Leroy

My crazy, selfish, and unruly alter ago.

This is a rewrite/reimagining of my original 'Leroy' from my now defunct Quotev account.

A: Basic Facts About Leroy

He has intruded many parts of the trip down south. Yes, he goes beyond Internet communication and into real life, and he has brought Mom to tears at least once.

Leroy sees others as personal mirrors. What he says about them is what he thinks of himself, or me when things go awry. If he compliments someone incessantly, he is in fact flattering himself and getting his food from others' emotions. Yet when things go southward, he yells at them and calls them names, when he is in fact targeting me. No wonder why I feel like a rotten pile of trash when the defensiveness goes away.

Leroy is usually triggered when I want something and it is not given to me. He arises out of my inherent selfishness and takes everything to a new level. He is the spirit of vengeance against what I perceive as the source of the pain. In all reality, the source of pain is deep inside of me and Leroy likes to put the blame on anything but me. He essentially blames others for my own pain.

Leroy is also triggered when someone flirts with me and teases me. He is especially sinister there because he works my hormones up and makes me want to do things I ought not to do. Leroy revels in gratification and will do anything to achieve such a temporary bliss. Once I act on Leroy's prompting, my whole mood goes down south and he disappears, as if he is laughing at me for giving into his ploy. Then my true self feels horrible for giving into such a pathetic temptation.

Leroy hates it when I am honest with myself. He wants me to cast aside all sound thinking and wants me to go after the pleasure no matter what it is. It could be tons of attention, hot girls, unabated attention, etc. It is anything to prevent me from having a life of my own.

Of course, I cannot totally shake Leroy off because he is like a parasitic twin. Even as I publish honest works about myself, Leroy does enjoy the reception of the story. It is best, though, if I keep the worst aspects of Leroy at bay and only let him out when things would be beneficial to my true self, e.g. publishing this work.

B: How Leroy Manipulates My Thoughts

I end up manipulating other people because Leroy manipulates my own thoughts. He takes advantage of my paranoia and my worry and turns it around so it gets aimed at others, either through rages or through wooing people half-heartedly.

I sometimes think that all my friends here on Quotev will abandon me, so Leroy takes that and turns it into 'you have to be online all the time because your life IS ONLINE, not in real life.' It is absolutely ridiculous to think that and the fact is: I need a life soon, and I cannot worry about Quotev all day long.

For the longest time, I went right along with it and caused drama at every stoplight of my life on there. I never thought of the implications that a trail of broken hearts would bring. Now I know, finally, and it is not pretty. I do not blame Leroy because Leroy is in fact a part of me. I instead blame myself because technically I did it, although I was not in the right state of mind.

Leroy also amplifies any bad situation and makes it horribly bad. He will insinuate that it is not just bad, but the worst thing ever, so I retaliate that much more harshly, and I end up causing damage to people around me. I end up losing friends mostly because of Leroy. (Not always, I have lost one because of gross incompatibility.)

I would talk to any random girl and Leroy would give me the ability to temporarily 'love' such girl by giving me thrilled feelings at seeing her fall in love with me. There are at least a score (20) of incidents where this has happened, and it has always hit the gutter when the girl liked me back. Of course, I kicked the dead horse anywhere from 2 to 30 days, and the longer it lasted, the rougher it got, more and more cracks showing, until I just broke and gave up on them, usually due to a religious difference (I am a Christian) or just plain old 'getting tired of them,' which is the lowest excuse to end a relationship.

C: Leroy and Status

One of Leroy's big enjoyment sources is someone's status. The only time Leroy would ever commit to someone is when she had a really high standing on Quotev and/or in real life. I had one ex (really nice girl, still talk to her occasionally) in which I dated on and off 6 times or so, because getting with her brought me up to her level, and made me feel like a 'special individual.' (That is hokey, by the way.)

Of course, that relationship's cumulative time added up to over two months, which was the longest time I ever was 'with' someone. My true self also enjoyed her because she was highly intelligent and we shared the same faith, almost to the T. Yet, Leroy had the biggest inroad because of her status as a person, which was much higher than me.

If you still don't know how status plays into Leroy's pleasure, here is how it works. Leroy pulls me up to such person's status, and I typically am envious of such person's status, so he gratifies my desire to be a higher-class person, at least in thought. That keeps me in a relationship that is otherwise dead as a corpse.

Leroy also craves an ever higher number of following/followers. He wants to surf the web for more fans so the number can go to 100, 200, 500, 1000, and eventually 5000 and above. He gets satisfaction out of that and creates a smugness inside of me that is entirely fragile and could collapse at any time, and when it does, I will. deteriorate faster than a snap of a finger.

D: Leroy and Age

Another source of enjoyment for Leroy is someone's age. For reasons I have no clue of, Leroy tends to enjoy ladies older than me by at least five years. He probably feeds on their maturity and he adjusts himself to be extremely attractive to them. (Trust me, I dated two Filipina ladies and they are both over 25. I did have a good time with both of them because my true self enjoyed their warmth and intelligence. The second one... I had a hard time leaving her because I really did love her little boy. He was SO sweet.)

It is not like Leroy doesn't enjoy younger girls though. He has gotten morbid kicks out of me dating really young girls. (Like 13 years old.) Leroy enjoys the thrill of borderline illegal relationships. (Technically illegal if the romance crosses the line into erotic fantasies.) That is one thing I strive to hold back the most, because I end up becoming a ephebophile, in which I am actually not.

E: Leroy and Attention

Leroy's chief source of enjoyment is attention. Quotev is like the easiest place for just that. Message someone, get a good impression, and you're on your way to stardom. Seriously! I started out with no followers and ended up with almost 400 one time, but that account got banned because of my bad behavior and complete mischief.

Attention is medicine for my inner emptiness. It grants me with another moment of relief from the hurricane of black negativity that would attack me if I didn't talk to people. Yet feeling the blackness in full is probably what I need to experience. The pain, suffering, torture... all of it... Exposing myself to the raw pain of being wounded inside... I think it is what I need.

I really don't enjoy any of the attention. It merely neutralizes the menacing hurt that threatens to eat me alive. Leroy makes me think I will kill myself without the attention, so he eggs me on to keep talking to people on Quotev. Yes, I will eventually leave Quotev when I am fully recovered.

F: Leroy and Quotev

(This section was written the day I left Quotev. Leroy was only part of the problem. Quotev itself was one of my worst downfalls of all time, tarnishing my character and fostering within me some horrible addictions. Someone told me that Quotev was extremely unhealthy, ON QUOTEV, and it inspired me to leave Quotev for good, because I need a life outside of social media, and Quotev is some BAD social media. Do not ever let your 13 year old daughter or son to have an account on there.)

Leroy enjoys Quotev as a whole. It is a place where he can thrive. Quotev is like a greenhouse that cultivates Leroy weeds and makes them grow into rotten trees. To say this, the bigger Leroy gets, the more hurt and desperate I get, and Leroy gets even bigger, until I snap, and end up hurting peoples' feelings. Then either I calm down and continue talking, or I cut myself off the vine that sucks my soul out from within. (I did the latter finally.)

(Read my story 'The Deep Injury' for a far more in-depth examination of what Quotev did to my mental health, and how I intend to recover from such a debilitating dependence on such bottom of the barrel 'social media.')

G: Final Thoughts

Quotev is a very unhealthy place, honestly. This place coops all the codependents and narcissists together and creates a false paradise that allures those who are emotionally sick and weak. It hooks them in, like it did me, and creates a high level of dependence on the place, which then sucks the life out of the user and makes them a 'drug addict' of sorts. I am one of those addicts and I need help now.

H: Update

I have deactivated my Quotev account. Leroy permeated my very existence there, even down to protecting my true self from emotional damage. I tried to shake him off but he kept reappearing in different contexts, creating enmities where friendships should've been.

I randomly snapped at a handful of followers and pretty much told them to drink bleach. There is no excuse for my horrid and derogatory behavior, but the stress of using Quotev as my emotional pill was coming to a head and I finally realized that feeling lonely was better than taking a neurotoxic, narcotic pill to make myself feel better.

I will publish all future poetry/stories/rants to WritersCafe. I need to take a long break from the busy social cabal that is Quotev. I probably will never join again because this is what it does to me. It creates euphoria, then dependence, then addiction, then rages. I will have plenty of withdrawals but I made sure I could never access such a den of horror again.

If there is any good that comes out of Quotev, it is an illusion. Quotev is a small stellar black hole in the midst of the World Wide Web, but whoever goes into its event horizon is not likely to come out without being scarred. I will be in a lot of pain but pray for me. It's the least you could do.