Under Their Influence

In a recent post I talked at length about the idea that I have had an impact on other peoples' lives without stopping to think whether that was positive or negative in the moment. When I finally reached the bottom of the rabbit hole that thought process lead me down, as I turned and contemplated the climb back to sanity, I thought about the question in reverse - namely, who has had an influence on my life that I haven't stopped to unpack, or that I have been ignorant to all this time?

I have PTSD because of a lot of fucked up things that happened to me when I was young, the guy that did it to me springs to mind first and foremost as he has undoubtedly had the biggest impact on my life, but he doesn't fit the remit of the question - whose influence have I been ignorant to, and with him at least I have spent the better part of 30 years trying to unpack and mitigate the effects of what he did.

The obvious starting point is my family, specifically my parents. My mother is responsible for my love of cooking and coding - it's ironic that most programming text books conflate algorithms with baking, in my case that was quite literal. My mother was the one who first taught me how to use a PC when we got an old Amstrad CPC-464 from one of my uncles. Mum taught me how to use BASIC, to run commands, and use a word processor, databases, and spreadsheets all on a computer with a green monochromatic display with a command line interface. Mum never pursued her interest in computing beyond college level, pivoting instead to a 40 year career as a paralegal. She also taught me how to cook, and bake, she bought me my first cookbooks when I was around 6 years old the same time I was learning to code. We would always cook together of course, a tradition that we still follow now more so for special occasions as life gets in the way it's not something we have the time to do so much.

My father is responsible for my work ethic, the guiding principles of: "if you're going to do something do it right", "don't rush perfection", "good work is never cheap and cheap work is never good", "you'll pay more in the end fixing problems than you saved by cutting corners", and perhaps the most egregious of all, "if you bend over backwards for people they will shit down your neck" - my Dad has a way with words.

My brother at least at first was responsible for my education in culture, his taste in music, movies, and TV had an influence on my life in my younger years, mainly because I was obsessed with games and had little interest in those things so what I did see was often what he picked. Our tastes diverged in our teenage years however, despite only being 3 years older than me, his taste now is very Gen X, whereas mine is typically millennial.

I have no other siblings, but I do have an extensive extended family - Mum came from a family of 14 and Dad came from a family of 12, most of which all have multiple children to the point where my attempt to fill out my family tree on MyHeritage ran aground when I hit the 250 person limit for their free membership without even completing 2 generations of my family. Many of these cousins, aunts, and uncles were often part of my life when I was younger but I can't say any had a lasting impact on my life, my interests don't align with theirs, I doubt any of them have had similar experiences to me, at least I've never been close enough to any of them to find out.

My childhood friends taught me a lot about trust, who is worthy of it, and how to spot those that aren't. My teenage friends taught me the importance of independence, and independent thought in particular. Most people probably have a very different experience in their teenage years with peer pressure and conformity being the standard, my friend group was never about that life, probably because we were all outsiders in our own way although we could fake it when we needed to in order to survive. I don't want to say we were cynical from the jump but that wouldn't be far from the truth if I did.

As for University, my time spent there was very much a reboot of my life, or as one friend called it "growing down" instead of growing up, when you've experienced trauma that made you old before your time, she also had a way with words, but she also taught me the power of silence - sometimes you don't have to lie you just don't bother correcting people when they make assumptions. I'll admit this does sound rather childish but set against the alternative of trauma dumping on people who you know really couldn't handle what you have to say, sometimes it's for their own good; the desire to be honest and open with people can make it difficult to navigate the headspace of accepting that not sharing everything doesn't mean you're dishonest, people just don't need to know every detail of your life.

Beyond academia, my closest friends have taught me the importance of support, and how much your presence can mean to someone, even if you don't say a word, just being there is enough sometimes. I think the fact that I have friends I can be uncensored with without fear of judgement and the liberation that provides, the comfort and assurance, and the certainty set against a world where everything is increasingly uncertain is probably the most important impact anyone has had on my life.