Today, I woke up late. It was shortly after 10AM.
I have the week off school. It is reading break, so I don’t have much to do. Nevertheless, I am trying to fill the time with productive things, which I don’t think is too hard for me.
When I spend time alone, the things I choose to do are productive.
When I spend time with others, the things I choose to do are things that, I think, facilitate human connection. Since I yearn for human connection, I much prefer to spend my time with others. I think it’s a good thing that I tend to do things that are meaningful alone, but that doesn’t compare much to doing silly things with others. I much prefer silly things with other people, especially if we get to talk while doing it, assuming I am close enough to talk with the person.
There is a barrier experienced by all people concerning human connection. In order to truly be yourself around others, you have to be vulnerable; in order to be vulnerable, you need to feel safe; in order to feel safe, you have to trust the other person. Human connection, therefore, relies on trust. To connect with someone, you have to trust them enough that they will not take your vulnerabilities and make you feel shame for them. You must believe that they will not reject you for your flaws, or what they perceive to be your flaws. This is obviously a very difficult thing for people to do who have been harshly criticized for those potential flaws during their early development.
When you are growing up, your brain is acutely attuned to the world that surrounds it. Your human DNA is not enough to tell you how you ought to take the world; it relies on experience to program it, in a sense.
I do not believe I was raised harshly. I do, however, believe my upbringing was inconsistent. Inconsistency can be more detrimental when it comes to forming and understanding your place in the world. Laissez-faire parenting is strongly correlated with misbehaved, out of control children who grow into aimless adults with loose morals and an ill-conceived perception of right and wrong. Over-controlling parenting often results in anxious, fearful, mindless, programmed robots who are so enveloped in their fear that they cannot form their own thoughts, opinions, ideas, or beliefs. But harsh parenting can also result in exactly the same rebellion that Laissez-faire parenting does. If a harsh parent tells their 15 year-old daughter that she cannot date before sixteen, she might believe that the rule is based on illogical premises (which it is, but she might not argue it that way). What happens then, when her parent tells her that smoking pot is bad for her? Is she really going to listen to her same parent who believed they could control her dating? She’ll probably have a spiteful desire to smoke more pot to make a point to her parent that she knows and is fully aware of her parents humanity. Her parents, she knows, are flawed. If they make an argument made on bad reasoning, how can she trust them?
When I was about seventeen years old, I walked for two hours to buy an energy drink at a gas station. I drank these occasionally in a way that is perfectly understood to not cause any health issues (providing you have no underlying conditions).
I bought two energy drinks, drank one the night that I went out, and saved one for lunch-time at school the next day. But before I could go to school, my mother invaded my privacy, searched through my backpack, and found the energy drink.
I would think, to most parents who’s knowledge isn’t stuck in the fear-mongering of 2006 that this would not be that big of a deal. Young adults drink energy drinks occasionally. But my mother was often uninformed. She feared for my safety which can almost be excused. I am not entirely sure of my feelings regarding this, but I do know that I am still displeased about her behaviour regarding this (among MANY other things).
She found the energy drink in my backpack and poured it down the drain. Energy drinks, she claimed, had 1000 milligrams of caffeine. She shamed me and told me I just wanted attention, to show off at school that I was cool enough to drink energy drinks. I wanted to “flaunt” it, she said. I remember that specifically because my mother would often claim that I wanted attention when I was young. If there’s one thing that has been incredibly difficult to forgive her for, it’s that. That is the type of thing that, when you tell a child over and over again, will probably result in the mindless, emotionless, fearful robot that I talked about previously. This was a mistake on her part, a big one.
The reason I am telling this is to demonstrate my previous point with better clarity. Imagine you were in my shoes. You had been drinking energy drinks occasionally for about three years now. You are a healthy, fit, young adult. You make a little bit of your own money cleaning towels and floors at your mothers spa, and decide to spend it on energy drinks occasionally. Then, one day, your mother invades your backpack, finds an energy drink you spent your money on, pours it out, insults you, and claims that energy drinks have 1000 milligrams of caffeine.
Will you, having experienced that, find it easy to trust your mother again?
I hope, if I explained this well enough and if you are being honest with yourself, that you would say no: it would be difficult to trust her again.
My mother was an inconsistent parent. With a harsh parent, or laissez-faire parent, a child will know what to expect. He may grow up with a sense of self-hatred inside, and he will have problems, but he’ll at least have a somewhat consistent view of the world and his place in it, no matter how fucked up that view is.
But inconsistent parenting has it’s own hidden demon. How do you develop your view of the world and your place in it when the world seems to change at the whim of an adults poorly-regulated emotional state? You will feel hopeless; you will feel lost; you will feel unloved and like you do not matter. Most of all, you will feel unsure of your Self. You won’t be able to trust the evidence of your eyes and ears.
Parenting is impossible to get right. The facets of the human mind are plenty and impossible to reign in to form a perfect, ideal being. Nobody is perfect. But at some point, you must be able to point these things out and recognize “Hey, there’s a big fuck up.” I know people don’t like to speak so objectively these days. Like I’ve said before, in writing these things, I don’t mean to criticize my parents like they might have criticized me as a child. I am working through the ideas that have come through my own mind. I reach some conclusions, but telling things like they are is separate from anger, resentment, or criticism. I do not feel when I write these things.
Tomorrow, maybe later today if I feel it. I might post one of my fiction stories. The issue with that is that I’m going to have to read it line by line and copy it onto my computer monitor as it only exists on paper now that my school email is gone. I’ll see whenever I do that.
Today, I finished two economics/statistics quizzes ahead of time. I did some studying using a practice midterm for my Operating Systems course. Later, perhaps tomorrow, I will start writing my Metaphysics questions. The metaphysics questions will be pretty simple, I think. I like to write and think I am capable (if I take my time) at forming my thoughts clearly and coherently. The Operating System midterm will take place after the break. I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ll study hard, but the instructor is just not very good. She’s the head of the department, unfortunately, and people go easy on her for various reasons, but I think she’s one of the worst two professors I’ve ever had. The other worst professor I ever had is an entire story, I think. This one just spends half the class writing things on the board that are already on her slides presentation and stumbling over her words and failing to answer basic questions from students. I wonder how familiar she even is with Operating Systems, or Computer Science as a whole.
Later tonight I have a band rehearsal with Possum. It’s nice weather out today which means we might get to walk over, which I always enjoy. That’s it for now, I think.
MyShelf 