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Wrote this in a comment on a Youtube video about parents who have disowned their children and why earlier today :
My parents never disowned me because that would have meant noticing me and also would have been too much work. Turns out you can ignore a child and treat them like they don’t exist and aren’t worth anything without going through the hassle of throwing them out. I was an unplanned and therefore unwelcome child and was treated as such. I had no friends, was bullied and outcast at school, and my teachers didn’t like me either because I was such a pathetic, contemptible child. So why waste compassion on someone so worthless? Plus I was way too smart for my own good. I had a very cold childhood from which I am still thawing out at the age of 48. Very little warmth or light reaches my frozen, distant heart. I can’t get really close to people because I have never been. Even my beloved best friends are not truly close to me. On the outside I am a funny, bright person but on the inside I am as cold as the interstellar void. And I don’t know what to do about that.
me, youtube, august 31 2021
Would have included a link to the video but my browser lost all my tabs. Grr.
Nothing new to my loyal, patient, and wonderful fans in it. But I guess the video knocked some more icicles of trauma off my frozen heart.
I guess i have an urge to tell people about my tragic childhood partly because I could not tell people about it at the time.
I didn’t have the words. The rape took them. Locked them away with the rest of my emotions when I fled what was happening to me the only way I could : by retreating deep into my shell.
And that continued into the rest of my crappy childhood. I could talk about a lot of things of an intellectual nature but I didn’t have the words to talk about how unhappy I was.
I didn’t even have the awareness to realize how wrong it all was. Neither did I have the self-worth to feel like I deserved better.
I just coped as best I could, like any abandoned child.
And like I said in the comment, I am still thawing out from that cold as midnight tundra childhood. I am acutely aware of the profound wrongness of how I grew up and I can feel all the places where the love and joy and human connection were supposed to go.
I know that I have profound interpersonal issues. Exactly how profound they are I will not know until I am healthy enough to actually attempt to connect with people on something like a normal human level.
You don’t know how broken something is till you try to use it.
I try to imagine truly trying to connect with a lover or even just a close friend with benefits. A fuck buddy, if you will.
And it’s not a pretty picture. As much as I like to think of myself as easy to get along with and fun to be around and a very open person, I know that the truth is that anyone trying to get close to me is walking through a minefield and I can’t help them avoid setting off some kind of explosive traumatic reaction in me because I don’t know where the mines are any more than they do.
I’ve never gone down this road before either.
So I imagine there would be a lot of mood swings. I have too much pride in my self-control to take them out on my paramour du jour, but some would be bound to spill over via my projecting empathy anyhow.
Sorry, whoever has to deal with that. I’d protect you from all of it if I could but when you’re as broken as I am, it leaves a lot of shrapnel lying around for folks to step on.
More after the break.
Dream to me now
So I was talking to my friend+ Luke online today and I joked about sneaking him in to Canada and claiming he is my long lost cousin.
And he said, “Yeah. Very lost. ”
So I said, “Me too. But if we’re lost, let’s be lost together. ”
Then I sent him a link to this song :
And eventually he replied that he didn’t have a reply song for that.
I told him that didn’t matter. What mattered is if he liked the song.
And he did.
And I feel really good about that whole little interaction. I feel like I reached out and shared a little magic with someone I care a lot about by connecting via music. I feel like for just one little moment, I made the world of imagination come alive for Luke by oing something you would not usually see outside of a movie or TV.
And that felt really good. More than that, it felt right. Like for once, I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.
And I want more.
Not sure what to do with this information right now, though. As a writer, I already try to create that kind of magic for people. To connect them with something bigger and better than life and take them out of themselves for a little while.
But that’s a pale imitation of what I did with Luke today. For one thing, sharing that song with him was very personal. It’s a song I love that means a lot to me. Sharing it with him was like sharing a little piece of my heart with him.
I can only hope that it was magical for him too. That it made him think I am someone really special, because I am.
I have real magic in me. Not the bullshit with spells and magic symbols and so on. The kind that really exists and can, through the power of shared imagination (aka art), can fill us with wonder and joy (and laughter and fear and all the rest) and make us feel like we have truly touched something bigger than our mundane lives.
That’s the true Disney magic, and it’s my magic too.
And I want to share it with the world.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.