Growing Up Freakish

I have always been fascinated by "freaks" people who don't fit into the standard categories. Such people seem to illustrate the intrinsic arbitrariness and ambiguity involved in our cognitive maps, however useful and necessary categories may be. Even such seemingly ironclad categories as "male" and "female" break down when you look at intersex and transgender people (I loved the "five sexes" theory when I encountered it).

It seems to me that people who don't fit into the accepted categories can gain a lot of insights that would elude people who just naturally fit into the way things are. It's like, fitting comfortably into the norms of society is not an option for you - and that's either going to fuck you up so bad that you never even get to the point of conventional development, let alone transconventional; or it's going to give you a boost and help you see more deeply into the world and yourself than most people ever get to experience. Often it is probably a mixture of insight and trauma that you get under such circumstances.

I don't consider myself very unusual or freakish, but as a child I definitely did not fit in, and was ostracized, humiliated, and beaten as a result. (What can I say, it was a real "Lord of the Flies" scenario.) I had a lot of emotional trauma from that, and it took me a long time to process it. But what I did get out of that, I feel, is a certain degree of insight and a questing spirit. Because I was forced into the role of the outsider, I looked at everything from that perspective. For a long time this meant that I rejected conventional morality, beliefs, and authority - so in some ways it kept me "preconventional" for a long time - but ultimately it meant that I was unlikely to be able to settle into conventionality and leave it at that. The emotional trauma aspect led me to dissociate from my body and feelings and escape into my head, and so I became more intellectual and analytical than I probably would have otherwise; this had its downside, to be sure, but has definite advantages as well.

So although my childhood was deeply painful and I spent much of it in an emotionally numb space, I wouldn't change it now - because it made me who I am, and I like who I've become.