Just Stories, an explanation.

I've struggled with starting this new project over the past few months. It seems to me that as I have explored deeper into my own creative identity I have collided with a stratified layer of anxiety that reaches down to the root. A baseline reality of my inner thought-life is a steady stream of anxiety that courses through me at every moment. Many times I feel myself slip into the comfort of a new story, the longer the better. These stories serve as distractions from my anxiety. A means to escape and disappear into the elsewhere of creativity. 

So I have decided to pull from these stories the things that seem to be most important to me. This project is an exploration of my perspective on stories of all types. How they disgust or delight me. How they engage or terrify me. How they bring me a deeper understanding of self in a world full of distraction and confusion.

I have decided to introduce this exploration of story through the sharing of a story of my own. A story, steeped in fear, that reaches out from my youth. Recollections of a time where my agency was not as clarified, where the world was formless, and not much seemed to exist outside the boundaries of my limited perceptions.

I was young, I have never been good with recalling the exact age of any of my memories, but from context I was either in kindergarden or a year or two before. I do not have many early memories, because of this it  is interesting to me that most of the memories I do have are particularly full of terror. Perhaps this is due to the innate power of such experiences on the psyche or perhaps viewing it from a biological perspective: the more an individual can learn from fear the more likely they will survive. However as I have gotten older these excuses seem to be an optimistic conceptualization of the early signs of an anxiety disorder. Regardless of the true explanation for why these memories stand out to me so vividly in an otherwise undefined past, I was young. 

I remember waking from my sleep in the light of day. Late morning, obviously not on a day of school. Perhaps it was a weekend? There was something strange about this morning. It was almost as if, rather than separating from the unconscious fully, I had brought it forward with me out of my sleep. One of the first things I noticed upon waking was that my blanket was missing, and that my sheet was overtop my head. As I lay there a truth became very apparent to me, I was not alone. It was a sinking feeling. I felt my heart rate increase, my adrenaline rose but I was frozen still. I dared not move or make sound for whatever was in my room would see. There was no doubt about its existence. The thing existed for my body knew it to be true, for if it didn't exist how could  the fear be so real? I lay frozen beneath the sheet for what felt like an eternity. Wrestling with the concept of the thing. It was not until I threw off my sheet(perhaps my first and greatest act of courage) and sprinted out of the room and down the stairs that I was capable of understanding there was nothing there.

This memory is interesting to me not just because it is such a vivid early memory, but also because it is so similar to anxiety I have felt as an adult. On not just a few occasions I have felt like that little boy, trapped between his sheets and mattress, terrified of even moving to breathe. What must I have looked like to those who observed me? Perhaps I would be squirming slightly, perhaps they would see slightly elevated breathing, but to most I would seem as if I was still asleep. The comparison of this image to the reality of my experience during that time is so clear to me. I can step back into that room, into that bed, and pull the sheets over my head. If I do, once again, I can feel the terror. I can swim in the thickness of it.

This experience is valuable to me because it signifies something about myself I have not known until recently. There seems to be in my life an overt connection to those unconscious parts of our brains so often ignored in our day to day struggles. Those leviathans that sleep beneath us as we walk around in our worlds, only to breach the surface as we sleep, or in those briefest of moments where our emotions, whether anger or passion, rise high enough to overcome our erected walls of control. Then, like in our dreams, these leviathans spill out of us in rushes of ecstatic language or action. I often feel as if I am living my life in parallel to my imagination. That as I go about my day more than half my brain is wandering the hallways of my own creation. Often these imaginations overflow into conversations I have or take over the focus required to do daily tasks. 

When I was younger these overflows were not understood by me. Often I felt as if I was a passenger. My behaviors were not my own, there were specific times where I would wonder about my behaviors of rage or fear, grappling with something akin to a god. Some power that seemed to overtake me. Only now, as an adult, can I see these energies for what they are, and in their definition gain some modicum of control. My experience so long ago, hiding beneath the sheets of my childhood bed, not only educates me on the nature of my anxiety, but also brings forward to me the truth of that experience. 

The very same fear runs through me today, the very same boy trapped in terror exists in my head. A handful of decades since that point have only enabled a greater control over my reaction to the terror not reduce it. This shift in perspective reminds me of the fairy tales I read as a boy. This defining of my anxiety, this acknowledgment of its existence, is as if the breaking of a spell. Once defined, once noticed, anxiety cannot ever be considered as normal again. It will always stand out.

This is the power of a story. All those years ago reading about the pricking of a finger on a needle, or the slaying of a dragon, or the ritual of sacrifice, all these examples lend to our unconscious the idea of an unrecoverable shift of perception. For in much the same way that these curses or spells are broken I am freed from anxiety. It can no longer hide in plain sight, tricking me into considering it an equal with my other thoughts. It must exist in stark contrast to its surroundings. It is no longer possible for it to belong. 

I often think of this change from the perspective of a surfer. It was important to me when I began to learn to surf, to understand the nature of a wave. To watch them as they formed and where they broke. It was important to be aware of the wind, that great force that moved whole mountains of water over vast distances. As a surfer I do not control the ocean, I have no power of the waves. Instead I am a being that exists on the surface of it, using its power to propel me forward. There is risk in the act, I have been tossed and turned like a piece of clothing In a washing machine, but in those brief seconds of control, when the primordial power of a wave unfurls beneath the fiberglass of my board I am seemingly right at the edge of consciousness chasing it into the present. When I have harnessed this force I feel as free and as empowered as it is possible to feel.

My anxiety is that wave, my fear is the ocean. Only when made aware of its nature, when I am capable of understanding it, can I ride it smoothly to shore. Once I do see its nature, once I have contextualized its scope, I am free of its spell. 

Stories have always been a vehicle for me to escape, an inspiration for me to create, and means for me to gain perception on my experiences. What will follow is Just Stories. My attempt to identify and define the value of the stories I consume.