I read something on social media where some expert stated that the reason for boredom is that the brain finally feels safe, recognizes no immediate threat and has nothing to focus on. In the moment of boredom, it doesn’t have an assignment or purpose and will seek out stimuli. I know these moments personally and have been the victim of what happens when your brain starts to run amok. The tsunami that erupts internally and is forced out through actions and words that seem so foreign to the consistent observer. Many erratic behaving adults were unprotected children.
When I was a teenager, my bedroom was my safe haven. I grew up in a trailer where I had friends whose bathrooms were bigger than my bedroom. I shared my room with my younger sister until the level of violence between us required separating and adding an addition to accommodate our parents’ bedroom. I protected my space at all costs as there were moments were the refuge it gave me kept me safe. Those four walls over time absorbed pain, suffering, creativeness, sadness, art and so many other emotions that the materials themselves understood life. During the time I lost my best friend to a car accident those walls became a living journal of black Sharpie on faux wood paneling. Every inch that was accessible from squatting to tip toe was written on.
Each letter connecting a thought that I could not articulate from my mouth in conversation but could wield a pen like a conductor to a symphony, I found my way to communicate.
My parents were livid. We all knew that what I was capable of during emotional dysregulation was nothing they wanted to deal with. They did not want to see the byproduct of their own inability to parent a non-neurotypical person, that was not a thing in that era. I was not applying myself. I just needed to try harder. I was choosing the hard way. The consequences for not doing what I was told permitted the physical subjection I endured. Those moments at the receiving end of my dad’s hands and my mom’s words, molded a monster.
Even in those adolescent years I understood the need millennia before my time to establish ones claim to the space they occupied even on cave walls. It proved I was extant.
I was taking up space. I felt often that my presence was not welcome or wanted. I would counter this by either being in my room or outside until it was time for bed. I played sports as much as I could or was allowed to. My bike held more power than money because as long as I took care of it, it did not cost me a thing to use. It got me away when needed and returned when desired. I left my mark on everywhere I could. I had this deep fear of being forgotten or swallowed by the monster that was growing within. I was in my late teens when it really started to sink in that I was different from my peers in many ways.
I had behaviors that were not typical and coping skills that seemed out of place. The place those skills were created was an environment many were left out of. If more people would have been let in behind closed doors it would have made more sense. When the walls cannot be breached from either side, a level of psychological inbreeding takes place where you do not know it’s not ok, until you are observed doing that behavior in the world at large.
In February for only the 6th time in my life, I was moving into a place alone. This may seem irrelevant until you are allowed into the back story of how many places I have EVER lived, address wise. I have moved so many times that I cannot tell you street names but can recall most city and states. When I have to account for my whereabouts over even a 5-year span, it takes over an hour to document accurately. I have left something behind in every move and relocation. I am turning 46 in December and have lived in IA, TN, MT, WA, NC, MN, IL and WI. If you look at how long I was in each location and how many times I moved for whatever reason, I have occupied many dwellings. I lived a nomadic lifestyle.
My first place on my own was a trailer co-signed by my grandparents in the trailer court my parents were managers of. I was 18 or 19 and had no fucking idea what I was doing. I remember going with my grandma to help me get a checking account and direct deposit without any understanding of how it actually worked. A core memory of the only time my grandma actually said she was disappointed in me still lives to this day in my brain focused around a moment where I naively trusted a bank teller with cash. I was so excited to make my first trailer payment. I understood that because my grandparents also held the loan that if I fucked up, they got in trouble. My grandparents were held to a pontific level in body, mind and spirit for me, my grandma more than my grandad. I remember speeding from work to the East side of Des Moines to get to the bank before it closed. I walk into a lobby full of agitated Eastsider’s in various stances waiting in lines.
The banks systems were down, and they were doing everything by hand. I knew that I could not wait, or my payment would be late. So, I waited for my turn. I handed over my cash payment, gave her my account number, and she asked me if I wanted a receipt. I told her no. That decision absolutely altered me and haunts me to this day. The money never made it into the loan account. My payment did not post, was considered late and I was out the money. I went all weekend hella proud of myself until midweek, I get a call from my grandma. Not only did she express her disappointment she all but referred to me as ignorant for not knowing any better that I needed a receipt for proof of deposit. I know to my core that moment has absolutely fucked with my connection and ability to deal with money and finances. Of all the people on the planet to hear and feel that level of disdain from changed my brain.
It does not help that during this time frame I also had undiagnosed ADHD and CPTSD. I would observe others and even try to ask questions when I would see something pertaining to money and was often told I was being rude for prying as those were private and not discussed. The fact is I didn’t care how they made their money; I was trying to understand HOW to use it correctly. I would hear get a roommate split your bills and save money. I did that and got absolutely fucked over and realized I do not share space well with others. I was listening to so many people only getting the portion of the story that made them look like they had it figured out that I was left out of significant pieces of where a few of them were living off of credit cards and pay day loans. A habit I would later pick up.
At no point in any of those years did painting my walls take a priority. So when I found myself divorced for the second time and moving into my own place, I actually refused to do anything other than clean it. With my second wife, I bought the house, and even then, we did not paint the walls because she was too frugal too. We spent years in that home arguing over upkeep and maintenance; even the trailer court kid in me knew better. When she was forced to move due to her actions that subsequently lead to our divorce, two very big things happened, I switched bedrooms and painted the walls. While knowing that I was not going to be allowed to stay there. It was an act of defiance.
The apartment I now live in is has a very seeded and tumultuous past occupants wise. As an empathetic and intuitive person, I could feel the walls were oozing like a festered wound. I scrubbed them and cleaned them, but I still refused to paint them. This time the defiance laid in the refusal to accept that I was alone again. I did not want to be in this space. I did not want to claim it, and all this was temporary. Because the deeper wound and reality was, I going to be forced to roommate with the monster again.
I never stayed long enough anywhere to see the fruits of my labor manifest. I had to accept my monster was unresolved, untrained, unkept, unloved and the undesired parts of myself that I could avoid as long as I was coupled. I never actually dealt with any part that conceived her. I simply engaged in others, avoided and moved on. She too had been spending her alone time “painting walls”.
It came through via hair changes, tattoos, piercings, words, art, actions, lovers, decisions and many other forms. I say this with deep resounding astonishment, how any of this did not establish alcoholism or a drug addiction is beyond me as I had access to ANY of it. Yet in a whisper it was she that suggested we paint these walls, together this time. The colors are of blue hues and their names are Navigation and Freedom Found, they are bold as are we. We are both a work of art and a living installment. I don’t know what is next, but I have a new awareness of self that is not superficial. From there anything new is possible.