Alterations

So My Therapist Says, "That sort of thing in childhood permanently alters a person." That will set you on your heels. Here I've thought I was right off the rack and come to find out, I'm couture. But not really in a good way. I'm cut to fit, taken in at the sides, hems let out....altered. Permanently.

I don't remember much what I was like before I was altered....IF I was altered. Even if I remembered, it wouldn't be terribly relevant. You're nobody, really, before the age of 8 - certainly not who you become. I'm OK with the alterations. I like who I am. The highest compliment I ever got from anyone - ever - was being told that of all the people they knew, I was the one "most comfortable in his own skin". I hadn't ever considered that before. But I am. Well, I was. Now I find out I'm comfortable in an alteration and it leaves me to wonder how comfortable I might have been in a less altered state.

I don't much like thinking that I am permanently changed. I've never been a fan of permanence, immutability, constancy, stability and the like. I've always liked the ability to shift this way and that when circumstances required. I've loved being able to pick up and move at a moment's notice. I really enjoyed reinventing my life at several different junctures. I don't mind change, I rather like it. It's the permanent part that has me a little rattled.

Some alterations I was aware of: AIDS changed me permanently, for example. I had a roommate once who was also HIV+. He said something incredibly wise and prescient that didn't mean much to me when he said it at the height of my career. "The thing about AIDS," he said, "is that we're constantly renegotiating our lives." But I had a vote, sort of, in that alteration. I don't know when or where I got it. I'm glad for that. I'd be saddled with a grudge the size of which boggles the mind if I knew who to blame, besides myself. That I was a party to seroconversion makes this permanent alteration not so hard to wear. But the other... I'm not sorry that I had the early relationship - if it was such a thing - but I'm troubled that it altered me, if he's right. I didn't - couldn't have - known that was part of the bargain when I was 8...or 12...or 16. That's just wrong.

What was I before I was changed? Absent intervention, what was I going to be? I'm defiant enough to think that if I knew what the original course was, I could jiggle the rudders and get back to wherever I should have been going. This permanently altered thing isn't good. That's a truck load of What Might Have Been. There's nothing but regret in that. I don't do regret. That's a weak person's folly. "Own your shit!" That's what I tell people - and myself. No regrets. My plan is to die without any. Of all the things The Good Doctor has said - and this was a throw-away line, mind you, in the course of an hour (50 minutes, if you've been paying attention) - this might be the one that bothers me most.

If he's right - and he often is - I was measured and cut and sewn back together without my consent. I was completely, willingly, lovingly, happily complicit in the situation. I would never infer that I was mishandled without my consent. I was as blissful as a child gets when I was with him. But there are scraps that were cast off that I might have kept if I'd known they belonged to me. What got thrown away without so much as a vote? I'd like to know that.

Altered.
Permanently.
That's disturbing.

He did his dissertation, he said, on this sort of thing. So he should know, right? Right? Well, riddle me this: If you're permanently altered, you're not who you were supposed to be. So who was I supposed to be? And would it matter if I knew?

(cue music)
"Who am I anyway?
Am I my resume?
That is a picture of a person I don't know.
What does he want from me?
What should I try to be?
So many faces all around and here we go."
- "I Hope I Get It" (From "A Chorus Line", Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban)