Getting to the bottom:
Amassing the sins of our parents and other conversations about the kids of 1973.
This ones for a friend. I don’t think they will mind that I wrote this, because whats underneath, what we unearthed is worth writing about.
I found out someone I’ve known a long time has had some dark life moments in the last few months. They and their partner have been incredibly supportive of me in difficult times and its my turn to pay forward on friendship and caring.
I arranged to visit them today and spent several hours unwittingly peeling away layers in the way only the best kind of unsolicited streaming flow of conciousness conversation can.
They are a kind, thoughtful individual, funny, witty, lateral, and sensitive. It was difficult to see them struggling in their own body, to be battling with the shackles of their mind, trapping them metaphorically and literally into a holding pattern of relentless mental anguish.
‘This too shall pass’ was one of the only things I could offer as solace, things are transient, and nothing remains the same forever.
‘I don’t get to talk to many people’ they said ‘but, I wondered if you would know…. why the fuck is this happening to us??’
And to contextualise they meant to us as people born from a particular time, in a particular space. Whats to be done for the kids of ‘73?
As luck would have it, I already knew what my answer was.
‘We were born at the wrong time’.
They looked to me for expansion. Of course its me so it was ready to fire like a loaded gun.
And my explanation sounded like this. By the appointment of time we arrived on earth, we weren’t born at the right time to harness an emergent social, cultural, technological event or movement. We have always been either just alittle bit too old, or alittle bit too young. And we have clawed and scraped and toiled for the little we got. I backed my theory up (like a proper sociologist) citing Malcom Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’, a piece of writing that greatly affected my own outlook on the nature of luck and success. The ‘you make your own luck’ placard gets a good drubbing in Gladwells uncovering of the sociological nature of place in time and the cultural space we occupy.
I told them about yesterdays writing on duty of care to our children, and the way we view and treat trauma. I told them of my therapists dismay at the recounting of my teacher saying ‘have a good look’ at my monstrous head wound and how heartbroken I felt that she shamed me.
‘ugh’ said my therapist and shook her head. ‘just… no emotional intelligence’.
No emotional intelligence. I said to my friend that not only were we born at the wrong time, our parents, the post war generation were all (with respect) emotional retards, a prisoner of their own schizophrenic upbringing caught between emotionless austerity and the free love movement.
Raised by the ‘drink some concrete’ touting generation, its taken 40 years of self realisation to succumb to the very real woundedness of our childhoods.
We are (some of us) very really broken. We were not really allowed to connect to our pain, and we both identified strong associations of guilt to have appeared weak and unable to thrive. It is only in conversation and with time and experience in adulthood as parents ourselves that we feel the true nature of the damage.
They told me they looked at some old photos from our time as children at primary school, and with astonishment saw the faces of blank canvasses, empty precious vessels waiting to be filled up with hope, love, encouragement, the brightness of the future.
For some of us it wasn’t so.
More comically we discussed traumatising 1970's media, and our parents inability to discern that in 1978 taking your child to see ‘Watership Down’ was going to scar them for life. The presence of nuclear threat, and Jeff Waynes ‘War of the Worlds’ terrified us to the point the first time I heard it again as an adult Im sure I had a wee PTSD moment. They told me that they discussed this with other people who looked on abit confused, but I got it only too well.
I think they felt a sense of comfort they weren’t alone in their feelings, and I know I connected with everything they were saying. For a moment I think there was some clarity for my friend, a laugh, a smile. In our weaknesses we discover our strength, that of friendship, collectivity and the ability to be kind and say ‘you’re ok with me, I know you, I know this pain, we’ll get through this, and fuck the naysayers’ and what my friend Vivienne rightly pointed out is the ‘what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger’ bullshit just be positive mentality.
Its ok to say we got a shit deal. Its ok.
And I’ve got your back.
