Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 76

“It feels like I know my grandson less now than when he was...

“It feels like I know my grandson less now than when he was younger.  He used to be an amusing kid.  We’d go to museums and restaurants.  We’d play games, and cards, and chess.  We’d actually discuss things.  He was very outgoing.  But now he only wants to be on the computer.  He’s obsessed with this game called Fortnite.  And what’s the other one?  Grand Theft Auto.  He’s losing his capacity to socialize face-to-face, especially with adults.  He’s either staring at a screen or desperate to get back to it.  It frightens me.  He’s disassociating from the real world.  He’s becoming more aggressive and rude.  It’s all part of that culture.  There’s a complete acceptance of violence.  I can hear him screaming in his room: ‘Great body shot!’, ‘Great head shot!’  He spends his mother’s money on abstract things like new weapons and armor, then gets angry if she says ‘no.’  We’ve tried setting a screen time schedule with the school psychologist, but he’s angry about that.  He’s always demanding more time.  I feel like we’re losing him.  He probably thinks that I’m just an old fart, and I’m not supporting his interests.  But I have no interest in entering that world.  Just as he appears to have no interest in entering ours.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“He’s a new kid. It was my job to show him around the school....

“He’s a new kid.  It was my job to show him around the school.  I wasn’t wearing my glasses when I met him, so all I could see was blonde hair and a red face.  He didn’t say a word.  He just had a blank expression the entire time.  And he’s pretty far from my type.  But we both play percussion in the band, and I’m the section leader, so it was my job to help him learn.  I didn’t have much patience with him.  He’s not good on the mallet.  He can’t play his scales.  He doesn’t even know his notes.  Plus he could barely make eye contact.  But one day after school we were with a group of friends in the park, and I started making fun of him.  I told him: ‘You’re so shy you can’t even do anything.’  He started to pout, then he said: ‘I’m game to do anything at all.’  So I said: ‘Well I dare you to kiss me.’  And he did.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“I met James when I was twenty-nine. I don’t want to say it was...

“I met James when I was twenty-nine.  I don’t want to say it was love at first sight, but that’s what he always said.  We had so much in common.  Both of us grew up in foster care.  We’d been homeless together for six years.  Even though we lived in stairwells and tents, we’d still go on the dates.  We’d go to the park, and the beach, and the movies.  Everyone loved him.  He was the kind of guy who’d give the shirt off his back.  And we had the exact same sense of humor.  He was always making me laugh.  But we also had the same addictions.  He died of an overdose in January.  We’d just gotten in a really bad fight, and we went our separate ways, and that night I got the phone call.  I’ve been lost ever since.  It’s been a downward spiral.  I’ve been using a lot.  I’ve been really depressed.  One night a couple weeks ago I just walked into Lake Ontario.  I think I wanted to kill myself, but I don’t remember much.  I started swimming, and then I just stopped, and floated, until I went under.  I woke up on the shore with people all around me.  I’d nearly died of hypothermia.  I just got out of the hospital yesterday.  I’m trying to get my life back in order.  I don’t want to leave this body yet.  I’m afraid to die.  I want to live life.  I’d love to work.  I’d love to get back into the arts.  But if I’m being completely honest, I don’t see myself staying sober.  Because all my friends are addicts.  And they’re the only family I have.”
(Toronto, Canada)

“He just seemed so nice and normal when we were young. He had a...

“He just seemed so nice and normal when we were young.  He had a high profile job.  We were super spoiled. He always hugged me.  Always told me he loved me.  Always taught me things and encouraged me.  But I guess the whole time he had a drug problem.  He started yelling at my mom when I was five or six.  It would happen all the time.  Then when I was eight years old, I walked in on him beating her for the first time.  She was all bruised up and crying.  He looked like he wanted to kill her.  We left a few years later.  Mom woke us up in the middle of the night, packed our bags, and took us outside.  I remember she flagged down a random car.  My father ran after us in the street, begging me to stay,  just me.  We got a restraining order the next day.  And after that, I barely spoke to him anymore.  I hated him for what he did to my mom.  But a few months ago he had a bad stroke, and now he’s living in a rehab center in a ghetto part of Toronto.  He just sits around all day.  He wears raggedy clothes.  He doesn’t remember anything.  Whenever I visit him, he says he wishes we could go back to when we were kids.  He asks why my mom left him.  Then he asks again.  And again.  He just seems heartbroken.  It’s all very pathetic.  I feel bad for him.  It’s hard to stay mad at somebody who’s not really there anymore.”
(Toronto, Canada)

“We took a test in grade four. If you did well, you got...

“We took a test in grade four.  If you did well, you got designated as gifted.  I think I was the only one in my class that qualified.  The teacher had a conversation with my parents.  I was told I had unlimited potential.  I stopped doing my homework, and convinced myself that putting in less effort was somehow an admirable thing.  Arrogance became the default trait of my personality.  I loved to point out other people’s mistakes and inaccuracies.  I became good at winning arguments, not because I was right, but because I was intelligent.  The arrogance gave me form.  It was my anchor.  It covered so many fears and insecurities.  I became terrified of running into people who were smarter than me.  In college I’d stay in my dorm room and play video games, until I encountered people who were better than me.  Then I’d quit.  I hardly made any friends.  Now I work as a programmer.  I chose this career because it’s where I’m smartest, and I thought I had the chance of being the best.  But it’s just not possible anymore.  There are too many talented people.  Recently we hired a genius kid from Saskatoon.  He’s younger.  He’s better.  And I’m having to mentor him.  There’s a feeling of my identity being eroded and nothing being left.  It’s something I have to figure out.  I’m going to therapy.  I’m meditating.  Either I stop needing to be the best, or I’ll die of a heart attack when I’m 40.”
(Toronto, Canada)

“Honestly I just fell into it. I started as an engineering...

“Honestly I just fell into it.  I started as an engineering major.  Then one night I was slaving over my physics homework, while my roommate sipped tea on the couch and read a novel.  So I decided to be an English major like her.  Ten years later I’m working as a copywriter at an advertising agency.  You know that feeling when you’re pulling into the driveway, but you can’t remember anything about your ride home?  That’s a bit how it feels.  Like I blinked and I’m eight years down a career path that I just sort of fell into.  There’s plenty to be grateful for.  It’s a good enough job.  I’m not living paycheck to paycheck.  I can afford to have fun and take vacations.  But my job is not my passion.  And every story you see elevated on social media is: ‘I loved this thing.  It became my passion.  And then it became my career.’  There’s not many people saying: ‘My job isn’t my passion, but I love mountain biking on the weekends.  And that’s enough for me.’  I think the feeling I’m trying to resolve is a sense of ‘enoughness.’ There’s so much I love about my life, but I spend most of my time at work.  Is it OK to get my joy outside of work?  Or does my passion need to be tied to my livelihood and a sense of responsibility?”
(Toronto, Canada)

“We’d just spent the entire day driving back from my parents’...

“We’d just spent the entire day driving back from my parents’ house in Winnipeg.  He held my hand the entire way.  It was such a beautiful time of life.  We had an eight month old daughter.  He loved that little girl so much.  You could tell by the way he looked at her.  Absolute adoration.  We always used to argue over who’d get to bathe her.  He was the one who put her to sleep that night.  I remember he came downstairs and told me that he’d said ‘goodbye’ to the baby.  I said: ‘You mean “goodnight,’ not ‘goodbye.’  Then he told me that he loved me.  And we both went to bed, I thought.  The next morning I found him in the garage.  It looked like he was just standing there.  My neighbor said I screamed like a wounded animal.  My God I was traumatized.  I never slept another night in that house.  It was two years before I could sleep at all.  I dropped from a size twelve to a size six.  At the time I fucking hated his guts.  I mean c’mon, this baby wasn’t an accident.  We committed to this.  Our daughter needed him.  And it was all so humiliating.  Everyone knew that my husband had hung himself in my garage.  Apparently I was so insignificant as a human being, so abhorrent, that my own husband felt the need to take his own life.  My privacy was gone.  There was no front stage and back stage anymore.  Everyone knew the worst thing about me.  And I figured that if I could handle that, I could handle anything.  I transformed myself.  I became more courageous.  More extroverted.  I went back to university and got my Masters.  Now I work as an expert witness in custody cases.  I think that two people died on that day.  Blair, and the woman who was terrified to live without him.”
(Toronto, Canada)

(4/4) “I called the number immediately. I didn’t speak any...

(4/4)  “I called the number immediately.  I didn’t speak any Italian.  But I kept repeating the names of the Italian couple, and I gave him my phone number.  The couple called me back the next day with an interpreter.  They told me they missed me.  They said they’d been worried about me.  I told them I was finally ready to change my life, and they said: ‘Enough with Russia.  Come live with us.’  So I came to Florence.  And when I arrived, they introduced me to everyone as their son.  It was a whole new world.  A whole new life.  That first night my father sat me down, and he said: ‘I understand you’re afraid.  But you’re part of the family now.’  I have a Mom and Dad now.  I have a brother and sister.  I have aunts.  I have uncles.  We celebrate things together.  I’d never celebrated Christmas before.  I was twenty-three and I’d never even had a birthday cake.  But now we celebrate all of these things.  And we share sad things too.  We go through things together.  These last few years something deep down inside me has changed.  I’m more open.  I’m more caring.  I don’t really believe in God but there’s got to be something.  I don’t know how any of this was possible.  There is no one in the world like my mother and father.  Now I want to enlarge our family.  I want to have children of my own.  And I want to tell them everything that happened to me.”
(Florence, Italy)

(¾) “My behavior grew worse over the years. I became a...

(¾)  “My behavior grew worse over the years.  I became a troublemaker.  I got in fights.  And when I turned seventeen, the director kicked me out of the orphanage.   Anna cried.  She didn’t want me to leave.  But thankfully she’d prepared me well for life.  She’d taught me to do little jobs like washing dishes and cleaning.  She’d taught me right from wrong.  She showed me affection.  She knows what she did for me.  She knows it was her.  Every Christmas, every birthday, every women’s day, I reach out and tell her that it was her.  I joined the military after leaving the orphanage.  After serving for a few years, I began working the nightshift in a bread factory.  Things were going OK.  It was a decent salary.  I bought a car.  But I wasn’t moving forward in life.  My first girlfriend dumped me.  I fell into a dark place.  Then one night I opened a very old book from my childhood, and a phone number fell out.  It was the number of a young boy that I’d met during my trip to Italy.”  
(Florence, Italy)

(2/4) “I remember it perfectly. They walked into our classroom...

(2/4)  “I remember it perfectly.  They walked into our classroom while taking a tour of the school.  They weren’t even looking to adopt.  Their friends had come to adopt one of my classmates, and they were merely tagging along.  I was scared of them at first.  But Anna nudged me to the front of the class.  She encouraged me to give them one of my paintings.  And the next day the orphanage director called me to her office.  She said the Italian couple wanted to speak with me.  They talked to me for an hour, and at the end they gave me a bag of oranges.  I handed them out to all the other kids at the orphanage.  I think the couple was touched by this, because that’s when they invited me to visit Italy.  Anna prepared all my documents.  We visited for several weeks.  They brought me all around Italy.  I could tell they were friendly, but I was still frightened.  They lived in such a big house.  They were giving me so many things.  And I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.  I had no idea why they cared about me so much.    They told me they wanted me to stay and join their family.  Anna begged me to do it.  She told me that this was my chance to change my life.  But I was so scared.  All my friends were at the orphanage.  So I told them ‘no.’  When I went back to Russia, I lost the backpack with their contact information.  And I didn’t see them again for fifteen years.”
(Florence, Italy)