The View from Here

I was a strange child.

Well, okay.  Maybe “strange” is a bit over the topic.  Let me try a few other words. 

Unique?  Peculiar?  Unusual? 

Getting closer.  But I think all of those words still miss the reality.  Not to mention they carry with them a bit of a stigma that needs to be unpacked.

How about…creative?  Pensive?  Imaginative? 

Hrm.  Those are good adjectives that described me as a child but they still aren’t quite capturing the reality I’m trying to describe. 

Maybe because there is no easy, clean-cut way to describe people.  Or, in this case, the result of what people become because of the coping mechanisms they end up using.

Let me explain.

Today I’m having one of those “stuck on the outside, looking in” sort of days.  It’s a phrase that basically means there’s something separating you from all of the activity you want to be a part of.  Think of it like walking down a city street and passing a huge window through which you see a party going on.  Fun looking people eating great food while laughing and dancing and celebrating life in one another’s presence. 

The reality, though, is that when I say this, like many other people, I mean, “I’m trapped on the inside, looking out.”  In other words, I’m stuck inside myself and the reality I experience, longing to be a part of the world I see around me.  This isn’t a new phenomenon for me.  A lot of LGBTQ people feel this way, especially when they are literally trapped inside of themselves for fear of revealing who they truly are. 

Some of you might recognize this experience.  Growing up, particularly in my teenage years, school was not a pleasant experience.  It wasn’t that the academic work was difficult; I would have had straight A’s if I would have decided that was what I wanted.  What made it difficult was watching the people around me and, in many cases, wanting to be involved in what they were doing but never daring to step up and be involved.  I was awkward and inept, like all teenagers, I suppose.  But the big thing that kept me from coming out of my shell was fear of simply coming out.  How would I dare try to hang out with one of the guys that simply radiated cool when it wasn’t his charisma that attracted me to him but how incredibly attractive he was?  Sandy brown hair, bright green eyes flecked with gold, not a zit in sight, and (don’t you dare laugh) a permed mullet that was so damn sexy back in the day.  Not to mention his sense of humor, his quick wit, his athletic body….

….you get the idea.

Like I said, some of you will recognize the experience.  And you’ll also recognize the fear that grips you in these situations because you’re so worried about being “too interested” in something he or she does or says.  What if I laugh too hard?  What if I ask the wrong question?  What if I just say the wrong thing and he figures out who I actually am and what I actually see when I look at him?

When those are your fears, when you live with the anxiety of being discovered and outed, it just becomes easier to withdraw and live inside yourself.  If you don’t interact you don’t risk interacting too much.   Sure, that means watching the world move on around you—people laughing, having fun, falling in love, having relationships—but it’s worth the occasional twinge of pain at being left behind if you can protect yourself.

Isn’t it?

I mean, look at it this way.  If the story I’m about to share would have happened today, it would have ended quite differently.  When I was in ninth grade I was the victim of what today would have been considered an assault.  Or worse.

It was in an art class.  “Back in the day” we were required to take a certain number of art classes, music classes, writing classes…the artsy classes that are only occasionally offered now as electives because there’s not enough time in the day to indoctrinate students on taking standardized tests.  These classes were mandatory in my school.  It was a large room that seemed to ramble on in every direction.  The main part of the classroom was near the door.  Large, wooden worktables with worn tabletops which had been nicked and painted and stained by generations of pubescent Picassos were our desks.  I don’t remember what the teacher was lecturing on that day or what we were actually working on but I do remember the sense of panic I experienced when one of my classmates took a wire used for slicing chunks of clay off of the larger blocks and, from behind me, wrapped it around my neck and pulled it tight.  I’m not sure how long he held the wire around my neck but I remember the laughter of his friends and the pain when he finally released the wire.  I don’t know where the teacher was when this happened; he never did find out about it.  Plenty of students on my side of the room saw what happened but no one ever said anything.  Probably because I never said anything.  I forced myself to laugh, as if I was in on the planning of the morning’s entertainment.  I knew that if I made an issue about it my complaint would just draw more attention and more attention was not what I wanted.

If this was the kind of thing my peers did when they only suspected I was gay, what would they do if they actually knew I was gay?  If I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, walked the wrong way, talked the wrong way, gave someone too much attention….It was just easier (and safer) to withdraw as much as possible within myself.

I think this is how my imagination and creativity blossomed. 

I began to write in junior high school, which for me began in seventh grade.  Puberty had arrived, bringing with it a number of realizations that couldn’t be unrealized.  This is when I started pulling back within myself.  But once there, apart from the world outside, I would create worlds and scenarios.  Sometimes I would even bring the people around me from the “real world” into my imagination; if I couldn’t hang out with them in the “real world,” I could hang out with them in my fictional world where I could be the cool one that they wanted to hang around and emulate. 

So I wrote stories starring mythical versions of myself and the people who were either too cool for me to talk to or the guys I was too attracted to that I avoided lest they look into my eyes and see my soul.  Looking back at the thought of writing those stories I have to admit I’m embarrassed—but not for reasons you would think.  I’m not embarrassed because of what I turned my fear and anxiety into and how I attempted to capture the personalities and characteristics of my classmates.  It was the writing that was cringe worthy. 

I think some of the best writing, some of the best fiction, has to come from something relatable and something real.  Learning to take my struggle and turn it into a narrative in which I learned to expose my thoughts and feelings to even fictional versions of the people around me was an important lesson for me to learn.  I still do it.  In These are the Days, I’ve inserted pieces of myself and people I know into the characters.  In the new story I’m working on I’ve taken it a step further and am actually using people I knew as the rough outline of the characters in the story—and it’s working really well.

Where am I going with all this?  Well, I have two points I need to make.

The first point goes back to where I began:  I’m having a “trapped on the outside, looking in” sort of day.  It’s been….an undisclosed number of years since my high school days but old habits die hard.  There are a many people whose own paths mine has connected with in some way, whose light I find refreshing and inspiring.  Being a connection oriented person I find myself aching to learn more about these people.  This is why I hate doing “meet and greets” at concerts; the twenty minutes or so I have with the artist or artists isn’t nearly enough for me to develop that connection—especially when I have to share the artist with other people with meet and greet tickets.  So, for example, when I try to interact with people through social media and my attempts fall flat, I feel like I’m looking in through that large window at fun people having a fun time and I have no idea how to get involved. 

Still happens. 

I think it will always happen. 

So I think it’s important to remember that I’m in control of how I respond to this feeling.  If I let myself be consumed by the sights that are holding my attention through that window, I’ll become rooted to the spot.  I’ll never find a way in and I’ll just make myself feel worse and worse.  But if I choose to change my perspective, to leave that spot and turn away from those tantalizing sights, I might someday find my way “into the party.”  Or…better yet….I might find something even better to be a part of.

Remember, though, that the grass is never greener on the other side. 

The second point is this:  You aren’t alone.  I know there are people reading this who can identify with my story.  I know there are people out there who are victims not only of the ignorance and prejudice of the people around them but who are also victims of their own coping strategies, the things they do to make it through life.  Things like disengaging from the world around you because you’re too afraid that the world around you won’t accept you.  It gets better.  It really does.  And the experiences you had or are having, experiences like mine, will give you something.  They’ll give you lessons to help you be a better person.  They’ll give you motivation to become a better person.  And they may stimulate your imagination and creativity to help you help others to stimulate their imaginations while telling them that there is absolutely nothing wrong with who they are.