If there is a problem, you're the problem

If I think other people interpreted something I've done as wrong, my stomach sinks to my bowels and I will lose sleep for days over it. Most prominently if it's a family member who's older than me, or if there's something of consequence on the line otherwise. Instantly my headspace shifts, I become flushed, and I can focus on nothing other than finding a way out.

I think that sounds dramatic, so I don't like talking about it. But it's been a constant issue during the past few months as I've dealt with contractors for my house.

I had a tile & flooring contractor lay tile for my shower. New construction, square shape, pretty straightforward thing. After a few days, he's wrapped it up and tells me it's done, but wait at least 24 hours to use it, and preferably 48.

I let 24 hours pass and feel how the floor is, which at this point is solid and seems like it's cured. I tentatively step into the shower to have a closer look at the rest of the walls and floor, and place my foot near the drain.

The tile around the drain dips down under my weight.

Instantly, my gut sank and I started to get nauseous. I hopped out of the shower hoping I didn't ruin the floor. For the next two hours, I was freaking out, going over the details of what happened and imagining how I would tell the contractor about it. I wound up texting him later that day and told him exactly what happened, and he said he would come out to check it out.

He came out, said yes it was my fault, and he would have his guys fix it but would have to charge me an extra $100 for it. I agreed.

The next day, it was still bothering me. The contractor had popped the affected tile off the floor, so I went to take a look at it. Underneath was the waterproofing membrane. I put my finger on there to feel how solid it was. There was space underneath the membrane.

I pushed down gently on the other areas around the drain and all of them were bowing under just pressing with my finger.

Again, my body instantly went into another bout of spiking anxiety and turmoil about this.

I waited another entire day before taking pictures and sending them to him, explaining that this looked like a problem with the installation.

As I worried, he tried to say the install was perfectly fine. Tile around the floor drain is expected to dip a little under the weight, perfectly normal.

Ultimately, it took another month and a half and me letting his crew come back a total of three times to properly finish out the floor. Numerous phone calls, calling the place the tile was from, calling the waterproofing membrane company, and insisting to the contractor that this was absolutely not a proper install. In the end, he agreed it was a mistake and apologized.

Two months of agonizing, arguing my case, and trying to convince the responsible party to just fucking fix your mistake and it felt like I was the one who was in trouble and was being "bad" at every turn.

This has been the case for a lot of situations for me. Every job I've had, any church I've been involved with, and contractor I've had the displeasure of working with - any arrangement in which there is some sort of exchange of money and/or power, I feel like I default to a weak little boy dealing with adults who needs to mind himself. I have no right to think about complaining, let alone bring it up to them. Certainly did not follow through with standing up for myself.

If you're not the problem, you don't love me

As I've mentioned before, growing up my father had some core principles which were preached to us religiously, among them being:

• Children have no rights
• Children should be seen and not heard

As a child, I never dared contradict my father. It was the same for my brothers; you followed my father and went with the flow, or you'd face his wrath and he'd beat you, scream at you, and psychologically wear you down until you submitted to him. In the end, you always faced the same direction, and it was much easier to do that voluntarily.

Time went on, we all got older, and my older brother started working at the family business. He's 7 years older than I, so by the time I started working there at around 13, he'd been there a while.

The dynamic was the same as it was at home, albeit more intense now that my mother wasn't there to serve as a buffer. My father would scream at my brother at least twice a week. These were intense & long, often over half an hour. The entire building could hear it. He would be ridiculing him, his life decisions, how unserious he was, how he was a big joke, etc. until my brother was in tears. I'd be hiding out in the corner somewhere taking it all in.

When it was over and we corralled back to our normal working areas, he was often silent. Though when he did have something to say, it was usually something like "It'll be the same when you get older".

I watched this happen for years. My brother would continue not taking his work & life as seriously and shrugging off responsibility - according to my father. My father would lay into him about it, and my brother would take it.

All the while, I watched as we churned through non-family employees like a meat grinder. Promising full-time jobs that weren't seasonal and then working them well beyond what was promised until they either quit or "messed up" and we just fired them. They'd last anywhere from a few days to a few months.

Anyone who lasted more than a few weeks was either going to be the small percentage that managed to stick around (i.e. eat shit for small wages and never complain) or we would have to find a reason to fire them.

This all led me to develop a core principle I still live by, for better or worse:

I will give absolutely no room or reason for someone to have a problem with the work I've done. I will always do everything to way it was supposed to be done.

This is not a perfect principle. You'll never make everyone happy with anything, I understand that. At the time when this ideal started to develop, I was around 16 and it was my way of surviving in my environment. It served me well enough at the time.

I will be turning 30 soon, and while I do think this has served me well, it no longer does in its current form. I've known for a while now that I need to evolve past this. However, my fear of mine is evolving away from the results of this.

Despite the turmoil of sticking to that principle, I've been successful where I've dedicated my time. I've managed to leave the family business and work my way up from having no IT experience at 23 to now working as a software engineer and having a much better resume than I even hoped to have at this point. I've been able to keep friends, find success in my marriage, and seize the opportunity to build a home. I was having what were probably panic attacks throughout this process, but it worked.

I was essentially trying to hold myself to a standard that was higher than anyone else had for me to avoid punishment. On the flipside, this also gave me confidence that if someone did bring up a problem with something I did, I had full confidence in my work and could stand up for myself on its merit. They would either be wrong, or it would be an opportunity for me to grow and get better.

Now that I have children though, it's become a top priority to figure out how to take the good parts of this principle and strip away the bad. I need to evolve, because whatever I am doing while my children are growing up is what they will be receiving from me, and likely end up doing too.

Living With Integrity

I think that the driving principle I've been living by could be reduced simply to: live with integrity.

The real lesson I've learned over the years is that you have to live with integrity to your standards and not by anyone else's. The way to properly live with integrity is by developing proper standards. If your standards suck ass, but you live with integrity, you are still sucking ass.

It would have been a tremendous leg-up if my father had properly taught me and my brothers this. Instead, he deeply instilled in us the importance of living to his standards and to reject the idea of having our own. The idea of me wanting independence was something so horrible to my parents that my mother cried nightly during my elongated notice period (of nine months to help them adjust at the company). My father tried every trick in his book to keep me from leaving. When I finally got a job offer than I accepted and it was official that I was serving my final two weeks there, he shifted from "You're not actually going to leave" to "You're going to gain valuable IT experience and then come back to help the family".

Ever since that fateful day I left, my family has been "waiting" (in their words) for me to come back. Back to the family business, back to the family's thinking - back to "home".

Back to being fully submissive to my father.

Final Thoughts

I have both a son and a daughter, and it applies to both of them equally that they absolutely must learn how to walk in integrity, properly, for themselves. I will undoubtedly have flaws in my ways.

At a high level, they need to be able to be self-sufficient without me as soon as possible. I think that is the best way to prepare them for life. If I were to die earlier than I intend to, they will at least be prepared to take care of themselves. Otherwise, I will be here to continue to raise them through childhood and offer guidance in adulthood.