I love Doctor Who.
I love it because it is supposed to be a kid’s show that is jam packed instead with stories of bravery, sacrifice, fear, loss, sci-fi, unbelievable adventures, magic, and every moral of every society you can think of. I also love it very, very much for the speeches that they use every season without fail when the current iteration of the Doctor has their big moment to shine with their almost millennia of wisdom. I love that as an adult, the show makes me think.
One of my favorite speeches is Matt Smith’s (11th Doctor) at the very, very end of his tenure in the role. David Tennent was my first Doctor and I loved him very much in that role. Still do. And the end of his journey in the show was violent, fraught with grief and mourning for the loss of himself before the big transformation into Matt Smith happened. Years later, the contrast to Matt Smith’s departure was visible and tangible in every sense of the word. He gave a big speech about how we are all many different people throughout our lives and how that’s okay…how you have to keep moving. And remember all of the people you used to be.
It got me thinking today about one of the people I used to be.
It may not seem like it now, or could be incredibly hard to believe, but I used to be a very withdrawn version of myself. It was nothing for me to be holed up in my bedroom on my computer or with my nose in a book for hours on end. I’ve struggled with sleep for most of my life, so teenaged me was usually up very late chatting, reading, listening to music, and contemplating the world in whatever way I decided to. It all seems well and good, but the problem was that this version of me was very, very, very traumatized, and very, very, very trapped within myself. I remember struggling to make eye contact with anyone – especially men. I didn’t have my first kiss until I was 19 years old and that was largely because I forced myself so that I could get it out of the way. I spent my teens being very shuttered within myself, very detached, very withdrawn, and largely removed from the world. Remember my last post about spending a lifetime protecting myself? Well…I consider the ages of 12-20 to be the years when I was constructing those walls and finding the broken glass to put down the pathway.
I didn’t have in person friends, I struggled with family dynamics, I largely checked myself out of every situation I could and immersed myself in fantasy worlds as much as possible. I could fake interactions really well – a skill I learned to hone into a very powerful tool in adulthood – and most people would never know that I’m an ambivert at best most of the time. Relationships of most kinds were and are extremely difficult for me because it is hard for me to break out of my shell and feel safe. It’s still very hard sometimes. I struggle with feeling inadequate and annoying and well…fill in the blank. If you’ve read my blog for more than a minute or 10, you can probably fill in ALL those blanks. It was easier to disconnect.
I reconnected back into the world through music – in particular with Linkin Park’s first 2 albums and then again especially with their song Numb. It was one of the first times in my life I felt like someone understood me and that coming out from the self-induced soul coma was okay.
What I didn’t know back then was that that disconnected feeling was part of my trauma – part of how I checked out when the world got to be too much. I learned how to mask myself rather than deal with my pain. I lied to everybody constantly about how I was and refused to ask for help until it literally came down to do or die.
I’d like to think that I have better ways of coping now, but oh…..to look back and realize how far out of that shell I have come but to constantly feel the void of it calling my name…it’s strong. It takes effort. And sometimes it is more effort than I have in me to give.
I know many folks are likely feeling that call of the void right now, whatever that might sound like. I feel like what I’m hearing most from people now is that the fear and uncertainty and pain is culminating into all of us falling back into the old habits that kept us safe and warm when the world was otherwise the scariest place we could be.
I’m going to urge you here to fight it and I’m not going to give you some big song and dance about how strong you are and how much courage you have – because screw that.
Fight it when you feel weak. Fight it when you feel inadequate. Fight it when everything feels so heavy that you feel like you’re going to buckle under the weight of it – and then let yourself buckle – but stand back up anyway.
Let yourself be drawn to the void for a bit but remember that nothing was ever solved by hiding from it.
Hang in there, everybody. Someday this page will be filled with the words of an older, wiser me who looks back at this point of my life and laughs at how much I thought I knew…just like I look back at the teenage me and wonder what I was so hell bent on hiding from. We had so much to do and learn. We had so many beautiful things to do and become. I hope that all of us look back from old age and are proud of whatever we did to survive and make it through to the next page.
As for me…I’m excited to meet whoever I become next. I hope you are, too.
