CHAPTER 17

Killjoys Are Creative Too

   Creativity is an incredibly deceptive word. Tradition defines artists as the creative ones, whether their medium is painting, writing, acting, dancing, sculpture, music or whatever. And due to the definition being so limited, scores of people throughout time have centurially claimed they're not creative.

   I say: Bull!

   Creativity comes in multiple forms.

   It's the primary energy in every one of us. Every minute of our existence, we all create. Our very life is the canvas upon which we display the artistic output of all our thoughts, feelings and decisions.

   Even the most downhearted, boring life is a creative product of the one who's living it. Nowhere is it written that creativity is always positive, magnificent, loving or pretty.

   Whenever I hear Sinatra sing "I Did It My Way" and sense it's meant to symbolize a special spirit within someone who broke from the ordinary and went for it in an admirable, individualistic and victorious manner, well… I think it's a hoot.

   "I Did It My Way" is everyone's song. We all live as we choose, consciously and subconsciously. It's just that many of us prefer not to confront that truth, or its consequences, or the responsibility it requires.

   So, too, with my mom… she did it her way.

   Throughout our relationship, I watched her create an intricate, loveless gray canvas of sorrow; write volumes of reasons to whine and pine; fabricate floods of tears and tantrums into which she drowned her chance for fun or love; weave stacks of wet blankets to smother her zest for life; invent obscure dis-eases to justify her hypochondria medicine feasts; and with a lot of help from her fears, she built a home ambience of thunderous silence and controlling oppression.

   She was very creative. Though, as with many, I doubt she realized she was the highly prolific author of her attitude, her life, and my kidhood.

   She created a canvas so immensely morose I often feared that one day when I was away, she might declare her heart project done and terminate it.

   She never did though. Perhaps the Curiosity Energy, the twin kin of Creativity, kept her going. As it did with me when life seemed to be at a jumping off edge, not only through my kidhood but during the lowlights of my first two marriages and occasionally thereafter.

   Based on my on-the-job-experience with life-battering, I reasoned that negativity was the dark offspring of creativity. As is hanging in to be a central target of another's anger by believing there's no other way to survive. No options.

   Abuse is a neutral energy gone wrong from being channeled through someone's fear for their ego's fight to be right.

   As for the targets, acceptance of abuse is also an energy corrupted by the chaos channeled through a wayward search for love in all the wrong faces and places. Mostly, in the war zones of another's refusal to love and be loved.

   I recall investing considerable energy into inventing all sorts of reasons for deserving to be sequestered within un-loving setups. Even more backup substantiations for extending my self-imposed visits into unhappy camping grounds.

   And today, with abuse being a primo topic, it must call for incredible creativity from abusers to deny their wrongdoings and continue to pain-alize others.

   As well, for a woman to remain with a battering ram.

   I recently read a graph on the reasons for casualties being admitted into protective custody, shelters and/or foster homes. Lowest on the scale was emotional abuse. This baffled me, at first.

   I then wondered if this low ratio is because emotional abuse is so hard to define, so invisible and physically scar-less, so widespread and has become such an ingrained and accepted trait of our specie. Even adults who experienced it as kids often can't see its current affect on them, nor do they understand the need to.

   Those who channel their neutral creativity into emotional abuse seem not to realize the negative seeds they're planting in their targets' fields of psyche dreams.

   Possibly that's why emotional abuse rarely gets marked as a threatening condition with long lasting repercussions that silently scream for rescue.

   The creative expression within emotional abuse takes so many forms, it often outlets via parents consistently degrading kids, mates degrading mates, friends degrading friends, even kids degrading parents, and all excusing it as “harmless fun…" when it is truly mental bullying.

   Another form of creative abuse is where parents smother their kids with elaborately decorated smoke screens of their own fears; redesigning their private phobias to appear as protective parental concern from a knowledgeable guidance counselor.

EXAMPLES:

   A mother re-scripting her distrust of men by telling a daughter: "Don't trust the boys, honey, they're all alike. They only want one thing." Thereby inhibiting a girl from establishing what her relationship might be with men… yet never really explaining what the “one thing” is nor how to recognize and counter-act it.

   A parent covering their fear of success and hatred for their family tree by saying: "You'll never make anything out of yourself, you're just like your Uncle Harry."

   What a creative, common and socially approved way of denying a kid the forum to freely communicate; to discover who they are; and, to unearth their own individuality.

   Smothering to the point where receivers mature with their hopes and potential so deeply buried by family repression and putdowns that it often takes tremendous shrinking for them to even consider they might contain talents worthy of accessing.

   Hey! Ain't it a hoot. One who is supposed to stretch self-awareness is called a shrink.

   The most creative, yet unfunny, venue for abuse I have noticed is dished out under the deceptive wrapping of Insult Humor which makes as much sense as giant shrimp, Army Intelligence or Civil War when you consider that insult means humiliation and ridicule; and humor is defined as delight and amusement.

   Heck! Insult Humor has even been elevated to highly paid careers by Don Rickles and his clones and clonettes.

   Nearly every sitcom includes a token insulter earning the highest pitch on the laugh track machine. Consider: all the old sit-coms, like: Carla on Cheers, Louie on Taxi, Mama on Mama's Family and Archie Bunker in general. Or, take your pick of any current calamity. The knock-down list rolls on in real, and reel, life.

   Though many shows do portray supportive relationships, the old writer's trick of bringing in Le Grande Insulteur when the big guffaw is wanted, still loiters.

   I've met scads of people through the years who delight in their flair for ridicule; in how deftly they can cut up and put down any available prey.

   Couples vent frustration and anger by degrading each other publicly with stilettos of one liners, usually when they have yet to show and cleanse their dirty laundry at home.

   Parents vent their dissatisfaction with their own lives by degrading their kids, or their mates, in front of one another, which is a very creative, subliminal way of thrusting their own fears outward, killing two birds with one moan. Kids then grow up believing they are souly a product of both negative personalities.

   Many parents promote the Castigating Shuffle by letting their indifference imply it's OK for kids to compete for the sharpest dagger digs. "Hey! Kids will be kids. They'll grow out of it." Why so sure? Many adults haven't.

   To advance the insult creativity, most kids are packed off to school with their lunch bags of mock ham and bully-onia sandwiches, cans of non-sweet yokes and snicker barbs. Why not? Insult has already been home-programmed as crunch time entertainment.

   Eventually, the graduates of Insult Humor move onto the moan-up fields of offices, bars and society-at-large, well prepared to verbally cut down anyone worthy of back patting praise. Worthy of what they earned that the Insulter believes they haven't got.

   As with most circles and cycles, eventually this creativity is brought back home to be legacized onto their kids like a sacred ritualistic gift.

   My skin crawls when I hear the usual tag served by both kids and adults after lunging their sharpest insult: "Hey! Just kidding. Can't YOU take a joke? What's wrong with YOU? Can't YOU accept my humiliation? Can't YOU let YOU be the butt of MY joke? What's YOUR problem?"

   Talk about upside down schematics!

   Then I think perhaps those who enjoy aiming attack arrows were simply taught as kids:

    LOVING = INSULTING = LOVING

   Possibly they feel that by choosing lucky YOU to aim the cleverest slur in their attack sack is the best way to show, as often said, how much they really care. As in "I wouldn't waste my time insulting a stranger."

   And you know? That may be true for many.

   Though I view Insult Abuse as a lousy excuse for a verbal caress, for many it may be the closest they ever got to being noticed as kids.

   After working my way through the defense barriers of the many insulters I've met, I learned vulnerable emotions were rated as weaknesses in kidhood by their parents. Proving kidhood is indeed an apprenticeship in the art of attitude selection. And, HOW it is taught has life long repercussions of continuing choice.

   For me, Insult Humor is a dirty trick when aimed at kids as it can sink deep into their thought process. I say it's dirty because kids aren't groomed to challenge adults. From birth they're taught to unquestioningly obey. And they usually do, especially if they believe it's the main route to the love they want.

   Kids are unilaterally instructed to respect adults with no individual regard as to whether an adult has earned respect. Heck! Adults don't respect all adults. Yet, kids are expected and forced to unilaterally "respect," which, to me, is a direct route to the Adulteration Alley of Lost Integrity.

   This mandate is a deadly poison. Possibly, it's why so many kids cringe from reporting abuse and molestation. Or, why so many kids fear questioning or resisting adult behavior that feels "wrong."

   And with adulterated putdowns, even if little kids dare to reply, most haven't gathered the verbal ammunition to create a topping response.

   Kids are born desiring recognition. They are shown how to accomplish this by example. First from family. Then by society. This unfortunately leaves them vulnerable for being programmed to believe one of two messages:

   Hurt & Degradation = Recognition. Or,

   Supportiveness to Love & Be Loved = Recognition.

   A thought which makes me think that a more appropriate title for parents is Primary Programmers.

   Sure, we all, including kids, have a choice as to how we store the data we receive. Whether we believe what we are offered denotes: How Life Is or How It Shouldn't Be. How to gain recognition, and what kind of recognition is desired.

   But, when our suppliers of kidhood data are the ones we also hope shall love and approve of us, staying detached to examine the quality of the data becomes a complex task. It delays the sorting process that has been known to keep many adults filling many a shrink's couches and cachets.

   Creative emotional abuse is so intricate to decode as it's such a common aspect of our specie. Hard to define. Harder to crash. Perhaps that's why it's so low on the totem pole of causes for saving kids from non-healthy family environments.

   Heck! If emotional degradation was recognized as the harmful abuse it is, so many kids would need to be rescued that we'd have to create a new continent to shelter them.

   With the programming Ashley sought to feed me, such as: that life was a serious no-fun-raw-deal; that loving her husband and getting pregnant was her downfall to which I made it impossible for her to recover; that on birth I was already a home wrecker and heartbreaker; that no matter how I sought to reverse fate I was unlovable . . . God! If I saved that trash file, I'd have just cause for deleting me from my current journey.

   But somewhere in my heart, I sensed the only way I could "Honor Thy Mother" was by not becoming what she was grooming me to be through example, through her fears, guilts and self-sown sorrow.

   Somehow, I knew I was meant to best honor her birthing me by striving to create the best me I could be. Which one would think might be the prime goal of every parent, but is not always the case.

BOTTOM LINE DICHOTOMY:

We often need to disobey our parental programmers in order to obey the higher purpose of our soul's Creator. In order to fulfill our individual spiritual and creative destiny.

   The simplest way I've found to differentiate between our Cheerers and Jeerers, family or not, is to run what we're told through our GUT Buddy ― not our Guilt Gully.

For instance, is what I'm being told:

Promoting my highest potential? Or, encouraging Clone-hood through enforced lifestyle, career choices, adopted fears and restrictions? Or, Is it making me feel Good? Or, is it making me feel disgrace for existing?

Are the comments I'm told:

Improving my confidence in going-for-it in life? Or, feeding my self-doubts and fears?

Do the insult jokes I hear:

Make me feel happy or hurt for having heard them? Or, are they too close to my fears to respond?

Do the comments my family issues regarding me, my life and decisions make me feel:

They appreciate my individuality and stand lovingly in my corner to root me on with no strings to their love? Or, will this Swap Shop 4 Love ever prosper or close?

   I've come to believe that anyone who makes me feel bad about ME; who lessens my abilities for success; or who promotes me to deny my self-worth, swallow my opinions or sacrifice my happiness in order to gain their friendship, love or approval is not offering the quality of kinship that merits such a significant trade-off.

   We have enough to deal with in overcoming what our fears and self-doubt can deny us from manifesting without letting others' fears further deny us. Without letting outside Killjoys corrupt our confidence by adding their negative creative fuel to our life tanks.

Copyright © 2004 by Krystiahn