I was thinking about Circuses yesterday and trying to equate them in my mind with the antithesis of my life.
In my mind's eye, I've led a very dull and ordinary life. I grew up in the suburbs of NJ in a middle class neighborhood, and while we were poor I never wanted for food, shelter or most of the other basic necessities. My school taught me the socially approved values of wanting to marry Prince Charming, create 2.1 brilliant perfect adorable children, possess a house and career, friends, community and all that jazz.
At the same time, I never belonged. While other kids had finished basements and curfews, I grew up in a feral household. My parents were anger management challenged individals who never addressed their emotional baggage, because in that generation, it just wasnt done. Autism spectrum disorders, which run in my family, were not even on the radar until I was well into adulthood. Neglect and abuse - just the facts of life.
house where I grew up in New Jersey
On the outside of my house, life was normal. Mom spent most of her time in the yard, making sure the garden looked like Martha Stewarts weekend project. But on the inside, it was always a mess with fights and construction. My dad bought a 1920s era bungalow and spent the next eighteen years rebuilding. For years there was a square hole in the living room that dropped into a dirt cellar - a type of oubliette for the uninitiated. Nails and 2x4s littered the floor on any given weekend. Mushrooms grew out of the ceiling in a corner of the bedroom I shared with my sister.
Hence there was the dichotomy of the outer house and the inner circus in my life. A facade of normality, while on the inside I felt like a freak; something to be gawked at and ridiculed because I wasn't "normal" - never allowed to be who I am. The pressure was always there to conform.
Yet somewhere along the way I learned to question, to think for myself about how things are meant to be. Being an introverted maladapt, instead of friends I picked up books which taught me the value of alternate realities, change, rebellion and looking for the choice that was not given.
How then did this happen? How did I fail to be properly programmed? Was it a lack of love, something innately abnormal in my gene pool, or perhaps, all along - was I a changeling? Something fey and foreign, inserted by another race to corrupt and distort the odds in favor of bizarre transformation and shifting axes?
Instead of normality I chose to drop out of college and travel the world. After spending the first twenty years of my life in one house, I spent the next twenty years moving on average of once every few months - as if I belonged to a gypsy caravan or a traveling circus. But there was never a show. Even though I was a freak, no one came to see me, because instead of promote who I was, and have pride in who I had become, I felt shamed by the values and expectations I had never been able to fulfill nor discard.
All the faces in the world are mirrors. What kind of reflections do you see in the faces of the people you meet?
{liberated from The House of 1000 Mirrors - read me! short story}
I am still working on my house, opening up the walls so that my inner circus can perhaps one day be something to admire; a person who can enchant and amaze others. I would prefer to be recognized for my bravery and strength of character, rather than shunned for my awkwardness and social gaffes. I try to re-imagine the perfect circus - one where the animals are treated with compassion, the performers are treated with respect, and the audience becomes part of a big family of misfits who share in the creation and the insanity.
Ironically, in Discord I feel at home. People think like I do, yet I am still constantly fighting my failure to communicate without anxiety, fighting the same old need to feel accepted by normal standards - to be "successful". to give back to my community, to be a valued member who people respect and can relate to, to nurture long lasting friendships.
rear view mirror; image by torico
These I still consider worthwhile values, and I realize that not everything that I was indoctrinated with as a child was completely worthless. The values of acceptance, peace, honesty, and trust are still valid - they were just skewed and distorted by toxicity, shame and pain - as if I was looking through life from a the crazy house of mirrors at a circus. I have ever been the growling dog, fearful of the world. It is now time to change that perspective into something that will allow me to be happy.
I believe that my lesson now is to accept who I am, and not worry about whether people love my circus. I will re-imagine it as I go along..
all images from pixabay except where noted