The Silence of the Storyteller

Written 14 April 2017, 1.08pm.

Do you know what it's like to pour your soul out in writing to fifty people and have not. one. person. acknowledge your existence?

I go through this every week. But I suppose that's the life of an artist. This is what I wanted. I made my bed, I guess I have to lie in it.

I'm a storyteller at heart. I always have been -- in writing, in acting, in music, in photography, in dance. It would make sense that this innate part of my soul would come to full force in writing -- when I write my update emails from college.

But in today's age of social media, nobody wants to hear stories. They want sensation. They want soundbites. They want Upworthy. They want BuzzKill -- I mean BuzzFeed.

So they lash out at me for talking too much. And then they withdraw from my life because I demand too much of their time and attention.

I have a storyteller's soul. And they hate it.

There's an entry in my journal from June of last year (on the subject of the five love languages): 'Acts of service children are good, helpful little children. Quality time children are just little time sucks -- always taking, but never giving back -- at least not in a 'tangible, helpful, productive' way. No wonder everybody hates us.'
I say 'children,' but this really means 'people.' We're all children at heart.

I go for my first counselling appointment on Monday. I'm scared that they actually will be able to help me. The only way I can get anybody's attention is to whine about how awful my life is. People will give you some (tiny) measure of sympathy/attention (for a limited time) if you're going through a hard time. It's underhanded and manipulative, but I am so desperate for something, ANYTHING, from anybody, that I am about willing to do anything. But if counselling helps with my issues and I'm no longer struggling, I lose the very tiny sliver of care that anybody ever had for me. Then I well and truly am alone. After all, think of how we talk to each other:

C1: Hi! How are you?
C2: Good. You?
C1: Good!
*awkward pause*
C1: Well, better get going.
C2: Yeah... I guess...

C3: Hi! How are you?
C4: Meh. Not great.
C3: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What's going on? Can I help?
*insert moderately lengthy conversation*

So basically, the only get to get any length of connection with another human being is to have a sucky life. The thing is, all the Pollyannas of the world hate the people who have a sucky life -- "it's the power of positive thinking," they tell us. "If you think your life is going to suck, then it will." And "nobody wants to hang out with you if you have a sucky life *insert some kind of 'negative vibes/toxic people' crap*."

TL;DR: Just spend some time with me. Just talk to me. Just listen to me. That's literally all I want.


'We shot all our dreamers and there's no-one left to lead us...'
- Larry Norman, 1972

'I need some contact... I'm so tired of talking to an answering machine.'
- Prodigal, 1985

The One

The first time anyone actually told me that I was valued in any capacity was at the very end of my second year of college. That was the semester the school put on The Secret Garden. It was my theatrical debut, and I played Mary Lennox -- the main character. It was a role I absolutely did not expect to get. The director of the show was also the director of my program (both the program I was in at the time and the program I'm in now). After the show was over, after all the exams were done, just days before grad, I was in his office -- he had been trying for months to convince me to transfer into the Bachelor's degree, which would take an additional two years. I had finally decided to at least see what it would look like if I did, so we met and went over how my academic life would look if I stayed.

After the discussion on academics, he shifted into 'convince-her-to-stay' mode (or at least that's how I thought of it at the time), because I was still not committing and there was less than a week before I graduated out and then it would be too late. Because I had just stunned everyone on campus with my ability to act in The Secret Garden and because he had directed it, that show was a large focus in the conversation. At one point, he was talking about the process of casting and how it's always kind of a crapshoot on some level, and he said, "Sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes I get it right." He looked at me. "With you I got it very right."

I sat stunned.

I had spent twenty years being told -- both by people close to me and by people on the periphery of my life, verbally and non-verbally -- that I was unimportant. Useless. Annoying. No good at anything. And if you're told something often enough -- by enough people, and by people you are supposed to trust -- eventually you begin to believe it. And the more you hear it, the more deeply ingrained it becomes in your thought process. It's called indoctrination. I had thoroughly believed that I had no importance or usefulness or value whatsoever. In anything. I fully believed that I ruined everything just by the mere fact that I existed and was just wasting valuable oxygen that could have been used for other, more important people. People that others actually needed and liked.

Sure, I grew up with people telling me God loves me, but I had no reference point for that. What is love? His people pretended I didn't exist as much as they possibly could. Because I was so quiet and shy, they could get away with being downright rude about it because I'd never say anything about it and they knew it. I certainly saw it, but I never said anything. Who could I go to? Nobody would have listened to me anyway -- they were all too busy ignoring me.

I tell this story because I am up against this again. Recently I hit my absolute lowest point, and it scared me enough to send me to this same director and tell him I needed help. (He was literally the only person I could think of who I knew would properly listen to me.) He's told me many things in the days since then which have given me the strength to keep fighting, but one of those things was a question: 'why do you believe this lie?' At the time he asked it, I was so exhausted from fighting just to stay alive that I couldn't think of an answer, but the question haunted me: Why do I believe the lie? And it brought me to all these reflections that I shared above -- for twenty years of my life, it was all I knew. It was all I was told. I had literally no reason to believe otherwise.

There was a flash-in-the-pan Canadian boy band in the late '90s/early 2000s that made this song that received fairly significant radio play when I was a kid. It was actually one of those cheesy 'follow your dreams' songs, but if I may shift the context a bit... the chorus ran as follows:

You could be a star shining out in the darkness

You could be a fire blazing into the cold

You could be a voice calling into the silence

You could be as bright as the morning sun

You could be the blue sky after the grey

You could drive the clouds of fear away

You can bring the healing to a world that's come undone

You could be the one...

(Jake, You Could Be The One, 2000)

And you could, dear reader. Just as a college performing arts director was the first person on the planet to tell me I was worth something -- when I was already into my twenties -- you could be the first one to tell someone else that they're worth something. Go do it. Don't wait. You may be the only one who will.

Resistance and Perfection - Definition Of An Artist

I have been called worthless.

I have been called lazy.

I have been called stupid.

I have been called a whore.

I have been called annoying.

I have been called too smart for my own good (and believe me, that's not a compliment).

I have been called whiny.

I have been called too negative.

I have heard people tell their friends not to associate with me.

I have heard people tell my friends not to associate with me.

I have been told I'm not wanted.

I have been ignored.

I have been yelled at.

I have been told I will never amount to anything.

I have been told I am a waste of skin/of time/of space.

I have been told I'm wasting my life.

I have been called unloveable.

I have been told I mean nothing.

I have been given the cold shoulder.

I know how Larry Norman must have felt -- what it's like to be too worldly for the church and too Christian for the world. I know what it's like to have the church look at you and say "we don't need you and we don't want you."

I know what it's like to cry myself to sleep. I know what it's like to practice until I literally collapse. I know what it's like to rehearse until my practice clothes are sweat-glued to my body. I know what it's like to pull an all-nighter -- for an entire semester. I know what it's like to starve. I know what shin splints feel like. I know what emotional heartbreak feels like. I know what it's like to pay enormous chiropractic bills because I have destroyed my body trying to be good enough. I know what it's like to practice until I can't breathe.

I have known all this in the past two years. I know most of this as I write.

Tell me now how worthless and unlovable I am. Tell me that I am solely responsible leading today's generation astray. Tell me I am the antichrist. Tell me all this sweat, all these hours, all this work, all this pain, all this love in my heart for it -- tell me it means nothing. Tell me the oxygen in my lungs as I practice is a waste. Tell me I'm wasting my life. Tell me God hates me.

Go on. I dare you.

The Attack Of The College Jerk(s)

I've spent the better part of my life being ignored. One can get used to that after a while (albeit a long, long, long while in my case), but what's infuriating is when people can no longer settle for ignoring you and instead start to insult you every second chance they get, ripping out every thread of happiness you've ever had, slowly, methodically, steadily.
As if it couldn't get any worse they spend the other half of their time with you (notice I said 'every second chance' in the preceding paragraph) being quite decent friends. Not bosom buddies or anything of that sort, but fairly open and friendly-like. They probably wouldn't defend you if a robber were to get his hands on you, but they listen and they have no problem conversing with you.
Luckily, most of the worst offenders in my life are now going to college. Even better, all of the worst are going fairly far abroad -- far enough that they only return for Christmas break and then they're too caught up with family things and the few people they've somehow managed to retain as friends to bother looking for me and insulting me.
The problem is, in April they all come back for the summer and stay until September. There's three of them, although two of them seem to have really mellowed out as of late.
The third one, however -- let's call him RJ -- seems to grow more and more irritated with me every time he sees me.
This probably wouldn't bother me so much if I wasn't so close to his mother and younger brother.
I can tell when he's returned from college even before he says anything on Facebook. His mother's whole attitude toward me changes when his return is drawing near. She stops talking to me, gradually distances herself; giving only vague excuses for it that mostly place the blame on her chronic illness.
I realise he's her son and she loves him more than me and wants to spend time with him, but honestly, must our friendship go through this roller coaster based on her son's location? It's not that she and I spend that much time physically together anyway, most of our contact is through e-mail.
Something just occurred to me.
So many people who know both him and me -- and there's quite a few, seeing as we attend the same church -- have said that RJ and I are very, very alike (in personality that is, not appearance). I've seen it too. His mother comments on it almost every time she sees me -- how I remind her of RJ.
So is this it then? Am I just a replacement for RJ while he's gone off to college? When he's here, is that reason enough for her to ignore me because now she has the 'real thing' living in her house again?
Or has RJ 'brainwashed' her (for lack of a better word)? Does he exercise such subliminal power even over his own mother that she has nothing to do with me as per his (possibly unspoken) wishes?
Or am I just a conspiracy theorist?