This video came across my Facebook feed just now and I’m glad I found a copy on YouTube I could share with you on my blog here. I can see myself in it so clearly I’m stunned.

This is me, mostly. And it might seem strange to think of me as having grown up in an unstable environment, because the usual image of that is a horribly brutal family situation and mine wasn’t that. I never experienced childhood homelessness. I was never physically abused. I never went to bed hungry or out the door in dirty clothes. By all rights I have to say I had it pretty good. But family life on mom’s side was still dicey at times and this video really gets how I learned to cope with it.

Thing is when you grow up in certain situations they don’t seem unusual to you because that’s your normal environment. It’s only as you get older and have more contact with the world around you that you begin to see how odd it might seem to others. But even then it’s still normal to you.

Mom’s love was the one constant I had growing up. Everyone else in her side of the family (I never had any contact with dad’s side until I was in my middle teens) was a minefield of is it good today or angry, and that was mostly about the central family drama that I was in the middle of and which I won’t go into now. The only one I never had to be careful around on the maternal side besides mom was my maternal uncle who lived in California who was always cheerful and fun. But he was clear across the country from me. I grew up with a bitter always angry and hostile maternal grandmother and that was the big minefield I learned to navigate growing up. Mostly by going to my room and closing the door, or going out for a walk. To this day long walks are how I work off nervous energy.

Don’t even get me started on the teachers I had all through grade school until I entered Woodward. Being the only son of a divorced mom they all pegged me as a problem child the moment I entered their classrooms and treated me that way (Montgomery County let me see the notes those teachers wrote in my school record, but wouldn’t let me make copies alas). Then there were the bullies my being a skinny girlish art kid attracted. Woodward was paradise compared to everything that came before, but even then it wasn’t until my senior year there that I finally began to feel secure enough to open up and make real friends.

So I see myself in this video very clearly. I can think of at least one other friend here who probably can too. I see you. Survivor’s Intelligence.