Fences

Here's what's up in the days of the moon half-full, mind half-gone. It occurred to me this morning that I have spent a lifetime pretending everything was alright. It occurred to me because I got sucked into (and yes I blush) an episode of "If You Really Knew Me" on MTV yesterday. In this show, it seems a team of 20-something do-gooder enthusiasts show up at a typical crappy American high school and force various stereotypical groups to interact with each other through games and sharing so that each self-absorbed teen can see that everyone has problems, and so we should all love each other, and be friends. It is edited so that there isn't a dry eye in the house as kids admit to being bullied and knocked-up and pushed around. And at its conclusion there is more empathy for one's fellow pupils and the hope that this kind of radical outside-the-box thinking will endure and this generation (Z, is it already? how time does fly) will change the world.

Now since I do not have the benefit of just starting out in the world of the nearly-grown-up and being forced to hang out in the school gym all day telling my innermost secrets to frenemies, I merely reflect on myself and how right at this moment I done made a real mess of things, and yet I continue to give the complete wrong impression to everyone and my mother that this is so.

It is said that ACOAs have no idea what normal is. I will counter that in this day and age especially, it is difficult if not impossible to define "normal." There is no one way to lead a life. Even in the subset of certain definitive lifestyles there are different ways of going about one's bizness; however, I think what is meant by the 12-steppers is that when you grow up in an addicted household you are really living on the edge of having not one fucking clue what is ever going to happen and you don't even have any precepts of what oughta be happening, and growth of a personal nature is generally not an option since you haven't that luxury. You have to roll with the punches, and follow rules that most kids wouldn't know existed, and above all keep up the pretense of living a life worth living when you are not within the walls of your domicile. And sometimes, perhaps incurring even worse damage, when you are in the bosom of your family. There is much to be gained from such adaptability, such self-reliance. It's your story and you are sticking to it.

The big problems arise when you are old enough to vote, and realize that you must mimic what those around you do in order to fit in at college or a job. You don't show up in college with a definitive sense of self because you were never allowed to develop one, so you observe the behaviors of those around you and in a typically hideous Frankenstein's monster way, stitch up some of their behaviors with your own fight-or-flight responses and the gut instincts you always knew existed beneath the daily crazy you endured. Again you exhibit typical ACOA behavior by trying to please all of the people all of the time, and watching your few acts of rebellion bring crushing punishments down upon you.

And then for better or worse, off you go then into a lifetime of confusion and misunderstandings. Who cares, so what? It doesn't mean you can't be happy and successful and fulfilled, that you won't eventually figure out actual likes and dislikes and rights from wrongs. But the tricky part is the self-doubt that all of it is just an act. That without meaning to you have created this persona who is not the person you are, nor the one you set out to be, and when the chips start to fall you are quite possibly totally fucked because you have gotten so good at looking well-adjusted, or crazy-overdramatic, or in love with misery, or a busy bee, or whoever you have been when relating to a certain group at a certain time. And really that helps nobody, least of all yourself.

Interesting to me at least. And to be clear not in a pity party way, in a holy shit this all sucks right now way.

Maybe VH-1 can make a show for 30something me-s who nobody knows.