Self Expression in a Conforming World

 For as long as I can remember I felt different. And was told, many times, by people in "Authority", that what I was doing was wrong. I was either too loud, too emotional, too energetic, way overboard in everything that I did.

I was told that I was wrong and needed to fit in.

The whole world, it felt like, was telling me to conform to what they thought I should be. To Be Small.

For many years I was a chameleon. I became whatever I thought you needed me to be. For two reasons. One, I wanted you to be happy with me so that you would not tell me that I was wrong. And two, I could manipulate you to get what I wanted from you.

As a result I never developed a sense of My Self. Any sense of who I am as a Human Being. I was so busy being anyone else that I had no Identity of my own. No sense of my own Person as a Person.

Now I do have a sense of My Self and who I am. It took a long time and a lot of work to get here, and I have not arrived. There is still work to do.

I no longer twist myself into weird pretzels in order to be someone else any more however. Progress has been made.

Recently I have been thinking about our children who are now being twisted into Conforming to an idea of who they should be by others.

I am specifically thinking of a bright and funny six year old girl who loves to play dress up that is being abused by her grandmother that I wrote about a while back.

And I am looking in horror at what paths she will probably tread in order to save nerself from the violence of one who is supposed to love her and the failure to save her from her parents who should love her.

For in making someone conform to what you think they should be you are perpetrating a profound act of violence against their Person and Self.

In twisting another Human you are Violating them on a very deep level.

And it can never truly be repaired.

And the violence is then aided and abetted by our society.

It goes back to the idea, so ground into the fabric of all things, that children are Property. And parents can pretty much do as they wish as long as it is quietly within the home.

And it continues with the extended family wanting to protect the family name from being embarrassed. Because we must protect the adults from shame instead of the child from harm.

And then there is most people not willing to get involved. Convincing themselves that it is not their business after all.

So we have generation after generation of children growing into fractured adults who are so busy trying to protect themselves that they cannot become what they should.

And they escape. They escape into anything that will help them to numb the feelings they have and cannot deal with. They have addiction, maybe even not the thing that is now called "Substance Abuse Disorder" AKA using mood or mind altering substances abusivly, it can be a whole range of actions, attitudes, and behaviors, who's sole purpose is to change how they feel in the moment.

It is, in many ways, self preservation.

When I was twelve and a half years old I was already suicidal and I got high and did not feel like dying any more. Getting high saved my life for a while. And ruined it at the same time.

It is no surprise to me that teen suicide rates are up. That drug use is up. That screen escape is up. That adults are finding different ways to check out of life. And that many of them ake the final check out by intentionaly dying by their own efforts. AKA, suicide.

Because We, our Society, keep creating a place that people want to escape from. We keep perpetuating a Society that does not work for a large chunk of society, so ultimately does not work. And so large chunks of our society use mechanisms of escape in order to be able to live in this society.

Until this no longer works.

And some people Die because they can no longer escape and see no other way to live.

We need to overhaul our priorities. We need to stop protecting abusers, whether in the Home or in the Public Sphere, and Prioritize creating a Society that we no longer need to escape from.

We need to Prioritize Love over Hate and Fear.

We need to Prioritize Service over Acquisition.

We need to Prioritize Your Rights End where My Freedom Begins.

We need to destroy the Cult of Individuallity and replace it with the Collective Good of All in our Society. Which means we will need to expose our Societal Hatreds and the ways in which we Devalue Others in order to recognize the Humanity in all of us.

We Must Love Each Other or Die.

We Must become Rational Beings Who Love. For Love is the only Rational Act.