The Examined Life

[lilithsaintcrow]

Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
–Hamlet

I did not know how good or bad my life was until I started seriously writing.

I’ve often talked about this with the UnSullen One. Repressive or abusive families depend on a kid not knowing that what they’re forced into is wrong–it seems natural because it’s all you know. Perspective is impossible to obtain when you’re young and these things are etched on your brain and soul with acid.

A lot of my twenties was about unpacking this long list of things from my childhood and really thinking about them. The baseline assumptions one operates on largely get formed during childhood, and after that it’s hard work uprooting and modifying them. Writing was (and remains) for me a priceless tool for excavation and modification.

I literally had no idea how weird and outre some of the stuff from my childhood was until I started putting it on paper, in one way or another. Sometimes it came out in fictional themes and situations. Often it came out in long passionate diary entries or poetry where I would disgorge pages and pages of stuff, and it wasn’t until later as I reread and thought about things that it started making sense and coming together.

When I say “making sense”, I don’t mean I understood all of it. The crazy doesn’t make sense. That’s why they call it crazy. But I had to find some way of making these things bearable inside my own skull, of drawing their teeth, milking their venom, transforming them into strength instead of the kind of pain that eats holes in your life.

In other words, becoming a monster is not the proper way to fight monsters.

I don’t know if other forms of art–film, dance, painting, etc.–are like this, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t. For me, the writing was a lifeline I grabbed in the middle of raging seas. Writing down and rereading gave me a critical few inches of perspective, enough room to turn the knife so the blade wasn’t in my flesh. It was hard, yes. Examining one’s basic assumptions about life and digging up things one would rather not remember is hard work.

But the art seemed to do it, not me. It provided the perspective, and that perspective provided me with a fighting chance to decide who the person I wanted to be really was.

There’s a price to be paid for this. (Of course.) I always have the writer in my head.

For example, a few Decembers ago I was in a car accident. (Slippery road, deer in my lane, the ditch reached out and grabbed my car.) Afterward I wrote about how the different parts of me were dealing. It went a little bit like this–and you must imagine all of these different parts of me reacting AT ONCE, in the space of a few seconds.

The Inner Self: OMG! OMG! OMGWTFBBQLLAMA! OMGWTFBBQLLAMATAPIR! OMG! OMG!
The Mother: Okay. We’re all in one piece and upside down. First order of business is to get that seatbelt off, then punch out a window in case there’s petrol leaking out…
The Humorist: Holy shit, a deer in the road. Nobody is ever going to believe this.
The Practicalist: Worry about getting out of the car first. Then flagging down help. You have your cell phone. Good. Get out of here.

The Writer: Oh, so THAT’S what it feels like to hang upside down in a seatbelt. Look at how the glass is broken. Take notes. Hmm. I wonder if I’m bleeding? How would I describe that?

A few months later I was writing Mindhealer, and a car crash figured in the first part of the book. After I finished writing that chapter, I felt…purged. Lighter, even. It wasn’t until much later I figured out that was the last part of a process of transmuting a very scary thing into something else.

That process of transmuting is in my opinion a very basic part of what makes us human. But this means that I rarely experience anything anymore without viewing it through the lens of language, of the writer. This is a good thing for me–after a lifetime of feeling too much, I have some insulation. A way of making the world make sense.

The act of writing down what happened to me in my childhood birthed the adult I wanted to be. Before you can become something different, you first need to figure out who and where you are. The perspective provided by writing gave me a way to examine all these things that threatened to destroy me, and gave me the ability to map out where I wanted to go instead.

It functions a lot on what I call the “mask principle”, which is related to the “fake it ’til you make it” I learned in palpation training for massage. If you understand where the anatomical structures are but you can’t feel them, pretend you can. One day the click will happen, and you will feel those structures under your fingertips clear as day.

The mask principle is a little different. We become the masks we wear, in magic, in psychology, and in life. (Vonnegut said it better. He always did.) Choosing your mask becomes a matter of utmost importance. You can choose to be something different–something better, or something else. Writing provided a way for me to see what mask I was already wearing and choose one closer to what I wanted to be.

Here’s a very personal example. I have never spanked my children. I don’t need to, I rarely even raise my voice. The Little Prince and the Princess do not have behavior problems. People come up to the Muffin or me in public places and compliment us on how well-behaved our young ones are. It takes only a look or a word for them to settle down.

This is not the way I was raised.

It was a harsh struggle when the Princess was a toddler to not use spankings. Brutal corporal punishment was a feature of my early life, and I often just wanted to spank because it was all I knew. It was easy, it was the way I’d been taught things should be.

It took a long time of me pretending a calm I didn’t feel and wearing the “mask” of a parent who didn’t need to beat her kid before the mask became reality. The Princess was a sweet baby and a toddler who didn’t need spankings, and she taught me well. The Little Prince is a more challenging child, but I’ve become a parent who doesn’t need to spank.

Writing helped me do that. I poured out frustration, anger, impotence, hard memories, and tears onto the page. I literally wrote my way out of a rage problem, because I did not want to raise my little girl the way I was raised. She was a defenseless, helpless human being–what, in God’s name, did she need to be beaten for?

The breakthrough came one day when I was so mad I was literally shaking. I can’t remember what had happened–probably just some normal toddler stuff, testing the boundaries or a simple mistake. It would have been so easy, so goddamn easy to spank.

I remember my hands turning into fists and the temptation to yell and spank rising…and then, something clicked.

I do not have to be this way. I do not have to live this way. I heard it as clearly as I’ve ever heard anyone speak to me, but it WAS me, the core of who I was, speaking to myself.

The rage evaporated. I took a deep breath, picked up my daughter, and thanked God that I’d never hit her and I wasn’t about to start. I had become a better person by wearing that mask, by constantly asking myself, “What would a parent who never even dreamed of hitting a child do?” And faking it as best I could until the reflex became natural. The habit became reality, and since that moment I have never felt the urge to hit any of my children. That urge literally vanished. The childhood programming had been rewritten.

Without writing, the habit of writing, I’m not sure I ever would have arrived there. And that’s just one instance (albeit a huge one) of what I’m talking about here. Those few inches of perception are hard-won. They really are just enough space to take the knife from your flesh and turn it so it won’t hurt anyone. It’s hard, hard work turning that blade.

But it is worth it. Not only for other people but for yourself. And if you can become what you want to be, the people you love (or who truly love you) will be happier than you can ever dream, for you.

That, my friends, is worth the pain and effort, spilled ink and tears.

Over and out.

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