The Funeral of a Boy

                        Flash Fiction

You wake up in the morning to cheery tune of your phone alarm. “Ugh, already?” you grumpily say to yourself. Sliding yourself out of your bed, you walk towards the kitchen to find something to eat. You pass by the fridge without hesitation, there is never food in there, why look? You look into the pantry to nearly bare walls. You think to yourself that going hungry won’t be too bad. Disappointed after your failed quest for food, you slink back into your room and open your bag of pills. You can’t remember a life before being on meds, you were prescribed your first pill so many years ago. You start with your hormones, like every other day. The blue and white pills are the only thing you care about out of all them, you tell yourself. No thought is given towards to other meds that travel down your throat. Groggily you make a note to yourself of one item off your daily mental checklist of routines. You look at the next item on the list, take a shower. You wakeup a little more, showering being one of the favorite parts of your day. You clumsily travel to the bathroom in your guardians’ room, the one with the only working shower.

 As you turn the handle to raise the temperature of the shower, you recollect when you had a shower of your own. You had a shower, no job, no worries in the world, a father fig-. you cut off that thought with a cringe. That life is far behind you, you think. You turn off your shower and wrap yourself in a towel, it does little to help protect from the cool breeze emanating throughout the house. The sun has begun to show its rays upon the day. As you meander to your room you look up and see a photo of a young boy. No, wait that boy is you, was you. You sigh as days long passed replay throughout your memory. Days when you were happier, or at least could lie to yourself better that you were happy. The name spoken by many lips’ echoes throughout your mind, “Anakin.” You can’t help but cringe and almost life at it. You think of your father, disgust at him for many things, but his cruelest joke was cursing you with that name. You let go of this thought, Anakin isn’t around anymore, at least he isn’t here often. The boy you were once referred to feels distant to you, like a long dead relative, one who everyone will still recollect about the happy and to your despair many bad memories had with them.

You finish your walk to your room and look around. You search for something to wear and after a moment of slight searching you pick a pair of moderately clean jeans, even after being washed by the poor excuse of a washing machine you have, it still has some minor and faded stains. Your middling feeling towards the cleanliness is oppressed by your complete apathy to find anything else. By the time you finish your extremely difficult task of putting a shirt on, you still have nearly 40 minutes before the bus arrives. You fire up your computer and log in to your commonly used programs. You sit playing games contently, after all it’s one of the view sources of comfort you can find anymore. A memory strikes you as you’re playing. Your broth- no step-brothers enter your room to excitedly watch you play games. You can’t help but smile and the adoration they give you. You are such a good bro… and before you finish the sentence, you angrily cut the memory short, you can’t, no, you won’t associate with that life anymore. You look down at your phone in your lap, the clock reads 7:10. Quickly you shut down your game, grab your bag and run through the door. You wouldn’t want to miss the bus.

Author's Statement

My video is a collective show case of myself from a young age to around my early teens, using photos and a small selection of videos to get a basic picture of me in earlier life. A statement is used as a marking to metaphorically indicate in my eyes, a new chapter in my life. Generic inspirational music is used because I view my struggles of realizing my unhappiness with being labeled a guy as a cliché but easily digestible story of being trans. The beginning of the video has a somber feel that is contrasted but messages that show on screen. Statements such as “a good boy,” and “boy genius” are given to describe the praise that I received during childhood, but ultimately made the decision for change a more difficult one. After the statement representing a turning point the music picks up. The happier music demonstrates an uplifting feeling in my life from making such a huge change. Pictures shown are a short selection of my time from starting to transition to the present. In the pictures the overall mental improvement is visible by the presence of more genuine smiles, as compared to the previous pictures, where the smiles seemed fake or hollow.

The Flash Fiction piece is writing of my daily morning routine with emphasis on key actions that I find the most inspiring for myself and my happiness. Hormones are directly talked about and glorified in the piece, which was done so due to the feeling of freedom from doing so. Sporadically there is flash backs to my past which, in the memory are given more of a wonderful status, but that is cute short by the memory of something regretful, or painful being brought forward. This represents my resentfulness of the past. Throughout the piece there is a distinction made between the possessiveness of some objects, a line that is drawn between what’s mine, and what’s the “guardians”. These represent my disassociation with objects associated with the people who would be viewed as my protectors, things and people I have grown distant and distasteful towards.  The piece connects to the video by the unhappiness associated with the past. While the video highlights the despair, I had towards my appearance and what I was viewed as, the writing piece brings forward the mention of my emotional distress of trying to recall the past, a lifelong gone. One of the biggest influences in this writing piece was my “You” story, in the sense that it encouraged me to write more deep and depressing pieces, and in the vain attempt to not sound pretentious, helped encapsulate my personal view of my personality.

Reflection

Throughout the past 8 weeks, not only me but the class has delved deep on topics such as personality, and bias. The main purpose of this was to make the class think about the influences on why we act the way we do, and our deeper sense of self. The class was given many different sources to look at and dissect to provide an answer to the questions presented to the class. Different authors have provided a variety of answers, for example, the implicit nature that is you that was formed at your creation. Others have a more agreeable answer to this, such as your environment.

Psychology is the study of the human mind, and the person who studies it, a psychologist. Various psychologist throughout the many years of human existence have provided sometimes wildly varying answers on the meaning of what makes you. Sigmund Freud, a notable psychologist, brought forward the idea of 3 distinct parts of your internal machinations that come together to create the person that the individual is. The three characteristics he described were the Id; described as primitive and instinctual self; the superego; which is stated as being based on the internalization of a persons societal rules; and the ego; listed as a mediator between the id and super ego. Another psychologist, named Carl Jung, had two different philosophies on personality, they being the collective unconscious and archetypes. The collective unconscious is loosely paraphrased as every individual being born with personality traits that they have, and that said traits are rigid. Jung’s archetype is an indicator of the various defined themes that appear in most stories that humans tell.

In the class, some of the theories were agreed up while other ideas were also presented by the various pieces of media shown. “The Personality Myth” from the Invisibilia Podcast touches upon the idea of how some people in general view personality: “Your personality is your core.” (“Personality”) Later in the podcast Lee Ross, a noted psychologist is stated as having a different interpretation: “Ross believes the real thing that determines your behavior isn't the stuff sitting inside of you - your personality - it's all the stuff around you - your situation.”(“Personality”) Talk is later given about the Milgram experiment, an experiment that put what was considered every day people into a situation where they were administering nonexistent shocks to individual, up to a lethal amount, the result being most people followed the orders even up to and past the supposedly lethal shock.(“Personality”) [1]

In my opinion I agree more with what Lee Ross was presented as saying, compared to Freuds or Jung’s philosophies, however I don’t completely disagree with what Sigmund Freud have said. Freuds philosophy of the 3 selves, is something I don’t feel is entirely false. For instance, people, when given anonymity will sometimes choose to act more cruelly compared to when they’re face to face with a person.(Dawson)[2] I view this as the superego being quieted and the Id being allowed to do whatever it wants because of the lack of consequences. I very strongly disagree with Jung’s philosophy of the collective unconscious, and archetypes, and with a person’s actions representing their true self. I believe that, like Lee Ross had said, a person’s actions are much more likely based on an individuals environment, rather than who they are. Additionally, I believe that personality is more fluid, changing over time and when with certain people.

There is no concrete answer on the creation of a person’s traits. While many different sources have tried to answer the question, none can be called the end all be all answer. No interpretation of the mind is necessarily wrong, but you will likely have one you agree with most. In the end, it’s all your perspective

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[1] “Read the Transcript.” NPR, NPR, 24 June 2016, www.npr.org/2016/06/24/482837932/read-the-transcript.

[2] Dawson, Joe. “Who Is That? The Study of Anonymity and Behavior.” Association for Psychological Science, www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/who-is-that-the-study-of-anonymity-and-behavior.