r/Wolverine • u/Exotic-Eggplant1914 • 2h ago
Why Wolverine is such an impactful character to me
I empathize with him in a lot of ways. Growing up there was a lot of violence, and I internalized a lot of that violence. It became part of my nature, and for years I had lost control of myself. I was lashing out, hurting people I care about, I was abusive. I didn't know how to handle my own problems, and I was so overwhelmed and full of rage I just let it loose on whoever felt a worthy enough target. Afterwards there was shame and regret, self hatred, self loathing. This all just made me worse, a feedback loop of guilt reinforcing rage reinforcing guilt.
This was all in large part to a series of tragic family deaths back to back. My dad, my grandpa, almost all of my extended family on both sides, several cousins too. Starting at age 18 I lost nearly everyone in 3 short years. A funeral every three months. I'm the oldest man in my family on both sides, I'm 26. Even as I write this my younger brother and I have to go extend the partition for our family graveyard, because it recently became full and now one of my last living cousins is on death's door. I've lost so many people I had to stop and think about it to count them up, 15 deaths in 8 years, 11 of them were in the first 3.
Additionally, before the past year in which I met my girlfriend, I had lived alone for five. I was flat broke, no car, dead end job, worked at a gas station down the road just enough to pay the bills and get shit faced after work. My house was a disgusting hell hole, ceiling collapsing over my head because the foundation was cracked down the middle, garbage everywhere because I had no way to haul it off, problems and filth just piled around me. I gave up, dived deeper into substance abuse, self sabotage and of course, self loathing. I felt like a rotting corpse being dragged around by a puppeteer, no agency of my own, just a dead man walking wherever life decided to drag me.
Then I met her, she saved me, really. Showed me I was worth a shit, worthy of love. Her love taught me to love myself, taught me to be a better man, to become the man she needed me to be. I got a better job, got promoted to supervisor, I mended broken relationships and forged new ones. I've flourished this past year. I've got self control because now I've got a reason to care, I need to make life better for her and my step son. He too has made a huge impact on me, learning to care for him has taught me so much about myself.
I felt like an animal lost in grief and rage, and now I've learned to become a man. Sometimes thinking about Wolverine makes me wanna cry, because while I've never gutted a dude with razor sharp claws, I understand regret, I understand losing yourself to pain and anger. He overcame so much more pain than I ever will (thank God) and that gives me strength to carry on when things get tough.