Imaginary Self - Who Am I? (Part 3)

As I left off in part 2, when I was little I wanted to be a prince. This was the start of my imagination adventures that I still go on to escape the boredom of reality. It's why I have always seemed so content in silence and so patient. I never really had imaginary friends. I had an imaginary reality that I entered to entertain myself. And it was all in my head, I didn't tell anyone or verbalized the dialogue running through my mind like I was directing and acting in a tv show. So I could be getting a haircut or just sitting on the floor staring at unplugged fan and no one would know that I had left this reality. The only physical thing I really did was use my two fingers to run as my characters were moving. For this post I'm going to psychoanalyze my four-year-old-self and see how this fictional world I created reflected one of the fundamental aspects of my personality and how that made me vulnerable to depressing and suicidal thoughts.

So the first character I created was named Silver. He was a prince with yet-to-be defined magical powers and his weapon was a whip. But instead of this being my imaginary friend, he was my idealized self.
I imagined that I was him. Before I got to like middle school my character names were pretty simple and straightforward. Laser Boy. Ice Boy. Electric Boy. Fire Boy. So Silver was dressed in silver with a silver Egyptian tunic thing like Moses and Joseph from those Sunday School stories I mentioned last post. His weapon was a silver whip probably because of the whole slave thing, again from the stories. But I/he never really used it. You don't really need to use a weapon when you can snap your fingers and whatever you want happens. Yay magic. But as I got a littler bit older, I realized that he was too OP (over powered/godlike). There's not much of a story or adventure when you can win with just one snap. So over the years Silver evolved in both powers and appearance. Really inspired by Robin becoming Nightwinng. Each change reflected a change in me or at least a change of what I valued or desired from super smarts to super speed to flying to control over the elements to psychic powers like telepathy and telekinesis and back to magic but more focused and limited. I really liked spells. That's party how I started writing poetry. The main thing is I wanted to be superhuman, to be supernatural, to have control over situations in my life. I wasn't thinking along the lines of being a superhero to save the world. I wanted to be a superhero to save myself. So I think I pretty much covered the reasons for wanting magical powers which isn't anything strikingly new or whatever.

But now let's look at the socio-economic features of the character. A prince has money, power, authority, respect, and potential to be king. My family wasn't poor, but we weren't rich. I've always been a big dreamer. When I was told that we were moving when I was like four or five, I instantly imagined moving into a castle like in Beauty and the Beast. With a chandelier and two winding staircases. Obviously that didn't happen. We still only had one floor. Which was fine. But I think it was the first time I realized that if you dream too big, you're always going to be disappointed. I was also the youngest in my family so naturally I was always fighting for attention, for validation and respect, to be treated equally. I've already touched on power and control over my surroundings. But potential to be king. Potential being the keyword. I wanted to be considered as an option and I wanted to be able to choose, but I did not want to be a king. In that sense, I loved being the younger brother, being second in line to the "throne" of responsibility but still in line.

So I guess that's where Silver came from. Silver is second place. I'm the second son and I leaned from a very early age not to aim for the gold. You tend to lose at a lot of things when you can't even tie your own shoe laces. So I didn't want to be in the spotlight in case I choked under the pressure, but I still wanted to be important and be recognized for my value. I feared the pain of losing. So second place was just fine with me. And that meant someone else won the gold and I also understood that joy and was happy that someone else got to experience that.

I elevated other people's needs over mine. I humbled myself. But I lowered myself because I didn't feel like I deserved better and I didn't want better for myself. I was content in my lowly misery. This form of selflessness came back to bite me later. This selfless pride made it much easier to accept and nurture the seeds of doubt. It's not like I was contributing to society in any meaningful way. And even looking at the cold hard math, would I be less of a financial burden trading in a one time funeral over providing clothing, food, etc. for X more years?  Because I didn't recognize my value as a child, I began to think that maybe the world would be better off without me...