Thursday, August 21, 2014
Yesterday I referenced the fact that my birthday is coming up. Throughout this last year I have been hyper-aware of the fact that I am now in my forties.
And yet though my chronological age marks me as a 'forty-something' the mind and perspective I carry about with me each day is decidedly influenced by a number of developmental stages from my own life history prior to the time I legally became an adult in which my needs were never sufficiently met. There are, unfortunately, a number of periods of time from my childhood in which I felt my needs were not fully met.
Some days I feel like having a level of responsibility typically attributed to a one year old. Other days I am acutely aware of how much pain and alienation I was feeling in the summer of 1982 shortly before my ninth birthday. If you have been following my blog with any regularity you will know this to be true. I have written several times about pondering how little I can recall from the summer when I was a mere eight years old. Still other days I think back on my life as a teenager and how I didn't feel my development needs as an adolescent were being very well met (mostly due to the fact that my father and second stepmother's attention were being acutely focused on my newly born half-brother). I was thirteen at the time he was born. Thus much of my adolescence coincided with the earliest years of my brother's life. Infants and toddlers are naturally essentially completely dependent on their parents or other caregivers for their very survival. It was only natural that my father and stepmother would pay so much attention to my brother. It was necessary for his own healthy development. Meanwhile I felt lost in the shadows. Being lost in a shadowy world of pain and dissociation is never a good experience for someone and especially not for a teenager.
I gradually came to carry around more and more resentment as the years of my adolescence came and went. My pain compounded into a form of silent anguish as I continued to feel insufficiently attended to. I think silent agony is the worst kind of agony you can experience. And yet I am convinced there are many people out there walking around in the world who suffer silent agony. The smiles on their faces hide the anguish within. Smiling and dark humor eventually become some form of adaptation to manage your life in a world that is all too often dark, depressing and nerve-wracking. It's my strong intuition that the comedian and actor Robin Williams used some humor as a way of living (and coping) with his own inner tumult. I see something of myself in the man. And it's thus no wonder his death left me feeling genuinely bereaved...at least for a short spell of time.
My awareness of chronological age, developmental age, missed opportunities, grief, regret and the like was sharpened in the last few days after I read an article on Facebook regarding a young gay man's blog post that apparently has been circulating through the online world. You can find more here.
I think it's only natural that people like to associate with and befriend others who share similar characteristics such as age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The shadow side of such preference arises when we become so locked into surrounding ourselves with those like ourselves (or at least those we perceive to be like ourselves) that we become clannish, unwelcoming, abrasive, abusive and worse. When communities, nations and the entire world become deeply invested in polarities based on some type of identity the outcomes of such polarization can be most unfortunate. Current events that reflect this sad reality are unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, Iraq and the Ukraine.
As for the LGBT world I would like to find and help create a world that is inclusive and welcoming of all types of people.
Yesterday I referenced the fact that my birthday is coming up. Throughout this last year I have been hyper-aware of the fact that I am now in my forties.
And yet though my chronological age marks me as a 'forty-something' the mind and perspective I carry about with me each day is decidedly influenced by a number of developmental stages from my own life history prior to the time I legally became an adult in which my needs were never sufficiently met. There are, unfortunately, a number of periods of time from my childhood in which I felt my needs were not fully met.
Some days I feel like having a level of responsibility typically attributed to a one year old. Other days I am acutely aware of how much pain and alienation I was feeling in the summer of 1982 shortly before my ninth birthday. If you have been following my blog with any regularity you will know this to be true. I have written several times about pondering how little I can recall from the summer when I was a mere eight years old. Still other days I think back on my life as a teenager and how I didn't feel my development needs as an adolescent were being very well met (mostly due to the fact that my father and second stepmother's attention were being acutely focused on my newly born half-brother). I was thirteen at the time he was born. Thus much of my adolescence coincided with the earliest years of my brother's life. Infants and toddlers are naturally essentially completely dependent on their parents or other caregivers for their very survival. It was only natural that my father and stepmother would pay so much attention to my brother. It was necessary for his own healthy development. Meanwhile I felt lost in the shadows. Being lost in a shadowy world of pain and dissociation is never a good experience for someone and especially not for a teenager.
I gradually came to carry around more and more resentment as the years of my adolescence came and went. My pain compounded into a form of silent anguish as I continued to feel insufficiently attended to. I think silent agony is the worst kind of agony you can experience. And yet I am convinced there are many people out there walking around in the world who suffer silent agony. The smiles on their faces hide the anguish within. Smiling and dark humor eventually become some form of adaptation to manage your life in a world that is all too often dark, depressing and nerve-wracking. It's my strong intuition that the comedian and actor Robin Williams used some humor as a way of living (and coping) with his own inner tumult. I see something of myself in the man. And it's thus no wonder his death left me feeling genuinely bereaved...at least for a short spell of time.
My awareness of chronological age, developmental age, missed opportunities, grief, regret and the like was sharpened in the last few days after I read an article on Facebook regarding a young gay man's blog post that apparently has been circulating through the online world. You can find more here.
I think it's only natural that people like to associate with and befriend others who share similar characteristics such as age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The shadow side of such preference arises when we become so locked into surrounding ourselves with those like ourselves (or at least those we perceive to be like ourselves) that we become clannish, unwelcoming, abrasive, abusive and worse. When communities, nations and the entire world become deeply invested in polarities based on some type of identity the outcomes of such polarization can be most unfortunate. Current events that reflect this sad reality are unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, Iraq and the Ukraine.
As for the LGBT world I would like to find and help create a world that is inclusive and welcoming of all types of people.
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I invite you to accompany me as I document my own journey of healing. My blog is designed to offer inspiration and solace to others. If you find it of value I welcome you to share it with others. Aloha!