First Steps

I intended to write a post about a fantastic hat my ridiculously talented friend made me, and I still intend to, but there's a more pressing issue that popped up recently that I'd like to talk about. Bear with me as it's pretty difficult for me to delve into, yet it deserves talking about since it pervades nearly every aspect of my life. I wrote about it once before, but I don't think I gave it the necessary weight.

Let me begin by saying that we all want to be regarded as Strong People. Nobody wants to show weakness or vulnerability, but it's such a huge part of life. Training in acting for so long taught me that I can't get away with faking strength. Life has often taught me otherwise. Even still, my notion that I'm invincible has been nothing but a detriment to me. I'm hoping that dealing with this issue head-on may help anyone who reads this to deal with their own issues as well. If it helps, fantastic! If you get anything from it at all, great! That's what this is for. For you and for me.

So if you checked out the link or if I've told you before, you already know. If not, here's a brief explanation. When I was five years old and my brother was seven, my father kidnapped us from our home in Santa Cruz and ran us across the country for eight months. We ducked police and hid in relatives' closets to avoid the eyes of maids and guests. We hid from tollbooth attendants. We would be jostled awake at four in the morning to drive from one indeterminate home to the next. More often than not it'd be the second home of a relative, something tucked away in New Jersey or New York or San Francisco. Honestly I don't remember how many states and guest rooms we squatted in.

Always, there was the threat of danger. Around every corner was someone who wanted to take us from our father, or get us as he would say. Little did I know, our mother was spending every waking second looking for us. She essentially put her entire existence on hold in order to find us. Thankfully my father was tracked down and brought in to court, where our mom got custody of us again. This in itself was pretty traumatic as well, since my father had spent the entirety of those fugitive months telling my brother and I what an absolute monster she was. Who was I supposed to trust? At that age you believe what the big people say. You believe what your FAMILY says.

So, twenty-one years later I find myself at another growing-up point. All over the media, peoples' pasts are coming to light for better or for worse. I realize now that I can't keep denying how profoundly this affected me. Some examples:

First off, I tend to deal with people in an extremely roundabout way. I used to lie incessantly. I cut that out a long time ago, but the fact that I even recognized that as the norm...or an acceptable way to behave...is indicative of what I learned from my dad. He broke promises. He made things up. He tried to control people with a charismatic persona while dodging any actual confrontation. I learned some of his behavior and began to live that way. What was more important than anything else was what people thought of you, not who you really were. Who you really were was something to be swept under the rug and hidden, therefore I developed this notion that my true self was this terrible thing to be shut away. I started to look down on people who really liked me, because anyone who liked me was fooled by a persona. At least, that's what I wrongly assumed.

Truth is, everyone is already naked. We inherently know who others really are. In the back of our minds, we really truly know. I'm still learning to trust that.

Next, I've got some pretty intense anxiety. It's lessened over the years, simply as a matter of growing up, but the idea that there's a big scary dangerous world out there waiting to pounce on me still lingers. Vague dangers lurk in the shadows. Strangely, there's plenty I'm not afraid of at all. Actual danger doesn't really phase me, since I trust my ability to deal with...say...an earthquake, or my house catching on fire. People, however, are a different story. People can be angry. They can be disappointed. They can love and reject. They can know you. They can figure you out and show you your reflection. That's what makes me anxious. I try to stay on peoples' good side, partly because I'm really in love with people, partly because I'm deeply terrified of them. Again, intellectually I know you can butt heads with someone and still love them. Hell, my brother and I used to kick the ever-loving crap out of each other, but that didn't change anything. To this day, though...I avoid calls from loan companies. What the heck are they going to do, send snipers?

The world isn't inherently dangerous. It's wonderful if you have the courage to drop your shield. That's a notion I've barely made any progress on, unfortunately. Working on it, yes, but it's been an uphill fight through and through.

I've inherited a mechanism for dealing with confrontation, and it's one I've augmented to fit my own needs. I use shoddy excuses to shelve my problems until they go away. Usually some smug lie that makes perfect sense if I don't think about it. The thing is, it doesn't work that way. Problems like that don't vanish. They ferment and fester in the mind until they become some twelve-armed fifty-eyed creature that I scare myself into avoiding further. It's a vicious cycle that I'm so frustrated with that ironically, I can no longer avoid it. It's something that allows me to remain a victim of life, rather than a participant in it. Thankfully I don't have the same delusions that my father had (mine involve time-travel) but I've gone so long thinking that this was something that worked for me. It worked alright, but not in my favor. It allowed me to be confident, but absolutely weak. I let me sit on my cloud and pretend the problems I had were beneath me. It's the reason I avoided dealing with the effects of that event.

I allowed this to be such a major part of how I operate that I didn't even realize when I was doing it. Only very recently have I understood how much of a handicap this is. The trouble is, I got so used to looking at every confrontation as a potential catastrophe that I would just bury my head in the sand. I taught myself that I wasn't equipped to deal with life head-on. Of course I am. Everyone is. Confrontation is the rock tumbler that reveals your lustre, not the man in the shadows with the knife.

Finally, at least for now, is this notion that I'm actually unworthy and terrible person. I know! It sounds dramatic, but it's such an internalized idea that I can write it without batting an eyelash. I've let this feeling to go unchecked for quite some time. I've even used it as an excuse to make some furiously poor decisions. "Well, I'm worthless anyway, so what does it matter?" I've even had friendships and relationships based on this notion. I would associate with people that made me feel as terrible as I felt inside. I fed this feeling because it felt right. Clearly I hadn't deserved my father's love. Even his proximity, after a while. I took this as absolute fact. Common knowledge, frankly. I certainly didn't earn my fluke successes, but my failures were a matter of course. In the end, it made life easy for me. Why toy around with the idea that I'd amount to anything if I could simply sit back and let things be? If I failed (which, naturally, I would) I failed.

Like the other issues, this is one I'm constantly dealing with. I've developed a marginally healthier attitude, which has been helpful, but I haven't dealt with it entirely. It remains difficult to imagine success in any endeavor for me. What's more, I generally don't acknowledge that success is even possible. Still working on this one.

It comes down to this: I've got work to do. If I intend to part with this victim mentality, it's going to take work. Work that I am willing to do. Work I'm ready to do. I might upset a lot of people, I might surprise others, and I'll certainly surprise myself. Even since writing this, I've been on a strange emotional rollercoaster. That has to mean something's right.

Anyway, thanks for reading all this. It's tough to lay all of your ugliness on the table like this, but for me, it's necessary. For the sake of growing up. For the sake of dealing with the things I don't want to deal with. For the sake of hopefully helping someone else out there gain some insight.

I expect I'll be chronicling my progress on here, so you know where to find me. Er...well...at least where to find this. By no means will I stop posting fun and silly stuff, but I'll be sharing more of this type of thing as well.

Alright, I'm signing off! Love love love love and love,

Dak