Previously: in elementary school I was sort of existential--I didn't believe in God or the Devil.
I was sort of a virtuist--my goal was to discover what was good. Since I felt that I did not have the good, I felt that someone must eventually give it to me. I knew that things could be good--most foods, and I thought weapons were good because they possessed effectiveness. At this point friends were one of the great things in my life. During third grade, however, I spent some time homeschooling. This made me feel powerless over my life, and stupid--my father had bought a bunch of flashcards to teach me the times tables. I couldn't see why they were important. The best I could do was to affirm any new beginnings that were offered me, for I felt that I had no wisdom and surely there must be a reason for these obviously marvelous wonders to be taken from my happiness.
In middle school I began to feel that something was wrong with the world--my life wasn't following the right path. It seemed that some kind of hero was needed. Life was boring, and full of jarring experiences that I felt were the product of misunderstanding and non-empathy --I thought a tentative goal could be to make life more interesting, or even to create happiness in these other lives around me. I didn't think that happiness could be found through goofy experiences or entertainment. Everyone wants to be part of the action, I thought, and if I'm not going to sleep with anybody it must be for the greater good, and it must be a universal rule and so happiness must be about something other than stupid entertainment--it must be meaningful. Maybe that is what is wrong with the world--it does not have meaning. But I felt that before I could take part in the holy meaning I should understand first what was wrong--afterall, how can I know what is meaningful if I do not know what is meaningless? I felt it was injust to be a perfect/blissful/innocent being in an imperfect/changing/hateful world. It became my goal to empathize with everyone, to nurture those that still had a conception of a non-fractured totality, specifically young children and especially infants. I thought an infant could understand my longing and sadness. I began to feel desperate, and more urgently needed a grounding in some kind of real knowledge or experience. I also felt that I was somehow responsible, and that I should work to become virtuous. Virtue was anything that gave me pleasure or power. I was a caged hedonist--I felt that I should only derive pleasure when either life had no meaning, or no real harm could come of it. I didn't want to take risks because I felt that I was continually failing. Failing both in body and mind seemed to spell death. I thought that any kind of love relationship was a risk to my body. The main objective was to explain to people how they are very wrong--passively, by not giving in to affirming any of their wrong behaviors by imitating or befriending them. All of these people seemed to believe that nothing was going wrong.
In high school I began to internally blame people for not contributing the answers I needed. I began to feel that I deserved some compensation for all my sadness and regret. I developed an exaggerated and irrational, almost mythic conception of the greatness and perfection of my closest friends. I felt that truth should be expressed, as a daring, revolutionary flaunting of all the ugliness and stupidity in the world around me. I felt guilty for not spinning fabulous dialogues with teachers and friends, although I had the arrogance to believe that I had that capacity. Because I could not speak at length, I compensated by explaining to myself how everything I said was very profound. I began to believe that I was a hero, just not a great one. I had yet to find a practical means to my ends. I could recall making the agreement to wait for greatness and happiness until I was an adult. I thought it was a long wait to achieve some measure of goodness. I began to think I was an adult, that there was something about adults that denied them greatness, and felt that it must be about creating meaning, taking part in the life-dialogue. So I wrote poetry, but I still felt that I was out of control. And this was affirmed when my teacher told me that I was writing nonsense. But everyone seemed to respect me for it, which gave me a new perspective. Secretly I wondered if art was a more appropriate medium for truth. That seemed like a very dismal prospect, since I sensed that poems were meanings.
In college the main thing I learned was I had to do something. I couldn't think of myself as a philosopher, artist, poet, or anything else if I didn't do anything about it. I needed to collect images and pages which grounded me in the idea that I did in fact have imagination. It was easy to forget. As soon as something was created, it was part of the world. The only way it could be a part of me is if I corresponded with the world, yet I often did not correspond, so that I had to build bridges over the air, and supplement the incredible but tedious situation of uncertainty, aimlessness, sickness, and humiliation, with mental playgrounds where perhaps I was the only one who did not get lost.
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