Baseline Assumptions: Renegotiation, The Lead-Up
All of the following information will relate back to the pandemic of 2020, the events that followed after, my subsequent relationship for information and truth, and what would eventually become my present-day ideological underpinnings. It's lengthy and autobiographical, but please, bear with me, it has a point - I promise.
I was homeschooled*
I was homeschooled AND my family was religious (which will be relevant later), but we were NOT part of a particular religious homeschooling cult.
We were not part of anyone else's cult, because my family (immediate and extended) operated as its own high-control cult (which happened to be made up of religious people).
All interactions my family had with social groups were either as leaders of insignificant religious factions, or as functional facilitators (event organizers, musicians, teachers, etc.).
All members of my family (immediate and extended) demonstrated an inability to assimilate into a group as just a member, and were commonly ostracized or directly kicked out of potential social groups if they failed to prove their functionality fast enough.
*I would attend 1.5 years of public school, starting in the 2nd half of the 7th grade and finishing the 8th. This brief interlude was largely the work of my outsider stepfather, and outside the realm of normal for my family.
Despite being "homeschooled," I spent the bulk of my time in my grandparents' house under no direct supervision from the ages of 5-10 years old. There were two other relatives present in the home, each with significant psychosocial abnormalities of their own, with limited capacity (vague, I know). There was dial-up internet on a laptop that was typically in use, a Yamaha keyboard, a small collection of movies, some age-appropriate school books, some toys (less in the later years), fields on all sides, and a swingset. All things considered, I didn't hate this time. I was mostly unbothered. When I could get access to the computer, I would play Runescape.
I would receive about three years of mildly-disorganized specific 1-1 instruction in reading, writing, and some mathematics (we wouldn't even fully get to multiplication before my educators would check out, shout out to the second-cousin's-wife who decided to lend me some help on that one when she noticed my helplessly self-taught incorrect method of multiplication when I was 10).
My willingness to "read for Wikipedia articles for fun," and a mild obsession with Jeopardy! was treated as evidence enough that I was smart enough to do whatever I needed to do later on in life. No one worried that I had virtually no practice in composing my thoughts in a format for anyone else's consumption, presenting to peers, being exposed to new concepts or evaluating the quality of information I was presented with. If I really wanted praise, I could always take on a hyper-detailed Biblical research project for a few days.
This time period is what I am referring to when I say that I was raised in isolation.
When the pandemic rolled around in 2020, I was instantly transported back to familiar territory.
Sit at home all day, do only what is required, check out as much as you can to make the time go faster, sink deep into your internal world, and only come up for air as much as you need to.
My then-partner and I did that for the better part of three years, avoiding people as much as possible, creating lofty, altruistic ideals about "doing everything we could to avoid spreading the virus," making exceptions and chastising each other for their transgressions. As real as the virus and its impact was, for us, it was an excuse for religious fervor wrapped up with a real-world, science-backed justification.
At the time, having just completed my associate's degree, I had been primed not to make any claims of my own, not say anything which could not be supported by a cited source, or argue from a position purely of personal preference, desire, intuition. Everything down to hair color, clothing, music taste, needed a suitable justification, lest it come under scrutiny. And in the presence of my self-proclaimed "hyper-logical" partner? There was nothing that wouldn't come under scrutiny.
The chaos of my family, the contradictory belief systems, inconsistent application of rules, cognitive dissonance baked into our everyday lives, lack of real intellectual engagement, had made me into someone desperate for reason. I attributed every bad thing I'd ever gone through to a lack of sense. If anyone had showed up, offering an answer to every question through scientific inquiry and objective fact, I would have followed them to the ends of the earth - I know because that's what I tried to do with him.
By the end of those three years, I had fully learned my lesson. Not everything can make sense. And just because something makes sense, does not make it right. And just because it's right, doesn't mean that it feels good. And just because your existence has reason and consistent internal logic does not mean it is an existence you will enjoy having. And existing without ever enjoying it is tantamount to throwing your life away.
The last year, the breakdown of logic, the breakdown of sense, was a rough one.
I don't believe it was so much that he broke me, as much as I broke myself in my pursuit of my own ideals, ideals he just so happened to align with. It would be easy, with the questionable origins of our relationship, the 12 year age gap, my total lack of family or connections, the security he offered, to cry foul and paint him as a 2-dimensional villain. To retrospectively treat the entire relationship as just one manipulative man enjoying the company of a younger, more attractive, compliant woman. But that's not compelling, and it's just not true.
We did not spend so many years together on the basis of superficial motives. And at least in respect to our desires for consistency of thought and reason, I don't believe it was ever a disingenuous act on his end. It just so happened that he was self-unaware to the point of hypocrisy, I was rigid enough on my own to the point of decision paralysis, and for a black-and-white thinker such as myself at the time, his absolutes were better than any drug I've tried so far.
And so off the deep end I went, diving headfirst into quantifiability, hitting the bottom, and resurfacing more disillusioned and confused than ever. Nothing meant anything. Facts, reason, logic, scientific inquiry, academic consensus, you could gather it all up and make it into the best pile of sense you wanted and still feel miserable by the end.
So what else was there?
I could either answer the question, or give up and rot.
And I did rot, for a while.
But eventually, we started to get somewhere, and an intuition, a person, a self started to emerge.
