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. 

Discussions of Equality in High School

It’s easy to forget but sometimes the words we use and how we use them can be incredibly painful and even deadly. 

Imagine for a moment that you have a secret.  Absolutely nobody knows about your secret.  You have tried very hard to keep this secret hidden from everyone, including your family.  It’s not that this secret makes you ashamed or that you don’t want to share this secret.  The reverse is actually true:  You are aching to share this secret, to be honest with the people around you, especially the people you love.  You keep this secret because you have learned by watching the world around you that honesty isn’t always met with reason.  People who have shared this same secret have been met with judgment and ignorance and intolerance.  Some have had their lives taken from them.  Some have taken their own lives because of how they were treated after confessing their secret, after revealing their truth. 

This secret doesn’t make you feel alone.  It makes you alone.  You are isolated.  No one to confide in.  No one to support you.  No one to comfort you when hateful words are thrown around without a care as to who could hear them and how they will be heard.

This is what it’s like for many LGBTQ people. 

Today a friend of mine casually dropped a comment on social media about a conversation that took place in his history class.  The assignment had been given:  Prepare a one page discussion on your opinion as to the state of equality in American society and provide an example of how society could be made more equal.  During the course of the review discussion of the assignment, the teacher asked if there was anything else the class wanted to discuss.  One student blurted out, “Yeah.  Fag marriage.”

And apparently it all went downhill from there.

My immediate question was:  What did the teacher do in response to the offensive language?  The answer:  Apparently nothing.  Students referred to LGBTQ people as “diseased.”  One student said that if he had a child “who had a mental disorder or was gay or trans” he would lock “it” up.  It.  He called his theoretically child an “it” because he needed to distance himself from the humanity of a theoretical child that failed to suit his inherited, preconceived notions of what was acceptable.

And the teacher said nothing.

Another student took this a step further and said that he “would probably shoot it.”   

And the teacher said nothing.

And my friend, the student, was trapped, listening to this ignorance that science abandoned over forty years ago and even contemporary religion has begun walking away from.  Yet, here was my friend, stricken by the lack of compassion, lack of human recognition, his fellow students were parroting.  I stress parroting because kids don’t develop this kind of hate on their own; it’s nurtured into them by parents who were spoon-fed the same nonsense when they were children.

And the teacher said nothing.

I want to stress again that my friend was trapped.  He wasn’t able to leave the class lest it bring more attention to him and his situation.  He couldn’t speak to the point without tipping his hand.  He was forced to sit in his high school history class and listen to people liken sexuality to mental disorders that are deserving of death while the teacher, who was either woefully unprepared to address the topic or woefully uneducated to address the topic sensibly, finally managed to say, “"I don't have a huge problem with it....but do two people really have to get married to proclaim their love?”  Never mind the fact that apparently this teacher did get married to his wife to proclaim his love. 

In case people have missed it, we are in the year 2016.  Applied to this situation, this means a few things:

1.      If you are a teacher who invites discussion about controversial topics over an assignment about equality you had better have the education and the wherewithal to ensure that the participants in that discussion are respectful of the equal standing of all human beings regardless of age, gender, sexual identity, religion, ethnicity, and so on.  If you can’t maintain a modicum of decorum in your class when it comes to these conversations then you had better not invite these conversations.  Today this teacher failed his students.  He failed to model the spirit of a lesson on society’s call to provide equality by allowing students to cross a very serious line in their rhetoric and demeanor.

2.     Absolutely everyone in this country (and even the world) is free to develop and speak their own opinions.  You are not, however, free to treat that opinion as fact.  What makes you, a high school student, more intelligent and more informed than an entire scientific community who rejected your theories decades before you were even born?  What makes you, a high school student, more versed in law and legal issues than the nine men and women who sit on the highest court in the United States and declared that opinions like yours are not valid opinions in a court of law and are therefore out of step with the spirit of the constitution of the United States? 

3.     Parents, if this is the kind of thing that you are teaching your children at home or are subjecting your children to in the life of your religious or faith communities, you better think again about the damage you are potentially doing to your children.  It used to be said that three of every ten people were LGBTQ.  A recent survey reported that nearly half of today’s teenagers identify as something other than straight.  And, yes, that includes young people in the Bible belt and conservative pockets of the United States.  Pushing your uninformed, medieval notions of homosexuality is not only perpetuating ignorance; you are also probably causing stress and anxiety in, statistically, half of the children in your home. 

I’m not going to name names.  I’m not going to identify the school.  I don’t want this to come back and cause problems for my friend.  That being said I have absolutely no doubt that a copy of this essay is going to find its way into the hands of the school’s administration and I hope to God that this issue is addressed.  I’m not suggesting suspensions or detentions.  I’m suggesting that students and teachers would benefit from a little education with regard to the history of the LGBTQ movement and how stupid, ignorant, throw away comments can undo a person’s sense of self-worth. 

Thank You

I want to take a small break from the deeper reflections I’ve been writing and say THANK YOU to you, dear reader.  Why?  Well, apart from the fact that you’re taking time out of your day to read this note, I have a few notable reasons to be grateful.

1.     Last night when I checked the readership of my blog I saw that not only am I reaching people in the United States and Germany (as I’ve done since the beginning), I also have readers in Ireland, France, and Poland.  You don’t know how cool it is for me to see that much interest in what I have to say.  Since launching my blog on January 27, 2016 I have had nearly 370 viewers.  I’m not a math major; I’ve often said that math is evidence of the reality that there is an ultimate evil in the world.  But those 370 views works out to be an average of 14 people per day (I think) cruising by.  That astounds me and humbles me.

2.     I logged into my publishing account last night and learned that my book, These Are The Days, has not only earned a 4/5 star review (my first review!!) but I have a royalty check about to drop.  I’m not going to lie—the royalty check is a nice thing.  What’s even cooler, though, is that people are reading my book and seem to be liking it.  I am so grateful for this!  When I first self-published the book I was so worried that not only would people not enjoy the book (in part because I did it on the down low and didn’t have an editor sweep through it), but that I would take the risk of exposing myself for nothing.  So far that hasn’t been the case.  You guys are awesome!

3.     Because of the support I’ve seen through watching people come to my blog and read my book, I have been so encouraged.  There are still those moments when I worry that people will discover who Troy Comets really is but until then I feel like I’m doing some good.  That’s an affirmation I sorely needed in my life. 

4.     Also because of your support I am roughly one fourth of the way through a new manuscript for a new story.  It’s another LGBT “coming of age” book but I think it’s a little more complex as it tackles topics like culture, identity, stereotypes, and bigotry based on race, sexuality, and religion.  Feeling inspired after seeing all of these numbers and reports, I wrote what I think is one of the best scenes I have ever written last night.  I can’t wait to share it with you!

I am so grateful to you, dear reader, for joining me on this journey.  I’m sure that some of the people who visit my blog and read my book are not too different from me, being trapped in a place where coming out flat out isn’t an option.  Believe me, I respect that and pray for the day where we can all be who we were meant to be.  I understand completely your desire to learn more, participate vicariously, and keep yourself safe by not subscribing and deleting your history. 

But for everyone else, if there is one thing more I could ask of you it would be to find and follow me on twitter.  I’m still learning the twitter ropes and all the cultural pieces of the twitterverse, but I think that what I appreciate more and more about twitter is the ability to be in rapid and sometimes meaningful contact with people.  I think we all need someone out there to act as a hole in the wall into which we can whisper our secrets and dreams and aspirations without fear of consequence.  Since it seems that Troy Comets has taken up residence in that hole in the wall, please know that I’m here for you.  You can follow me on twitter @TroyComets.

So, again, thank you.  Someday hopefully I can find the words that will convey what you mean to me, dear reader. 

Panic

I had a panic attack the other day. 

I’m not exaggerating or engaging in hyperbolic rhetoric.  I seriously had a panic attack the other day. 

For those of you who have never experienced a panic attack or who have never witnessed someone experiencing a panic attack, let me try to explain what this feels like.  More specifically, maybe, let me explain what it feels like for me.  Do you know that feeling you get when you’re driving a very hilly road at a somewhat unsafe speed and you crest the hill and your body seems to gain altitude faster than your heart?  Or that feeling you get when you’re in an elevator that is designed for people other than tourists so it actually moves quickly and not at a snail’s pace so, again, your body loses altitude faster than your heart?  Imagine just that sensation for a prolonged period of time. 

But of course a panic attack is more than just a physical sensation.  Imagine every real or perceived criticism your mind can generate, every real or perceived fear or judgment you’ve ever been subjected to, every real or perceived pressure you’ve experienced occurring to you all at once.  Imagine every rational and irrational worry bursting through the door of your subconscious and demanding your immediate and complete attention.  Imagine losing control of your reasonable mind to entertain panic over things you really have absolutely no control over.  It’s a profound sense of powerlessness that literally leaves a person gasping for breath and desperately trying to escape one’s own skin. 

That’s what a panic attack is for me.

There aren’t a lot of accurate depictions of a panic attack on television or movies.  Face it, of the mental illnesses writers can afflict their characters with, anxiety is B level material.  I think there’s one exception to this rule, though.  There is a comedy/drama produced by the Australian Broadcast Company called “Please Like Me” that tackles a number of contemporary issues head on including mental health.  One of the actors, Keegan Joyce, does a phenomenal job portraying Arnold, a character who struggles with anxiety and panic attacks.  Here’s a clip onyoutube of the first time we see Arnold having a panic attack (it starts at about 2:50).  Here’s another clip of how the show’s main character, Josh, works to calm Arnold while Arnold has another panic attack (just be advised that not everyone responds this quickly to de-escalation or even responds to this approach).  Oh, and be aware—there’s language in these clips.

Panic and the anxiety that creates it can be absolutely crippling not just because of the panic attack itself but worrying about having a panic attack brings life to a crawl if not a full on stop.  There are periods in which I won’t leave the house on my own because I stress about having a panic attack in the middle of a store somewhere.  It’s a valid fear, by the way.  I’ve had to drop my shopping and race to my car a few times in the past.  Each time it gets worse because that irrational part of your brain begins to whisper things like “Everyone’s watching you, you know.  They see you come in.  They know you’re that crazy guy who picks up a cart full of food and then leaves it in the middle of the bakery.”

For me there is no rhyme or reason to my panic attacks.  Sometimes, after the attack is over and I have an opportunity to conduct a post mortem on the corpse of the panic attack, I can’t even determine the cause of the event.  For example, I had an attack about a month and a half ago just before bed.  I tried very hard to bring someone along on this journey, to explain what was going on inside when it was happening, but I don’t think it made much sense to her and I don’t think it did me any good.  In the end it was very much like Arnold in that first clip:  Don’t touch me and just leave me alone.

What I do know is that the triggers for my anxiety and my panic attacks are all external.  Something on the outside of my body pokes something on the inside of my body, drawing attention to an issue or a fear.  And then it pokes it again.  And again.  Soon that spot is enflamed and the issue or fear is blown completely out of proportion. 

There is a really cool word in psychology.  The word is “catastrophizing.”  As in, “When I have a panic attack, I automatically catastrophize everything.”  In other words, the irrational part of my brain takes over and carries the topic or situation to the most ridiculous extreme outcome, the most catastrophic culmination.  This is like Arnold in that second clip; there are no options because absolutely everything is messed up and set against you. 

I think my panic attacks are about the only time when external stimuli completely hijack my sense of being.  These evil invisible demons who follow me around and whisper devastating thoughts into my subconscious inevitably seize control of my brain and my body.  They induce the physical reaction I described before, where my insides aren’t quite at the same altitude as my body.  My breathing becomes shallow.  My thoughts turn dire and intense.  I literally look for a way to physically escape the setting I’m in because I think that if I could just change my surroundings I could protect myself from the mounting anxiety.  It never works, of course.  You can never escape from the things inside.

National Public Radio did a piece a few weeks ago on combatting anxiety by externalizing the self-talk that people use on themselves to drag themselves down.  It was a piece originally run on the podcast “ReplyAll” in which a guy talks about how he created a spambot to email him comments to trigger his anxiety.  He set it up as a website; people could go to the website and enter in all their fears and anxieties.  When I got to this point in the story I actually rolled my eyes and expected to hear how the bot would email positive affirmations in an attempt to mitigate the effects of the guy’s anxiety.  That part didn’t come.  Here are some examples of some actual comments that the bot sent:

--I don't agree with all the people who say you are weak-kneed and monstrous. 

--Most of your friends are doing okay, which makes me wonder why you are so a burden on others. 

--I respect that you just live your life and don't care if people think you are exhausting to know and not interesting. 

--People on Facebook look at your picture and think: strangely repulsive and whiny. 

--Ask yourself, do you always want to be deficient and likely to die soon. 

--People pretend to be nice to you but they're thinking: weird-faced. 

(Taken from an article you can find here:  http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/01/guy-outsourced-his-anxiety-to-a-spambot.html )

The whole idea was apparently to externalize this self-talk so that it would be easier for a person who struggles with anxiety to disregard it.  Instead of these comments appearing unbidden in your brain, they would show up in your email box.  Theoretically the change in orientation would decrease the impact of the self-talk.  It apparently didn’t work too well.  The guy who created the bot took it down because it made him too anxious.

Here's a link to the original piece from the "ReplyAll" podcast.

Here’s the deal.  At least for me. 

I have dealt with anxiety for most of my life.  Because of my education and experience, I know the psychology behind it and the standard approaches to treatment.  I know the breathing exercises and how to try to anchor myself in the moment in order to regain control of my racing brain with all of its doomsday observations.  I have a prescription for Ativan that I take as needed.  Knowing all of this and having these resources really doesn’t make a difference in the end, though.  My anxiety hasn’t gotten better through therapeutic interventions or through educating myself.  Part of this is because of the state of my life.  As you already know, dear reader, not very many people know exactly who I am and the anxiety that weighs on me because of this is extremely heavy some days.  But I really don’t think I can escape my anxiety any more than I can escape my eye color.  Sure, I can cover it up and pretend it’s not there or that it’s something else but that doesn’t mean it’s gone.  I think, for me, anxiety and panic attacks are just part of my make-up.  It’s not going to go away.

But….

Just because it’s not going to go away doesn’t mean I am going to let it control my life any more than it does. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  You read that statement and you remembered what I said at the beginning, about being afraid to go out in public sometimes and having to leave public spaces at other times.  No doubt you’re curious how I can live, subjected to the control my anxiety has over me, and then proclaim that I’m not going to let it control me any more than it does.  Here’s what I mean.  I can choose to be a victim of my anxiety, become its prisoner, and let it confine and restrain me.  Or…I can acknowledge it as a part of who I am and incorporate it into my story.  If it controls me, it drives who I am and what my story is.  If I seize control of how I understand my anxiety and what it means to live with it and endure it and how it affects me, then in the end I control it.

It’s why I’m writing this post right now.  By sharing the story of my struggles with anxiety and how panic attacks affect me and, more to the point, accepting that there is no magic mental surgery to extract “the anxiety center” so that I can be “normal” gives me the ultimate control of how I define my anxiety.  If I leave it a mystery, refuse to acknowledge it, distance myself from it, or put control of it into the hands of a spambot, then my anxiety controls me.  Writing about my anxiety in this way not only empowers me but it turns this thing I suffer from and all the horrible things I experience because of it into something more endurable because, through my story, hopefully other people will learn more about themselves, whether they struggle with anxiety and panic attacks or not. 

In the end it’s all about how we will use our experiences in a way that help us define ourselves and give us power over our own stories.  By naming, owning, and accepting the not-so-savory parts of our personality we truly get to know ourselves and become more balanced as individuals. 

Nobody has it all together.  Nobody is happy 100% of the time.  Everyone has a struggle.  It just takes time to accept this and learn from it.  Let me be clear:  It’s not about learning to be “okay” with every horrible experience you’ve had or every way your body or mind betrays you.  It’s about not letting those betrayals define you and seize control of your story.  It’s your story.  It’s my story.  It doesn’t belong to anxiety.  It doesn’t belong to depression.  It doesn’t belong to eating disorders or image disorders or physical impairments or horrible voices from within or without.  When we give up that control we will always lose sight of who we are, how special we are, and the good that we can do.

The Story of YOUR Life

In “These Are The Days,” as Tyler struggles to come to grips with his sexuality and the dysfunction of his family, he often looks at Caleb and Caleb’s family and expresses a desire to have the things Caleb has.  To Tyler, Caleb has everything figured out and has a healthy family that supports him unconditionally.  At one point Caleb shares some advice his mother shared with him:

“When I came out to my mom,” Caleb started slowly, conjuring the memory in his mind.  “She said that we all wish we could be something or someone other than we are.  All of these people we want to be like, we don’t know their whole story.     Are they really that smart or good or inspirational?  Do they really have it all together?  And more importantly, how did they get that way?  Something or someone happened in their lives to help them become the person we see, who we end up being jealous of.  My mom said that instead of focusing on other people and their stories we should focus on our own story and make it the best it can be.”

People are constantly looking around themselves and comparing their own lives to what they imagine to be the lives of the people they respect or envy.  Notice I said “imagine.”  Our imaginations are really good at filling in the blanks that exist in our appraisal of other people’s lives.  Let me give you an example.

I’m fascinated with youtuber culture.  I can’t tell you how much I enjoy watching someone who is figuring out their gifts, who has the ambition to figure out the technology, and who not only  discovers a voice inside of themselves but a following in the world that wants to hear that voice.  There are some people on youtube who have literally changed the medium.  People like Zoella (who just crossed the ten million subscribers mark on her youtube account today) set the bar high.  They originate quality entertainment, collaborate to augment their own skills and gifts, and even sometimes articulate very real struggles they face in their lives. 

Those of us who peek through the youtube window into the homes and lives of these internet celebrities sometimes walk away wishing that what we just saw was a part of our own lives.  We all do it.  I’ve done it.  I talked about this a little in my first blog post; a part of me watches these incredibly talented people who seem to have their lives together and/or seem to be having the universe handed to them and I envy that.  I sit and wonder what my life would be like if I had the access to today’s technology fifteen years ago or if I could figure out “a voice” or “an angle” that would help me accumulate a following and all of the opportunities that come with that. 

The problem is, of course, that the five to fifteen minute video that is opened to the world via youtube only shows a small portion of the 23+ hours that remain in that person’s day, not to mention the 167+ hours that are unrecorded from that person’s week, 52 weeks out of the year.  Like I said, some youtubers are good about speaking to the world honestly about some of their struggles.  Going back to Zoella, I’m deeply impressed that she has so openly spoken of her struggles with panic and anxiety.  Some youtubers have powerfully shared their coming out stories.  Others never draw attention to their low points or their struggles or the challenges they face in life. 

And that’s okay.  Maybe that’s not a part of their voice or their vision.  I don’t think it’s the responsibility of every youtuber to offer the world a 100% accurate portrayal of their lives.  I do think it’s important for us to remember, though, that when we look at youtubers or recording artists or actors or that kid in our class or the person at work—all of these people who seem to have it all together, who appear so talented, who are lucky enough to have everything go so smoothly for them—we have to remember we don’t know their entire story.  We only know what we see.  Everything else that causes us to wish their life was our life is simply a product of our imagination. 

In reality the only person’s story we know completely (or as completely as we possibly can) is our own.  Too many times we look at our own stories and discount, discredit, and disregard them.  Our experiences are mundane, our talent is negligible, our opportunities are limited. 

Here’s the problem with that thinking.  When we compare the story we create for that person we envy to the story we muddy up for ourselves, we corrupt our story. 

How many of us would sit by and listen to someone tear another person apart?  “Your life is a mess!  Why can’t you be more like so-and-so?  Why are you too stupid to figure things out?  Why can’t you be funnier?  Why can’t you do your hair different?  Why don’t you have cooler friends?”  If we were walking down the street and came across someone being so insulting and abusive to another person, very, VERY few of us would keep walking.  We would do something to intervene.  But this kind of abusive talk is what we subject ourselves to all of the time when we compare ourselves to other people, when we minimize our own story and glorify the stories of people we don’t even know.  And like all victims of verbal abuse, we eventually begin to believe the things we so harshly tell ourselves. 

There is no greater power that we can be given than to take ownership of our story.  By all means, be honest with yourself about your shortcomings.  I’m never going to record an EP and I’m never going to paint a masterpiece.  But I am much more than my shortcomings and I will not give my shortcomings and my failings center stage in the story of my life.  I will be candid about the difficult things as best as I can, but the story of my life is not the story of a victim.  I will not exaggerate my gifts and talents but I will take pride in my knowledge and my abilities and how I am able to use these things to help others.  I will tell my story by telling my story not by drawing comparisons with the stories of people I wish I could emulate. 

God knows it can be a struggle to wrestle control of your story away from that voice in your head that likes to tell you what you lack and how far short you fall.  I think the power of our narrative is like any other muscle in our body; we have to exercise our commitment to telling our story for it to become as natural as catching yourself from falling on the ice. 

Before I end this entry, I want to address the irony of my advice to you.  “Physician, heal thyself” or some other similar sentiment has probably crossed your mind while reading this post.  How can someone who seems to be trapped by other people’s expectations be qualified to comment about the need to resist being trapped by our understanding of other people?  I’m not going to insult you by saying, “Take it from me.  This is a lesson from the trenches.”  Instead I’m going to remind you of a couple of things I’ve already said.

First, taking control of your story is a struggle.  It’s not something that happens all at once.  It’s also not something that, once done, won’t need to be done again several more times.  We all have ups and downs, good times and bad.  And that little voice inside each of us is always ready to start tearing us down again.  How we struggle to own our story is one of the fundamental themes of our stories. 

Second, we find those things in us that we can do and we embrace them.  I can’t come out at this point in my life, but I can write.  I can share my knowledge and my experience.  Like I said, I won’t exaggerate my gifts and talents but I will take pride in how I use these things to help others.  And that’s really what the writing of Troy Comets is all about—offering people the help and support and experience that is in me that only Troy Comets can express right now.

So, how about you?  How do you own your story?  What struggles have you had to overcome to take control of your story?  What nips at your heels, trying to trip you up and so you fall back into that old habit of talking to yourself in derogatory ways? 

As always, share what you’re comfortable with and if you ever need to talk, I’m always here.  

Oubliette

There is a word that I learned a long time ago.  I’m not sure how I was exposed to it; maybe I learned it from one book or another.  The word is oubliette.  It’s a French word and, if memory serves, means “place of forgetting.”  In a practical sense, it’s basically a very isolated dungeon cell. 

I don’t know why this word has stuck with me over the years.  Words tend to do that to me; I learn the most random word and its etymology and it’s permanently carved into the tissue of my brain.  But this word, oubliette, is one that has been especially bewitching over the years. 

It’s human nature to want to forget things like embarrassing experiences.  We all have those “I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die” moments, as if the underside of that rock would become a metaphysical clinic for specialty brain surgeries.  Once we’re checked in, the world famous French surgeon, Escargots à la Bourguignonne, would skillfully work his medical magic and remove the mortifying memory.

The thing is, though, that even if we could remove the memory of our embarrassing blunders, other people would still remember them.  And isn’t that what makes an embarrassing moment embarrassing—that other people were there to witness our screw ups?  We feel embarrassed because we are worried about how people will judge our words or actions. 

When I was a completely awkward and totally uncool teenager (as opposed to the perfectly uncoordinated and exceedingly maladroit adult that I have become), I remember one painful incident in which I said something and walked away wondering when exactly I had become the social disaster I had just witnessed.  I grew up in a small, rural community.  In our community was a store on the corner of the intersection that boasted the only stoplight in the entire county.  This was “The Merc.”  Merc being short for mercantile, an all-purpose store that sold everything from paint for your kitchen to long underwear for grandpa.  For some reason or another I had just stopped at “The Merc” before heading up the street to the county fair where, as luck would have it, I would run into my much cooler cousin and one of his friends from the upper echelons of our class at school.  For some reason that cannot be explained, that completely defies logic, that still makes my inner self cringe and curl up into the fetal position, I told my cool cousin in front of his super cool friend, “You should go to “The Merc.”  They have pants on sale.”  I am not exaggerating when I say my cousin and his friend exchanged a look and my cousin literally did the slow, “Okay.”  I said a hasty goodbye and walked away, looking for a place where my humiliation could be forgotten. 

It wasn’t so much what I said, though I suppose that was the catalyst for the embarrassment I felt.  It was how my cousin and his friend saw me in that moment that was the reason I felt embarrassed. 

This isn’t an example of an oubliette.  This is an example of what everyone deals with.  Now let me show you what a contemporary oubliette looks like.

When someone is gay and either hasn’t arrived at a time and place in which they can come out or simply is trapped in a life where coming out isn’t an option, that person is literally locked away in a dungeon inside themselves.  Sometimes the dungeon is of their own making; more often than not it’s the prison which was created by religion and perpetuated by society.  This isn’t about worrying about how people react to the things we say and do.  This is about being terrified at the prospect that people will react poorly to who we actually are. 

Psychology tells us that the prefrontal cortex, that part of our brain behind our forehead, helps us control the things we do and say.  These are our “social breaks” that, as a rule, keep us from saying or doing stupid things at the wrong time.  It’s what helps us from constantly producing episodes in our lives that would force us to seek out the skills of Dr. Escargots à la Bourguignonne

Psychology also tells us that we can’t control our sexuality.  Whereas there is a part of our brain to help protect us from perpetually living out embarrassing moments, there are no “sexuality breaks” to keep us from being attracting to any socially acceptable gender. 

We can learn to cope and recover from embarrassment.  I mean, eventually I was able to look my cousin in the eye again.  When we are trapped in the prison of a sexual identity we can’t admit or express, we truly find ourselves wanting to forget.  We become walking places of forgetting.  We repress, we deny, we compartmentalize—all because we realize there is something about ourselves we cannot change that could or would cause unmitigated damage if it were truly known.

So, like a prisoner locked away in that deepest, darkest dungeon who eventually forgets who they are and what human contact is and even that the love of God touches them in the most abandoned recesses of the most abysmal prison, too many LGBTQ people, trapped in their own private oubliettes, begin to forget these fundamental needs of survival.  We are convinced by well-meaning people that God does not love who we truly are.  We put up walls that prohibit human contact we are programmed to desire lest we betray ourselves.  We desperately try to starve and even kill the part of us that makes us who we are because we can’t possibly be someone that everyone from society to our own family tells us is not acceptable.

It is the most isolating prison imaginable.  It is a prison without walls, where anxiety is the chain around your neck and fear is the jailer.

So why am I writing about this?  Why would I talk about something that’s so depressing?  Something that, thankfully, fewer and fewer people have to struggle with because our culture is finally changing?  There are a couple of reasons.

The first is that, in writing about this, I hope that it gives you a glimpse into the struggle that nearly every LGBTQ person moves through at some point in their life.  Most people find a way to be pardoned, or at least paroled for periods of time.  Others live their entire lives locked inside of themselves, watching the world experience all that it can while they languish in their oubliette. 

The second reason is that I hope this serves as a reminder.  With all of the success and progress of the LGBTQ community in the United States, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that there are still pockets in our country in which this progress is denied and even undone.  And that’s just in the United States.  Think globally.  Think about the places around the world where to confess who you truly are is to literally risk death.  For all of our progress, we still have a long way to go.

What are your experiences, either with embarrassment over something said or done or with being locked inside of yourself?  I would like to hear your story.  Share what you’re comfortable with.  And remember, if you are locked in your own oubliette, you are not alone.  People are here for you.  I am here for you.