What’s it all about?

I don’t know about anyone else but I suffer from cosmic angst, the feeling that unless I know the reason for living there isn’t much reason in living.  I didn’t know how to put it into words until I met J Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, when he was at the first dedicated Babylon 5 convention here in Birmingham.  He was explaining the thinking behind what he was putting his characters through and said that he posed two questions to them in the wrong order, namely “what do you want?” and “who are you?”.  To have the answer to what you want, Straczynski said, one must first know who you are.  It was at that moment I found what I had been missing in life – I didn’t, and still don’t, know who I am.  I have spent many a long night trying to work out the answer to that annoying question to no avail.

I have very little memory of my childhood and I have no idea why I became a victim of depression at the age of seven.  The only way to find out who I am is to know what made me the person I am today for a person is the product of their memories and experiences.  I don’t know what to do about my lack of memories about my childhood.  I’ve asked my parents but they are as much help as a chocolate pickaxe.  I have no friends from that point in my life; let’s face facts – I haven’t got any friends full stop, not friends who know me well enough to be able to help me anyway.  I certainly don’t want to have hypnotherapy because you never know the kind of things the therapist is doing to your fragile mind or body while you’re under the influence (although that might increase my sexual experience, I suppose).

I need to know who I am.  I need to know what the Hell my existence is all about.  That need is all-consuming in my life, even more necessary to me than all the other things on the Maslow hierarchy of needs.  I need to be complete, to become all that I’m capable of becoming, to be the real me rather than the series of masks I have to wear to fit in to a society that I am increasingly horrified and marginalised by.

Such big questions have no easy solutions and I have sought answers in philosophy, psychology, politics, theology as well as my own attempts at poetry and self-analysis through the writing of a TV series based on my interests and research.  I am still suffering from cosmic angst though as, no matter how much I try, I still have no answers. 

Who am I?  I don’t know.

What do I want?  I don’t know.

Not much progress for 17 years work, is it?

Until next time…