On Failing To Conform

Something about finding myself married and pregnant at 17, then standing in a welfare and food stamp line, made me realize I'd fallen far out of the mainstream; that is, done a giant downward somersault from my middle-class suburban upbringing.  And that I might never find my way back again.

While friends were off partying at good schools and preparing for solid careers, I was changing diapers and taking night classes at a community college, learning how to type so I could work a low-paying steno job during a deep recession and somehow keep my little family afloat. 

The prognosis, dear reader, was not good.

But, being blessed with youthful adaptability and curiosity, I made new friends in our low-income housing complex -- while avoiding drug dealers and glass-strewn playgrounds -- and experienced life as a very poor person. I also applied every spare brain cell to finding a way out of this dark hole. 

Overnight, I had become Becky in Wonderland.

I did, eventually, choose the door out but this early episode meant I could never quite adjust to the comfortable middle-class world again. I was no longer in step with my generation and peers. 

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates 

when he becomes a conformist.  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've never owned a house, have held few regular jobs, became a freelance writer so I could be there for my daughter but also pick her up and go when the urge came on, continued to live with minimal income, and spent every spare penny seeing the world and sampling human habitats, including the chi-chi neighborhoods of Paris.

Though essentially kicked out of the conformity crib at an early age, there was still some small, stubborn and insecure part of me that longed to climb back in, a part that wanted to go home and start all over again, that imagined such a thing was possible.

And so I went through an extended spell of trying to conform, finally settling down in one place and joining clubs and even a church and volunteering and trying to find happiness in watching movies and TV and giving parties and going shopping and out to dinner and developing a routine that had been designed -- by accident or intent -- to provide the illusion of safety, stability and abundance in what seemed an ever more dangerous world.

The effort nearly killed me. Not only did these habits provide little comfort but my ability to laugh, dream and even breathe began to disappear. In short, I became depressed.

This doesn't happen to everyone, and many of my fellow Americans are quite content with their piece of The Dream, even if it has severely frayed in recent years. But so many aspects of our culture -- from relentless consumerism to growing distrust of strangers and "foreigners," an overwhelming addiction to passive entertainment and chronic fears of financial ruin -- can cut us off from our joie de vivre and, in fact, the whole rest of this enormous and fascinating world.

"Be who you are and say what you feel, 

because those who mind don't matter and those 

who matter don't mind. -- Dr. Seuss

Though solidly suburban and middle class, and products of the post-war push to conform, my parents raised my siblings and me to be "independent," as they put it. They wanted us to "think for ourselves" -- not easy when all around are overt and covert messages ensuring we don't.
 
I'm not sure our parents expected us to be quite as independent as we became but such is the law of unintended consequences. (My first real act of independence would lead, of course, straight to the poorhouse.)

So I've now embarked on this middle-aged female fiction writer's slash journalist's slash adventurer's tour of the globe, spending as little money as possible with the hope and intent of keeping this nonconformist vagabonding life going until...well, until.

And maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll meet up with you, dear reader, somewhere down the road.

"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." 
-- Katherine Hepburn

Photos:
1. Steno pool. Not me but almost. Source: National Archives of Canada

2. New England home. Similar to one I grew up in. Source: homesrealestate.com

3. Globe. Source: iconeasy.com

4. Discover. Source: 4.bp.blogspot.com