After high school and the subsequent gay party life that I had gotten tired of, I started looking for ways to improve my outlook and my demeanor. I had been told on several occasions by very good friends, that I was just so depressing to be around because of my negative outlook and my constant bitterness about the unfairness of life. Sure I had reason and justification to feel that way, but the more people hung around me the more I sounded like a bitter old record on repeat. When my best friend Stacey took me aside one day and explained why it was just her and I for the movie and not the rest of the group, it was the first time that it really sunk in that bitter and depressing was really how people experienced me. I didn't think of myself that way, so to be confronted with that reality about myself sent me on a quest of self exploration.
At the time I had just done the Landmark Forum (the evolution of Wearner Earhardts EST Seminars) and was just becoming aware of who I am as a person, and more importantly, my choice in the matter. I spent several days a week volunteering there for those couple years. This is why people label it "cult-like", that and the fact that people have genuine revelations doing this kind of self-introspective work and come out changed somehow. The real reason people volunteer so much there after doing the Forum is because after such major self-revelations it helps to be around people on the same journey, and around people who understand the questions you are asking about yourself. Like speaks to like.
Landmark was not some new fangled fad that had randomly appeared at that moment of my life either. Both my parents had done the EST Training when I was four years old, and had raised me and Josh in that kind of logic based conversational relationship. That is how calmly talking to me on the phone could switch me from wild out of control hellion to obedient school boy in a matter of minutes. They engaged my brain from as early as I could use it. They actually treated me like a thinking human being, not a randomly willful disobedient child. In the end, that kind of upbringing ensured that my parents would always be more than just parents, they would be equals as thinking human beings.
The course I was volunteering for that led to the ultimate shattering of my self-identity was called the Communication course, and as one bent on self-improvement I took the homework assignments of that course very seriously. The homework they has assigned for the first week seemed quite simple, though after spending several hours unsuccessfully trying to figure it out for myself, I eventually came to a wall. When these kinds of blocks come up, I do what I've always done, I called my mom to pick her brain about it. We planned dinner that night and somehow ended up at Denny's (why is my life always changed dramatically at a Denny's?). There, we had a long profound conversation about the homework assignment which was: What one sentence rules your life?
For the uninitiated, this can seem like a weird and tricky question. For me, it was very difficult to put in to words and actually say those words out loud. The idea is that in everything you do in life, every question you ask, every statement you make, every choice you make and every action you take you are perpetuating and enforcing this one sentence, subconsciously of course. But it is there in the background of everything you do in life. It is usually a very simple statement made by a child.
So mom picked me up from the zoo I was living in and we went to Denny's and started having a conversation. I dont remember a lot of the lead up to the point where I discovered my sentence, but it involved my past, and my behaviors, and my secret thoughts, and when it came right down to it, out popped a sentence spoken by my child-self: "There is something wrong with me".
This surprised my mom and she asked if I was sure that was the sentence that ruled my life. After a little more reflection I decided that yes, in fact, this sentiment was at the heart of everything I had done in my life and was present in all the actions I took and in every conversation that I had ever had. When I acted up, I was physically showing that there was in fact something wrong with me, when I had tantrums I showed it, when I asked questions I asked it believing there was something wrong with me for not already knowing the answer. If I really looked, I could find that one sentiment everywhere in my life. She then asked me what made me think that it was true.
I told her about my first memory somewhere around the age of four. I was sitting in a therapists office and I remember him looking at me and asking me what would make my parents think there was something wrong with me. That's probably when it started. As simple as that, someone says there is something wrong with you, and you believe them. Then you spend your life subconsciously proving them right. I decided somewhere around four years old, that either there was something wrong with me, or there was something about me that people found wrong.
I then spent my youth acting up. Proving to everyone that there was, in fact, something wrong with me. I was put in Special Ed from the age of five because of "emotional problems", I saw therapists regularly and never the same one for too long, I was on a first name basis with the school counselors repeatedly in their offices because of something I had said or done, I even had a couple run in's with the law. All in all, because of that one sub-conscience choice I had become a very difficult child. When I was in the second grade at Wilmont Elementary, I had one of my legendary tantrums that came to an abrupt and shocking end when I kicked my teacher right in the face and gave her a bloody nose. Difficult boy.
Yet, even then, my Mom had a way of using her words. After the "kick heard round the school" my teacher took me by the hand to her office and got my mom on the phone at work. I was still struggling against her, but the moment she put that phone against my ear, it stopped. I have no idea what my Mom said to me, but it was a slow quiet conversation that made me calm down, apologize to the teacher and promise to do my school work. When I handed the phone back to the teacher, she was so shocked with the about face in my demeanor that she could only utter the words "What on earth did you say to him?" My moms reply "I just had a conversation about what behavior is appropriate at school and what isn't."
When I started 8th grade I got put into a "normal" class in junior high. My mom still remembers the face of the teacher I got, though she mostly remembers it through a red haze of unimaginable anger. In my vein of being "wrong" I had taken up several quite unusual traits. For example I much preferred sitting on the floor under my desk as opposed to on my chair. I liked to make noise as well... especially if it was too quiet. Any noise at all really, and with this big old mouth I have a cacophony that comes out, from raptor screeches to dog barks and everything in between. My favorite thing to do was when the teacher wasn't paying attention I would go to the back of the classroom, open the floor to ceiling storage closets and fold myself onto one of the shelves and shut the closet doors. At least twice it caused quite a ruckus when the teacher thought he had lost one of the kids. To say he didn't like me much, would be putting it lightly. He hated my behavior so much, that he successfully got me permanently expelled from the only Junior High school in a 50 mile area. At that final meeting, he had acted so righteous and justified in only teaching normal students that my mom, the calm zen one, almost punched him right in the face. But, as I was in the room, she decided better of it.
She drove us home that day angrier than I had ever seen her. She had taken the rest of the afternoon off but when we got home, she told me I couldn't come inside. That I could spend the next couple hours playing outside in the yard or whatever, but she didn't want to see me in the house until school was over and Josh got home. So my punishment for getting expelled was to go play outside, and instead of doing that, I broke into the neighbors house and stole some trinkets. This began the avalanche that eventually led me to assault charges, court dates, home study, institutionalization and eventually probation in another state; all before my 12th birthday.
So in answer to my Mom's question about whether that sentence was true about me I could only reply "People who dont have something wrong with them, dont go through all the things that I've gone through!' And she sat there in silence for a few moments while formulating the response that would eventually shatter everything I believed myself to be.
She looked back at me and said "Shane, I'm going to say this about the things you have gone through in your life. All of those therapists who insisted that something was wrong with you, those couselers who deemed you emotionally challenged and unfit for normal classes, the teachers who were to lazy to put in the extra work to engage you, the Doctors who couldn't ever tell if anything was actually wrong with you, and especially your Dad and I, we were all wrong. There was never anything wrong with you, we just didn't know any better than to believe people who thought they knew what they were doing. I was wrong for believing them.
"You were never anything more than an amazingly creative, energetic little boy who loved to play and use every bit of your imagination as much as you possibly could. They live in a world of sameness and conformity, and you were never meant to conform. You are a born leader, and you were born to stand out in this world and make a difference. I'm sorry. Please hear me when I say this, I am sorry for letting you believe that about yourself for so long. It. is. Not. True.
"Only You get to say who You are. Only You get to decide who You will become. More than anybody I've ever met, you have the reason and right to go through life angry about the hands you've been dealt. But you took that anger and became one of the strongest people I have ever known. No matter how many wiser, older people tried to conform you to the way you should be, you always held true to who you were and the possibility of who you could be. You were always the smartest person in the room and you never backed down from questioning the things you didnt understand, and while that can frustrate the common person to no end, it is people like you that drive the world forward. You give me hope for the future.
"And as a point of clarification, I know exactly which therapist your first memory is about. I find it weird that you remember him because that was the one and only time I ever took you to him. I was in the room when he asked you that and I remember it because you started tearing up and crying. The part that you dont remember is at the end as we were getting ready to leave, he took me aside and told me that he had observed certain behaviors and traits in you that, if left untreated by him, could lead to homosexuality. I pulled away from him, I told him that I already knew my son was gay and there was absolutely nothing that needed to be fixed about that, and that you would be just as loved. Then I looked him in the eye and said I would not ever be bringing my son back to a hack like him. Then you and I went out to ice cream at Baskin Robins."
The unlovable, broken, unpopular, chubby ugly boy died that day, in that very moment. Every excuse that I had to justify the way I was had become a choice that I could take forward with me, or set down and move on from. I chose in that moment, to move on. I have never made a better choice. From then on, I became a new man, the man I wanted to be, the man that I could be proud of. I went to school, then the military, then on to be twice over CEO of arts organizations, and I have started following my dreams with wild abandon. I have become a man that I am proud of.
This wouldn't have happened with different parents. My Mom and Dad are the most amazing people I know. And I dont say that simply because they are my blood and they raised me. I say that because they were able to form adult relationships with their children, and in so doing they created thinking, artistic fully formed human beings. I have often said that my Mom is so powerful in her mind and her speech that if she said the word chair, a chair would fall out of her mouth. By admitting her mistakes and saying the words I Was Wrong, she shed the suffering and self-imposed alienation I had felt for years and gave me a second birth in life as truly anyone I wanted to be, free from the baggage of my youth.
She speaks in a way that causes transformation in others, and when she tries she creates brilliance from nothing.
Happy Mothers Day, Mom
3 comments:
First of all, I took those pictures of you and your mom in the pool, and nobody’s every worn water wings with such élan. Second, nobody that I know has every felt—ever—that there was anything wrong with you. Ever. On the contrary. Last, don't think nobody reads this blog. Sometimes even the most unlikely audience is paying attention. Happily.
Oh, and that last comment was not left by Unknown. It was left by Uncle in Altadena.
When I was a kid, you weren't hyper... you were FUN. Still are! Love you Shane!
And you know, your mamma isn't just an amazing mom, she's also an amazing aunt.
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