4:27 am - Thurs 2/05/04
Carrying The Scars (Pt II)

(I just finished writing my last entry, and thought I was going to go to bed. But I still feel like writing, and I don't have anything I have to do today, so here we are...)

The whole thing about my past as a foster child, that whole last entry, was kind of a preamble to what I've really been thinking about lately...

Actually, I've been thinking about this stuff for a long time now, but it's...it's not hard to write about it in an emotional sense, but it's hard to figure out how to say what I want to say.

A lot of things are going on in my head at the same time--I'm thinking about an email Jane forwarded to me from Tim L. (Having to do with wanting to meet his mother, his anger at her, etc), about newspaper articles Jane sent me about kids in foster care (Basically, they fare much worse, as a group, than the population as a whole), about being "normal" (Whatever that means), about writing, about being an actor, about being alone, about love and sex and creativity and self-loathing and a million other things.

One thing that got this ball rolling was Diaryland.

I was a foster child, and was terribly wounded by the experience.

Now it is becoming hard for me to write about this, because it makes me uncomfortable--I don't want to come off like I'm using my "foster child-ness" as a crutch.

But I'm really not--I can say I was "wounded", or "damaged", or whatever you want to call it, by my childhood, but I know I'm still responsible for behaving decently towards others, for doing the right thing as best I understand it. For being, basically, a good person.

And I'm still responsible for myself.

And while I'm sure I still harbor feelings at some level that the world "owes" me, I've become better, over time, at realizing that, basically, "shit happens".

I got more shit on than some and less shit on than others, but if I'm waiting for some kind of prize...Well, the only prize you get for surviving being shit on by life, by and large, is survival itself.

("Woo-hoo!", as Homer Simpson might say.)

I don't think I've ever "used" being a foster kid as an excuse for anything. I might be wrong, I might be deluded, I might be fooling myself, but I really don't think I have.

I think, if anything, I've spent more of my time under-playing my childhood than leaning on it for sympathy or excuses or what-have-you.

But I was hurt. Badly hurt. Hurt in such a profound way that I'll never completely recover. I know that now.

There's the thing; for the longest time I did think I was going to "recover", that if I could just "get over" my rough past that I could be the person I was "meant" to be if the shit hadn't hit the fan (And that's the last time I'll use the word "shit" in this entry. I promise).

But I'm never going to change the past. I'm never going to be the guy who wasn't a foster child, who didn't spend his childhood in five different homes, who wasn't sexually/physically/verbally abused, who doesn't still sometimes feel a volcanic rage that terrifies him (Or the "Little Boy Lost" feeling that he's "damaged goods", beyond being truly loved by, or truly loving, anybody).

There's not a "real me" to get back to, if you know what I mean.

This is who I am. This is what I've got to work with. Rough edges may get smoothed off over time, but I'm not going to turn into something, or someone, else.

"What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You're left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is go on or not. But if you go on, it's knowing you carry your scars with you."

I've thought about writing a lot over the past number of years (Both writing here in Diaryland, and trying to be, as I sometimes put it, "A capital-W 'Writer'"). I want to do it, but I've felt a great resistance, and I think it's in part because I'm still afraid to really reveal myself (Either directly, in here, or indirectly, through characters and/or a story).

I don't want to fail.

And I don't want people not to like me.

I think the "sticking point" is that I've still been harboring a notion that I'm "normal", a "member of polite society".

I'm not.

I'm a fucked-up, odd-looking, middle-aged, balding actor (And wannabee writer), who's been "involuntarily celibate" for a decade, who's bright, funny, talented, self-centered, insecure (and at the same time, secretely kind of conceited), who's constantly tired, frequently depressed, but also more joyful than he sometimes lets on.

I love women, but they scare me, and I'm also mad as hell because I love women and they scare me and I'm alone and horny and lonely and I'm afraid that's just going to be the way of things the rest of my days.

I'm not gay, but in recent years, I've wondered if I could be bi.

I'm a slob, I'm afraid of my capacity for anger, I work a job I'm way too old and smart and talented and capable to be doing, and recently, I realized again that, however astronomically unlikely is is, I really do want to be a major star.

I was thinking the other day that it took me twenty years to get out here to L.A. and start being an actor, and whatever else I want to do, I don't want to have to gear up for another 20 years to do it.

And I think the thing that will help me "do whatever it is I want to do" is the realization that there's nothing to lose at this point.

I'm not going to lose my normal life. I'm not going to lose my social standing.

Cause I'm not normal, and I don't have any "social standing".

From the get-go, life set me on a different course than most people. And to quote the Borg (I think that's my first geeky Star Trek reference in here), "Resistance is Futile".

This is me. This is what I've got to work with. "What is lost will not be returned to me", so I'm going to make the very best of this interesting, fucked up package.

Starting now.

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