Comparing Myself To Others: Me Vs Cody

 Quite a while ago, I somehow manage to talk about my history of self-harming. I still can't believe that I worked up the courage to write about that. But I am extremely grateful of the overwhelming support I got from it. Thank you all for the love! 

But now, I wanted to start looking back and confront some of the things I feel like are my triggers and why I was harming myself. And one of those issues that has had me down on a number of occasions is having a more popular and more successful older brother. His name is Cody or as many people know him as, Codeman 25!

Now, I am not alone when it comes to stuff like this, there are many others who struggled with what I am about to talk about. But for anyone out there who reads this and/or struggling with the same thing, just know that your siblings do love you and it isn't worth hurting yourself over it.

Looking back on my struggles with this, I noticed a few things. First, my brother burst onto the scene during his senior year of high school. It was there that Cody would discover his passion, which was making incredible videos. Codeman was quite popular among a lot of people that I would later meet during my time in high school.

It is no secret that high school wasn't really the best time for me and being compared to Cody didn't exactly help me either. In fact, I never really got to discover who I was as a person throughout my time there. Most of the time, people usually just ask me how Cody was doing. I even remember trying to do similar stuff that he was doing in high school, like for example, Media class. I myself do really enjoy being creative and I wanted to learn how to do stuff like that, only to be told how Cody would do it.

In fairness though, I wasn't exactly very social with other people. To say that I was socially awkward would be an incredible understatement. Like I had mentioned before, I didn't have anything special to talk about honestly.

I felt like a total embarrassment! While I was struggle with suicidal thoughts throughout high school, Cody was getting to do some amazing things at Penn State. Don't get me wrong, I am extremely proud of him, but it just sucked seeing him do that while here I was struggling with school work and not able to fit in.

By the time I had gotten out of high school, I struggled with jobs as well as trying to figure out how to deal with my CP and Scoliosis and with each passing year, it just got tougher and tougher. And every time I thought I had accomplished something, I only ended up being out done by Cody. I just end up hurting myself even more.

But probably the biggest sign I had about dealing with this issue was when my brother was getting married to the woman of his dreams. I am a shamed to admit this but here we go. The day of the wedding Cody originally wanted to have me and Chad just stand with him, unfortunately things kind of when haywire as Codeman was left without a groomsman. So Chad and I decided to help out and join in on the wedding.

I'll never forget standing up there with all of the guys and during the ceremony, I started to cry. Sadly, it was for more than one reason. For one, I was so happy for him, I can still see the look on his face when he was looking at Christine, he looked so happy. But the other reason I was crying about because it reminded me with what I have been facing my whole life, loneliness. 

Everywhere I looked, I saw a person that had knew my brother for many, many years. While on the flip side, I had people come in and out of my life, mainly because they decided to do drugs and drink alcohol non-stop. My last couple of relationships ended with them cheating on me and lets face it, I ain't exactly the kind of guy women flaunt over.

It just hurt me so bad and I was so ashamed of myself, I didn't want to ruin their big night, so I went and hide into a dark corner and just let them enjoy themselves.

I ain't going to lie though, I really just wanted to end things there.

Ever since I posted about my self-harming, I have been really trying to my best to put things into prospective. And one of the things I've been working on is to stop comparing myself to other people and try to build myself back up. 

Throughout this journey, I found out how much I loved writing and storytelling. I got to launch my first book and will be doing soon again in the near future. One of the biggest supporters I have is my big brother Cody. He and his wife Christine as well as many others have continued to encourage me to write and put stories together whether it be my blog, my poems, novels, Hometown Sports, etc. And it has helped me out so much mentally and although I still struggling with some things about my writing mentally, I can honestly say that I am in a much better place than I was so many years ago.

The point, I am trying to make is that, comparing ourselves to one another is utterly pointless. God made us all different for a reason. We all should be focusing on being the best we can be because if we focus on how we are compared to others, we're only going to end up hurting ourselves in the end.

And it wasn't like I hated Cody, he didn't do anything wrong. It just seemed as though he had things lined up for him more than I did. But again, maybe it was for a reason.

I just have to remember to learn to love myself, if it is possible.

Until Next Time!

Love Codeman!

God Bless and Be Safe Everybody! 🙏🙏🙏