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Breaking out of the culture you were born into
2011-05-27 20:11:48
edited 2011-05-27 20:11:48 in Meatspace
We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year
It's much, much harder than it sounds.
Comments
yes, no, and no.
I helped a girl escape from her oppressive christian fundie parents in Arkansas, where she'd been stuck living with them her entire life.
O'course when she tried to follow me back to Britain she failed to get through customs due to her naivety, got deported, wasted most of her money on phone-cards trying to call me every day.... and I dumped her because she was too clingy and had pissed off all her other friends (and several of mine, AND my family members)...
I still kinda have to take credit for unleashing her on the world.
But yeah. You HAVE to get out of there.
Just find a boyfriend / girlfriend / hermaphroditefriend / whatever who you can leech cash and a new life from for a while until you can get yourself set somewhere else and break off from them.
When I was a little kid, I thought that all men worked day jobs from morning till evening, all women were stay at home moms, all girls were nice and calm (except for tomboys) and liked dolls and pink things, all boys were rough-and-tumble and liked action figures and robots, and all of these people lived in single-family homes in suburban areas, complete with two-car garages that actually contained two cars (along with a lawnmower and other stuff), frontyard lawns, backyard lawns, wooden decks, two interior levels, separate bedrooms, family room, living room, kitchen, and so on. Most impressively, I actually wondered, when I was a kid, why all these male composers wrote such pretty, lyrical music.
Now I know that people live in anything from bridge underpasses and tunnels and mountain caves to passenger cars to mobile homes to tiny cramped studio apartments with rent paid by the month to townhouses without windows on the side to basement rentals to penthouse apartments to million-dollar mansions. And that many, many people don't have nine-to-five desk jobs with weekends and holidays, but instead work at odd hours and days. And that there are many professional or otherwise working women, and that men and women don't necessarily get married, and they also have extramarital affairs. And that there are some men who are open to or prefer relationships with other men, and some women who are open to or prefer relationships with other women. And that there's nothing that actually says that girls are inherently placid and elegant and boys inherently rambunctious and loud, but it's societal norms that have caused this stereotype, and that "tomboys" are not at all weird.
And sometimes, just like in metroidvanias, you discover things very close to where you started, only very late in the game. The concept of sexual intercourse is one such example. I mean, where else did you get started?
When I was a kid I thought for a while that living with a single mother and 12 cats in the middle of the Welsh countryside was normal.
Then I actually talked to someone from school and learnt that their mothers hadn't divorced their fathers yet, and that they got pocket-money, and got to eat things that weren't made of lentils or chick-peas. I figured that was probably because not only did they have two parents to earn twice as much money, but at least some of them probably had a better way of doing it than busking with a flute in a shopping center.
My mother used to be really annoyed at me for not liking the taste of mushrooms... but I can't help it. They're disgusting... even if they are practically the easiest food to find in the Welsh countryside (at least without stealing someone's sheep).