Dissenter

I remember once, in grade school, reading something I liked.

I don’t remember what it was, or who wrote it, or what grade I was in, but it was colloquial. It was the first time I had been exposed to that style of writing, and I enjoyed it. The fact that I was enjoying what I was forced to read at school was quite a unique experience. It was also the first time I had seen the word colloquial, so colloquial=writing I liked. I don’t remember what was said in the paragraphs, but I liked HOW it was said.

Learning about colloquialism didn’t introduce me to a new writing style, it just gave a name to what I was already doing by default, and that was helpful, because I simply wasn’t ‘getting’ English.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think that the great rush to mash the intricacies of language down kid’s throats does a lot of damage when it comes to how a person learns to communicate. What’s the hurry? Do us all a favour and forget about participles, and pronouns, and how many adjectives is too many, and just let kids tell their silly stories with all the chatter that matters at that time, then write it all down just like that, bad spelling and all. If they love language, they’ll treat it better, and use it more effectively.

In school, when the curriculum asks you to write about your Christmas vacation, it wants you to write it like a robot, is how I felt. It wants you to start with a relevant introductory sentence, then prove the relevance of that sentence for the next couple of squared paragraphs, then sum up neatly and unsurprisingly by repeating the introduction with an added, or implied “Isn’t that interesting?” or, “I told you so.” The curriculum is also not shy about stating the fact that this kind of writing is what you need to replicate in order to find a job, but I was so young, and I wanted-and still want-to write sentences as long as I could mete out with a breath, or maybe two, because that’s how kids talk. That’s how kids communicate, naturally. I wanted to be excited about writing, and not have to worry enough about the rules that I lost all fluidity of means, and forgot WHY I wanted to communicate at all.

I forgot why, and I lost it anyway, both my fledgling craft, and my will to communicate at all, because I felt I needed permission to do it in my own way.

There’s a lot of pressure on people to follow rules, and even those of us who don’t tend to wall ourselves into boxes that say, “I don’t follow rules!” on the outside of the cell. I barely wrote anything for decades. I’ve written more in the last 4 months than I wrote in the entirety of the previous 30 years. I always wanted to, and I always felt bad about not, but still rarely made the time unless I was in some extremity of spirit, like after I found my friend with his head blown off, and my Mom died, and I went to rehab. I wrote some poetry after all that.

I always felt better after the catharsis of writing, and I’d tell myself that I’d just done something vital, and healthy, and natural, and gee, I should do that again soon, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t follow rules, and I didn’t adhere to schedules, and I didn’t have good habits, not in my box.

What a load of self-defeating crap. The truth is that I love order; I love rules, too, if they’re mine.

There’s a certain romance and (possibly) grudging admiration attached to mavericks, to idealists, to dissenters, but I don’t think it’s warranted, certainly not the romance. If you take everything that you do without thinking, and make it 25%-40% harder for anyone else to understand why you do it that way, you’ll be a maverick. If it’s 80% harder, you’re probably a poet who’s trying to make a living at it.

You do not want to have to blaze your own trail all the time. It’s a ludicrous waste of time and effort. Following a path is a good idea, there is always a lot you can learn without having to do all the research yourself, which is really exhausting, and usually not worth it, or even necessary. We get to live much easier lives, and learn all sorts of new and exciting things because someone already broke the ground, identified the environment, and kindly labelled it for us.

A good example of this for me is in the ever-present struggle for mental health. I spent a large portion of my first 46 years wondering what was wrong with me, while also believing that no-one else could possibly know enough about me to provide the right answer. But you never hear an answer you’re not ready to accept. The stigma surrounding mental health issues is fortified with weapons like crazy, weak, back turned to god, did too many drugs in the 60s, gay, and all wrong. It is not a welcoming prospect at all. I hit several bottoms-of varying altitudes-to be forced into the humility required to accept an answer that I did not want to hear, but was already painfully obvious. I could rattle off all the symptoms, but it would take too long; it had already taken way too long. When the doctor said ADHD, I felt such a profound sense of relief, I nearly fell asleep, but I also could not WAIT to get out of his office so that I could start walking down that path.

I do my best not to wave the flag overmuch, and I try hard to not shrug off accountability for poor behaviour onto the shoulders of the label, but when things are really hard, and I’m really tired, frustrated, and confused, I still have that well to drink from, and with a draught of patience and compassion for myself, I can restore the will to continue on a path where broken becomes experienced, where struggling becomes persistent, where lost becomes curious, where scarred becomes resilient, where penitent becomes accountable, and where ‘What the hell am I trying to say, exactly?’ is colloquial.