I can say with a grin that the above statement pretty much sums up my life right about now.
As I type this, I am pausing to take a deep breath, drink in the moment, create thought. I'm at my standard blog-writing, stream-of-consciousness crossroads: Where to begin? Which convoluted pathways of connected ideas am I focusing on today for this brief thesis?
(Yes, I really do think like that. I am not concise. I like words. I talk like that too, although I have a harder time stringing the words together when they are to be spoken as opposed to written. Ask my husband, he finishes my sentences for me because I can never remember the words in the moment of speaking them. ;)
OK, enough about me. Let's talk about me. LOL! God, this is an obtuse, arrogant post! But it needs to be. I need to talk "out loud" about me in order to get to the heart of who I am. Because I've never fully let myself express what's naturally occurring inside. Parts of me, yes, but I can see now how I've caged up (or severely reigned-in) some rather important parts of my personality. And in parsing out those aspects of myself, I can see where my self-censorship once served a purpose, but the need is no longer there. Time to clear out the trash and other mental detritus and let me be me.
Because honestly, I like me. But I terrified that you won't. But I think you'll like me better - or at least tolerate me better - if I learn to allow myself to be unabashedly, unapologetically me.
Mi mi mi mi mi..... giggle!
A lot's been happening in my brain since the Mokey-post. Opening myself to the possibility of being a philosopher has been freeing on so many levels. Since early-childhood, I've been heavily concerned with credibility. Overly-concerned with it (although until recently, I didn't know it.) How can I be a musician if I can't play an instrument? How can I be an artist if I haven't taken an instructive course? How can I do or be anything if I don't have the background to prove that I know what I'm doing or what I'm talking about? You see, I do not believe that my perspective is valid on its own. I was fooled by an adult at a tender 4 years of age. When I realized that what he'd shared with me was wrong, I was completely humiliated. I'm still horribly embarrassed that I allowed myself to be so awfully taken advantage of.
I swore I would never allow that to happen again, and built my life after that around protecting myself from being used or tricked into compliance by anyone. I made myself smart, quick-thinking, people-pleasing, adaptive, and able to guess what was wanted ahead of time so that I was always over-prepared and ready for anything. I also made myself into an unattractive target. I would never again be so pretty as to invite that type of thuggery to myself (note: this transition took several years and a couple more negative incidents with schoolboys). I would make any man who would be with me PROVE that he was with me for me, an no other reason. (I realize I'm really damn lucky I found such a man, as I ask so much of him.)
I would avoid all situations that might lead to feeling a fool. I learned to avoid competition - to lose was to be seen as a bigger target - and slowly got worse and worse at anything athletic. I embraced the grunge movement's sense of style and emphasis on the insides versus exterior appearances. And I kept myself a general expert in as many subjects as possible so as to never get backed into a corner on anything, for any reason.
Sadly, this also means that I shot myself in the foot -- by never specializing, I never became a credible expert in anything. People know I'm smart, they know I have a lot of interests, they know I never settle into one steady livelihood. But what do I really know? How can I be a respected musician if I've never written a song? (But everyone knows I can write music.) How can I write a book on a topic I've merely thought about for 30 years, but never studied or travailed with? ....Writing such a book is the one idea that's stuck with me consistently in life as "Oh, that would be fun and fulfilling!" "Someday, I'll totally do that! Once I've gained some credibility." Like that will ever happen!
By thinking like Mokey, I've allowed myself to look past some of these nonsensical issues. I don't have to be a credible expert to start seriously recording my big philosophical ideas. (Heck, I can always cite corroborative evidence from Other credible sources.) I can look at the people out there whose whole lives seem to revolve around just the things that they like -- things like geekdom or gaming or war reenactment or surfing or whatever -- and not wonder how they can do that, how they can reduce their lives to eat-sleep-work a boring job-do what they want. I've always seen them and questioned myself: How can they give themselves the right to focus so much of their lives on one cultural area, allowing themselves to maintain a lack of knowledge in other culturally significant areas, thus leaving themselves open to ridicule and disrespect by those heavily involved in other areas of society?
Dang convoluted, I know. But when one is trying to shield oneself from ALL forms of unintentional humiliation, these are the kinds of global perspectives one must have. Yes, this is really how I think. It's just so ingrained now, so practiced and part of me, I don't even hear the thoughts in my head. They're integrated into my mental framework that all other thought must occur within.
Which brings me to my latest set of realizations, brought about by copious episodes of the new series of Doctor Who. I can be Mokey! I can finally allow myself to be the philosopher inside! I can let the overly-symbolic, far-too-wordy poet in me that was bashed by my peers in high school to resurface! I can be that esoteric again --> In Public! I can... wait a minute, who's this guy in this show I've been watching for a month now? Holy shite, he sounds like the way I talk to myself in my head. I've rarely found a fictional character that I can so greatly relate to, even among my favorite genres, books and programs. They're never quite right. But here's this totally random and insane smart funny guy with lots of big thoughts and big words backed by big perspectives, and he revels in it. He's totally unembarrassed by it -- no matter "Who" he is.
Don't get me wrong - much as I love the show, I'm not crazy, I'm not Doctor Who. But what the show provides for me is an example of someone who is not afraid of many of the characteristics and personality traits that, within myself, I tend to hide in the dark. It's like, once again, a form of permission to be myself -- oddly enough, I see in Mokey and the Doctor a form of public credibility for the person that I see myself to be inside, that I rarely express at any one time in full. It's like it's OK now for me to be that person, to see what it feels like to let the various aspects of craziness and oddity in me out into the daylight all at the same time. Which DEFINITELY makes me vulnerable to commentary by anyone in my immediate vicinity, because let me tell you, I have a HUGE personality and I talk to myself and sing in public. No SERIOUSLY, that's naturally the person that I am.
But what I've learned from the writers, producers, and actors on this big popular BBC TV show is: What's really important is not that I have the ideas, or think about them, or act on them, but that I enjoy them. Being ridiculed for them doesn't really matter so much if I have a sense of personal satisfaction in life earned by being the way I really want to be, no matter how silly/geeky/ignorant that may appear to somebody else.
(For any Facebook friends reading this who saw my recent photo comment on babies, animals and vagrants -- it's seriously true. My energy is such that when I open up and be myself, all the crazy people on the bus or Metro have to start to talk to me or about me. They talk to the ceiling and ask me questions, they yell at me, they propose to me. And all I'm doing it just sitting there trying to be small!)
....Man, I gotta think about that. Being me will open me up to more unwanted solicitations by strangers. I'm totally unprepared for how to deal with that, having spent my life avoiding them. And God knows I have a small child just like me - who draws people to her, who is beautiful, whose very existence makes it inevitable that she will receive a similar humiliation as I did. If I can't be myself and defend myself, how can I teach her to do the same?
By the way: Hey, Me, Happy Birthday. Do yourself a favor like writing a long blog post about yourself today, get some catharsis out of it. For someone like you, that will make it a much happier birthday. =)
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