Some thoughts.
You know, when my dad called me a "fucking liberal pussy" the other day, it got me thinking. Normally I dismiss things like that, since they're like cold rain in my family: unpleasant, but frequently a part of nature. But this bothered me more than usual, because it's the latest in a chain going back as far as I can remember.
At the same time my parents encouraged me to do as well as I could in school, my dad called me out for it. I've been called a queer, a freak, a faggot, you name it. For what? Wanting to read books? To play video games with more intricate stories and better writing than any of the shit they watched on TV? Books that gave me ideas were especially bad. World mythology, atheism, world religions, philosophy, etc. I was given the "work hard in school because you don't want a job like mine" speech, and it paid off. But by expanding my mind's scope, not my wallet's. My dad still can't figure out why I "don't just write a best seller and be done with it."
When I actually tried to share ideas with my parents, I became an alien. When I grew a beard, they thought I had joined an Islamic "cult." Whenever I mentioned Obama's candidacy, the "good book" and references to the antichrist immediately came to the foreground. And not jokingly. With deadly seriousness. They want me to share my poetry with them, and I do too. I can't begin to say how wonderful it would be to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with the people I'm supposed to love most about the art that satisfies me so completely. But when I try, or when I show them the work that I do, they wonder why I'm depressed, or if I'm planning to kill myself. To them, literature is something purely pleasurable--if a book isn't making them happy, it's making them uncomfortable. Four years of being away from them allowed me to peel that layer off of myself in bits and pieces. Now, instead of closing a book when I'm uncomfortable, I congratulate the author for making me feel that way and read on, seeing if I can find a way to outpuzzle the puzzler.
Mostly though, I think about how different I would be had I been encouraged to read those books, rather than being reprimanded for reading them or having them confiscated. It's really a kind of artificial retardation, something that I know set me back by a number of years. When my mind was being blown left and right as an undergrad, others asked me how I didn't already know about x, or didn't already accept y. I was unable to formulate answers because the answers I had been given were concrete and acceptable only in my home or in my town. Outside, they evaporated.
But why didn't I read those books anyway? Surely I could have, if they weren't confiscated. I guess I was weak. If one can be faulted for wanting to be accepted within one's family by sacrificing certain ideas or the means to obtaining them, then I am at fault. I certainly wouldn't do that now, but the world's a different place when you're seven, or ten, or twelve. You're not ready to risk alienating everyone yet, because to you, a warm hug still feels better than intellectual curiosity.
And even now, as someone who has and will again refuse to sacrifice ideas for acceptance, I'm still bitter about it. Sometimes I just want to say that religion makes perfect sense to me, to sit through a sermon without burning to point out inconsistencies or fallacy. I still occasionally desire to censor myself, but when I use a euphemism like "sausage pole" and it causes my mother (who has called my father a "fucking motherfucker" more times than stars in the sky) to burst into tears and call me a disgrace, I know that I can't. I have to be willing to be thought less of by anyone if that's what it takes to be honest about what I think or believe. Because the second I'm not, I turn into them.
At the same time my parents encouraged me to do as well as I could in school, my dad called me out for it. I've been called a queer, a freak, a faggot, you name it. For what? Wanting to read books? To play video games with more intricate stories and better writing than any of the shit they watched on TV? Books that gave me ideas were especially bad. World mythology, atheism, world religions, philosophy, etc. I was given the "work hard in school because you don't want a job like mine" speech, and it paid off. But by expanding my mind's scope, not my wallet's. My dad still can't figure out why I "don't just write a best seller and be done with it."
When I actually tried to share ideas with my parents, I became an alien. When I grew a beard, they thought I had joined an Islamic "cult." Whenever I mentioned Obama's candidacy, the "good book" and references to the antichrist immediately came to the foreground. And not jokingly. With deadly seriousness. They want me to share my poetry with them, and I do too. I can't begin to say how wonderful it would be to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with the people I'm supposed to love most about the art that satisfies me so completely. But when I try, or when I show them the work that I do, they wonder why I'm depressed, or if I'm planning to kill myself. To them, literature is something purely pleasurable--if a book isn't making them happy, it's making them uncomfortable. Four years of being away from them allowed me to peel that layer off of myself in bits and pieces. Now, instead of closing a book when I'm uncomfortable, I congratulate the author for making me feel that way and read on, seeing if I can find a way to outpuzzle the puzzler.
Mostly though, I think about how different I would be had I been encouraged to read those books, rather than being reprimanded for reading them or having them confiscated. It's really a kind of artificial retardation, something that I know set me back by a number of years. When my mind was being blown left and right as an undergrad, others asked me how I didn't already know about x, or didn't already accept y. I was unable to formulate answers because the answers I had been given were concrete and acceptable only in my home or in my town. Outside, they evaporated.
But why didn't I read those books anyway? Surely I could have, if they weren't confiscated. I guess I was weak. If one can be faulted for wanting to be accepted within one's family by sacrificing certain ideas or the means to obtaining them, then I am at fault. I certainly wouldn't do that now, but the world's a different place when you're seven, or ten, or twelve. You're not ready to risk alienating everyone yet, because to you, a warm hug still feels better than intellectual curiosity.
And even now, as someone who has and will again refuse to sacrifice ideas for acceptance, I'm still bitter about it. Sometimes I just want to say that religion makes perfect sense to me, to sit through a sermon without burning to point out inconsistencies or fallacy. I still occasionally desire to censor myself, but when I use a euphemism like "sausage pole" and it causes my mother (who has called my father a "fucking motherfucker" more times than stars in the sky) to burst into tears and call me a disgrace, I know that I can't. I have to be willing to be thought less of by anyone if that's what it takes to be honest about what I think or believe. Because the second I'm not, I turn into them.