My Struggle

There's a new local photography club starting up in my area. Part of me is excited by the thought of meeting other people who share an interest in a hobby that has become something of a lifelong passion for me. But I'm not going to join. And not just because meeting new people gives me anxiety (although that's a contributing factor).

I'm not going to be able to relate to these people. They're not going to accept me as one of their own. They'll most likely take pictures of birds and flowers and babies and buildings, and while I've taken pictures of most of these things, it's not what inspires me.

The art I create is misunderstood. My intentions will be misinterpreted. I know, because it's happened before. Even in the case that other artists get it, there's a hard-boiled limiting factor baked into our culture that prevents my work from getting anything that might resemble professional exposure.

The one time I met other artists who do something similar to what I do - the first time I felt like I wasn't the only person in the world who does it - was online. I pushed myself WAY outside my comfort zone, in the hope of growing into a community that might offer the possibility of collaboration.

But it was all for naught. Like the NFTs they blindly idolized, all their ambitious plans evaporated in an instant, leaving me alone (like I've always been) with the summer plans I had cancelled so I could be flexible enough to zoom off to another state at a moment's notice.

If you knew the small town I live in, you'd know the chance of meeting anyone even remotely like me is astronomically small. If I were of a stronger constitution, I might actually relish the opportunity to be a trailblazer, opening people's eyes to possibilities they might never have considered before. But any potential there, is locked behind the bars of my anxiety.

It's been a pattern in my life that I tend to eschew anything that's popular (while rushing to the defense of the improperly maligned). Sometimes I wonder if I do it subconsciously to distance myself from the social interactions I fear, or as some kind of psychic retaliation against the people who have, in my mind, rejected me (although the reality is that I probably never gave them a chance in the first place). [Although a more favorable interpretation is that I understand firsthand what it is to be rejected and misunderstood - so I want to provide support to others in the same position, while standing up to the mentality that fuels this kind of bullying behavior].

Is this why I gravitate toward the esoteric and the controversial? Because it gives a purpose to my self-generated feelings of isolation within, while also providing a buffer from the pain of connection? "Of course I'm alone - look at how eccentric I am!" Yet my interests are genuine, and deep. It's simply not in me to be inauthentic. Life is truly more fascinating on the fringes than it is in the mainstream.

My struggle is this: I am still a social creature. I crave to feel part of a community. Yet I'll sabotage any chance of that happening, to spare me from agony. I'd LIKE to see it as a problem in need of a solution (chemistry? therapy?). But the more likely reality is that it will never change. And the sooner I accept this, the better. There's no end to my suffering. Just the question of what I'll accomplish in SPITE of it, and to what extent I'll ALLOW it to hold me back.

If life disappoints me 99 times, is that really justification not to try once more? Or, a question more appropriate to my circumstances: if life devastates me once, tearing me down body and soul, is that a good enough reason to spend the rest of my life hiding in my shell? I'm still working out the answer to that one.