It's tricky, since I'm not allowed to talk about pretty much anything that is going on for me this year. But I think I can still drag out a coherent post to help illuminate, somewhat, the processes that are occurring these last many months, and to highlight, perhaps a little, of why I'm not up to my usual standards of productivity and accountability.
That I'm writing this today at all is a good sign -- as of Friday I had vowed to quit everything -- OddOnes, SCARE, work -- and to delete all of my accounts, remove myself from the 'web, and basically just up and move somewhere and see what I could do from there.
Because I was tired; stressed, lost, and feeling very very alone and unloved. I know these feelings were not true, and I think I feel how they are not true today, but subjective and objective reality don't always intersect cleanly. But I'm jumping ahead here, putting the conclusions up here in the introduction.
I had a hard time growing up, and I know that almost everyone else did too. However, how easy or hard your childhood was has no bearing whatsoever on what it was that I experienced as a child, or to the resources (emotional, familial, and otherwise) I had to deal with it at the time. So yeah; my childhood sucked. And it left a mark.
That mark is what I've been trying to deal with this year, because that mark has been fucking up my life and my relationships ever since... forever. So I want to fix it, because I really have no other choice, since continuing on with the level of suck I live with is not a choice that fills me with joy.
Every young child develops, through experience, a model of what the world is like and how they fit into it. The experiences we have as very young children are rarely perfect, rarely idyllic, and often full of sampling quirks and bad data. The model I developed early on was that I was not worthy of love, that I couldn't rely on other people, and that I had to do everything myself... because not only would the key people in my life just not be there to help out, but I wasn't even worthy of such help when they were. I was a nuisance, a burden, a chore.
I know why I developed this model, I know how I developed this model, I know this model is false and based on limited and insufficient data, and I know I've since grown far beyond the world this model was created to help me survive. But none of that helps; the mind is not the heart, and some of this stuff is branded deeply into the soul.
Also, we constantly moved as a family, and I had no home support structure, and limited access to any other family; I had few friends, and I never developed any deep relationships. I was terrified of most of the world, seeing it (rightly, in a sense, but in an amplified manner) as a dangerous place, with the people in it being erratic, confusing, and hostile (school, you know; other children are truly monsters sometimes).
At a late age I decided to learn how to be a people person, like you would decide to learn to speak German or Italian.
As I actually got a girlfriend, and then more girlfriends, and then a wife, and another wife, and another -- I thought things were going okay, but at the same time there was a continued emptiness and things were always coming apart, pretty much on a schedule.
I've had jobs of different sizes and flavors, and hobbies like nobody's business, and I have a fairly dazzling collection of skills and interests -- but most of that was not very satisfying, and I always felt like I was just faking it anyway. After a while at any one location or situation, I felt like I was running out of the energy needed to continue faking it, and that people were beginning to catch on to the real me -- an unlovable fraud.
My sense of worth, of value, has been tied up in what I _do_ and not who I _am_ -- and I've always been aware of that, which doesn't help, because I really had no idea what to do about it. So I continued doing, and feeling useful by that doing.
I spent a week in therapy over Christmas and learned some interesting things about myself, and some interesting models of how the kind of damage I incurred as a child happens, and some interesting tools on how to try to repair it.
But at the same time, my stress levels rocketed, I started dropping the ball on some basic activities and commitments, and of course, at work I started a massive, important, and otherwise interesting if ill-timed project.
So my work project has not been going as awesomely as I like; my role in some of my other community activities seems to be eroding as people with newer and shinier and perhaps more relevant skill sets wander in; and I'm wading around in middle age, thinking I'm going to become useless soon, because frankly, who wants an ancient technologist anyway?
So at Flipside I finally come unraveled. It's a safe environment, safer than any other environment I can think of; it's familiar to me as well, having elements of the world I grew up in (in a sense; it's a long story). And it's hot, and I don't do well under high temperatures. And it's tired, because nobody sleeps well at FS, and I don't to well under sleep deprivation.
I noticed at one point that I was about to come to blows with a friend over... nothing. So I left camp. Gone. And I sat in a secluded area and just let my mind unravel in peace, sobbing and rocking and taking apart my cell phone for much of that afternoon.
Then I curled up under a giant mushroom (really; not real, though, but made from a parachute) and let the world pass by for a while longer, emotionally drained for a time. Until it got crowded, and then I took my damaged self to a quiet bench, but there the tears were more noticeable and the rangers collected around me with their quiet voices and supportive concern. The PET checked me out to make sure I was healthy (I was), and I asked them to get a camp member for me, and they did. I announced that I quit (everything) and allowed Anna and Marla to comfort me for a little while until I could stand life for little longer, and then I returned to camp.
If I had been found that way in the "real world" they would likely have committed me. And rightfully so.
I pretty much spent the rest of that day and the next sitting in a corner ignoring the world, crying most of the time under my hat. I even snapped at Susan, and if you know Susan you know what a crime that is. But my friends were really there for me, in that they let me have that space; they checked in, but didn't push. And on Sunday, when I had actually recovered a tiny bit, they let me re-integrate into being a camp member and doing the radio stuff I love.
Interestingly enough, the deeply buried, deeply scarred child in my psyche noticed something (because I pointed it out to him, but hey, that's one of the tools my father gave me over Christmas) -- and that was "these people are being nice to me; they honestly care for me."
This was, in fact, perhaps the first time I had ever felt (FELT, not understood) that I was cared for, that I counted for who I was, and not for what I could do, or make, or buy, or charm. And this first came from that one Ranger, and then the nice PET, who helped me at the trail; and from Anna, and Matt, and Marla who came to me at the river; and then from my many friends at camp afterward, and even these new people who I had never seen before but took me under their care for a lovely walk and introduced me to some more nice people.
This may seem a silly thing; or maybe you might dismiss it as being untrue, that I must have felt loved before, in all my 46 years, and on some levels this is true -- but that broken child deep inside had not, trust me there; HAD NOT; and then did, and it is the most painful, disturbing, unbelievable feeling to feel friendship for the first time like that. It still hurts. It hurts a lot.
Because, if for no other reason, than it highlights what I have been unable to feel during all the years leading up to this point.
I hope the lesson sticks, that the memory continues to sink in to my psyche; because that is the memory, the feeling, the lesson that I have to learn (or absorb, or feel) -- that the time of being helpless, and alone, and abandoned, is behind me, and the tools and protections I developed then are not needed in the same way now.
I'm not fixed yet, but I have hope that I will be. I have a nice therapist now too, who can help continue this healing. And I have friends who, it seems, will give me the room to be an idiot for a while and still accept me into their midst.
I'm still wracked with misery, but it's more like the pain of a healing scab than the pain of damage being inflicted. Maybe it will switch over to an itching soon... and then heal over.
There are still things I want in my life but may never have, perhaps because these are unreasonable wants. I'll figure it out eventually. And I still don't feel nearly as competent as people make me out to be, but I'm also still learning so I hope that gets better.
I don't have any real dreams to drive me forward right now; I've pretty much let go of everything, and maybe I'll pick up a strand or two as time goes on. I'm doing some things, like SCARE work and DAYJOB, out of a sense of momentum as much as for any internal impetus.
Everything is temporary, and this too shall pass. I wonder what I'll find on the other side of this journey?