So this is continuous happiness.....you know I always imagined it something more....

I didn't sleep last night. At quarter to four, I grew sick of accusatory walls and sweaty skin, so I left the house and a sleeping roommate. I was on a darker part of the E&N Trail, when I happened to look skywards and see a shooting star. Then, when the streak of white had faded from the sky, something else took it's place. A pulsing, heat wave of light. Glimmering and casting invisible tracks  along the black expanse above my head. I gasped and stopped dead in the middle of the pavement. For the second time in my life, I was witnessing the Northern Lights. I was blown away. I watched them and wondered if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing. Probably not. This was my own private light show. Made specifically for the heart-sick little insomniac with nothing else to do but wander the streets of her city at 4 am.

It takes a certain amount of courage to invest in damaged goods, doesn't it? A certain kind of patience....some understanding....a whole lot of dedication. But here's the catch: it's always worth it. I have found that the harder you work for something, the more reward you get in the end. For some people, however, hardwork is just too much to handle. Some people like their lives spelled out for them. They like everything easy. Predictable. That's fine. I'm not one to judge whether this is right or wrong. All I know is, if you give up on something (or someone, for that matter) because things get too complicated, or too 'hard', then you're letting go of a lot of opportunity. Because, if you dig deep enough, you'll always find gold. Even in the most unexpected places. Too bad there are still some people who have yet to learn this.

You may be wondering what I did until I left the house at quarter to four....
I wrote.
And the following is a censored version of what I wrote. Censored because some things are better said privately, rather than displayed to anyone who cares to read but doesn't care to care........You have been warned: this will be extremely long......

I stopped drinking. I poured it all down the sink, and I have been clean since that day. That day.  So instead of being chronically upset all the time, I am now constantly jittery and strung out on lack of sleep and conveniently-timed caffeine pills. No, I'm not addicted, I just have to take some occasionally to stay awake through work after a night of no sleep. I am also devoid of any sexual drive whatsoever, which I'm sure you all need to know, haha. I'm talking none. Whatsoever.
Every day I get a little smaller. Inside. Maybe because I thought this time it was different. And I still fucked it up. Somehow. I read what my sister wrote about me on her blog. She told me the same thing over the phone and I almost cried. Almost.
Where did this come from? A lack of parental stability? I mean, for Christ's sake, I smoked a joint with my own mother the other day. That's not supposed to happen. On the other hand, my mother didn't sacrifice herself for her kids. Having us never changed her. Never. She hardly ever fit into the stereotypical 'Mom' role. She let us do pretty much whatever we wanted.

What does that do to a kid? What did that do to me? What parts of my past have come back to haunt my ability to form stable relationships? Was it the lack of discipline or parental example from my Mom? Was it constantly being shuffled around as a kid? Always a new house, a new girlfriend for Dad, a new city for Mom? Was it discovering the relative that I adored was really an alcoholic child-molester? Was it the fact that addiction and depression runs rampant through both sides of the family?

I think it's time, finally, for a serious self-analysis. Tonight is the night I'll put it all down on paper and try to figure myself the fuck out. Let's start at the very beginning. I obviously carried something with me from before birth, because I was already a little 'off' when I was born. I drove my parents insane by never sleeping. My Mom said I seemed uncomfortable. I've seen pictures of when I was a baby. In most of them, I look happy. But, in others, I look....I can't describe it. Knowing? Knowing. As if I already knew all the terrible things about life. Like I had seen it all. Like I knew more than anyone else, but I couldn't tell anyone because I was 'just a kid'.
Let's fast-forward a bit. Mom and Dad split up. I'm purposefully not going to talk about my sister during this, because her interpretation of our childhood could be completely opposite of mine. So. I spend the remainder of my childhood being traded back and forth. Most of my time is spent with Dad and his girlfriend-at-the-time. Some time is spent with Mom; the most memorable period being on the Queen Charlottes. It was heaven for me, but a drug mecca in reality. Everyone on that island was bored with life, and spent most of the time under the influence of something. My days there were spent mostly unsupervised. I would play in the woods, or close to the woods. It was always wet and it always smelled clean. I have a selective memory when it comes to the house, just like all the others. I remember the general layout, but I can't remember spending any time in any of the rooms. Except maybe my own. We lived with my mom's best friend (my Godmother), and the 'boyfriends'.
So I get a little older. I start school back in Nanaimo. I never stayed at one school for very long. We were always moving. I never got a chance to get used to anything. I didn't see my Mom very much during that time. She moved a lot too, always promising to come to Nanaimo, but never actually settling there until after I had grown tired of asking her to. The only female presence was Lisa, the mother of one of my classmates, who eventually moved in with my Dad and became my worst enemy. Her son was my first 'romance' you could say. The relationship was based on kissing in the bushes and pretending we knew what we were doing. Thank God he never became my brother. That would have been a little unnerving. We moved probably four different times during the Lisa years. Anyway. This isn't my life history, it's my psychoanalysis. Haha.
So it appears that, very early on, I was surrounded by change. I found that I couldn't rely on anybody or anything. 'Don't get comfortable, cuz things are going to change,' became my mantra.
Days spent with my Dad were....'normal', you could say. He disciplined. Spanked. Maybe a little more than he should have, but definitely not enough to raise concern. Mom was the opposite. She did her own thing and encouraged us to do ours. This probably stemmed from a direct rebellion against her authoritarian upbringing and less-than-perfect childhood. I was constantly torn between 'these are the rules' and 'make your own rules'. This may explain why I find it so hard to create my own right or wrong. Anyway. Point being, my life wasn't candy-coated for very long. As I said, I always knew more than I was supposed to. I was smart as hell when I was a kid. I learned a lot just from watching my parents. Not all of it was bad, but I seemed to absorb the negative more than anything else. I learned from Dad that it didn't matter if I was miserable, he wouldn't leave a girlfriend until HE wanted to. He promised that me and my sister came first, but that was never displayed. I don't blame him. You shouldn't have to sacrifice things for your kids. Dad also 'taught' me that sarcasm was an easy way to get out of talking seriously. Almost as easy as avoiding conflict altogether. I learned that adult life was one big secret. One big no-kids-allowed club. And that infuriated me. There was also an element of fear mixed into the whole 'growing up' thing. My Dad didn't have much of a childhood because his Dad didn't have much of a childhood. Therefore, I also got the wierd impression that there was something bad about getting older. Like when my Dad would come home drunk and tell me how I would always be his 'special little girl' and he never wanted that to change and I felt like screaming, 'Yes it will! I'm going to grow up, and then what!?"
Dad kept secrets. Mom didn't. Or at least, if she did, I never knew.  Whatever Mom said, I took with a grain of salt. I learnt very early that promises meant nothing. "I'm moving to Nanaimo" stretched on for years, until I just gave up. With Mom, being a responsible adult was out of the question. Downright ludicrous. Mom gave up on men very early. There were a couple boyfriends here and there, and then none. Dad always seemed to have someone. Growing up between two opposites really fucked things up. I grew up learning all I could in between the secret 'adult life' and thousands of kept secrets. I became an emotional, and obsessively-curious little girl. Everything was drama for me. I narrated my own life as if I was in a movie and nothing was really real and I could do whatever I wanted because it only 'thickened the plot'.

Kids spend most of their lives around their parents. They can't help picking up attitudes and habits that are displayed like ornamental furniture around the house. Why should parents have to censor themselves? Why do some parents feel the need to sugarcoat things for their kids? We'll figure it out eventually, and we'll hate them for keeping the truth from us. I think parents are too afraid of fucking up. They don't want to 'fail' like their parents did. They see their own children as a second chance. They think, "Ok, a fresh start. I'm going to do everything that my parents should have done. My kid will be perfect."
                                             WELL HERE'S THE BIG FUCKING PROBLEM:
That kid is NOT your second chance. That kid is not an extension of your own life. That kid is a self. A human being. An independant life. It doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the world. I wish my parents would have said something like that to me. I wish they would have written me a letter that went a little like this:
"The world is an amazing place, and I'm glad to have brought you into it. From the time you left your mother's body, you became your own person. It just so happens that we will be feeding, housing, supporting, and loving you for the rest of our lives. This is not a sacrifice, it is just what we chose to do when we decided to become parents. That's what parents do. Some people are mistaken in believing that parents are supposed to do a whole lot more. We are not here to teach you things, we are here to provide an environment where you can learn on your own. Life is learning. Life is good and bad. Life is love and hate. We have learnt things in our lives that have made us who we are, but they won't be who you are, and we won't try to make them who you are. We want you to learn on your own, and you will. We will always be here to help you, and we will answer your questions if you ask them. We hope you can learn from us, just as we hope to learn from you. You are your own person. You have complete control over what you say and do. This may seem very exciting, but it can also be very dangerous. You have the choice whether to inflict great joy, or great sorrow on the world. You have to power to love or to hate. You can make your life whatever you want it to be. We know you will make the right choices, because those are the choices you want to make."

Wow. God. Maybe I'll keep that and give it to my own kids. Anyway, sooooo many people are tied down by the same conflict between parents and kids. The parents want their kids to be perfect, so they live their lives through them and try to correct their own mistakes through them. Kids, on the other hand, are seriously influenced by their parents and dread it all at the same time. We've all heard: "Oh no. I've turned out exactly like my mother." Everyone says that. Why? It's obvious. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's because, as much as we despise the fact; our parents set the example. We feed off their version of life. We are recycled and evolved versions of our parents. So what happens when a kid is given the kind of freedom I described in that letter? Does he evolve faster? He sure as hell would spend a lot less time wondering how much his parents fucked him up. I mean, here I am saying, "Dad is the reason I can't commit to anything, Mom is the reason I can't set rules or limits or boundaries, blah blah blah." Well what if they had said to me, very early off, "Look, we're just here to set a foundation. Something for you to build on. We won't supply the wood for the walls or the insulation to protect you. You have to find your own way to build your own house." That's why kids rebel. Their parents try to build their 'houses' for them. They buy the most expensive wood and the most leak-proof roof and the safest windows and doors and one day the kid wakes up and says, "This is not my house." And he has to start all over again. How much time do we waste in our lives 'starting all over again'? How much time to we spend rebuilding what someone else tried to build for us, so that we can finally feel 'at home'? It doesn't matter if you give a kid all the toys in the world and move half-way across the world to find the best climate to raise him in, the point is: YOU are building his house, and eventually he's going to wake up and say, "What the fuck?" and he's going to have to tear it all down and start all over again. I think that's what growing up really is, it's waking up and ripping your world down to its foundation so you can start again on your own.

So here's the question. If you raise a kid from the beginning by giving him his own freedom, what happens? Does he mature faster? Does he fall apart without any boundaries to hold him together? Didn't the hippies try raising kids like that? What happened to them? Some probably grew up to be corporate lawyers and their parents said, "What the fuck? I didn't raise you like that." and that's where they made their mistake. The flipside to raising a kid without boundaries, is having no expectations. And that's tough to do. Even the hippies couldn't do it. Well, some of them couldn't.

So that's life. Building your own house. Learning and relearning things that your parents thought they had taught you in the first place.
What makes people lash out? Boundaries.
Take something away from someone and what do they want? Give someone more than what they need and what do they ask for? Nothing? Usually. Set rules and what can you expect someone to do? Follow them? Ha ha! Setting rules and expecting people to follow them is like expecting people not to evolve.

Humans need to discover their own true nature. It's happening, but slowly. Too slowly. You can't start growing until you find out who you are. You can't live in a world with others until you figure yourself out first. And that's hard to do. Why? Because of rules. Because people see this:
                                                                   YOU CAN'T.
And they wonder why. And they WANT to do it. As sick as it sounds, people do wonder what it would be like to take someone else's life. Why? Because it's illegal. It's the same reason people try weed. The same reason people give up diets. The same reason why, when you were seven, it was fun to hold your breath until you turned purple.
Why don't kids listen to their parents? Because you can't learn a rule by listening to it. Saying 'don't touch the stove' just doesn't cut it. The kid is going to touch the fucking stove, get burnt, realize that it hurts like hell, and probably never do it again.

Ok. So. What does all this come down to? We live in bodies. With souls and hearts and minds. We can't avoid this, we are born with it. Certain things affect our bodies. Touching a stove HURTS. It damages our skin, and then our body has to repair itself. Certain things affect our souls. Ending another life, whether it be a moth, a dog, or another human being, just feels wrong. Certain things affect our hearts. Love feels good. Certain things affect our minds. Learning. It's all very simple, we just complicate it. Think about spiders. They are born with minimal parental influence , and they fly off on little strings of silk and land somewhere to start building their homes. They know exactly how to spin a web. They know how to sense vibrations, catch their prey, and stay alive. It's instinct. They're born with it.

WE are born with it. But we are also born with what we consider an evolutionary miracle: independent thought. What does independent thought do? It clouds instinct.

There is a boy. He goes to school. Another boy steals his lunch, so a fight ensues. Mom says, 'hitting is wrong'. Teacher says, 'fighting is bad'. Society says, 'war and killing are not the answer'. The boy grows up. All around him, he sees violence. His country is at war and he questions. He questions his mother, he questions his teacher, he questions society.

He questions himself.

He questions his instinct.

Maybe he'll end up killing someone some day. And no one will be able to explain why he would do such a thing. Could it be because, when he was a boy, his Mom told him that hitting was wrong, and when he grew up, the whole world seemed to be at war, and he couldn't help but question this? Who was right? Was Mom right? Was society right? What was right? And you know who he didn't ask? Himself. He didn't ask himself. He didn't use his body, heart, soul, and mind. He lost his grip on instinct. What is instinct? In nature, it's survival.

That's how important instinct is. It is SURVIVAL. Anything that clouds instinct is potentially dangerous. This explains why some people believe that a totalitarian form of government is ideal. A mindless, subservient mass of being, with a strictly-enforced code of rules. People think that a uniform set of laws is the ideal way to control the human race. They believe that it is the 'right path'. Trouble is, people WILL rebel. We all know that. We've seen it countless times. It's because you can't artificially reproduce instinct. You can't show someone a way to live and say, "This is the right way." They will always question it. There will always be doubt.

You can't question true instinct. You can't stop yourself from blinking when something flies at your face. You can hold your breath until you pass out, but after that, your body kicks back in, and you start to breathe. So why is there murder? And why do some people kill themselves? Boundaries. Set by other people. They lose track of their own instinct. It all comes back to mankind's curse: independent thought. The realization of our own power. We are the only race that can, and will, consciously decide to end our own lives. Some people realize how much power the have, and they don't progress past that point. They take the lives of others, or they take their own life. Why? Most likely because everything tells them they can't, but they know they can. They don't stop and say, "I have a choice. Yes, I can kill. Or I can'not. The point is, I have a choice." I believe that people are good-natured at heart. By good-natured, I mean able to follow their instincts without influence. Some people need to become familiar with their 'bad-natured' side before realizing their true self. Some people need to try touching a stove, before realizing it hurts, and they don't want to do it anymore. And you can apply that analogy to just about any other situation in life.

There are exceptions. There's always an exception to every rule. There will always be that tiny mutation in the gene of life that blows all theory straight out of the water. Along with independent thought comes a hopelessly-moldable mind. Perhaps this is a survival technique, also. Like when you cross a bridge and you don't let yourself look down (I used to force myself to look down). We don't see what we should be afraid of, and therefore it doesn't exist. Fear doesn't affect our ability to make it to the other side. A moldable mind can definitely come in handy. But it can act in opposite ways. Some people become so lost in their own power, that they test their own boundaries before having a chance to learn anything from them. Some people never make it past the 'I have power' realization. And there is something after that. It's called: 'I have power. But it will never override instinct'. We assume there is more to this power, but there isn't If you kill someone, they die. If you kill yourself, you die and life goes on. You're barely a blip on the radar. So you go from realizing you have this extreme power, to realizing that the power isn't all that extreme. The time period between these realizations differs from person to person. Some people never make it to the second step. Some people get stuck and give up.

This all leads me to wonder if, perhaps, we are the least evolved species on the planet. Think about it: animals are born knowing how to live. It takes us YEARS of dependancy to get our shit together.  Animals do not purposefully end their own development. Animals don't question their own existence (as far as we know). Then again, perhaps we are the most evolved. But we must not get 'most evolved' confused with 'most superior'. Goddamn, that's dangerous. Maybe independent thought is the next step in advanced evolution. It may lead us to an entirely new form of existence. Or perhaps we're making a big deal out of something as simple as birth, reproduction, and death. Humans are famous for making huge deals out of the simplest things, keep in mind.

                                                                                                *cough*millenium bug*cough*

The point is, we have been given the gift of independent thought. Not only do we learn, but we think about what we learn, and we improve upon it. With that, and our extrodinarily-moldable mind, we may as well convince ourselves to make something of this thing called life.

Here's something to think about, since it still stumps me...... There is a need for love/comfort. Take the family pet: a dog. A dog will seek love, as well as food, from its master. I had a dog. I hardly ever fed it. It obviously doted on my father much more, because he was the food-bearer. However, when I would come home from school, my dog would be sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for me, with a grin on his face. Why? I provided no survival purpose for this dog. Or, could it be that love/companionship/comfort is a vital part of survival? As necessary as food and a mate? Is it a safety-in-numbers kind of thing? Or is it in our nature to be social creatures?

I think humans need to feel wanted. Since they can't figure out their own purpose, they like to feel as if they have a purpose in someone else's life. That doesn't explain what part love plays in survival, but I'm sure it plays a part.

 

 

 

 

 
"There were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven."
-Jack Johnson

 
think about it.