Things I need my teenage self to know...

Part 1: Preamble

I had therapy today, and we were deep diving about why this whole thing *gestures at all of Substack* has been so scary for me.

Granted, the fear has gone down mightily as the days have passed. And I can feel a certain wellspring of strength and self-knowing gaining momentum within me. But I have been completely shocked at how scared I am every single day of what I am doing here—even now, even at this point. If I wanted a magic potion to slow down time I think I found it: these 14 days have been the longest two weeks of my damn life. And the thought that I’m only halfway done tomorrow makes me so amazed.

We analyzed (Therapist and I) the usual culprits for fear in posting things in online spaces: trolls can be mean; virality can be scary; failure can be scary; comments are scary; no comments is scary; etc, etc, etc. But it wasn’t until we got into the real details of why comments were scary that we stumbled upon what was happening. I was explaining that comments were scary because they felt like something I had to tend to. They felt like something that could really mess up a thing I’d posted. Almost like I had to defend my post from things that might be said about it. (Naturally, I know cognitively this isn’t true—but these were the things coming up, irrational as they may be, as I tapped into the fear I was feeling and just let it speak.)

"So, it sounds like you maybe identify with the comments a bit—you take them on as your own—almost as if they somehow say something about you…” she pointed out, and as she did, I realized she was right and that there was more. That as much as I subscribe to the philosophy that art is not the artist, and that the second something leaves an artist’s mind, it is its own entity, and the artist can have boundaries that no longer include that piece of art, allowing it to flourish and interact with others independent of the artist and her psyche—clearly, part of me still identifies with everything I put out there. A little shred of my egoic self still views every thing I post as a part of me, and anything anyone else posts in response to that part of me as also part of me—or at least something that is my responsibility.

Oh why hello there Internet troll! Clearly, because you commented on MY post, I have to fight you to the death. Otherwise how will people know that I am NOT YOU??????

And then she asked the humdinger question that demonstrates why she is my bad-ass, ninja-level Therapist of a Therapist: “do you think the part of you that feels this way is current you? Or is it maybe a younger part of yourself. Like maybe teenage you…?”

Boom.

There it was. It hit home so hard. That was exactly it.

Sure, the adult me knows all these lofty and inspired things about ego and about self and about differentiation and about how boundaries work and about whose job is whose and about why it is not my responsibility to control how anyone responds to anything I do ever…

but teenage me? The teenage me who grew up as the oldest of five kids in a Mormon family where there were expectations of obedience and righteousness? The queer youth who grew up in the in the Salt Lake Valley surrounded by adults who literally thought being gay was a choice and literally said gay people were “an abomination”? The young man who was bullied so severely every day of seventh grade that he wanted to die? The one who had ADHD so bad, and so much trauma, that he was left with very few coping mechanisms other than to dissociate most days and drown his sorrows by eating, thus gaining a bunch of weight? And whose parents then disciplined him “stealing food” and for being “work avoidant” and “picking fights” and “leaving messes” and “not doing the dishes” and all kinds of things that there was just no way, without medication and proper care and proper attending to his traumas, he was ever going to be able to avoid?

Yeah, that kid is fucking terrified of looking bad online.

That kid is scared of a lot of things.

And one of the things that that kid was really good at? Was masking. Masking his feelings, and masking his sexuality and masking his pain behind a general, cheerful, facade of what looked like apathy mixed with self deprecating humor. But underneath all of that? Well the depths of his genuine desire to be a good person knew no bounds—and his concept of what a good person was was limited to the parochial and industrious ideals of the people he grew up amongst. People who prized (or claimed to prize) industriousness and hard work and punctuality and obedience and chastity and pure thoughts and the beauty of marriage between a man and a woman and….

you get the point. All the things this kid was NOT as an ADHD, spectrumy, genderqueer gay boi who had “no work ethic.”

Cue: HELLA MASKING!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway I think that young person is the one still in the background acting apathetic and self-deprecating—still wanting to mask like a masking champion—and who feels very, very exposed when adult me takes to the Internet to blow all masks to smithereens with all this “genuine authentic writing” bullshit. And for him, underneath his old masking habits he harbors a deep and terrifying fear that somehow, someday he will be found out. He will be seen, fully, as the piece of garbage his angry dad and the bullies at school and all those self-righteous folks at church knew him to be.

So, in the post (or posts) to come I am going to share some things I think this kid needs to know, and I hope that doing so here—instead of making him feel exposed and uncomfortable—somehow makes him feel safer in this space. (We’ll see!)

(Isn’t inner-child work a trip????)

Inner Child. (good job AI—this one is kinda sweet!)

See you tomorrow!

Joshua