The following post is my next installment in a writing project that began on 20 October. Although it stands on its own as an essay, you can view it in context if you work forward from the first entry in the series.
The next step in this series is to start talking about my upbringing and why it led to problems with mood instability. This shifts the focus from viewing the general picture to looking at a particular case. And yet, what follows is not just my story, but every story. The details differ, but we all have suffered good and bad times, we’ve all been hurt, and we’ve all learned from experience. We’ve also all developed in a womb and we face the same end. In truth, the differences are far less impressive than the similarities. Keep that in mind while reading my unique personal history, and pay attention to how my particular trajectory reflects the human condition as we all live it.
At the outset of this writing project I said this story would start at the beginning. So let’s go right back to my first moment: that of conception. I don’t mean to raise the abortion debate here, so understand that my point isn’t necessarily that my soul manifested at the exact instant a minuscule, writhing spermatozoon from my dad penetrated the massive, nutrient packed ovum produced by my mom. But until then, the universe had never before seen that precise combination of genetic and epigenetic information gathered in a single cell. At that moment, a goodly portion of my fate was sealed.
The moodiness so common in my mother’s family (as well as her artistic sensibilities) and the alcoholism so common among my father’s relations (as well is his analytical prowess) were carried forward to me in that mix of DNA. But just how moody, artistic, alcoholic, or analytical I became remained to be shaped by time and circumstance.
As the fertilized egg divided, then divided again, as it grew into a solid ball of cells in those first few hours and days, it was affected by the chemical mix of my mother’s fluids. Her hormones and cellular messages affected my rapidly expanding mass of protoplasm. By the time I implanted in her uterine wall and the love affair of blood vessels known as a placenta formed, I’d already tapped many sources of information not present at conception. As I developed in her uterus, my little growing body continued to be affected by myriad substances, sounds, and motions. Her breathing and heart rate formed the universe of my mood at that time. If she felt worried and depressed, I shivered in my dark, watery world. If she laughed with ecstatic delight, I shimmied with pleasure.
And if she took a medication, which was commonly done by pregnant women in those days, I took it too. If pesticides entered her bloodstream, they entered mine. When she smoked or drank, I felt the rush of nicotine or the loosening of alcohol. If she walked near the exhaust of an automobile, the fumes from leaded gasoline entered her lungs and moments later a heavy metal circulated through my nervous system as it produced millions of vulnerable growing cells each hour.
At the same time, the thousands of genes on my DNA molecules were orchestrating my formation. My sex, coloration, facial features, and internal arrangements were laid down. I took the form of a European male baby because I carried European genes and a Y chromosome. It is likely that brain structures were genetically shaped in ways that determined many personality traits: my introversion, my sensitivity, maybe even my seriousness.
And yet all these genetic traits were modified at every moment by countless influences from outside. The genes were painting my portrait using pigments acquired from the environment.
Did a separate soul enter at some point? Did a consciousness already familiar with birth and death take residence in that little baby growing inside a moody woman in 1958? Do we play this game of life over and over as reincarnationists believe? It isn’t possible to be sure. I’ve read the evidence that supports the concept and find it intriguing but not quite decisive. The jury is out. But there is little doubt that the person who I became differs in important ways from everyone else in my family, even as we also share many traits. Whence the source of that uniqueness? Genes? Environment? Prior lives? The touch of God?
All I know for sure is that the day came when my mother’s womb decided my time had come, and uterine contractions pushed me into the waiting world. For better or worse, my qualities were already guiding me down my own unique path. Even at that early stage I was already the product of both my genes and the emotional and chemical milieu which formed me, which nurtured me as I grew from a single cell into a lively baby in just nine months.
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