Compact mass.
I’m stuck in a conundrum. I don’t know whether it’s a
generational one or gender-based or a result of being in my 40s and I’m
mid-life crisising all over the place. Or there’s the outside chance that I’m
just finally realizing some things about myself that have always been true,
just not fully acknowledged.
I mentioned to my friend the other day that I may have
reached the nadir of my aimlessness, that point where I finally have to make a
choice to either give in to dissolution and inertial lassitude, or figure out
how to make the way I exist in the world more congruent with a fulfilling life.
Okay, yeah, the mid-life crisis idea is looking more likely. My hair guy
agrees, and he knows these things.
The time has come to wade into the compact mass of my spacetime and figure out how to avoid collapsing in on myself.
My formation.
Nerd. Definitely. Spent my childhood with my head in a book,
my mind in the cloud. I read constantly. I read in the morning, afternoon and
evening. I read in between classes. I read while walking to the bathroom. I
reread books over and over. When I wasn’t reading, I watched TV. I read while
watching TV. I preferred being lost in fictional worlds to existing in the real
one. It wasn’t totally pathological. I did have other things going on as a kid,
but as I became a teenager, it became more and more that important part of my
life, and while I did the extracurriculars, my heart was never fully into band
or softball the way I got into the classes, especially the liberal arts classes,
in school. I loved learning, even math, but especially literature and mythology
and history and anthropology. And I was into SF of course. I mean, come on.
Duh.
I never remember having an answer to the question: What do
you want to be when you grow up? Maybe at one very early point I had a dream of
some sort, but mostly the only answer I could give to something like that was
that I wanted to be in the United Federation of Planets. I did want things. I
wanted to understand every language. I wanted to read every book. I wanted to
take every class I could take. I mostly wanted to be left alone so I could
learn all the things. And that’s the one that stuck. I just wanted to be left
alone. I wanted to not be told what to do or told what as a woman I could do. I
wanted to do whatever I wanted, but I didn’t really want anything more than to
read and to learn.
No detectable features.
That’s a long-winded way to say that I lacked ambition. But
while industrious and ambitious go-getters went out to strive for material
success and driven and/or tortured creatives opted out of the mainstream to
frantically pursue their muses, I opted out of everything I could to pursue
this ungoal of not being an active part of any of it.
In some ways I followed the path of many soon-to-be artists
or philosophers by prioritizing a life of the mind and imagination and not of
material reward. It would be an ur-writer’s journey but for the fact that,
while I took in fiction at a prodigious rate and I enjoyed analyzing it and
thinking about it and seeing the resonant parts of it, I never created any of
my own. I wrote essays for books I read. I imagined Mary Sue stories for my
favorite fictional realities. I created and produced no original content outside of schoolwork.
Despite that, I did get an English/creative writing degree. And I wrote in college. A lot. And
then I graduated. And I stopped.
This isn’t the archetypal artist’s journey story. I’m not talking about how to unlock my muse or unblock my creative impulses. It's more of a meditation on how I don’t seem
to have them. That’s part of what I’m getting at. According to my knowledge of
storytelling, my origin story leads to an end point of artist. That’s the arc.
But it’s not the reality. I take those stupid “what should I do for a career”
tests and they come up writer, but I’m not a writer. (I’m making an effort here
to create this exception, go with it.)
Many who share my origin story ended up as artistic sorts.
If they’re not making a life or a living as an artist, they at least are incorporating
creative endeavors into their everyday life because that’s the only existence
imaginable to them. They need an outlet for their creativity, an outward
expression of this inner drive.
I, however, still just want to lose myself in fictional
worlds, worlds created by others. I’m not driven to produce my own. I don’t
feel unsatisfied if I’m not writing out my thoughts, feelings and ideas. I keep
my daydreams to myself, never voiced outside my head. I have the inclination
towards imagination, but not towards expressing it. It’s like I’m missing some
kind of gene that toggles between passive and active. That’s not it though. I
can be very active in my consumption of fiction. It’s more that I don’t toggle
between input and output. The buck stops here. Forever.
Black holes and event horizons.
It’s not just about artistic expression. My overwhelming
perception of how I exist in the world is as a black hole. I suck so many
things in but never emit anything but toxic radiation that doesn’t even escape the
event horizon. (I have no idea how black holes actually work.) Whether it be fiction or friendships, I look and listen and ponder; I
say/do/create very little. All input, no output.
I’ve already stated that when it comes to art, I take in
other people’s creations, I do not express my inner self to the outside world.
And that example works across the board for my existence. In conversations with
friends, I listen much more than I talk. When I do talk, it’s brief and only
rarely do I truly go into depth on what I’ve experienced or what I’m thinking.
A few people sort of know me, but I’m mostly a blank slate because I never
inscribe anything on my face for anyone to see. I'm really not trying to be mysterious or unknowable or any of that bullshit, I just truly don't know how to create those inscriptions.
I have almost never looked for romance. I do not want to
share my inner self with another. I do not want to share my body with another
either. I remain singular, impenetrable, one entire entity. I don’t feel like
my other half is out there waiting, that I need another to be complete. I feel
whole, intact, inviolable. What is in me stays there, bounded by the event
horizon. My “light” is held within. This metaphor seems to circumscribe my
entire existence.
Charge.
I have looked to archetypal figures for comparison. There’s the hermit on
the hill who lives in solitude and ponders the whichness of why. He (always)
lives alone yet gives sage advice when he’s sought out by youth seeking enlightenment. Not me.
There’s the English professor bachelor who never married and
spends all his (always) time in his books. He is eccentric enough, talks to
himself enough, but he’s an academic. He at least once upon a time taught,
whether well or poorly, and published tracts that maybe no one would read on
why Shakespeare is indeed Shakespeare. Not me.
The old maid. There’s a female. Never married, frigid or ugly is assumed. Not well known for living a life of the mind but then, no one
cares enough about this archetype to explore its variations so who knows? Maybe
that is me, but I wouldn’t know how to begin to relate to this one. Too bound
up in old ideas of women and their value as a commodity to really approach
objectively. Pass.
There’s the unknown artist stereotype. The painter whose
work is found in the attic after his or her death, that he or she never
attempted to publish for various reasons. Nope. No such works exist, as I’ve
already explained. Not me.
I most liked the idea of the childless, unmarried woman who
was a friend of your parents, had fought some good fights and had some wisdom to share, but lived a quiet life of solitude or at least a life apart from men. She seems an interesting figure. But she often acts as an aunt surrogate, sharing her wisdom with the next generation. I
have very little wisdom, and I choose not to divulge what I do have. (And talking to kids? No.) Not me.
I exist in culture, am a part of it, yet do not play a role
in maintaining it. I never wanted to have children; it never bothered me to be
a DNA cul-de-sac. I flirted with political action, found I could not believe in
my ability to make any sort of a difference in the world that way, and gave up
on it with only occasional misgivings. But as an appreciator of culture on
many levels, I worry about my responsibility to contribute something, anything
to its menage. What is the point of my existence if I only suck and never blow?
I’m not going into the meaning of life in any depth here. I’m
only willing to bore you all so much, and this is already 2nd year
college student narcissistic-level boring as it is, but I will just state that
it's the only form of immortality that I do spend time thinking about. It’s
not a strong enough drive to coerce me into creating my Frankenstein text to leave in my
wake so as not to be forgotten, but it is the area of my selfishness that most disturbs me. Notice the abstract though. Giving something to the culture at large; I’ve
given up on the ability to give something truly substantial of myself to the
people I care about. Not going to happen. BTW, I still don't even know why they would want something like that from me.
This is the place where your ideas come to die. I read your
thoughts, I watch your constructs, I contemplate your ideas and themes and how
they relate to the themes of others. I sometimes even manage to distill some of
it into coherency, but then I do nothing with it. I don’t send it back around
the dial with my own commentary, I don’t use it to inspire my own creations;
you’re lucky if I even tell other people about how awesome I thought it was so
at least someone else has the potential to make something tangible of it. I don’t even put the lessons learned in your work to good use in my own life. I identify with
things and gain some insight, but given my lack of interaction with very many
people, I don’t pass it on, pay it forward. If I ever gained a genuine insight
from any of your work – let’s say a miracle happened, and I thought of
something revolutionary that could change the world. No one but me would ever
know about it.
Now we’re getting to see the hubris of this concern. As if I
would ever have anything to say that would impact anyone else in any unique
way. The whole idea is ridiculous. I do know that, yet still I worry about this
persistent inability to share anything with anybody.
Maybe all the worry about being a black hole of suck on my
surroundings is some kind of deflection?
Angular momentum.
So what do you all think? (All, hilarious) I have many
theories. Because I never followed a traditional path in life with recognizable
hit points and rites of passage, I’m in a state of arrested development,
eternally stuck in that 22-year-old’s limited and limiting POV, not able to
commit, not able to conceive of a place in this world where I fit in and just
let all the bullshit go. Still spending all my time looking for an identity
that fits and being self-conscious, self-involved, self-loathing and just generally self-ful.
Or... Sometimes, even though I despise and reject gender
determinism, some combination of my upbringing, my personality, my education
and a complicated relationship with 2nd wave feminism causes me to
feel like I have a male brain in a female body. Fundamental dissonance. I mean, I feel like a woman,
but according to the old rules I don’t think like one. I identified with Spock.
I still identify with Spock. Passion has had a very low impact on my life as a
whole. Physicality as well. Spirituality? I flirted with some paganism for a
while, but it was really just because I liked mythology and hated monotheistic arrogance. I never felt it. I never felt any of it that I can recall.
My most passionate years were in late teens and early 20s.
That’s when I actually had substantial crushes on guys, when I burned with
longing and even wrote some “erotic” stories. That’s when I was invigorated by
stories, was overcome with romantic notions of anthropological history,
understanding to the depths of my being what the apocryphal words “wonderful
things” meant. That's when I explored Wicca and tarot and porn and slash, when a
picture or simply sliding down a stair railing could make me wet and give me
butterflies, make me understand what my body had to offer.
But that was still a small part of my life. Maybe there was
a time in there that I could have followed a different path, chosen the life of
feeling. But that was just my Pon Farr. It wasn’t meant to last. And I never
let my feelings control me. Probably to my detriment. I didn’t make the
passion-fueled mistakes a young person should. I never really let anyone in.
And now perhaps I never will. I have no desire nor plans to do so.
Perhaps it is all a chemical issue. I tend towards
hypothyroidism, and I think that also affects libido; right? So maybe the
Vulcan in me is just a less than optimal endocrine system.
Thing is, Spock was not a black hole. That seems a related
but not causal relationship.
Singularity.
So truly, am I an anomaly or are there lots of us out there?
I am perfectly willing to accept that my current version of this debate, the
mid-life crisis of it all, is common to the point of cliché. Of course it feels
specific to me, but what do I know of other people and their inner lives? I
live in stories, so no matter how adept I become at separating out the tropes
and inaccuracies of our cultural tales, I still find my search for identity and
meaning to be guided by them. I see the types of characters there are out there
and only recognize small portions of myself in them, oftentimes in scary places.
Looking at you Walter White and Dexter. Lumberjacks excepted. Don’t get me
started.
Is it common to feel like you’re a single-celled organism
with an impenetrable cell wall around you? Is that weird? Are there other
people out there who cannot relax completely unless they’re alone? Who cannot
stop watching themselves as an outside observer? Who cannot be a part of a
group without automatically walling themselves off from the others?
Do you think too much about the similarities between seemingly contradictory states of selfishness
and lack of self-esteem? Do you worry about your worth within the cultural
zeitgeist and yet have no desire to share yourself with other people?
Escape.
All that drivel leads me back to my starting point. Or it
will if I revise this enough. Judge for yourself. Aimlessness. Lacking aim. How
can you find an aim when you can’t seem to see or really understand the target?
It’s easy enough to see what is lacking. It’s virtually impossible to conjure
up a vision of how things could be different, much less somehow convince yourself
to desire that difference, to want something so badly as to overcome the
inertia inherent in a passionless existence and really endeavor to make it
happen. When your problem is lack of ambition and no motivation to give of yourself
whatsoever, how do you make and execute a plan with the goal of honestly
sharing yourself with others?
Well, you have to be less of an asshole to start, I suppose.
I still have the barest soupcon of a belief that maybe, if I can convince
myself to actually want something substantial, I will magically gain the
resolve and fortitude that’s been so lacking in my life thus far and actually want to go for it. If I could know what it is, if I could be convinced that I
want whatever it is, then maybe I could force myself to work for it, an idea
rather than a paycheck; to follow through on a goal formed by my own dreams
rather than one forged in practical necessity or made a priority out of circumstance
and Tauran stubbornness and pride. I think I need to be convinced that trying
to attain a personal dream is important. Maybe all the arguments about utility
and practicality and “why would you do that, it’s illogical,” bullshit is just
a cover for not valuing myself enough to think my dreams are important. Maybe
it really is all down to self-esteem and bravery. If so, I’m so screwed.
There’s a line in a Mercedes Lackey book I read a long time
ago, one of the first Valdemar books. I didn’t fully understand it, but it’s
something I’ve thought about a lot and come to hope was true. The idea was that
a persistent inability to do something could hide a true talent for it. I want
that to be true of me. I want to be able to create things, express my interior
life, share it with the world, whether it be of great worth or not. I would like
to think that the difficulties I’ve always had with this are hiding the truth
that I could be really good at it. If I could just flip the switch and let the
light escape my horizon. Then maybe I could find a goal worthier than just being
left alone in my singularity.
PS.
OMG, I can’t help but like that ending. There’s more than
one way to suck.
Did I mention this was a rough draft?
