When I was 5 years old, I won a local talent contest on WSEE TV, Arch of Talent. I then competed on national TV in a segment aired as a spot on a national TV show, Ted Mack's Talent Hour. I understand that that segment was also aired on some localities as one of the acts in front of the curtain on shows like Ed Sullivan. Most people didn't know that these segments were not present in the NYC studio, but were filmed off site at local TV affiliates. That being said, there I was, at 5 years old under the lights in a national TV appearance. I was understandably overwhelmed, but didn't know at the time what to feel. That lack of understanding led me to abandon my singing career at about age 12 or so. Over that 7 year period, I was literally forced to appear at churches, local talent shows, a fair or two, and lots of places I don't remember or don't want to remember, not too sure about that. In any case, I came to hate singing, and moreover to realize that my parents looked at me as a potential cash cow. I remember thinking at the time of that realization that I had no way of dealing with the emotional and intellectual fallout of that situation.
My father was a drunk, not an alcoholic, but a drunk, nearly every weekend passing out on the couch.
The only time he took an interest in me or my life was when he thought I could make him money. First by singing, then later by playing MLB. I was a pretty good catcher and he latched onto that, even becoming a Little League manager and schmoozing talent scouts.
If this sounds like the script of a bad B movie, imagine living it. So, I literally did not know how to deal with my feelings and my perception of reality, but how to safely feel at all. Since I was also short, ugly and definitely not in tune with my peers. I was bullied, harassed and ostracized, adding to the massive repression of feelings. So I quit Little League, Boy Scouts and about everything else. I went to school because my mother forced me to do so. I had the intellectual capacity to excel, but refused to do so in spite of my parents.
My life took a major turn when I was in a major car wreck on the way home from the hunting camp I helped my dad build, something I enjoyed a lot, despite my dad's general lack of enthusiasm about my being there, other than to be a gofer. I was actually building something. In 1965, my dad was drunk, as usual and this time went off the road ( with my mon, younger sister and me in the car) and hit a cement bridge abutment at about an estimated speed of 50-55 mph. The care flipped twice, rolled over twice and ended up right side up against a small stand of trees on the side of the road.
My dad was unconscious, covered in blood and the side of his head a huge gash with his brain exposed. I have lost a lot of the details of that night, but I gave my dad CPR (learned in the Boy Scouts) through the smashed and pretty much missing windshield. Now try to imagine the reaction for a 13 year old very immature boy seeing his father's brains exposed and giving him CPR in a wrecked car, through the windshield.
To say that my feelings were overwhelming and impossible to deal with is a massive understatement. Dad survived, specifically due to my giving him CPR, the first time I realized that I had any capacity to make a mark on the world. I saved a life, my father's life. OF course the next few years were total hell, and Dad never did recover completely from his injury. The rest of us were also injured, but with his being life threatening, nobody really checked up on the rest of us. I was left dealing with the image of my dad, believing he was dead. and seeing his brain through a hole in his skull, realizing that I also could have been dead, along with everyone in my family except my older sister. She was not there that weekend, on a date I think.
The kids at school temporarily left me alone, first in respect for my "heroism" (which didn't feel very heroic to me) and then just because they didn't "get " me. I was not a "normal" teen, and the accident and the aftermath left me truly alienated from everyone and everything, Mental health? What mental health?
So at age 13 I was officially and certifiably into an emotional funk that I used to repress any feelings at all. I don't remember much from that period, mainly because I was emotionally and intellectually un-invested. in the world. Considering what I went through, in terms of being unable to process or understand or even really feel my emotions from age 5 on, I had no reference points. I was emotionally left on a raft floating on the ocean of my emotions, or maybe up that proverbial tributary with no means of propulsion.
That is when I discovered SCIFI/ Fantasy. Most kids who read this genre probably got into the ships, ray guns, adventure,etc. I thought that was ok, but what hooked me was figuring out what the characters in those impossible situations felt, thought and how they dealt with it. To this day, I still do that. I judge a story not on the excitement, adventure or glitz, but on the grit and tenacity of the characters dealing with a reality they could neither control nor escape. I looked at Samwise Gamji and Friodo Baggins, not in terms of the grandeur of the story, but at what they felt, heard, saw and what it did to them. How they could possibly even process the immensity of their reality. What went on in their minds and hearts that kept them even functional in their quest. How they successfully and unsuccessfully dealt with their interaction under stress that is literally unbearable was an intense intellectual and emotional process for me.
It was this empathy with the characters in these stories that allowed me to finally work through the first decade and a half of my life, and most of it thereafter. I finally had a touchstone to human feelings in and about a crisis, about dealing with an impossible situation. It was not so much how the characters do it in the story, indeed most authors are inept at best in expressing this process. It was my trying to empathetically work through these feelings, experiences and situations that gave me a massive relief from stress, isolation and pain. In seeing though the eyes of a character who faces death and intense fear and stress, pain and loss, I could put my own experiences in perspective. Another aspect of this was reading stories by authors like Zelazny, Gamil, and others whose characters are just normal people suddenly thrust into a situation where they have supernatural powers or perception. Lovecraft's stories where regular people are suddenly exposed to or assaulted by horrors the human mind is just not equipped to deal were even more exquisite exercise in empathetic analysis of unquestionably impossible to deal with emotions.
Yes the sight of C'thuluhu rising from his watery grave would be incredible, but even more so, what did those seamen feel? What kind of terror stole their breath away and crushed their souls in that moment. How did they remain lucid in the face of ageless, nameless horror? To work through these experiences is to appreciate the true essence of being human. That is my reason for reading SciFi/ Fantasy, and I feel that they rest of the readers of these genre are missing out on the real core of the stories.
My training in martial arts, particularly the traditional arts of the Japanese Feudal Era, gave me more ability to overcome myself and my limitations, and in a sense, my fear of death. From the age of 5 I had several times I did not expect to get out of a situation or an illness alive. I credit martial arts with giving me an understanding that death itself is not to be feared. It is a possible outcome and the last fight you will lose. The arts also gave me more control of my temper and a constructive outlet for violent tendencies. Most recently I was a member of a medieval reenactment group that turned role playing into a full contact martial art.
At the same time, I was starting a career as an RN, linking me with the past in a way that led to a 40 year career in the ICU as an RN. Once again I was making a difference and it was immensely satisfying. It was also very high stress, again helped by retreating into the worlds of SciFi/Fantasy and examination of the lives and thoughts of those exposed to terrible, horrible situations over which they have little or no control. How does one survive these experiences? The very act of trying to figure this out for myself is cathartic and reassuring. It is not that I believe these people to be real, but that they are metaphors of the process of figuring out my life for myself.
And so it goes.....
