I Wanted to D!3 in the Minds of People

I'm not talking about ideation, although there was a season in my life dedicated to that constant background thought... I'm talking about disappearing into the wilderness and never returning to society. I wanted to unfollow just about every person I'd ever met from social media, and remove myself from their following list, stop interacting with anything publicly and have people just "forget" I ever existed, my identity slipped from their minds like a ghost. I still wanted to be alive, to experience life, to exist... I just didn't want anyone to know about it. I even fantasized about faking my own death so people wouldn't even potentially remember me and wonder where I had gone. This last year I seriously contemplated doing just this (maybe not the fake funeral part, although I did actually think about it, just the running away never to be seen or heard from again). 

I bet the question you might have in your mind right now is "why"?

For one I don't like where society is or is going, and I don't think people realize what I believe is really going on (I'll leave that there for a moment and maybe talk about it another day, and for now I'll keep things personal). 

Aside from our catastrophically insane society I wish wasn't our current reality, I couldn't for the life of me get anyone to really understand who I am. I know who I am, but others around me didn't seem to have any idea or care, no matter how many times I've tried to show them the real me. All anyone seems to want is for me to keep sweet, be funny, be agreeable, stop talking and sing. Be the entertainer, keep the party going, make people look good and pretend I don't know anything so I'm not any more of a threat than I'm already perceived to be because of my voice. 

This talent of mine (though I am eternally grateful for and now will be choosing with my free will to use for societal change) used to come at a cost. The people I had in my life were drawn to me because of my seemingly effortless notoriety (which wasn't even mine by the way, it was borrowed. I sang well so other musicians used me to make them look good and in turn I ended up appearing like I was cool and knew what I was doing, when it was them who knew what they were doing, I was just the vocal cherry on top. And please don't confuse the word "used" for a bad thing... I know what I was signing up for and I was more than happy about the exchange, it was mutually beneficial after all, and consentual symbiotic mutual use is healthy human relationships). 

The problem is, that because of this borrowed notoriety, the 'friends' that were drawn to me were drawn to me for the wrong reason. They wanted the significance that I appeared to possess, without wanting anything to do with me as a person (if you understand the mirror, this is messed up on my end as well, though I can guarantee you I had my reasons). Any time I said anything about anything it was automatically shut down or competed with whether it was something I learned, or something personal or something about my next-level-fucked-up childhood that could have been on Jerry Springer that I was desperate for people close to me to see about me: I was never actually allowed to exist as a human being. All people seemed to see was a pretty young woman who had a talent for singing, who was allowed to shine on stage (lest the people close to me appear insecure to the social group) but then anything offstage squashed through covert social dynamic tactics. It was clear to me that my 'job' was to make others look good, no one actually wanted anything to do with me, they just wanted to make sure I was around them but didn't look better than them (for any other way than the socially expected way, which was my vocals). 

I walked away from more fake friendships than I ever had real ones. 

The painful part about it was that I tried to explain my childhood and what I was healing (but still hurting) from over and over and over, but no one actually listened. If they had taken but a few moments to actually listen to what I was saying, no one would have competed with me or shut me down or felt insecure around me in the first place. If they had really seen what I was trying to show them, they would have had compassion. 

I'm not just a talented party-girl who sings in bands, even if I leaned into that identity for a few years: I'm a (now healed and recovered after ten years of constant self directed somatic therapy) childhood abuse survivor whose never known true belonging, family, support, love, or kindness in a day in her young life. It wasn't until I met my fiancé Jon that I even knew someone could have positive intentions for me at all. What people don't know about me is that I was tortured as a child, like actually legitimately tortured, chronically, by the people who were supposed to love me. If I would have actually known what a family was supposed to be as a child, I would have been taken away by CPS. 

My years of singing on stage in bands was more of a survival strategy for me than anything else. Singing in bands kept me alive, from actual ideation that lingered for years after my escape from my childhood home. And yeah, I was talented, and yeah I could pretend I was "the cool girl" sometimes and maybe that sent the wrong message, but no one was listening to the real message anyway. I couldn't connect with most people while off stage in between sets not because I thought I was too good for the folks in the crowd, but because I was painfully anxious that someone could at any moment, abuse me the same way my parents did (because if my own parents could do all that then surely anyone could) and I'd immediately have a C-PTSD response in public that would ruin the show and any chance of me having any reason whatsoever to live and continue to choose healing in the first place (before I met Jon and he became the new reason number one and music became second). I was terrified of human beings after what I lived with my entire upbringing and was taught was normal. It was when my Mother started showing up to shows unannounced and playing victim for the optics (after I clearly and calmly set the boundary with her that my music space is my safe space that she was not to attend) that I started wanting to give up music altogether. 

I felt pinched. 

No one was listening to me, I learned that If I'm honest it looks like drama, I didn't want to involve the venues in my safety and make the bands look bad, so... when Greg went off to med school ending music seemed like the best decision. If I couldn't control having safety from my abusive family anymore and being on stage involves public spaces and my name being on show advertisements so anyone and everyone can know where I will be on a Friday or Saturday night... why would I subject myself to that? Everyone there is there to have a good time, not worry about protecting me from something they don't actually understand or seem to care about at all. So what, am I seriously supposed to take legal action with zero tangible evidence so I can still do music in spaces where the truth of me is expected to be kept hush?

I got a lot out of music, but I wasn't getting what I truly wanted out of it anyway, which was for people to actually value me, and be easy on me while I recovered emotionally and socially from what never should have happened in the first place. I wanted people to understand why I was awkward, and why I had trouble speaking, and why I tried so hard to appear attractive in the first place. Because singing is the only value I knew how to provide, it was the only safety I knew (which is a pattern that runs much deeper than what I'm describing here: whenever my parents had house parties which was every weekend, if I sang and made my parents look good and then they got to take credit for my vocal talents they had nothing to do with, whatever punishment I was subjected to at the time would be lessened, so I learned singing = safety). Singing was the only asset and strategy I had to have anyone at all, even if they didn't care for me deeply as a person at least I had something. I wanted true belonging I didn't know how else to get, that everyone else seemed to already have but weren't interested in sharing with me. 

But I don't want to leave anymore, I just don't want to play the role of the cool girl.  

Because even if it was messy, even if no one listened, at least music gave me the one thing I couldn't get anywhere else: connection. Imperfect, and not at all intimate or genuinely loving but at least there was some, and what little there was kept me alive. This time around, if I do music it will be in a way where people actually know who I am, my boundaries will be respected (or I simply won't work with the venue) and genuine human connection and authenticity will be at the forefront of what I do. Because if this place is going to change at all, we're going to need it. 

Natasha MacIsaac