Stream of Consciousness 08/12

It might seem to the casual reader that these “Stream of Consciousness” blogs have a therapeutic tone. Well, I have neither job nor insurance, so until that situation is remedied, I suppose they do. Gotta get this stuff off my chest, right or wrong, in order to function. Even though most of my friends on this page know me IRL, it’s a safe place. It’s hard for me to put the words together face-to-face. One of the reasons I doubt the efficacy of therapy for myself. I forget things. Hugely traumatic things, no less. Then there’s the fact that face-to-face, I tend to say the wrong thing. My facial expressions, my words and my tone don’t tend to jibe. People misconstrue what I say all the time. I swear, sometimes I think I’m slightly autistic. I know I’m not. I don’t even have Aspergers’. But ADD and Autism are in the same class, just different ends of the spectrum. And I know I have ADD. And it sucks.

Last week, I had my midterms. My first midterm, intermediate accounting, was horrible. I’d be willing to bet I got no better than a C. I’m sure I didn’t fail. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. The next midterm was tax accounting. Open book, which was helpful, but as anyone will tell you, a decent test still requires study. I’m glad I reviewed my chapters before that test. That was a lot easier. I still doubt I aced it, but I think I didn’t do too badly. Before that class, there was a conversation about success in the classroom. Everyone, particularly the instructor, was shocked to find I’d failed classes in college. I’d let him know the previous week that I was stressed out because I was looking for a job. I still am, and I’m still stressed out about it. He asked if I had other things going on at the time, just out of curiosity and conversation, and I mentioned a learning difficultly. I didn’t specify anything. I also didn’t mention that I was working two jobs at times while in college, and that I failed two classes, one of them twice. In one, I had a professor notoriously opposed to music students, where music professors actually recommended dropping the class. In the other, the one I failed twice, I had two obstacles: one was a professor who hadn’t left Vietnam, but he was tenured, so the school had to wait for him to retire. The other was a class where the book was a work in progress. The professor was still writing it, adding chapters throughout the semester. The third time I took it, I got a C. It was a different class each time.

See, I leave things out. Things that would change the picture a bit. But these same things would make people go “Well, you’re just putting the blame on someone else.” And you know, maybe I am. And I don’t actually care as much any more. I know what I’m dealing with, I know what I’m fighting against, and I know when I have done something to myself. Lots of self-talk. Destructive self-talk. Learned it at my mother’s knee.

Yes, she was horrible to my brother. She was bitter and angry with men, and she took it out on him. I didn’t escape unscathed. Me, she told I was never good enough. Didn’t matter what it was, I wasn’t good enough. Don’t go into theater, you’re not good enough. It’s hard, and so very few people make it. It’s not worth the pain. Don’t go into music, you’re not good enough. You sing flat all the time, you can’t keep a decent rhythm, your voice is shrill and unpleasant. Don’t go into broadcasting. You don’t have the body or face for television, and there’re just not enough jobs in radio. Your grades could be better. You could be thinner. You could be less bitchy. You could be happier. You could be more serious. You could have a bit more backbone. Whatever I did, it was wrong.

But wait, there’s more! She would tell me not to go into acting or theater, then set up an appointment with a talent agent. One specific incident. She had the appointment, and I had strep throat. She kept the appointment. I couldn’t speak. I literally could not speak. She wouldn’t reschedule. And I couldn’t.

So here I sit, knowing I have to get a job, stressing because, frankly, I don’t know how. I have access to several hiring managers in accounting fields, and I haven’t been able to broach the subject with them once. I don’t feel competent to do anything. Why should I? I was told I was incompetent from a very young age. I really don’t like talking about myself. Feels like bragging, and bragging is bad. That one, I got from my father and the overall environment. Girls don’t brag. Girls sit quietly in the back and hope someone notices them, but not for the wrong things, whatever those may be. For someone who’s barely got a grasp on interpersonal relations to begin with, this is NOT helpful. I’m a very literal-minded person, I tend to take things at face value. I can pick out obvious sarcasm and humor, I’m not completely oblivious, but if I’m not paying attention for whatever reason, I will take you at your word. I don’t notice when someone’s flirting, I can’t always tell when they’re trying to get my attention or just happen to be looking in my direction. Gotta be obvious. I don’t always notice when everyone stops talking about something because it’s no longer comfortable. And I really don’t notice when I don’t stop talking about something that should have been dropped long ago. Once I do, I can’t stop, not immediately. I have to consciously force myself to stop. Experienced that in my last family trip, when I got so geeked out about seeing so many Ohio plates in South Carolina. I heard myself saying it so often, I was getting tired of it. It took another few hours to stop.

See, I appear perfectly normal. I give off an air of competence, normalcy, astuteness and intelligence, according to multiple reports from others. I know I’m intelligent. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have if I wasn’t. But competent? Astute? Normal? No. It’s taken me a lot of years to realize that, much less accept it. Doesn’t mean I don’t try. I know I say the wrong thing often. I’m good at it. Just ask my mom. I have an amazing ability to say or do the exact wrong thing. And I’m on my own dealing with that. No one else is interested, they only care that I’ve said or done something wrong. It’s a huge fear. So huge that I get worried when a friend doesn’t talk to me for a while. Unless I hear otherwise, like they’re out of town or out of the loop, I assume I did something wrong. Pretty self-absorbed, admittedly, but when you’re used to saying or doing something that makes your friends walk away, that makes your family stop talking to you, it’s hard not to.

Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I can deal with this. I get tired of struggling to strike just the right note. People don’t like me. I know this. This is not news. And I don’t always know why. In fact, I usually don’t know why. Sometimes it’s something I said, sometimes it’s something I did, and sometimes, it’s just because they don’t like me. That happens to everyone. That one, I can deal with. It’s when I’ve said or done something, and no one tells me what. They just stop talking to me. How in the world can I avoid it again if no one will tell me what I said or did? My only real choice is to keep to safe topics. I tend not to express my opinion any more, or share anything really important that’s going on in my life. The longer I do that, the farther that avoidance extends. Now, I barely speak about myself. No one’s interested, so I’ve learned. I have things in my past, dark things, that I haven’t told anyone. Not really. An occasional oblique comment here and there, but no one ever wants to hear the rest. Can’t blame them for that. Problem is I can’t see the line. So I have nothing really to say to anyone.

No wonder I feel so completely alone.