When no one can handle you, you have to handle yourself.
Fine if you’re an adult. It’s expected. Not so fine when you are a kid.
Especially a kid like me, who could be extremely stubborn and was scary smart so I could think and talk rings around most adults not to mention being self-contained and self-aware enough to know that adult authority was entirely arbitrary and I could defy them without serious consequence whenever I did not like what I was being told.
Honestly, only the fact that by default my attitude was one of cheerful compliance and eagerness to please let me get through childhood without being throttled like Homer Simpson throttles Bart.
Point is, I grew up with no greater power than me in my life. No authority figures to make me feel safe and protected. Nobody with a will strong enough to guide me and show me how to live. Nobody to stop me from hurting myself – or at least warn me of the consequences if I decide to do it anyway. Nobody stronger and wiser and greater than me to turn to when I was scared or anxious or upset or lonely.
In others words, there was nobody. Period.
And the problem with that is there was no discipline for me to internalize. The structure we impose on our kids becomes the structure they then use as the backbone of their own personalities and I was stuck with nothing to build on and thus despite the strength of my will and my mind, I’m a shapeless puddle of goo inside most of the time.
In retrospect, I wish I had paid more heed to others as a kid. Not been so sure of myself and flippant and passively defiant. I would have learned a lot more about life and grown to be a much stronger and better integrated person.
But I don’t think it’s “supposed” to be that way. Nature assumes that there will be authority figures who are smarter and stronger than you around to keep an eye on you and guide you when you are a kid.
It has no backup plan if a kid happens to be born with what amounts to superpowers of the mind and therefore requires someone extremely strong to handle them.
Where are Ma and Pa Kent when you need them? I might not be able to lift a car off your leg but I would take to their down home decency and plain morals quite well.
But I was an impossible child. Nobody could reach me.
Well, except for my babysitter Betty. She was the perfect person to handle me because on the one hand she was very gentle and sweet and I was strongly drawn to that, but on the other hand, she was a tough as nails gal from the other side of the tracks and therefore was not going to put up with any bullshit from yours truly.
So on those rare occasions when I was feeling my oats and being difficult, she could put me in my place with either a cutting quip or a few firm words or, that one time, the ultimate weapon : crying and telling me I really hurt her,
That worked. All the smartass thoughts in my head melted in a downpour of guilt and compassion and I never acted up again.
Funny how that works. Smart lady. She knew that she wasn’t going to out argue me but that I was a sweet and very compassionate kid, so emotions worked great.
I owe her so much. including whatever sanity I managed to scrape together after I was raped. If I failed to become a serial killer, it’s because of her.
More after the break.
IAN #1 : I am not a calm person.
I am, in fact, a fiery, passionate, inspired person with strong, well thought out opinions I am more than eager to share with whoever will listen.
I have fooled myself into thinking I was calm, clear-headed, rational type person both because that is the kind of person I admire and because it is by no means entirely untrue of me.
I’ve kept my head when everyone around me loses theirs before. I have ignored all the BS my social instincts feed me in orders to figure out what the REAL problem is, and been the sage and even-handed resolver of disputes.
But I have also been excitable, hotheaded, combative, argumentative, and overflowing with mad inspiration at least as often.
And I am never going to become a whole and healthy person unless I learn to stop trying to cut off and deny parts of myself that don’t fit my ill fitting and uninformed artificial sense of who I am and learn to just embrace whatever is actually there whether I like it, approve of it, or want it there at all.
After all, you can’t get where you want to go if you don’t know where you are.
So I here smash that false mirror that is our illusion of self and start looking inward to see the real me that has been there the whole.
Yes kids, it really is that easy! (NARRATOR : It isn’t. )
I can be the wise old owl, it’s true. And the sober impartial judge. And the resolver of disputes, spreading of oil on turbulent waters, and promoter of peace.
But I can also be a blazing firebrand intent on setting the world of bullshit, pettiness, and prejudice on fire with my verbal hand grenades and truth bombs.
I can also be a nearly undefeatable truth warrior more than equal to taking on the forces of crazyevilstupid wherever they dare to show their imbecilic heads.
I can even be a mad magician conjuring florid phantasm and illuminating illusions from my cloak of wonders to dazzle, amaze, and astound my spellbound admirers.
All this and so much more lies within me and none of it is the province of the calm.
Let’s face, I am a dreamer….. and we dreamers have power beyond mere logic.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.