Relationships are Voluntary: A Brief Post

All relationships must be based on volunteerism.

I learned to live by this maxim which has left me hurt and left me powerful. Any relationship - that is, romantic or platonic - should continue by choice and never because of obligation.

I learned this lesson the hard way. I learned this lesson by hanging onto relationships that gave me needless anxiety for too long. I learned this lesson by believing I could negotiate romantic relationships. If someone said "I'm not interested in you" I believed I could negotiate it through reasoning or pleading.

I felt like a failure for failing at relationships. I felt I had to act as the best, most giving friend. I felt doomed to perpetual loneliness because my romantic relationships averaged 1-2 dates and, until my recent relationship with my wife, 3 months. 

After a toxic relationship, however, I made a moment of clarity: I would rather live alone the rest of my life than to live with a toxic person. 

That moment of clarity happened only as a 28 year old. It lived in me previously as a thought, but from that time I learned to embody it.

My moment of clarity: my life mattered whether someone was in it or not. I do not have time for unfulfilling relationships.

An Elaboration on My Creative Mission Statement

I write screenplays, poems, and narratives to reflect the emotional truths of growing up in a small town.

I argue that a small town is a microcosm of humanity. I geek over two things: storytelling specifically from the broad category of creating and making things; and figuring out how people and humanity work. To write, for me, is to work out how humans work. Growing up in a small town, this was my lens of human beings in a formative sense.

Small towns, I argue, amplify human traits that exist everywhere. It amplifies something good and amplifies something terrible. Freedom feels tangible in wild and scenic places. I felt free to explore and discover in the woods surrounding my house. Prejudice and zealotry are also amplified. Cooperation and interdependence is frequently amplified. Isolation and loneliness are also amplified when everywhere feels so far away.

My lens for small towns originates from growing up in "Appalachia." I argue Appalachia is distinct in spite of similarities with other places. I argue that Appalachia’s narrative originates from an exploitation of labor and resources with minimal reciprocity by people with power. I argue that Appalachians built mechanisms of survival within an unforgiving landscape and unforgiving systems of governance - e.g. unforgiving systems of humanity.

I see a spectrum of two mechanisms of survival: constructive and destructive. Individuals in Appalachia and rural areas construct - they write, they build better things, they sacrifice for greater good. They frequently construct with available resources and within a context of scarcity. Individuals in the small towns I know also destruct - they prevent creation, they limit information sharing, they place self above all else, and they preserve unforgiving systems of humanity.

Through what I write, I want to represent the emotional truths of transformation in this environment, of how characters work through their mechanisms, and how these mechanisms prompt them towards a new truth.

I rarely write with realism or using representation lens. I write using elements of the fantastic - magical realism, dark fantasy, and especially science fiction. In a region that feels larger than life because the systems of humanity loom larger for residents, I find it useful to use literary elements that accurately reflect the emotional truths.

For instance, I have used an “Ark Universe” to represent Appalachia in an outer space context. A space "ark" or space station with Earth's survivors away from Earth is to share how people might feel removed from place and how people feel in an isolated, disconnected environment. While purely science fiction, it originates in an exploration of the emotional truths of small town life.

I also use characters I call “strangers” - aliens who have cacti pines that can send emotions and feelings into people upon touch. These exist to reflect the emotional truths. When emotional truths seem far fetched, something otherworldly feels appropriate and more honest.

There is a desire in me to conceive of Appalachia outside of traditions and what is stereotypically represented in this region. I do not wish to amplify Appalachian traditions. I want to discover the future of Appalachia. I want to imagine Appalachia as a futuristic place - a place removed from folks, white absolution, and the harmful, destructive systems of governance.