Archive for Adult Children

I was always told how much of a genius I was. I was always assured I could do anything I wanted and could do things other people couldn’t. They put me in all the best elementary school programs and gave me all the attention a budding genius could ask for. They even told me my IQ score and let everyone know how brilliant I really was. The bullshit flowed and smoke was absolutely being blown up my naive ass.

Then it all fell apart. Somewhere around middle school the support ended and these stewards of mine withdrew their support. The middle school I went to was ranked as some of the worst in the nation and gangs ruled the school (yes, even in middle school). Bullies were more prevalent than teachers and support staff. I became hardened and spent a lot of time on the absentee list. I became disinterested and stopped studying. My life morphed into a latch key existence – a swirl of domestic violence and self preservation – where I strived to just get by and survive as opposed to thrive.

Little did I know how far behind the eight ball I was falling. I didn’t then understand the learning disabilities growing in me nor realized that alcoholic, latch key parents having to work ridiculous hours would have massively broken results in my adulthood. No one celebrates the cessation of your normal childhood development. Nobody touts that you can’t socialize or make friends or that you wouldn’t know how to date if your life depended on it. How could they when they didn’t even realize you weren’t actually going to school save the days the school gave their cookie cutter tests. I was a broken human being at this point and how I squeaked into college was a comedy of systemic errors.

And luckily, college was where, after three years of scraping by, I would be diagnosed as being functionally illiterate.

Years of hard work, changing habits, examining motives, understand tendencies and using the tools I have found to make myself more whole; to help myself be an adult on the inside…all of that and more yet, I get this far only to realize there’s an enormous part of me that’s still a fucking child.

Oh how frustrating this discovery is, that I, when motivated by the right external forces, revert back to the depressive, challenged and brokenhearted kid that has dominated my life for its entire existence.

Feeling my thoughts go back to that awful rumination, that inability to see the truth and going into that place where nobody likes me, everyone hates me and all I am left with is eating worms is harrowing. Seriously though, how disheartening to realize all of this recovery has to happen on several concurrent platforms of my identity, some of which I didn’t realize were lacking. I’ve made great strides in professionalism, self-interests, socialization, friend making, appearance, expectations, planning, my money…but then to get blindsided by another plank of my person that I forgot to experience and grow is as frustrating as all hell.

Ugh! This is love? I forgot about love! How could I forget that emotion?

So here we go again, back to the slow slog of change, back to the road to recovery and once again to feeling things long dormant that must be felt and experienced while making subtle changes to get to a place where I can feel and be whole again. Thank you Universe for reminding me that my job is nowhere near finished.

And thank you to an old friend for reminding me about this part of me that I have been avoiding. You woke me up and now I can’t go back again. You brought me joy which I turned into pain, that has always been my way. Without you I’d just be in denial. Mad mad props.