Escape Into Chris - Entry 14

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

June 2007 – Normal, IL

My personality is based on an overcompensation. I was wounded probably at the end of my childhood and at the beginning of my adolescence. I made several observations about who I am. I must have observed that I was not as smart as a certain group, that my intelligence was middle range and also that my abilities were mediocre. For the rest of my life, I would attempt to overcompensate for a belief that I am not as intelligent as the smartest group. I always compared myself to the highest, the brightest – they were part of the exclusive club I longed to be in. Similarly, socially I was not the coolest but I watched the coolest with envy and longing. This self division occurred in me early on. I told myself I must try to become unique. I cannot be like the others. Because I saw the smart people and the cool people as unique, as special but I was only average, mediocre, like everyone else. My turbulent adolescence centered almost entirely on this blind cause to become unique in whatever I could.
I saw sameness and difference everywhere. I loathed sameness and worshiped difference – to set myself apart from the rest. Individualism became my creed. My academic obsessions – I had to overcompensate for what I believed was an overall lack of ability. My drug obsessions and self abandon – I had to overcompensate socially. I did not want to be like everyone else – extreme drug use put me into another category. I was unique because of my intensity.
All of this overcompensation and the thick protective skin it has left on me – now that I prose my pain through the character of Lethe, I feel at last I have found the key to not only his drives and insecurities but my own – and everyone’s personality to the extent that all of our personalities are overcompensation for some lack we feel from long ago that has, over the years, attained a level of truth with us. With me, I’m completely identified with my writing – this is my ultimate project to once and for all prove or compensate for my lack of ability and intelligence. We are walking overcompensations, it is as plain as day.
What does this all mean? We are not ourselves – we are a reincarnation of our past selves. The wounded child or adolescent replaying the trauma over and over again by trying to cover it up, by being what he feels deep down he is not. Is the personality not a machine of overcompensation? For my novel – and I wince to say that because the novel is the epitome of my obsession. But what if, by knowing this about myself and others, I can expose it and Lethe is the obvious over compensator – obvious to everyone (the reader) except himself. Rose too. What is the result of blind strife, self hatred, the empty core of the personality – it’s a myth each of us believes to be in the truth. By now, we’ve programmed ourselves into certain protective traits, habits – to keep us from feeling that empty core. We have all had a prolonged exposure to the empty core of our specific lack – now we structure our life on the project of becoming what we feel we are not. What then happened originally? Were those initial perceptions of our death, our lack, mistaken?

Escape Into Chris - Entry 13

Lethe Bashar's Novel of Life Las Vegas

Written by Chris Al-Aswad and illustrated by Gerrar Gonzalez

June 20, 2007 – Normal, IL

In my novel, the main character is riding a bus to Las Vegas when he has an epiphany – “I’m an eccentric genius,” he says to himself. He’s writing a novel, he realizes, a novel of life. He’s writing his “aesthetic existence” in the words of Foucault. To Lethe, the world is the stage for his art. He immerses himself in drama with other characters, and then, suddenly detaches himself to investigate the random experience. The other people he meets in Las Vegas are the supporting cast. Lethe provokes them to create drama, to create experiences that he can later contemplate and analyze or manipulate in story form. Lethe’s arch-type is the magician – he takes pleasure in play acting and playing with social realities. He has a personal mythology – he unconsciously weaves and develops in his interactions with others. Lethe is also a narcissist and perhaps his greatest shortcoming is that he assumes random people he meets are conforming to his imaginary epic. It appears as though these other characters are meeting him on the same stage and perhaps they are momentarily – but this is an illusion because in this novel every individual is immersed and blinded by a personal mythology of their own. Where they are the center of their life – epic and they seriously play the role they have known since their earliest memory. Everyone around them is the supporting cast. Therefore humans go about thinking they belong to a universal script in which everyone else naturally understands their role – when in fact – our epics and roles are as diverse as our environments, upbringings, and countless other factors. We have difficulty understanding others when we forget the role we are playing. The liberating part of this theory of life is that when you become conscious of the role you are playing, you no longer have to play it anymore.

Read scenes from Chris’ novel of life here on The Blog of Innocence.

Read Chris’ graphic novel at Escape Into Life.