This is going to be a big one
Imagine that I am taking a metaphorical running start.
We begin with a question : what if my entire internal narrative is wrong?
What if my entire sad story of a neglected and ignored childhood is completely false and based not on memory but on how I feel now?
What if the people I needed were there for me, but I wasn’t really there?
What if I was only sad and lonely because that wall inside me cut me off from all the love and attention and affection I craved so much?
Have I been guilty all this time?
I have to ask myself these questions because I have to know the truth, and even a mild attenuation of my dark and negative internal narrative could do me a hell of a lot of good, so it’s a quest worth embarking upon.
Let’s start with school. Pouring over those memories in my mind, I can find no flaws. I definitely was a lonely social outcast with no friends for a lot of my school life and when I did have friends they were not great friends.
I was also kind of a bummer to be around too. So whiny and weak.
So there is no chance I am wrong about how emotionally cold that part of my childhood was. School definitely sucked. Boredom in the classroom, terror on the playground, and no friends or social group with whom I could have developed socially.
But I was so overwhelmingly bright academically and in my own way self-confident and assured that people didn’t see how sad I was.
I didn’t let them. Sigh.
But my family and/or home life is definitely up for debate. I have constructed a narrative of cold indifference to if not open hostility towards my very existence and my being timid and therefore neglected and abused and never truly a part of the family.
And there is some truth to that. It can’t be wiped away entirely. In the broad strokes, that characterization is essentially correct.
But the devil, as always, is in the details. Sure, I was not exactly warmly invited to be an equal part of my big family, but it’s not like my parents and my siblings weren’t there, or never talked to me, or treated me like Cinderella’s stepsisters when they’re on the rag.
They were all there, and I talked with them, and while it might not have been as equals, they treated me with respect for my mind, at least.
We were definitely not the warmest of families. In fact for most of my childhood we were pretty detached from one another. Everyone doing their own thing.
But we were definitely the smartest of families. And I could always go to my siblings for a question or to request an explanation of something.
And being a gang of nerds and nerds loving to share information, they were almost always happy to feed my voracious intellect.
And there was love there. I might not have been embraced and included in my family, but I never doubted that they loved me in their own somewhat chilly, intellectual way.
And I loved them too, of course.
So yeah, I was often lonely and alone at home as well as at school, but at home there were people who loved me and wanted me to be happy.
To which my bitter side adds, “Yeah, as long as your happiness did not require literally any kind of investment on their part : emotions, time, support, guidance, understanding, money, attention, protection…. ”
The new narrative is still a work in progress.
But I am open to the idea that my childhood was not as bad as my negative characterization of it makes it sound.
And I know that I will be better off without that negative narrative poisoning me.
More after the break.
More on internal narratives
One of the corniest things you can say these days is that human beings need to tell themselves stories in order to make sense of their lives.
Good thing I didn’t say that, then. Ha ha.
Obviously, the most important story we tell ourselves is our own life story. It’s the one story that turns what would otherwise be just a string of unconnected memories into something that makes sense to us as a whole.
And, of course, it’s the one story that is all about us. We’re the center POV character for the whole dang thing. We were there for all of it.
In our internal narrative, we ARE the Main Character.
But the thing is, we don’t remember most of the things that happen in our lives. It’s not that we can’t recall it, it’s that the natural compression of memories over time is not lossless and most of it gets deleted before it even gets into long term memory.
And what the mind does not remember, it reconstructs. And what does it use as a basis for that reconstruction?
That selfsame internal narrative.
So over time, that narrative becomes the blueprint of our entire psyche. Which can be a problem because eventually we stop adding our memories to the narrative and start adjusting our memories to fit the narrative instead.
Especially if, like me, you don’t have a lot of other life experiences to base it on. The narrative of my life hasn’t changed that much over time, but the changes that have happened have largely been negative.
That’s because they come from the long process of me realizing just how badly I got fucked over in life and so the story just gets worse over time.
But I think I am ready to turn the corner on that now. I am opening myself up to the world again and that means moving out and moving on.
And that means creating a better internal narrative for my psyche to be based on.
Maybe I haven’t finished processing my past yet. Well too bad, I don’t give a shit. Constantly rehashing the past is just a way of hiding from reality and I am done with that shit. I’m going in the opposite direction.
It’s time for REALITY to hide from ME!
OK, not really, but could you imagine? 🙂
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.