16. Survival Skills

My Inner World

No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don’t. ― Stephen King, The Stand

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Over my young lifetime, all that I had to deal piled up, from frequent hospitalizations, drama between my parents, bullying in school, and the invasive curiosity of strangers. I felt bombarded, assaulted even, on a daily basis by a combination of all these influences. Yet, throughout all I experienced as a child, there was one thing that I never doubted: that I would get through it, I would  emerge one day. There were times when it all felt too much, when I wanted to escape my existence, but giving up was never my style. I have always been a fighter. Instead, I sought ways to not only adapt, but ultimately survive, all that I was forced to face. Intuitively, I developed skills to help me. These skills can be defined as creativity, vigilance, compartmentalization, and retreating into my inner world of dreams. They allowed me to not only cope, but to even thrive in some ways.

The first skill that I relied on was my creativity. It served several purposes for me. For one, creativity was an armor that I could take with me everywhere. When I was creating, I felt powerful and confident, in direct contrast to how uncertain and insecure I felt in the rest of my life. Creating was an activity that I could control, a skill I could wield. It felt like my personal superpower which allowed me to disconnect from everything around me. By immersing myself in the pure act of creating, I was able to access a quiet, introspective space which I found healing. My creative expression became my personal safety net.