If you haven't noticed from reading my blog thus far, I can be intense and I can be moody and I can also be intensely moody. I'm not a person who ever feels "blah" about anything. Every feeling I have I feel to the Nth degree, and unfortunately my kids are the same way. As a kid, you accept this as your normal reality, but as you become an adult, you come to realize that not everyone is like you and, in fact, most people are NOT like this. As an adult, being intense and moody and whimsical and creative are definite drawbacks. Unless you're Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison or someone with some tremendous talent, people do not tolerate that kind of temperament in adulthood.
And so it is that I suck it in and go on and try to pretend to be a normal adult. I can do it, but it hurts me to do it for prolonged periods. And the truth is, I'm not what I seem.
I still sit on the ground for what seems like hours and watch ants make a hill. I pick up leaves when I'm walking and collect them in my pocket to sketch later. Every bird that flies overhead draws my attention and I always wonder what the world looks like to them. I lay on my back and watch the sky, the clouds forming shapes of elegant beauty, the stars giving me pause to wonder about eternity.
When I encounter a spider or other bug in my house, I never, ever squish it. I pick it up and put it back outside where it belongs, aware that it has a life to live out that shouldn't be in my hands.
Feelings like love and admiration and awe completely flood me from time to time. Beauty overwhelms my senses.
I am hard to handle sometimes, difficult to figure out, impulsive, thrill-seeking, adrenaline-addicted, physically intense, loving, and the most loyal friend you will ever have. If you make me angry, I will slit your throat but then I will be the person to nurse you back to health.
I feel every emotion intensely but the truth is, I wouldn't want to be any other way.
Watching my son grow into a young man and seeing him face the same challenges I faced stirs up all of these emotions. He's a bright kid with a warped mind, an artistic and creative temperament, easily overwhelmed by emotion and beauty, sensitive and loving, stubborn but open-minded. And I see him hurting to fit in as he becomes a teenager, because he doesn't fit in; no matter how often I tell him it's okay, that fitting in is not everything and in fact is totally overrated, it's hard to understand when you are in the throes of adolescence. So in typical fashion, I am ruminating on all of this, on him, on his experience of the world, of my experiences in this world and of how it feels when you are outside the norm - and it is intensely emotional for me. I love my children so fiercely that I don't want them to face the challenges I faced, I want to spare them that pain. Even if I recognize intellectually that in order to develop, they must be challenged, I wish I could spare them certain challenges. My son and I are so similar, and I fear for him. I don't want him to go through the things I went through. But I am powerless to stop it. His life will be what it will be and my influence, though powerful in some ways, will stop at the boundary of where I end and he begins.
I
am a question to the world
Not an answer to be heard
Or a moment that's held in your arms.
And what do you think you'd ever say?
I won't listen anyway…
You don't know me,
And I’ll never be what you want me to be.....
And what do you think you'd understand?
I'm a boy, no I'm a man
You can't take me and throw me away...
They don't know me 'cause I'm not here.
And I want a moment to be REAL,
Wanna touch things I don't FEEL,
Wanna HOLD ON and feel I belong.
And how can the world want me to change?
They’re the ones that stay the same.
The don’t know me,
'Cause I’m not here.
You
see the things they never see -
All you wanted, I could be
Now you know me, and I'm not afraid
And I wanna tell you who I am....
They can't break me
As long as I know who I am
They can’t tell me who to be,
‘Cause I’m not what they see.
And the world is still sleepin’,
While I keep on dreamin’ for me.
And their words are just whispers
And lies that I’ll never believe.
And I want a moment to be real...'cause I’m still here.
No comments:
Post a Comment