A brag

Bragging can often convey positive feelings as well as negative ones. I have been dealing with this problem for a long time. Sometimes a few of my good friends and my brother would confess their heart-felt feelings to me saying that I sometimes go over-board in arrogance and often find me bragging too much about myself.

Looking back, this problem I have been fighting since my early 20s can be traced to my teen years. I craved for parental love & attention in which I lacked much. There is this vague stigma in me to seek for attention and was a very serious problem in my late teens until I realize I did not gain much from deliberate search. I have not been complimented much for the things I do when I was a teenager and today when somebody do compliment me in some ways I get so full of myself. Stop! Analyse! Everybody do crave for some attentions in one way or another. I am guilty of this act myself. Even up to today but there are many possible explanations to this social ill, at least that's what some people would categorize it to be. There is, I think, another part of me, who is innately malignant and suffers from probably minor ADD or Attention Deficiency Disorder. The things I say today would somehow subtly hurt or offen that person I am communicating with. Often it will be too late for me to realize what I have just said is offensive. The way I word things out, as a good friend of mine said, made her felt stupid. What is the psychology of all these when I can sometimes relate and understand people who are doing similar things to me?

My dear mother has always related to me about my childhood and especially my growing years as a teenage boy. There has been a lot of damages done to my brother in my pursuit of attention. Today, my family owes something to God because we, my brother and I especially, did not resort to drug abuse, become a punk in the society, turn out to be a spoil spoilt, or a really psychopath attention disorder patient. As for myself, today I seek attention in my very own way is perhaps, according to mother, the best of two evils as a mean to calm and reward myself of attention deprivations, perhaps. There is an urgent need to be humble and meek but even with God's help, it will not an over night effort; however, I do and I will try. My brother's heart has been very broken and perhaps his childhood times are as haunting as mine but with different problems altogether and for the most part, I believe I am the culprit of it all. "If you break a vase, you should patch things up" is the thought that now constantly pounds my mind. I now feel the terrible qualms of my guilts expanding day by day; the more reasons for the need to patch things up. There can be no amount of apologies, perhaps, to forgive myself and hope things will be fine. But I need to stop living in my past and from this day forward I will make things new, with the strength of the Almighty and Holy Spirit.

A brag not one more from me
Spit back at my face and hug me once more
when you know I tell a brag
Help me to help you, and I will help you to help myself
we then can live without seeing black faces.