implode, explode, overload, long road
If I even understood for a moment why I constantly push myself to do more and more, I could explain why I have more on my plate than a 600 pound man at an Old Country Buffet.
But I do not understand it. Not even for a second. I can only make lots of guesses.
Guess #1 - History
When I was growing up, I skipped a grade because I was “smart” or something. What that really translated to was leaving kindergarten and moving directly into second grade.
Smaller and smarter (I was supposed to possibly go to third or fourth) than the rest of the class, I had to prove that I could relate to the other kids. At that point in my life (age 6), I was more comfortable in a room of adults than a room of children.
I’ve never lost that need to perform. I NEED to be able to turn it on. I NEED an audience. I NEED somehow to fit in. Which is why I do lots of stuff.
Guess #2 - Rewriting History
My father wasn’t home very much when I was coming out of my early development years and moving into young adulthood. The last restaurant he owned was a twenty-four hour place that caused more headaches and hardship than I can explain.
Couple that with my mother’s work in a health club, both of my sisters leaving the nest (the eldest slicing herself out of the family picture), and the discovery that I was really incredibly artistic and not just book smart, and you have a kid, learning what the word gay means, and trying to conceptualize a life as a homosexual in a world where the word invokes hatred and fear.
The point is, my role models at hand were, not to their fault, absorbed in their lives so much that I figured I’d start to do the same thing.
When I was in therapy years ago, I described it as taking all my memories before 1990, folding them into pretty piles, tucked them away in the boxes of my mind, and wrapped them with pink bows.
I hit the reset button on my life and started a new one. In 1994, that meant I really did try to start a new one; I tried to kill myself. It wasn’t a cry for help as much as a desire for a blank slate.
I found that blank slate one day in Utah. Zion national park has a trail called “Angel’s Landing” that is really easy until you reach the chains. From there, it’s slow going, with only the links in your hand and some dusty red stone between you and a 2000 foot drop.
I sat at the top for five hours, quietly sipping the two gallons of water I’d brought. I cried. I laughed. I burned in the sun. I think I hallucinated a lot because of the heat. But when I was feeling defeated and about to leap off the edge (this was technically try #4, years after the first ones) a young girl walked up to me and asked me why I was sad.
I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t have an answer because I had no reason to be sad. I had no reason to be empty. There were people in the world who loved me. I had friends. There were people that I loved.
I still don’t know if that girl was real or not, but she changed my life. From that point on, I knew I had no reason to be sad. Ever. In fact, I had no reason to be anything other than happy because I have a good life. A great life.
And because I really do have such a great life, I enjoy challenging myself over and over to do more and to be more. Waking up in the morning means it’s time to do something special. Something useful. Which is why I do a lot.
Guess #3 - The History Yet To Happen
I grew up speaking Greek and English. At my grammar school, we studied a foreign language every day. My parents chose Greek for me. Somehow, very early on, I learned what the word ‘epitaph’ meant. We learned it in Greek class first. But then I think we talked about it in history.
In any case, I’ve fantasized about my own epitaph for years and years. At first, I intended to write it and then do everything in my life I had to do to fulfill the words.
Around age 20 I realized how re-got-damn-diculous that is, and edited the epitaph to pull out the notes of overachievement.
At 25, I rewrote the whole thing.
And today, at 29, I’ve realized that whatever I would like to write is null and void. It’s not my perspective, nor my place to write my own. It’s not something I control; this notion of how others perceive me.
I can only be the best ‘me’ that I know how to. And thus, I work a lot.