messed up in their own ways.
Demetrios Mammas (23C) is from Atlanta, Georgia.
