I have a very strong instinct to tell people what I know they want to hear.

Instead of, you know, the truth.

Especially if it has something to do with me. At some point in my childhood, I learned that there was no point in telling my parents and siblings the real truth about how i was doing because I wouldn’t get hope, I would get an awkward moment of stunned silence because they don’t really want to know and weren’t really asking, and then possibly something like, “But other than that, you’re okay, right?”.

It was absolutely not okay for me to not be okay.

So instead, I smiled and said everything was fine even though it definitely was not. School was the same soul-destroying routine of boredom (in class) punctuated by terror (on the playground) that makes soldiers lose their minds in a time of war.

But I trudged onwards.

I did the same thing with teachers. Tell them what they want to hear so the tension of the moment will end and the adults will go away and leave me alone.

This was bad. Very bad.

Some of those people may have been able to help me. Unlikely, but it’s possible. At the very least, it would have been good practice in the vitally important skill of getting what you want by sucking up to the people above you.

But I was lost in my own world.

On a deep level, what I was doing was the social equivalent of a chameleon changing its colors to blend in with its surroundings.

I “shapeshifted” into whatever it was I could tell they wanted me to be in that moment, and so it was like I was mirroring what I saw in their minds. \

Put that way, it’s kind of creepy. Like the Martian that looks like whoever you want to see the most in those two Bradbury stories.

The main one – the non-Christmas one – has always had a huge effect on me. I identify with that alien way too much. His torment at the end of that story when he’s trying to be what each person in the crowd around him wants at the same time is something I faced all the time.

Partly it’s because I have a weak sense of self. Maybe that’s what happens when other people’s emotions are so present in the mind. Who you really are gets overwhelmed.

But it can be hard to tell my emotions from the emotions of others sometimes. And there is always the temptation to just be someone else for a while.

I guess for people less likely to put themselves in the shoes of another, being yourself is kind of not optional. You are who you are. You can’t suppress your own troubled emotions by voyaging through the emotions of another.

I kind of envy them their lack of escape routes. My escapism has starved my life of meaningful content and left me with a soul so thin and emaciated that you can use its skin as a map of skeletal anatomy.

That sounded better in my head.

But the first brutal lesson upon which my entire personality is built was how to escape the real world by retreating into my mind.

Even now, it’s very hard for me to imagine staying in the game and fighting instead of constantly fleeing and hiding.

And when even this stupendously low stress life of mine gets to be too much for me, I retreat into sleep.

Maybe I would have been far better off if I had no choice but to stay in the moment and learn to cope with reality.

Then I my soul might have some meat on its bones instead of being as weak and diffuse and amorphous as a jellyfish.

Just how does one build spiritual strength, anyway?

Ain’t no such thing as a soul gym.

More after the break.

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The boy who died

I sometimes wonder about what I would have been like if I hadn’t been raped.

Obviously, my memory of my pre-rape life is pretty vague, both because trauma does that to the human mind and because I was 3.

But I remember being a pretty happy kid who loved life. My days were filled with honey sandwiches and my babysitter Betty and Sesame Street and the Polka Dot Door.

Also Romper Room, but I found that show to be patronizing.

I am pretty sure that had I not been fractured by trauma to the point where half of me went to sleep and has still not woken up 47 years later, I would have continued to be a bright, energetic, charismatic, and downright adorable kid.

At least until I had to enter school.

Then things get a lot more dicey. But I think I would have found my footing despite my lack of kindergarten.

Without half of me being functionally dead, I would have had all of my considerable amount of spunk and defiance at my command and could have used it to defend myself against the bullies both verbally and physically.

So I think I would have made a place for myself somewhere in the social hierarchy. Possibly somewhere near the top if I were sufficiently ferocious in my defense of my prerogatives and my boundaries.

But not at the top. I don’t think even an unbroken me would have the ambition to claw my way to the top of the heap. Because like… why?

I don’t want to run things. I don’t need that kind of responsibility.

I might end up in a leadership position despite myself though, because I have a lot of leadership qualities. I’m a big picture guy with high ideals and the pragmatism and respect for the details to put them into action.

That’s pretty much a leadership role right there. You can’t do that by yourself, no matter how hard I might try sometimes.

I can’t do it all by myself.

But I can’t do it with others, either. I never learned to work as part of a team. I am now and always have been a solo artist.

This is not a brag. I know it means I’m broken in a deep and terrible way. I missed so much of my development because of being so alone.

You can’t develop socially all by yourself in your room.

Not even with the internet.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.