Something rather big came up in therapy today, so I made sure today’s video was on that subject so I could make sure to externalize the thought before it got away.
It went almost exactly like this :
I had never consciously examined the role my hometown and home province might play in my mental illness before, so this was quite the revelation.
I feel like I am still processing it, and will be for some time. The place I come from is, as Doc Costin pointed out, a lot like my depression, to the point where in my mind they are now contiguous – one is merely an extension of the other.
But the place one comes from is such a fundamental part of who we are that it’s hard to really examine it, even though I haven’t been there for 17 years.
From a very young age, I knew I would have to leave. That sleepy small town vibe has no room for mega-minds like my own. My intellect alone meant there was nothing for me in my little town.
Not to mention being gay. Though I understand that’s gotten much better now.
Too late for me, but still, that’s nice.
I learned a lot when I took that trip home in 2008. It was the first (and only) visit since I had moved Away, and it made me realize just how sleepy my sleepy little hometown of Summerside really was.
It’s like the whole town lived at 60 percent speed. The people there don’t see it because they are all moving at that same speed. and there is this palpable sense of quiet despair and fatalism that things aren’t ever going to get better and you’re best off just living your day to day life without thinking about anything more.
After all, why ever dream of something better when you know it will never happen? You would only be torturing yourself for no good reason.
And boy does that sound like my depression.
I imagine that for most of the town it works out alright. It’s not like they live in squalor and misery. They have their jobs and their families and their socializing and their church and those things keep them busy and give them purpose and life momentum.
And the idea that there could be something more to life, that things could be better and that the stultifying slowness rots the soul, either never comes up or comes up and then is vehemently suppressed by the masses as an unconscionable disruption of their peaceful slumber in an attempt to make them unhappy with their lives.
Plus there’s the inferiority complex. Part of the anti-ambition that is fundamental to the Island character is the deep, keen awareness of just how small and silly and weak a province we are and how absurd it is that we’re a province at all.
And that gives us the little-guy feeling of being nowhere near as good or worthy or important as the big provinces and that makes us keep our metaphorical head down.
And I think I’ve been keeping my head down in that exact same way for a long time. I have a deep feeling of not being as real or grownup or legit as other adults and it fills me with enormous shame at being so weak and incapable.
At the same time, I know that my abilities put me far above others. And I hate that.
I just want to be a person, with a job, and a nice place to live, and a husband, and to stop being a drain on the system and contribute to it instead.
And I want this oversized abilities of mine to finally become of use to me instead of hanging around my neck like my buddy Albert Ross.
If I keep investing in my own growth, I will outgrow this cage of mine and finally be able to stand up and take my place in the sky.
I have already outgrown that lil town I grew up in. I’m over it now.
Time to move on.
More after the break.
Leave yourself behind
I think that, unconsciously, I have been clinging to parts of my past out of a blind fear of losing them somehow.
As if I have to hold on tight to every strong memory or they will disappears like morning dew and be gone forever.
And with each of this time anchors, I split off a piece of myself and that little piece stays in the past and divides my mental and emotional resources and I am sick of it.
Time to pull up stakes and let the chips fall where they may.
It’s not like I will literally forget my past if I don’t hang on for dear life. That’s not a possibility. I have an excellent memory and will retain the important stuff.
No, the issue is my emotional investment in the past. It’s the leaving part of myself behind that is the problem. Not only does that divide my resources, but even worse it keeps me from being able to move on with my life.
In fact, arguably, “moving on” is the very thing these anchors are there to prevent. As if there’s no difference between getting over something and “losing” it.
Perhaps this is a deep and hidden cost of my insistence on remembering things exactly as they were, in crystal clear HD, without nostalgia or fading.
All those emotional wounds have been kept fresh and bleeding in the deep freeze of my overweaning superego, ready to traumatize me all over again.
Maybe memories have to fade or become sanitized by nostalgia in order for us to be able to get on with life without a lot of old baggage weighing us down.
Maybe this is one of the many ways in which doing what made sense and seemed logical has, in fact, been very stupid and caused me a lot of pain.
Maybe even people like me are not smart enough to raise ourselves, especially if we stubbornly refuse to let a belief in magic or any of our instincts help. I just wanted to stick to what’s verifiably real.
Turns out that’s not enough.
And all because I couldn’t just relax and trust my instincts. I had to be “in control” of myself at all times. And that meant quashing anything that didn’t “make sense”.
Well it ain’t too late to learn different.
Might as well start now.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.