The Wounded Critic

scratchpad work in progress

title: the anatomy of a complex situation

after the intensity of working for the last 16 months to get to the root of my depression, i feel exhausted. i literally feel as if i have no strength to type everything i want to say. the new lens has sharpened its focus to such an extent that it captures far more than i am able to comprehend all in the glimpse of one moment.

layer by layer the onion of me has peeled over these months, and now, ultimately, reveals that core issue which has belied all my attempts to understand the genesis of my own personal pain. after years and years of striving to understand 'why' the pieces of the puzzle are now falling into place, revealing the big picture.

like an obsession in its own right, i have spent my entire life asking 'why', question followed by question, day in and day out, leading back thru a labyrinth of feelings, beliefs, assumptions, striving to discern their connection to some past event or situation that would identify their origins. believing that once that was identified, i would reach some promised land of peace and truth where only reality would prevail; not some pretentious world of my own construction.

having resolved the issue of anger with my family of origin, and accepted that situation without rancor and remorse as immutable, and irreconcilable, i reached a point where i came to understand how and why my inner child languished in confusion, feeling his basic needs for love unmet for all these long years.

i pondered his response to that, the hole in his heart and spirit for longing to be loved and cherished, and i saw what that frustrated need caused him to become: the elder ron, a jaded and cynical critical judge, who would find his worth measured in terms of external feedback. back then, he wondered, am i as lovable as bill [my older brother and perp]? am i as smart? he never needed to be appraised higher in value, just equal. but no, mother's own words "everyone knows the first one's special" stuck like a knife in the gut all these years, as a promise that he would never measure up to his big brother's standard.

so when big brother initiated me into the world of sexual behavior, i was finally worth something. i was worth something to HIM, my supreme demi-god. as long as he 'wanted me' i had value.

i spent my entire adolescence enamored of him, and founded my entire sense of self-worth on his existence. then the day came he died at the age of 23, my ground collapsed beneath me. i didn't realize at first, how all those years, while i loved him, i secretly hated him, and envied him all at once. i secretly wanted to occupy his place in the pecking order of our family system. after all, i was the second in line, born male, though my mother wanted a girl. yes, she used to dress me up in my cousins dresses, then when my sister was born one year after me, well, then....next.... ?

after he died, i had no sense of compass; subconsciously i began to characterize myself a loser. i was left to deal with a set of feelings that i had been out of touch with for so many years and i did not know how or where to begin. that was when my career introduced itself, and i would compensate for being a loser, by exchanging my obsession with him, for an obsession with achievement. i would use this career in music to give me the sense of usefulness and purpose that i had lost in the death of my brother/lover.

yes, i became the black sheep of the family after his death when i outed him by disclosing his predatory behavior of me and 3 others of my sibs. i defamed the golden child. my family has never forgiven me for that.

[insert emoticon for swoon....]

in all that, little child ron got forgotten; lost and buried beneath the suppressed feelings of pain, shame, rejection abandonment and anger that smothered him all these years. the ignorance and denial and the compensatory, overarching, overachieving elder ron, caused him to be forgotten. as a result, little ron became a wounded, anxious, frightened vagabond shuffling the streets carrying that wound to all the people, places and things he encountered along the way. with his cup outstretched, to beg for his 'daily bread' he would do a little dance or sing a little song, and he would be gratified by the sound of the coins clinking in the bottom of the cup.

as the elder ron surface crust is torn away, little ron emerges from the shadows, an emotional feral child trying to find a way to cope with life, while the emotions pour out as the aforementioned knife is removed.

i'm not even sure why i'm still talking at this point...... need to go rest in the emerging feelings

to be continued.....