I Didn't 'Get It' From 'Them'

Whether it's a good or bad trait or skill, there's always something off-putting about the assumption that it has to come from someone. The inclination to be artistic, an addict, compassionate--even if there is a possibility there's some genetic thread, there is just as easily a repellent, the possibility that it could have been killed off rather than nurtured, passing rather than innate.

It's one of the many ways intelligent thoughts tend to kill off individuality. Some twins love to look alike, but there are also the twins that are absolutely sick of that shadow that comes from always being lumped into something that reeks of some easy destiny. Some celebrity children enjoy hate living in their parents' shadows, some use it to gain their own spotlight. There are so many aspects of personality that are deeper, impossible to pinpoint down to genetics, environment, and so on.

It doesn't matter if your genetic contributors come from a long line of artists. Either who you are embraces and coasts on it, or you loathe it and do all you can to find a life that skews far from the comparison. Still, you'll find that the only way to avoid those comparisons is to go somewhere where no one knows you. Those comparisons always follow and they'll probably be repulsive or complementary no matter how things change. Sometimes the paranoia follows when a stranger makes a bald assumption on where you 'get something' from. Talents aren't necessarily decided by nature and nurture tenants. You can be passionate about something for decades then, just like that, be done with it for good. It's scary to think about, but also curious enough that you can't help but wonder what you might be like over time. I know that my 7 year old self would never have imagined my 37 year old self. My 67 year old self is probably not what I can really imagine either. It's not a lack of wisdom or experience, but largely because I can't possibly understand how wisdom and experience will later shape and manifest.

I've never enjoyed comparisons rooted in assumption, so that leads to a confession not all that startling.

Being compared to my mother is numbing. That didn't change even after she died. The fact that she was almost effortless in life and somehow never did wrong was a painful and confusing message. It got me into trouble and it often made me feel worthless. Don't do what she does--she is rewarded, you will be punished and berated. Very few people were ever able to reach me, to see how her light burned me, to soothe the wounds by saying they saw the flaws. I went back for the pain, time and again, because what hurt also numbed. Did you ever have a healing scab so thick and tight, clawing into your skin, itching, yet peeling it off was a relief, no matter how much it bled and pussed and scarred? That's what it was to love my mother. The fact that I could tell her this, that she'd be awed by my depth and madness instead of hurt and angry...  In the love was the abuse and in the wound was the cure. It didn't offend her. It didn't slow her. She was my best friend but outside of the first nine years of my life, I didn't have a mother in her. I had to learn to self-parent and there were many women, wonderful women, who were mothers to me when I needed one. I did become a motherly type over time, but not through example of my own.

The training wheels on my bicycle came off when I was four. I learned to ride a bike by coasting down a thirty foot hill at a 45° incline with one hand on the handlebar, the other indulging my thumb sucking. Which is often a metaphor for how I stumbled through a great deal of my life. There wasn't someone there to train me. It's possible that I'd have ignored them anyway. Art, sports, gaming--I was good at things I did without much proof in the doing. When encouraged, I'd already been doing it for so long, I was equally surprised they didn't realize it nor how unlikely it was I'd stop.

I'm sure when you have helicopter parents, it's easy to assume you've inherited the good and bad from them. Yet I look at kids nowadays in severe states of abuse and neglect (which was not my case)--even in those cases, there's something in the individual that makes them exceed their circumstances or succumb to them. It's not always a willful or inherited certainty. Again, there are simply some innate traits where people may fight for something but give up on something else. Strong people are strong in areas that they prioritize. You may think someone is strong in everything until you pit them against something they are actually half-hearted about. Then again, even where they are strong, sometimes they are just too worn-out to withstand another fight. Thresholds are there, whether mental or physical, there is only so much pain one can take.

Pain can be absolutely paralytic for me, so I've been adamant about my opinions on how the tortured artist is a bit of a bullshit trope. Pain was not even a driving force. Escape wasn't what I was after. In art, I maneuvered for ways to understand why I felt the world was always kicking me out of normal spaces. I was working out ways to belong that didn't involve hanging myself. I was looking in literal meaning, in metaphors and analogies, in disjointed rhythms and tripping rhymes, in visuals I could see in my head and not find outside of it. 

Creative spaces can be like hospices though. It's a little bit Girl Interrupted with the plastic surface of forced positivity but then you get the wallowers that seem to like talking about being bad at everything or want to have everything done for them. It's a bit the serial widow who slowly poisons the current husband a little too confidently. Even though I've met some amazing people in creative groups, I also realize that taking the mask off attracts the diseases. Or, forgive the Bird Box reference in a time where it's overused but... there are always sweet voices cajoling you to take off the blindfold so they can destroy you.

So I end up breathing deepest in the solitude and isolation of my own zen-like creative space. Even in team efforts with someone I know is reliable, my breaths are measured. It can't be helped. To protect individualism, it will always be a battle to be defined for yourself. To not be taken in by comparison or assumption, the stoicism becomes the happy medium. When working with someone, you still have to discern when to speak and when to listen. While a meeting of the minds can be extremely successful, you can't take for granted the person you work with. They have their own hang-ups and experiences and you have to treat them individually. The larger the group, the more of a challenge it is to unify the voice.

Back on the subject of traits and personality, I'm not offended or hurt or upset by comparisons. If anything, I am motivated to find how I can stand out more on my own. It's a challenge to prove to myself that I cultivated myself. The things that affect me do not define me. I am both grateful and hateful, bitter and sweet. I do have some power over how things affect me and how I affect things. There are some traumas that do create hard limits, but if I become reactionary and hurt someone, I am capable of apologizing when I create that hurt and misunderstanding in someone else.

I realize I'm covering a lot of trails here, but I'm wrapping it up. Busy brains and all...

Lol of course, I don't find a busy brain to be a human boon. As humans, we do too much fucking deep thinking and I don't doubt even idiots do quite a lot of it too, even if they don't end up on the logical side of a decision quite as much. Essentially, it's not the deepest and most profound words that we're drawn to. There are always elitists and self-proclaimed intellectuals that will insist they are looking for that, but I also find those people more likely to drive themselves into a deep misery that eventually needs lighter distraction. I'm more often drawn to those quick and easy thrills, I'll admit. It cracks me up when supposedly intelligent people write this form of entertainment off as lowbrow or that it makes people stupid. Pseudo intellectualism sometimes comes out of some of the most prominent intellectual circles too. In fact, the more a person claims to be an expert, the more likely they are to display the gaping holes created by their biased preferences for what they pass off as universal truth.

Okay, since that sounded like big-word babble, let's simplify. People who paint with one color do not make a rainbow. It's impossible to be completely diverse in a field, but have all the paints ready and make careful strokes. Trying to assume you know everything is a messy blend... that once more just makes one muddy color. Big egos do not make you unrivaled. A healthy ego is one willing to switch to another color, another brush, another perspective. You can still favor red but work with purple and green.

I derail on a lot of side thoughts but the main thing is, we're not meant to be anything. It's poetic and simply neater to romanticize destiny, to find patterns everywhere. People drive themselves into madness with their favorite patterns. It's really freeing when complex guesses are simplified. I love taking complexities and finding simpler ways. As people, our misunderstandings with each other often come with thinking we can apply that to each other. 

But they seemed so happy, there's no way they could hurt themselves.

I'm shocked because that's just not like them.

How often do we hear or even say those things because we were so quick to think we had so neatly figured things out? Or was it simply easier to box away their choices and label them without looking too closely?

You don't have to unpack everyone you meet. It's exhausting, even when down to your inner circle. Yet so many regrets often come from being too afraid to be hurt by the truth. To go back to the paint analogy, broad strokes seem to cover it all, but it's a layer too thin or too unevenly thick and it doesn't go very deep or hold with time. It flakes, it chips, it doesn't last.

For good or bad, I have no regrets with the relationship I had with my mother. I can't blame her for the scars and I still peel the scabs. I may regret more the relationships I lack that rawness with. She had no lack of faith in me, no delusion that I was anyone but me.

She probably got me. I don't know if I could say the same. Whatever we got from each other, death paints that into place. Time paints it differently too. The pain doesn't lessen because we never stop painting someone. Why would we assume that living people can be so easily painted down when the ones who are done are never finished?

We don't need to figure everything out. Hell, I'm pleased when my brain just shuts the fuck up sometimes. Once I've scrambled everything soundly, I could use a mindless bit of fun to wash it down.

Seeing a bit of a pattern? Well, yes. Some things are practiced because the results are consistently comfortable. Some of us are more creatures of comfort, some more risk-takers. For me, I am satisfied with finding a balance there too. I find if I am too comfortable, I worry I am depriving myself of the rewards of risk. I would say it's the way I've always been, but an innate trait.

Although I am not thrilled by being told who I get a trait from, I can concede to it without being too stubbornly against it. I know for myself which parts of me are mine. Most of them. I can also smile or laugh it off when I'm in no mood to argue. Yet, as you can read here, I certainly consider it more deeply than I let on.