emotional retardation

i think now that what lay at the heart of my drinking was emotional retardation. my emotions had stopped growing when i was around 13. that's when i first fell in love. her name was beth. she was a korean who had been adopted by american parents. i thought she was grogeous, cute and incredibly cool.

i wrote poems to her. it was the first time i felt something like sacrificial love. i enjoyed talking with her and we would talk for hours. my house was emotionally barren. my mother had lost all respect for my father. he was basically a castrated figure with no authority. her emotions had closed somewhere inside of her. she never kissed me or said anything nice to me. sometimes, when i invited my friends, she would cook for them. but there was no eros, no warmth, no sense of emotional homeness.

but my heart opened up to beth. i really did love her. she broke up with me, and when she did, something broke inside of me also. my drinking and potsmoking are related to heartbreak. but there is something beside that too. drinking took me to another part of myself, a darker part which i did not know how to integrate into my psyche.

now love is not considered a manly thing in many ways, but more and more, i am realizing that love is the viaduct to manhood. christ's sacrifice on the cross is love which links us with god and makes us born again. we are reconciled to god through christ's crucifixion. we must die to our immediate needs for the more permanent plans of god.

now, i see that i have the emotions of a 13 year old boy. i've never developed beyond that. it's horrifying to realize this. i only look at beautiful women. all other women i consider ugly. i want people to attend to my every need as though i were a prince or a star athlete.

in one sense, our culture is an extension of the culture of the ancient greeks and ancient jews. according to the ancient jews, no one was really moral except for the jews. all others were barbarians. according to the ancient greeks, only the greeks were noble and beautiful, their culture was a culture of contest to prove who were the best and once they proved themselves to be the best by going through a competition or agon among themselves and then with the gods, they were awarded with kleos or glory. other cultures were barbaric according to the greeks.

so why had i adopted the values of the dominant american culture that i did not like? no american or korean really wanted to hear about my devotional love to beth or others except for my beloved. in other words, it was really hypocrisy that made me drink. i was complaining about the culture but deep inside, the values of the culture had been imbedded in me.

so nowdays, i don't really watch tv, i watch some movies, i have more time for books, and i try to deconstruct the very premises of the culture that centralizes such an elite view of human beings and makes me partake in a game in which i am bound to be a loser.

and i feel better about myself and i can actually hear my own anger and fears boiling inside of me. i can have god at the center of my being instead of beautiful women and alpha males who seem to occupy the center of society. i can respect myself.

but why has it taken me so long to realize this?