Ah, here's a good central thesis on why I am the way that I am, and why I see things the way I do. See, I told you there was a method! I don't share my deeper thoughts, analyses, and feelings with strangers. Now, we're not strangers. You know enough about me, and you'll learn more.
Good evening, Reader, I hope your day has been as relaxing as mine. I spent quite a bit of time asleep today, and although I didn't do much, I did manage to accomplish some of the organizing to be done in my bedroom. It's a nice bedroom, it really is. It's the fact that it's located in my parents' house that frustrates me.
For the first twenty-six years of my life, I was bound by their expectations of me; I judged myself against them, and nearly always failed to measure up. When I was fifteen, my father asked me for a ten-year plan: where was I going to college, what would I study, where was I going to grad school, how many Master's Degrees I would pursue, etc. He insinuated - in fact, he may have flat-out instructed me - that without such a plan, though it may be adapted as circumstances dictated, and without strict adherence to it, I would not be the accomplished family man he assumed I wanted to be. That I would not accomplish anything of worth in my life. In truth, at the time, I think my life's ambition was to be a professional singer and actor, and to have just one girl so much as like me or think I was the least bit cute; "family" was not anywhere on my list of things I expected to be as a "man."
I couldn't provide him with that plan, nor could I come up with much for the five-year plan he asked me for when I was twenty-one. I'm okay with that now; I have no clue what the time-frame of my current plan is, I just know that I like it. It seems to represent my best interests and my desires, and pays respect to what I think it my part to play in the Great Story.
A friend of mine, who may actually get some face-time in my thoughts, recently complained that "saving the world is fucking hard" - and she's right. I just intend to focus in on contributing my small efforts to heal this one aspect of the world. But that was not what my parents had in mind.
It occurred to me, recently, that I've always taken for granted that my parents were always right. Not because they're my parents, and "parents are always right" - I was raised to question things, not blindly follow them (well, except for my parents' dictates, but they failed to realize that you can't teach a child to question everything and to follow your orders without question). No, it was really because as the central authority figures in my life, they quite often showed me how the World was shaped, in the process of disciplining me, teaching me, and even in praising me. They said, more than once, that my sister and I could not find better parents than they were, not for us; I believe it went something like, "Go ahead and run away! If you can find someone willing to take you in, they're more than welcome to you. I'm the best you're going to get in this world." And my mother's career as a clinical psychologist lent a terrible credibility to her views; she wasn't just speaking as a mother, in my mind, she was speaking as one with the education and experience to know the objective truth of her pronouncements.
My father is another story. He simply conducted a verbal reasoning seminar each time we reached loggerheads. He would either ask me what I was thinking when I did X, Y, Z - and really expect me to lay out for him in a bulleted list exactly what I was thinking - or he would simply control the conversation, leading me from point A through natural conclusion, obvious deduction, and simple-fact identification, to point W, and then leave it to me to understand how X, Y, and Z flowed naturally from there. He presented this logical procession to me in such a way that to contradict or gainsay it in any way was to deny reality itself. He didn't - and, in my mind, doesn't - understand the concept of perspective, of inherent subjectivity.
And as many who have argued with me in the past - that old friend I mentioned, not least - will attest, I have inherited this particular bastardization of the Socratic Method. It was a survival mechanism; the only way to have my perspective on life stand up against the intellectual assault of my parents was to present it and to defend it as one would a master's thesis.
It is a corollary of the combination of my parents' high expectations of me, and their assumption of the intrinsic objective correctness of their perspective on life, that I was never shown an ounce of affection that was not qualified. "Of course I love you; you should know that." "What do you mean, you want more physical affection? Last time I tried to hug you, you just pushed me away, I figured you didn't want me to touch you." "If you think I'm not proud of you for everything you've done, or that I don't respect all the hard work you're doing now, you're out of your mind."
That last one always struck me as a little amusing. Because the truth is, these sentiments are only verbalized in any way, shape or form, when I ask for them. During one of these discussions, my mother found cause to tell me that unconditional love was a fantasy. Her words, not mine. The words of a clinical psychologist, telling me that unconditional love was simply a human impossibility, against our very mental makeup.
My reasoning life has been far longer than it really had to be, if you ask me; I could have been left to the average internal life of a child without real psychological damage. But I wasn't just raised to question everything; I was raised to analyze everything. And for all the time since I demonstrated any ability to do that, I have been pitted against my parents' analyses of various dynamics or realities. And until recently, I "lost".
Recently, however, I finally came to understand that my parents were not always right. Of course, in one sense, I've known this since adolescence, when I came to understand certain things about myself that my parents simply could not. But this realization runs deeper than incorrect or inaccurate observations; I'm talking about ways in which their fundamental approach to parenting was not always right. They tried; they did their best, and unlike my father, I am fully capable of understanding that a human being's best effort is, in fact, the best they can do. (The number of times I've said "I did my best" or "I'll do my best" only to be told to "Do better" would be most easily written in scientific notation.) My AA sponsor is fond of telling me, "Forgive your parents; they were stupid, but they did the best they could for you." I'm certainly aware of that, and I really don't have much of a hard time forgiving them. It isn't resentment that spikes when I consider the depth of their wrongs. It's just pain.
Pain, in this sense, is just an emotion; it's sadness. Deep and abiding sadness, yes - for the time being. Sadness at wrongs visited upon me, yes. But not intentionally. My parents have yet to realize that they are bad at providing emotional support to me, and that this disability has descended into incapability over the last several years. (In inverse proportion, it hasn't escaped me, to the increase in the consistency of their disappointment with me.) I feel as though I've lived my entire life not knowing something was missing, only to have certain people point it out for me in my adulthood; now, being aware of the lack, I find it all but impossible not to look back, and retroactively experience the full dearth.
Until recently, I've apologized for my parents anytime someone pointed out the rather harsh way I was reared. They love me, I'd say, I know they do, because I've seen what parents who don't love their children can do to them. Or because they support me materially. Or because we still speak after all the times I've disappointed them in big ways (leaving college without graduating and being arrested leap to mind). I had a pretty cushy childhood, with all the things any growing boy could want.
I'm through apologizing. Yes, I had a cushy childhood, chock-full of things. It's even been suggested to me, by many people quite close to me, that I was so spoiled that a certain sense of entitlement may never leave me. Even if this is true (and I doubt it), then it's also true that a certain feeling that I don't deserve to be loved has also never left me; this feeling is also a direct result of the manner in which I was raised - if I was showered with nearly everything a growing boy could want, then the most important thing was one of the only things missing. Emotional support. Positive reinforcement. Someone recently defined true "love" as "unconditional positive regard." Yeah, I've never had that from anyone in my family. And I may never experience it from them. But I have, now, experienced it, even though it's hard for me to do so.
It's painful that this difficulty arises from a near-total lack of history with this experience. I'm entering adulthood with something of an emotional handicap: I'm far more capable of experiencing and receiving the negative regard of others than I am the positive, and because many don't know this about me, they see the manner in which I deflect or avoid their praise or affection as a rejection, or indifference on my part. There's nothing I can do about that. The best I can do is to love, and to be loved, with the whole of my heart, and to demonstrate that love in all the ways both small and large I know of.
I am quite physically affectionate: it's truly uncommon for me to pass nearby a friend without some sort of casual touch, even just in acknowledgment. I love hugs. I recommend everyone try to fit at least twelve good hugs into their day, as that frequency of emotionally positive physical contact can actually instigate a positive neurochemical response: it can actually give us a boost not just in our sense of well-being, but in our ability to experience that sense. Fantastic thing, dopamine, never been able to get enough of it. (Hence and per, y'know, being an addict.) I'm trying to smile more often, and more genuinely; that's a real uphill battle. I was taught to laugh not long ago. You'd think laughter is one of those things we pick up so early on in our development that it's almost an innate human behavior. The knowledge of and ability to engage in laughter may be learned that early on; but not too many people, in my experience, remain able in adulthood to laugh from the soul, unselfconsciously. To laugh a laugh full-bellied and loud. It's another small thing I do to stave off that negative-affect state I'm so susceptible to.
And I don't blame my parents for all of that susceptability; they're merely unwitting players of a role, a contributing catalyst within the unbelievably complex mechanism that is my emotional life. There are so many more factors to examine. This is just one that has weighed heavily on me in recent days.
Ever yours,
Dash
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