If you can handle the adolescent smugness and middle-aged feelings of inadequacy, I highly recommend having teenaged live-in tech support.
Andy fixed my website.
It’s all downhill from here, folks. I already don’t know which remotes and buttons and in which order turn on the Roku vs the Apple TV. If my life depended upon correctly setting up and playing a DVD my sons would be orphans. And let’s not even start down the road of computer talk. My eyes glaze more often than Krispy Kreme. Mmmmm…..donuts…..
I may snark and I may see my relevance fading away, but damn I’m proud of that kid. I will be bragging here, it’s my website I’m allowed to do that. This geeky, quirky, out of the box, marches to the beat of his own drumline young man is finally coming into his own. Ten years ago I wasn’t so sure I was going to let him live to see age five. The sensory overloads, the stubbornness, the overexcitabilities, the meltdowns, the incessant movement, the need for less sleep, the unquenchable curiosity, my complete lack of knowledge as to WTF was going on, and the never-ending exhaustion of parenting all that. Hard. So, so hard. Even now I can’t read a lot of what I wrote back then, because the memories and emotions come flooding back and I fear I’d drown.
This 2e kid. This amazing 2e kid. The schools didn’t know what to do with him. He fit in no box, couldn’t and wouldn’t “play the game,” driven so strongly by his internal gears that anyone and anything that tried to alter his path earned scars from the friction. My scars have calloused over, making me not heartless but resilient. I know I can handle what is thrown my way, including his superior knowledge and ability, and the insufferable case of teenager that I’m sure is yet to come. Four years into homeschooling and I still worry I’m failing him, until something like this happens.
He is going to do big things. He is going to be a change maker. He is not like any other teenager, not like any other gifted or twice-exceptional homeschooler. He has a mind I will never comprehend but I appreciate and love. He learns in 3D, holistically and completely. He understands computers and programming as though it comes from his very core, but also knows he doesn’t know nearly everything, and wants to feed that core with every bit of knowledge he can absorb.
It is amazing and an honor to watch him mature.
But so help me, his tech smugness…sigh…he’s earned it.
<I have been informed that my memory is less than accurate and that both boys, at separate times, came to my computer, stared over my shoulder, and went “huh, THAT doesn’t look right,” and told me how to fix it. Two t(w)ben tech gurus in the house. OY. Apparently running a Minecraft server in the basement has taught them something applicable to real life. Guess I’m glad I gave in on getting Minecraft.>
I’m sometimes exhausted by this thing inside me that makes me feel the way I feel, and that often even takes my breath away.
It’s really been quite the ride, and I’m ready to find a rest stop… To take a nice, long nap and wake with a different way of experiencing the world. To join the crowds and feel like I fit in. To hit pause and resume life unimpressed by this aura (shadow?) that clings to my heart and my mind like a weight.
Because sometimes it just gets to be too much.
For just a little while could I just be able to feel real contentment? To be able to sit in one place without feeling guilty because of all the things I want to do (no, NEED to do) with my life for the next millennium? Maybe to not feel so frustrated with ridiculous laws in my community or “the way we always do things” at work… Or to dread small talk at my children’s events with people who probably think I’m as different as they seem to me…
I would love to be able to watch the news without feeling such pain of images of children starving that freeze my spirit and make it rage or tears coming into my eyes or staying awake because the u fairness and pain of it all won’t let me rest. In fact, it would be super to be able to stick to one task at a time, rather than doing several things and planning five zillion other tasks in my head at the same time.
And can you imagine how sweet I would seem if I didn’t get frustrated or impatient when I have “the best the correct way of doing something? Perhaps I could be easier to live with if I wasn’t always so restless and needing to explore the world, or if I could be happy with my love relationships that never seem “enough” in so many ways, no matter how much the poor saps who have loved me tried to be what I needed.
I often think it would be great to go to the local stores and not have to talk myself into being more patient with the people in line in front of me who can’t figure out how to put there children in the shopping cart the right way round or to not feel responsible to help the clerk with all their problems when they get confused about the coupon combinations or whatever else that makes them have to stop and light up their light on the check stand. It would be easier to feel like I was more confused at times so I wouldn’t always get frustrated with what confuses others around me. (Yes, seeing ten different alternate solutions for each problem gets a little tiring, but it’s much worse to have to keep myself from bursting out of my own skin due to boredom when I have to stand in one place for more than a few minutes!)
I would love to not constantly wish I could just take a USB cord and plug it into my head so I could download everything exciting about my day into someone else’s mind, so I wouldn’t have to try to explain it. Because others often don’t understand it when I try to describe what made me feel those roller coaster emotions.
And how much nicer would it be if I could stop stressing how someone else cleans or cooks or fills out a form, etc…? It probably would be great to not feel that twinge of perfectionism kick in, or the knowledge that I could do the task in half the time and with less errors if I did it myself. (This is why maids and hair dressers don’t last long around here…)
Driving would be much easier if I didn’t anticipate the moves of every too slow or too fast or too inattentive fellow driver on the road or spend my time moving out of their way so they don’t hit me. Some people should not be driving. And maybe it would be ok to feel more road rage instead of imagining all the reasons they might be having a bad day or need to get home, and then worry about those imaginary situations for them.
I would probably live longer if I could sleep through the night without waking up and having restless legs or scratching my skin or dealing with scratchy tags in my clothing or having to sit up and check the social media for any updates to improve the world without my being in on the conversation because I know I can bring solution.
It would be great to have had hundreds more people to choose from for friends, rather than having one or two people who ever truly understood me because they not locked in false box although some of them are and are unrealistic and even they can’t satisfy me but I like it when they listen to me because they accept me even if they don’t have my best interests at heart or encourage me to do foolish things against ,y morals I’ll risk it just to to stop feeling inadequate or bored. Or to feel content to follow the teacher’s expectations in school rather than making games out of procrastination, underperforming to the very minimum acceptable limit for each product, or getting the work done much earlier and more detailed than anyone else (with my internal drive determining which of those options I would choose on any given task.) Or not bothering because they don’t know what they are talking about.
It sure is annoying when people roll their eyes at me because I’m not like them. I don’t have a house two kids and a stable job. I have too many interests and I resent the quest for money which tires me just so I can have a chance at having peace and dreaming or a life worthy of living, contributing having people see my potential. I could make a difference. I especially dislike it when university people claim they are smart. They aren’t smart. The worlds broken and there are millions of university people. That’s not the solution. I’m smarter than them and I know it. But I don’t like myself for being different. Those people don’t understand how much extra stress the way I am brings along with it. I’m not confident but pretend to be. I’m exhausted at trying to look normal when my mind is numb from boredom.
It is a nonstop anxiety overload filled with moments of pure bliss and contentment like heaven on earth with my partner then hell. My need for constant intensity and new projects cause conflict within me. I love being content and resting but I’m bored at the same time. I’m a contradiction. I’ve had moments of pure heartache, made stupid choices with tons of adrenaline and extra heartbeats in between. When I’m excited about something new I want to talk about it and plan it but when someone else is excited I have no interest in it because I don’t feel their passion and I listen politely for a while but then I want them to shut up because are excited and I’m not in my life I’m bored. I resent them. I’m jealous. It drains me.
It’s having an exceptional memory for every painful event that happened to me magnified by ten and I use anger and rage to disconnect from it. I have trauma, intense loathing and self doubt like I’m secretly not good enough but at the same time know I am. Skin disorders that make you itch for no reason at all, often all together in one week, or even one day. It’s an intensity of emotions and hopes/dreams/desires on fast forward, with depths of loneliness and frustrations all at once. I’m good at most things but I don’t know what I’m great at because I can really adapt to anything. But I’m tired. I’m bored. I have nothing left some days and I’m full of energy and hope the next. I’m like one of those bi polar people except I’m not. It’s like ADHD but it’s not. I function well on the outside but my true self is only on the inside, it rages when I feel like an alien. If anyone notices I’m feeling this way I will yell so they go away quickly. I don’t want them to hate me or blame me. I have so much potential and no energy.
I have two personalities and can and will change myself to fit in with anyone that interests me because I’m desperately trying to find someone like me who can like me for who I am. But my true self is displayed on the inside only to my eyes. I’m complex. I have found a few like me but I get jealous of them so I pretend I know more than they do even if I don’t because I can listen to them and work things out faster than they can. I prefer them to feel inadequate rather than learn something new. I have always felt a deep connection to the spiritual. Yet continued to do things which contradicted that.
I love learning new things but discovering them myself not being told by others. I’m a clever person and people have no idea just how clever I am. I’m exhausted. I feel unfairness so deeply. Pain so much deeper than anyone else. I have met a few like me we all are similar but not all the same. Some feel beauty so deeply they sit in it and will do anything to avoid taking risks they seem content. I do sometimes too but I need intensity of new experience to stop my own boredom. Trouble is I might get bored of what I was interested in and the people surrounding the new project but I’ve already got myself in too deep and hurt others because of my intense need for new and to be valued by anyone who is thinking like me at that time excites me. Until the next day when I’ve lost interest in it.
Sometimes I can be a narcissist. This is the result of loosing my Innate self identity because no one recognised this is me as a child. I felt like such a freak, no one liked me but I wanted to be popular. I wanted them to understand me. They didn’t so I became the pain and sabotaged my relationships with those who loved me.
I have developed immature emotional responses to serious situations and taken terrible risks.
This was because this was not recognised in me. I thought I was a bad person. I no longer take risks. I know I’m not mad.
I like people. I like to help them but at the same time I find them intrusive. People annoy me. They don’t really know me. Sometimes I just want to hide away and feel safe. Or die.
Some people who are like me have amazing lives but no one ever realised I was one of these. No one ever recognised it in me so I became angry and in conflict. I feel stupid like they were all better than me. I used drugs, took risks. Lost a lot. I think because I’m clever that I should be clever at everything but some things I can’t grasp. It doesn’t make any sense. I feel like a freak.
I have been diagnosed for years with bi polar ADHD depression and I didn’t have any of them.
No one was clever enough to figure me out. Only a genius could figure me out.
I’m 61 years old now and now my life is better. I know what I am. I have a name for it. I can’t help it. But now I embrace it fully and have replaced the bad with the good part of this thing and have the recognition I deserved. I’m no longer a narcissist but I am still tired …yet content. I’m among 3%-5% of people in the world who have this. I am very unique.
Ok, maybe most days I’m pretty comfortable with who I am and this thing isn’t really such a curse. But when I say that sometimes it would be nice to take just a little break from this only a few of you will know what I’m talking about. (And if you know what I’m talking about, you have what I have probably and wish you could take a break sometimes if you have it too. At least if it went unrecognised , if not you are probably extremely content or on your way to creating a remarkable life).