I realised yesterday that all of the projects I had done was a way to find mattering. With the podcast, I was definitely trying to reach an audience where it felt like I mattered. Sometimes I hate that this blog is basically all about starting with my childhood, and what seems like the burden that I bear.
I would never say that it is actually a blessing or some kind of curse. In one way it has been a blessing because I believe that if you write down your own exploitation [sic] then it is better.
I don’t remember when happiness was described to me as boring, but it could be when I grew up in a house that valued sensation-seeking above all else. It was as if too much pleasure was on the menu, a refusal to curb appetites. I don’t know where this came from, whether it came from what was known as scarcity mentality back in the days of the various movements that my family had gone through. But what hid behind this dissatisfaction also seemed to be a tight disregard for the self. The need for everything to be together, and held together, all the time.
The family moves like a monolith, and I had always hated having my fate decided for me. I think that was the primary reason I was rebelling, because even though going abroad had always been the “amazing” thing presented to me “because I would have more options”, I myself never had a say in this, not as a child, and not as a teen. It was the force behind so much of my rebellion, later in life, because of the double-edged sword of not having options, while at the same time being torn from the people I had loved.
It was this helplessness that I think had gotten the best part of me. I think I always wanted to be in control of something because of this, of things in general, I couldn’t and wouldn’t relax into that helplessness – not because it was devastating, but because it was sort-of a numb emotion, an empty void. It really is no emotion at all, when you think about it.
If it was never my decision, what if I had chosen to stay? Did anyone ever give me that choice?