Upwelling

The last two years have been difficult, and during those years I've sensed something rising, or changing, within me. Something was not yet settled, or complete, but I had, or have, no idea what.  I've been attentive to it, and I've been stitching thoughts together in an effort to assist it's completion, or need. 

My life never made any sense to me until I started writing.  It still doesn't, not really, and I need to make sense of it now, more than ever.  I don't care if anyone sees this post.  Why would they given it's on a blog that's been inactive for two years?  The truth is I don't write for an audience, or for attention.  I write to fulfill the agreement I made with the Universe to be what I've always felt it wanted me to be.  I'm just an employee determined to cover the shift I was assigned.  

The farther away I get from who I wanted to be the more grateful I become for who I am.  I am no longer afraid of what people might think of me, or what they might say about what kind of person I am.  I'm not threatened by anyone leaving me, or of rejection.  I'm not interested in your opinion of me, or pissed off if you don't have one.  Why?  I think it's because I'm finally living, and feeling truly alive, and neither one of those things is what I thought it would be.  I just know that each time I've lost something, or experienced a colossal failure in the past decade,  my capacity for joyful self-acceptance, and genuine self-love has deepened.  Those feel like things you arrive at in the final act   They feel like a strategy for letting go.

My journey looks unchoreographed, and meaningless to anyone who believes the tracks we leave tell our story.  I agree that they do. However, my journey was never on display, or played out in the world.  I barely manage to maintain a place in it most times.  I'm not a competent, or proficient Human.  My tracks, if looked at closely, show a man whose mind was often elsewhere while here.  My journey went through the quiet spaces in me.  I only feel deep connection with others when I retreat into myself, and emotions.  I know someone, somewhere, has had the same one, but to a degree so far north, or south of my own, that it makes me question how sincerely I've been living.  I have strength, and resilience in me, but we all do.  There are some people, however, who are the source for what the rest of us just carry. 

I don't know how extreme joy, or extreme sadness feel to others, but to me they often feel exactly the same.  Whether it's wonder, or grief, there's an emptiness.  I haven't expressed gratitude to the degree I feel it, or shown love in the volume I can afford to give away.   I rarely admit to whatever made me that I feel blessed to have experienced a Human narrative, no matter what that narrative was.  I don't think I express it because quite often I think I wasted the life I was given.  I think I wasted the time I had.  I think I could have been more kind.  I would have liked to have done more for my parents, and children than I did, or do.

I'm writing this post because I'm Humpty Dumpty, and after 53-years of sorting pieces, and aligning jagged edges, I was presented with the pieces to put myself together in a way that explains, matter-of-factly, why I've been relegated to the fringe, and why I can never get past the place I've occupied both in solitude, and community, my entire life.  In fact, statistically speaking, a guy like me who was raised the way I was by the folks doing the raising is in the exact place, and circumstance those statistics predicted I'd be.  I needed to write this because of how I've experienced the judgement of others, and how I've been labeled a loser by family, and a few 'close' friends.  They're wrong, and whether anyone reads this, or not, is irrelevant.   In fact, it will probably take them another lifetime to acknowledge their own behavior, or the need for that behavior to change.  

Shoes.  

A mile.  

Walk mile with other shoes on.  

It's the same tired, discounted, simple principle thingamajig. 

The truth is all men, and women, are not created equal.  Asking each to perform the same tasks, in the same way, to earn basic material items, or to be welcomed into a community isn't realistic, or even possible.  The randomly assigned IQ of 105 to little Ned will never shrink the gap between the other randomly assigned IQ of 160 to big Fred.  Little Ned will pull up to your driveway every Thursday at three in the morning to collect your trash, and Big Fred will do boob jobs, and lip enlargements for anyone with a Visa Gold Card in an office over a crowded Starbucks in Saratoga, and both will convince themselves they are where they are because of work ethic, or personal ambition.  Neither will ever admit one of their 'careers' is essential to the needs of daily life, while the other could disappear without notice, or alarm.

Below you'll find facts about the process of brain development in babies, how it occurs, and what is required for optimal development, as well as how the process is altered by circumstances that are less than optimal.  There are no excuses, or shifting blame.  Just facts.  Here's what happens when you build your house out of straw.  Here's what happens when you build your house out of bricks.  Here's how a wolf blowing on each affects your insurance premium.  I've never said shit to the folks I've been analyzed, and scrutinized by, in part because they refused to listen.  I don't know, or care, if they are now.  Nothing would change.  Besides, it's not their fault that they're idiots.  Mile.  Shoes.  You know.

Now, about that brain.

1. When we’re born, the only part of our brain that is fully developed is the lower part, the ‘primitive brain’.  The primitive brain is responsible for survival.  It’s where the Fight, Flight, or Freeze reaction originates, and not much else.  It’s what kept us from being eaten when we were cave people.   It’s not responsible for high level thought, or functioning.  The higher level parts of the brain,  the complex parts that make us what we are,  develop during the first two years of life, and they require intimate interaction, and connection, with other human beings to develop properly.
2. Baby brains are unique in their design, and growth.  Babies are born with the instinctive ability to elicit as much response as possible from a caregiver.  In fact, a baby learns how much response each individual caregiver is capable of giving, and modifies it’s strategy for each individual one.   The baby knows how much it can extract  from each adult who cares for it.  That’s the design part.  The growth of neurons in a baby’s brain is unique in both volume, and speed.  That’s why they’re capable of learning multiple languages, essential motor skills, and how to play a variety of musical instruments when they’re still in diapers.  The neurons in their brains are in a perpetual bloom.
3. A healthy neuron looks like an extended arm with a hand at the end of it, and fingers feeling about for something to connect to, and expand.  This is how higher brain functions like analysis, and social interaction are formed, and develop.  If a baby has invested, attentive, and emotionally balanced caregivers it's brain will develop in a manner that allows the baby’s brain to form, and achieve those capabilities as well.  And, since the brain is designed to develop in layers that become the foundations for each additional layer, individual brain development is dependent upon, and determined by, the quality of the interactions that take place in the first two years.  I visited homes of friends throughout my childhood that exemplified this model.  Now I’ll invite you to visit mine.  Mine, and millions like mine. We represent the opposite.
4. Two things were in abundance in my childhood household.  One was neglect, or lack of interaction.  The other was violence.  Neglect doesn’t require an explanation.  Violence, however, does.  Although there was physical abuse in my childhood, it was not abundant.  Shouting, and anger occupied more space.  Here’s a fact about the effects of that kind of violence.  “Children raised in households saturated with shouting, and regular angry exchanges end up with mental health problems at a rate higher than children who were targeted as direct victims of physical abuse.”   Here’s the two-pronged reason why…

   
5. A child in a healthy environment begins to construct higher brain segments on top of the lower functioning, primitive foundation we all begin with through the safe, and consistent interactions with their caregivers.  Together, with each interaction, they build a stairway to to this ability, and to that one, and so on, until they complete the design that nature had idealized, and desired.  A child like me, in a household like mine, gets something quite different.
6. When the neurons that are in bloom, and reaching for the next level of construction don’t find it because it isn’t there, they eventually stop looking.  And when they stop looking the part of the brain they were looking to connect to, or form, gets shut down.  It’s a one, and done opportunity, and it has to be.  In households like mine the brain determines on its own that it is unsafe to move beyond the primitive floor.  Fight, flight, and freeze are no longer emergency functions.  They’ve become the essential, and necessary exclusive functions for the environment that must be navigated, and survived, on a daily basis.  There’s no need for the second floor if there’s very little chance of ever being able to relax, or luxuriate in it.  It gets red-tagged, and removed from the blueprint, and it never gets built.  You can’t study harder, or attend group therapy, or take it on as a ‘do-it-yourself’ project in the future.  It’s gone.  No foundation was ever laid to build upon, and building the foundation can only occur during the first social interaction because that interaction becomes the paradigm, or model, for all social interactions that will follow.  It took fifty-three years for science to interpret the the method of construction that explained to me why I am the way I am.  
7. I’ve endured 53 years of whispers behind my back, and blame dumped on my front doorstep by people who were shaped by master builders, and refused to be thorough in investigating the truth of the rumors they participated in spreading. Still, I’m sure I’ll be the lucky recipient of more of the same.  I don’t care.   
8. I don’t care because I can finally stop the hurt that accompanied each attempt I made at trying to act like everyone else, so I could 'fit in'.  I can stop setting myself up for rejection by a demographic I never wanted to emulate.  I wanted to be accepted like everyone else I knew, but I was judged for my incompetence instead.  I was judged by a jury with no frame of reference, or experience, with the very thing they passed judgement upon.  
9. I’m the only judge, and jury I need now, and my first act is to grant a pardon to my parents.  What has hurt me the most, and for the longest time, was knowing how much they wanted to love, and protect me from the atrocities of their own childhood experiences.  Pardoning them so many decades after losing them is the only way I have to tell them that I understand, and that I miss them.  It’s the only way left for me to say thank you for the intent behind an inescapable result.  Susie and Kevin and Donna can fuck off.
10. To the others who were a part of my life at one point, before making their self-righteous exit, I just say thanks.  What I, and you, thought would hurt, and break me, hasn’t.  Your message to me that I’m not deserving of your presence in my life awakened me to how much of my life was wasted navigating your presence in it.  Susie, Kevin, Donna, Chris, Darren, and all the others who migrated away, you brought me to the beautiful realization that I actually get to choose who I want in my life, rather than feeling I must accept whoever showed up to occupy it.   
11. Ironically, it was your conscious decision to implement the most extreme experience of abuse, and neglect I've been subjected to, that allowed me to identify it, at all. You provided the perspective necessary for me to measure what I have never had the capacity to enact on others, by enacting it on me. You brought clarity to what kind of people I agreed to have in my life when you taught me the lesson by walking out, and refusing to hear my side of things. It's impossible to know any story if you refuse to hear just one half of it. You took my trash out for me, so I could see what it had been covering.
12. What was intended to be punitive became an enlightening reward, and I wanted you to know I'm grateful. The hatred I developed toward you, and your self righteousness has transformed itself into the most genuine joy I've ever known. I would never have discovered I'm allowed to tell anyone their treatment of me is unwelcome, inappropriate, or inhumane without your exodus, and self-serving participation in the spreading of erroneous, made up, and personally harmful details through gossip.
13. The clarity of my direction was galvanized, finally, after a decade of watching you interact with my sons, as if you were entitled to do so, while you prohibited me from interacting with your children, or never even informed me you had some. I can't believe any of you would want someone like that interacting with your kids, yet it never appeared to have any internal conflict from your self-made decision it was in their best interest that you continue to do so. You definitely taught them something, too.
14. But, what I'm most grateful for is the writing. Your refusal to agree to allow me to tell it to you directed me to the next best thing, which was to tell it. Period. Furthermore, by removing yourselves, and much of what I loved from my life, you removed the fear of what might be lost by making some people upset. Having nothing left to lose allowed me to collect the courage to use my voice. I finally did, and good riddance.

I know, you're right. Items 7-14 don't really have anything to do with brain development, but it is an upwelling, after all. They have to do with the plight of the individual trying to compensate for what didn't develop, and the way most people with developed brains often lack an understanding of how the events, and relationships responsible for the undeveloped brain destroyed any chance that individual had at knowing real love, or developing any sort of competency, for anything.

No amount of self-will, or determination can circumvent the brain in order to find a path outside of it that works. Whether you like it, or not, the path of partial vacancies is the only path that ever appears. Eventually you walk to where it begins, hesitate because you know what occurs when you're on it, and you turn, and walk away. Eventually, you're not certain you can do it anymore, and it gets harder, and harder, to find reasons to do so. Lately, I've been unable to find any.

People go through things, private, painful things, that no one else ever knows about. They go through them, and do their best to live their lives with the parts of themselves that remain. What they need is empathy, and compassion. What they get is an emptiness that's very hard to fill.

Having been on both sides, sometimes as judge, sometimes as the one being judged, I've come up with a series of question I ask myself when interacting with someone whose behavior seems bent on creating a gap between us, or that's void of focused attention.

"What if today was the one we all dread, for this person, the one we learn a parent is terminally ill, or that we are.  

What if it's the one the insight into our life that grants the truth we sought about how best to live it, the one we hoped for at 20, but came at 45 with the hint that we wasted it, or chose the wrong one because we were scared.  

Or maybe it's just another day for them where the loneliness can't be ignored, or the pain can't be forgotten, and the love they need is no where to be found.  

What if it's the day the ground fell out from beneath their feet, and although we can't see it, they're in the somersault of an inescapable freefall.  

I ponder these things because these things happen, and when they do most of us want to appear strong, or choose to go through them alone. Pondering them reminds me that I don't know what the person has been through, or is going through, or has endured, because we've all been through something.  

After pondering these things I can feel compassion, and show empathy.  

I can cut some folks some slack.  

I can choose not to immediately react.  

I can be humane."