Pt. 7 BUILDING UP
TO BE BROKEN
In
1982, I was born in a suburb of Los Angeles, a first and only child. In a few
years my family would move to New England. Where another few years would pass
by. Nothing spectacular to mention of these early years combined with limited
memories of those times; houses in relatively quiet suburban neighborhoods,
playmates with the children of nearby families, a broken leg at the age of two
and what seemed like an eternity in a plaster body cast, a typical middle-class
beginning. Just before turning six, November of ‘88, my family would move
again, from Nashua, New Hampshire to the South Minneapolis area of Minnesota.
We
settled in a quiet area of the city, again on a quiet block surrounded by
similar families. Everyone seemed to be working towards and achieving almost
identical goals; own a good home with continuous remodeling and upgrading, send
the children to a good “progressive” schools,[i]
achieve more lucrative employment, buy a new car every few years, celebrate and
gather with each other reinforcing the idyllic urban community of the late 80’s
– eat, drink, work, play, and be merry.
Of
course, there were the unavoidable dramas of life. There were arguments between
the otherwise playful children of the block. I was the one only child, but
fortunately I was in the middle of the pack age-wise, so there was almost
always a neighbor to play or watch cartoons with. Yet whatever conflicts may
have arisen between the kids, I was young enough to be shielded by the naivety
from the strange troubles the neighborhood parents.
And
so life continued that way for several years. Although too young to consciously
understand the ideals and the process of imprinting them upon me, this was the
lifestyle that would remain the unchallenged goal of mine for many years to
come. And only through a long and varied painful process of experimental
lifestyles, relationships, and philosophies would I come to grasp the
fragility, ultimate falsehood, and potential alternatives to that moment in
time which for countless reasons I would never be able to return to.
A
few years rolled by, and in that time my corporate father climbed that ladder.
In doing so, the raises in pay led to the natural tendency to afford a bigger
home in a more affluent suburb, commuted to in a shinier car, etc. etc. I was
moved to a more “affluent” school[ii]
(The International School of Minnesota) for the fourth grade, so the social
reset button was pressed again; new place, new people, new set of rules. In the
mean time, my mother was climbing a ladder of her own, as a school
psychologist. Aside from wildly the unprofessional dinner table anecdotes of
her “clients” situations, every new version of each diagnostic test that came
across her desk required a guinea pig; a.k.a. me. In addition to the pains
& humiliations of grade school, I would be continuously subjected to the
rigors of every coming version of the MMPI, Rorschach, I.Q. etc. etc. All this
focus on professional progress in my little family just isolated each one of us
from each other.
It
was 1995 and the age of thirteen was a big year for me. The private school I
was in was divided between an upper and lower school. The Upper school started
at 6th grade, thus I was one of the “big” kids now. Early that same
year I “broke up” with my first mock-girlfriend. In the year or so we had been
close we had never even kissed, but it despite it not being more of a
roll-play, it was an emotional milestone. So was seeing her immediately move on
to someone who until that time had been a relatively good friend of mine. That
was not to last either. At the end of that year, her family packed up and moved
to Cincinnati.
Those
were by no means the only memorable parts of the 6th grade, math
league and show choir provided interesting scenarios as well. But I had always
slacked off in school, and it was getting worse. I never cared much for
homework and managed to weasel out of most of it. The same year a classmate of
mine and I would start to sneak a cigarette behind the sports field on campus,
or smoke grass rolled in paper thinking it was all the same. They were all
hilariously uniformed acts of breaking out and rebelling against a society we
had little concept of. If “they” didn’t want us in the “group,” then we would
actively attempt to fulfill that assigned roll.
I
really just craved some sense of belonging. So, if the easiest way to do that
was to learn to surpass the expectations of what I felt others thought of me,
then so be it. I couldn’t be the athletic, carefree, have to study really,
really, hard to get by, but it ultimately doesn’t matter kid in the center of a
ring of adoring classmates who always gets saved the best seat at the lunch
table. I wanted to, don’t get me wrong, I wanted the popularity but I was smart
and creative and passionate add to that with my delicate face and frame,
traditional popularity wasn’t going to be the case apparently.
I
will argue that the disintegrating security of home probably played a roll in
this as well. My parents would try and hide the arguments and growing
animosity, but the more they tried the more obvious it was. These patterns of
pubescent delinquency and tiptoeing around a marriage under stress continued
into the next school year. And like any pattern of behavior, the longer it
continues; the more intense and ingrained it becomes. By the time I was halfway
through 7th grade, there were fights at school and a growing sense
of disconnect and ambivalence. I got picked on and in turn picked on the one
kid who was even scrawnier than me. There were other kids that were friendly
with me and I to them, but none I would consider friends. That December my
folks pulled me out of the school and put me in the local public middle school.
Now, we lived in the same affluent suburb we had been in for the past two
years. And by that, the local public school was as well funded as many private
institutions, there were just more kids, less rigid supervision and greater
opportunity to fight the yolk of conformity. And so my path was set. From then
on I would see the “norm” with growing cynicism for with each passing year it
would seem to only offer greater disillusion and discontent.
so,
when the time came around age 15, when it was observed that I wasn’t
“adjusting” well, I treated the “professionals” I was forced to visit as
nothing more than a game; given my knowledge of my parents’ discipline, its
testing, labeling and compartmentalizing it was more engaging for me to see how
wildly I could swing the pendulum of clinical diagnosis from one visit to the
next. Keep them on their toes to prevent a harmful classification to place me
neatly within the rigid confines of their big black bible, the DSM-IV…
that
hatred of possibly being categorized like insect at a museum or a particular
strain of virus, that fear of being labeled, kept me with one toehold across
the doorframe of many different social groups for years until I lost control of
the juggling act and succumb to the grander, yet equally ignored problems
facing the whole of civilization and ultimately the planet.
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