Content Warning for: tangential discussions of cancer; more detailed but mostly non-specific discussions of abuse, neglect, and childhood trauma relating to those topics; and discussions of the results of surviving abuse, neglect, and childhood trauma.
As I was shifting from finishing my lunch back into full work mode, Hank Green put out a Vlogbrothers video. If you haven’t been following the Green brothers lately, Hank revealed that he has lymphoma and was getting treatment for it a few weeks ago. This subject has featured heavily in their videos since then, as well it should given the place it likely holds in their minds, and today’s video was no exception. Instead of commentary about his condition or about the ways his life has changed since his diagnosis and the beginning of his treatment, today’s video was reflective. Today, Hank spoke about what we feel we owe other people, be they members of our community, those close to us, or even people who don’t exist anymore. His examples of the latter included the former version of his wife that he met and fell in love with when she was twenty and a former version of himself at seventeen that features heavily in the story he tells himself about himself in his day-to-day life. Eventually, and you should watch the whole video for the full impact, he conlcudes that he has the amount of obligation to his former self that he wants to have and that he wants to have some, which is a significant announcement since one of his big philosophical statements from the past is that a person bears no obligation to their former selves.
As you can no doubt guess at this point, the idea got me thinking. One of my major inflection points in the last few years was the first time I ever felt angry on my own behalf. It took until I was twenty-eight to even once feel indignation and rage at the way I was treated. I’ve been mad at people plenty of times and I’ve been mad on behalf of other people as far back as I can remember, but I was never actually mad on my own behalf until the thought occurred to me one morning that it was reprehensible that my parents had taught a former version of me that how I felt didn’t matter so thoroughly I was still struggling to unlearn that lesson more than two decades later. I was mad on behalf of the child version of myself, sitting in the back of my mother’s van, being told to hide how I felt in order to be a “proper man,” even then picking up on the subtext that my mother was tired of hearing me complain about the way my elder brother treated me. I was mad on behalf of my present self who had spent more than a decade in therapy at that point, trying to learn to love myself in a way that actually meant standing up for myself and protecting my emotional health rather than merely attending to my physical well-being.
The result of that moment is the permanent separation from my parents and all of my biological family (who, at best, with the exception of my maternal grandfather, all stood by and did nothing for almost two decades) save my younger sister and one of my younger siblings. It was me, sitting my parents down at a table and asking the questions I’d never felt were worth asking on, specifically, my own behalf when I lived under their roof. I decided that I would be the person I’d always wanted as a child, who would show up and demand answers. Who would never stand by while I was ignored, abused, and neglected. I felt I (present) owed it to myself (past) for surviving all those tortuous, miserable years. I still feel I am obliged to myself to uphold those decisions and continue to be the sort of person who will not sit by while something horrible happens, be it directly and apparently horrible or just horrible in the often slow, silent way of non-violent child abuse and emotional neglect. Right there, next to “storyteller” and “doing the right thing makes the world better for everyone” at the core of my being, is the thought that “I owe myself (past and present) the same sympathy, care, concern, and protection I am willing to extend to anyone else.”
Until today, and watching Hank’s reflection on the idea that maybe we do owe our past selves something, even if it is no more than we want, I doubt I’d have put it like that. I definitely haven’t stopped to think if there was anything else past-me wanted that present-me could do on my own behalf. I’ve been actively putting off further steps on that particular recovery path because my day-to-day life has been so stressful and demanding after going into family therapy last November knocked me out of the careful peace and well-being I’d built up to that point. Now, though, as things begin to calm down and I begin to turn inward to process everything that has happened in the last six months, I’m starting to wonder what else might remain from that period of my life that I feel some sense of obligation to. It is difficult to remember much of those years beyond the trauma, the pain, and my desperate attempts to find meaning throughout it all. I do know that the few thoughts I had to spare about the future weren’t really that detailed. I mostly thought of occupations and, eventually, the road I’d need to walk to get there. How I would change and grow to reflect the image my parents had spent so much time and efforting molding me to fit. Very vauge, non-specific things, for the most part, since I couldn’t really imagine a future that wasn’t the same as my present.
As I think about the amount of obligation I want to have to my former self, and where that might deviate from the obligation I already feel, I find myself wondering if I feel like there’s a disparity that needs to be addressed because I can’t remember something I should be able to or if I feel upset about the idea that my former self wanted nothing more than this thing I’ve already done and I should, instead, be even more angry with my parents on my own behalf. It could be a mix of both, of course, or it could be something else entirely.
I’m pretty emotionally worn out from the year so far and my absolute inability to get any emotional or mental rest what with everything going on hasn’t left me with much space or energy to work through this beyond the thinking I’ve outlined above. Between that and working through it enough to write this blog post, I’m pretty much tapped out. I’m going to keep thinking about this as time passes and hopefully I’ll be able to figure it out before it starts to eat at me. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good head start on it, thanks to already having thought through it all obliquely in the past, and once I clear the more pressing stuff in therapy, I’ll be able to start talking this stuff through with my therapist who has the benefit of being there for pretty much every major step I’ve taken in the past seven or eight years.
Until then, I’m going to set it on the already crowded backburner with the other stuff and hope that nothing burns or congeals while I’m trying to take a break from this kind of mental and emotional effort. Maybe, to extend the metaphor to the point of nigh-absurdity, I should take some of the stuff off the stove, put it in containers, and stick those in the freezer or fridge until I’m ready to work on them again. I’m just not sure how to translate this all from an overly elaborate metaphor to something I can actually act on since I already have a containering process I use and it’s mostly for getting things into a state where I can actually shift them to the backburner or even work on them at all. I’m not sure I can take it a layer deeper. Still, since this metaphor is just a description of how it feels to work through this stuff rather than a reflection of the reality of my situation, I think it’ll be okay to just have a stovetop with a really big backburner.
Anyway, these digressions are a sure sign that I’m too tired to think about this any longer, so I’m going to go sit someplace quiet, dark, and restful while I let thoughts of how much and what kinds of obligation I’d like to feel to my past self. Maybe having this framing will get it all resolved quickly, now that I can use it as a means of focusing my thoughts on the matter. I’d much rather get it worked through and as resolved as anything can be than to let it simmer for a while longer. It’s always nice to decrease my mental and emotional load and I sure could use less of that these days.