Belonging

I started writing when I was in seventh/eighth grade, but I was making up characters and stories in my head for a lot longer than that.  My characters weren't very complex back then, and the stories were cheesy and contrived, but it was an outlet for my creativity and a way to deal with my feelings on different matters.

Character history and development is always a fun thing for me to get into.  I love thinking of a background for a character: where they were born, where they grew up, where they went to school, who their friends were, what their parents/siblings/extended family was like, etc.  It really helps me understand their motivations and why they want what they want, or need what they need.  This is a process, of course, not all of which was understood by my thirteen-year-old brain, but as I got older, I began to become more proficient at these things.

When I was younger, thinking up these histories and developing my characters was easy.  After all, I couldn't relate with adults, since they were, you know, grownups, so most of my characters were kids, but engaged in adult activities (like being spies undercover, or child prodigies/savants doing equally-important things).  But since they were kids, I didn't have to look much past their childhood to develop them.  It was just never an issue.  The adults in my stories were cutouts of what I felt adults were "supposed to be".  Of the adult characters whose personal lives I developed, not much went beyond "married to lovely wife, two kids, dog".  You know, the American dream.

The trouble started with when I got older, since at the same time, so did my characters.  These guys weren't 12/13/14 anymore, but 16/17/18.  Characters of these ages usually had active social lives (read: drinking, partying, and other vices I was too naive to really understand), had girlfriends (or boyfriends in the rare case of a female character made an appearance in one of my stories), had sex, and did other young-people things.  Suddenly, what had once been very easy for me -- identifying with my characters -- became very difficult.  I couldn't accurately simulate their lives, or come up with rich histories, because all those things -- having girlfriends, partying, drinking, etc -- were not things that I ever did.  So my characters sort of became caricatures of me: they were mostly asexual, put a lot of emphasis on friendships with each other, and were too distracted with their work (whatever that might have been) to really focus on partying or drinking.

Later in high school, I started to be able to relate more with adults.  I had started an internship at a company in Los Angeles doing stuff I was particularly good at (computery things), so the people there treated me as their peer.  I didn't get the feeling from them that they felt I was "just a kid".  My writing changed to reflect this: my characters were now older than teenagers.  They were in their twenties, mature, experienced, and confident.  More adult TV shows became interesting to me: The West Wing and JAG especially -- smart TV shows that showed complex people solving complex problems through complex interactions.  That, also, translated into my writing.  But now I definitely had a problem: these people couldn't possibly be flat.  Their personal and interpersonal relationships couldn't just be them doing their jobs and occasionally hanging out with each other.  There had to be more.  So I gave characters girlfriends and romantic interests.

But I couldn't connect with it.  I didn't "understand" the whole girlfriend thing.  I didn't understand how some random chick could motivate anyone to do something, or NOT do something, but yet television, movies, and novels all had plenty of all of that.  I felt like I was obligated to do it, but I didn't UNDERSTAND it.

It's like when my friends talked about girls.  I didn't get it.  Nothing clicked.  When they were so attracted to someone, or commented on a good-looking girl, I felt nothing.  I just smiled and nodded, because that was the proper thing to do, but I didn't understand WHY it was the proper thing to do.  Guys are supposed to have these sorts of feelings, but how do they learn when to express them, or how to express them?

It seems so obvious now, but to me it was like an epiphany that smacked me right upside the head and had my flying into a wall.  When I first realized I was gay, it suddenly all made sense.  It made sense WHY I couldn't relate with my characters and simulate their relationships.  It made sense WHY my friends talked the way they did about girls, and why they felt the way they did.  Because if I took my feelings about guys and compared, it was exactly the same, albeit "misdirected" (I put it in quotes because, being gay is not a misdirection.  I'm only saying it to illustrate a point).  Once I replaced my characters' girlfriends with boyfriends, in my head, it began to make so much more sense.  I began to understand them a lot better, and my passion for writing returned hundredfold.

Of course, having all my characters have gay relationships is a bit exaggerated in terms of reality, so I would never actually end up replacing all my characters' relationships with a same-sex one, but thinking about it did lead me to understand how to write opposite-sex relationships without resorting to callous, awkward writing.

In the end, I learned a lot about myself coming to these conclusions.  It made me realize how important it is to belong to something in order to truly be able to identify my own motivations and desires.  Until I came to that realization, I didn't "get" relationships.  I never understood why they were important to people.  I never understood why they would be a driving force in a character's story or their development.  Similarly, I never understood my own empty response to what appeared to be normative sexuality -- the whole gawking at hawt boobz did not have the desired effect.  It left me confused, bewildered, and slightly uneasy.  When I had my epiphany, all of this made sense.  My reaction to hawt ass was what my friends' reaction to hawt boobz was, and so I understood.  I not only understood my own sexuality, I understood my friends' sexuality.  Sex made sense.  Relationships made sense.  My writing made sense.

Backasswards way to get to the conclusion no doubt, but in the end, my writing played a big role in understanding who I was.  I bet, if a psychologist goes back and reads everything I've written since I first started writing things down, they'd have a field day.  Or they'd be confused at all sorts of things.  I mean, I am.  Shit, I wrote the damn things and I'm still confused.

At least I'm not confused about this, anymore.  I know who I am, now.  Yeah, it took a while, but hey, the point is I did it.

And now, to end, a picture of hawt ass <33