As I am beginning to write about the individual challenges that I have dealt with and still deal with in my life, I feel like it’s important to point out that I in no way intend for these to be viewed as excuses for my behavior. I believe that where I am today is not necessarily my fault but even if every bad thing I have done in my life was a direct result of my abuse, the actions will always be mine and I have decisions to make about how I act just like everyone else.
I felt like immaturity would be a good topic to start this process off with. If I were to draw out a chart of my problems, immaturity would be at the very top with all the others flowing from it. I am going to focus here on the overall lack of maturity and how it has and still does create havoc in my life. I will probably dig deeper into specific areas of immaturity in future articles, but to start off I’ll go into it as a much broader topic.
Immaturity, as I reflect on my young life and then deep into my adulthood has always been there. Even while doing very serious jobs like police officer and deputy sheriff my immaturity would always be an issue. I could hide it for a while but it always reared it’s head. Whether I was getting too drunk at a department Christmas party, messing around during a pre shift briefing, whining about assignments I was given or not taking responsibility for my actions, I was very immature.
I don’t think I knew that my maturity level was stunted, I always said that the more serious a job you held, the more you had to be willing to let loose and have fun. That was an excuse, in reality that’s immaturity. My inability to understand the consequences of my actions and how I was viewed by serious people ultimately led to my downfall at my first job as a police officer and would be a problem at every job I’ve held since then. That downfall is something I’ve held on to as quite an embarrassment in my life and I will finally describe it here today.
Living with stunted maturity isn’t easy. You want to fit in with those around you, you want to be trusted and liked and so you get pretty good at faking it. Faking is easier at first as you meet new people, work with people you’ve never spent time with and who haven’t yet gotten to know you. It becomes more difficult as you become more familiar with others. You let down your guard and they will see your child like reactions to situations briefly until you reel it in.
Ultimately many of these people become your friends and if you can find it in yourself to trust them then they will see you for who you are. Most will never address it as a problem as they just assume that’s who you are. Others who are closer to you and care deeper will bring it up. They will tell you that you’ve embarrassed yourself or that your actions put them in difficult situations. Immaturity causes those situations and immaturity causes you to lash out at those who point it out. Angry reactions that are a symptom of the overall problem, immaturity. Not only are they an attempt to avoid accountability but they are also an attempt at creating a wall so that those friends feel uncomfortable calling you out in the future.
A person who is mature is capable of and willing to take a step back and assess their actions objectively. Someone who has matured properly can listen to advice from a friend or anyone for that matter, without treating it like an attack. Immaturity causes you to always try to put up a front (that need to fit in with the adults around you, your peers) and so admitting that there is a problem is out of the question, as if lashing out conceals the problem.
The inability to take responsibility for my actions is something that I have struggled with frequently in my life and while I believe I am significantly better at it today, I still feel like I need to be very cognizant of my actions. It’s exhausting but it is how I have best found to be sure that I can anticipate when I have done someone wrong so that if I am called on it I can remain humble and listen and look at myself objectively, admit when I am wrong and try to be better.
If they don’t call me on it I will call myself on it. This is actually something I have done often in my life. Today when I do it I know it is out of respect for that person because they don’t deserve to feel badly due to my actions and deserve the apology whether they seek it or not. In the past I realize now that I would point out deficiencies or mistakes I have made in an attempt to lower expectations people may have had of me. An example is in field training as a cop when I was doing well and receiving good daily reviews I would start to point out errors I made that were not seen by my training officers to lower expectations, to lessen the pressure I would start to feel as I did not believe I was good enough.
My relationships have been effected by my immaturity and the desire to not let people down has been the main culprit. That desire triggers lying, it triggers this awful knee jerk reaction to default to a lie when confronted with even the slightest issue. The feeling that you need to be perfect or they won’t love you any longer or they will be disappointed in you regardless of the issue at hand. Not understanding that failure and mistakes are a part of life and so is when people are disappointed in you. As an adult you deal with it, most people deal with it.
Countless times in my life I have sat and lied to someone I love or someone who loves me or someone who deserves my 100% honesty and as I’m doing it I am screaming in my head “STOP! You’re digging a hole, tell the truth, stop lying!” But I couldn’t. Most of the time there was absolutely no reason to lie, the truth may have been hard to admit but as an adult you discuss those things and move on. I can clearly see today that though I may have been an adult in age, I was a child in maturity.
Children lie like that not grown men. This has been a focus of my own therapy for years and has taken all these years to get me to a point of understanding. I spent those years trying to figure out how to “grow up” but that is not what it was ever about. I needed to find a way to accept that’s where my psyche is and develop tools to control it and through that understanding I would start to mature. I’ve come a long way but that is not to say I am out of the woods. I have accepted that all of these challenges I have will always be a part of me, I just need to find ways to deal with them all. I am and I will probably always be working on it.
My empathetic side has been a huge help in this. As I’ve grown I have embraced that I am a true empath. I care deeply for people and I feel their emotions too. This has helped me be honest with people because I know how they will feel and I know what they deserve. Maybe that’s not growing up but at least it’s not hurting people.
I want to describe perhaps the worst single example of immaturity that I have committed because it was a major incident in my life, one I have always been very embarrassed of and one that I have never told the whole truth to most people about. It’s the reason I left the police force in 2000.
I loved being a police officer. I loved the men and women I worked with, most of whom I am still close to today and will be forever. I loved helping people and I loved the adrenaline rush you get from a successful police chase or that comes from putting together a solid case to hold someone accountable for their actions. One day, it was May 19, 2000 to be exact, I handled a harassing phone calls case in which I took a micro cassette tape with the threat on it as evidence and placed it in my uniform pocket. I wrote the brief report on the computer in my patrol car, in which I wrote that I booked the tape as evidence per procedure. This was early in my 10 hour shift which would become a 13 hour shift. I fully intended to book the tape when I was at the station next.
By the end of the shift many more serious incidents had occurred and since I was going on vacation the next day I had to finish the reports of those incidents and have them approved before I could leave. When I was at the station I focused on the more significant reports, simply printing out the lesser reports, including the threats case, and putting them in the to be approved box since they did not need approval before I left. When I put the threats report in the box, I forgot that I needed to book the tape and attach the booking sheet to the report. When I was finished with the shift, I hung my uniform shirt in my locker and left. The tape was still in my shirt pocket.
I went on vacation and came back about a week later to find that the threats report had been rejected by my supervisor because I wrote in it that I had booked the tape as evidence but there was no booking sheet. This was the moment of truth. A grown, mature person tells their supervisor that they forgot to book it in the chaos of their last day of work, goes and gets the tape, books it, writes a supplemental report to establish the chain of evidence and explain what had happened. There may be some sort of punishment for the lack of care but it wouldn’t be significant.
I immediately lied. I said I had not taken the tape and the fact that I wrote I had in the report was due to the report being a “form”. This meant the report was common enough that instead of writing it out each time, I used a form that established all of the necessary elements of the case and I would simply edit it with the names, times, dates and specific information for that case. My supervisor had no reason to doubt me so he told me to correct the report to indicate I did not take the tape and resubmit it and so that’s what I did. I then took the tape out of my pocket and shoved it way in the back of my locker and went about my business.
That lie, that inability to accept accountability for my actions ultimately led to me submitting my resignation from the police force in a deal to avoid being terminated. I was devastated but still was not able to accept full responsibility for my actions. I told most people that I had a large tumor on my femur near my hip (which I did), that I needed to have surgery to remove it (I did), that my Dr had recommended I leave police work (which he had) and that was why I resigned.
This has been something I have carried with me ever since then. Even today as I wrote it out I found myself diving way too far into what I always considered to be mitigating circumstances that put me in the position to lie and then edited them out because they are insignificant to my actions. It feels good to just tell it as it was; clean and true. I screwed up, I lied to avoid accountability for my mistake and that lie created a situation far worse than the original mistake could have ever caused. Buying in to those “mitigating circumstances” slowed the learning part of that lesson for me but to be fair, I wouldn’t even know of my mental health issues for another 4 years at that point or the challenges I was going to face.
Immaturity isn’t fair to me and it certainly isn’t fair to those who got to know the public me before the issues were apparent as they got to know the private me. I haven’t lived up to promises I’ve made to people because of it, I have lied to too many people because of it and I have paid significant prices for it all. It is where I focus my therapy and my self work today. As I said earlier, I believe that most of my other challenges are rooted in the insidious nature of immaturity.
Thank you for reading, as always. Writing is healing, One Love.
Recovering Through Writing 