Reflecting on my teenage self; she didn’t know she really was alien.

Thinking about myself as a teen college student and feeling like I should send some professors apologies…lol

If they are still alive.

Sadly, most of my favorites have died.

I thought I sounded excited when I sounded arrogant.

I thought, when they said treat them as peers, that I should treat them the way the adults around me growing up treated each other.

Also, I had no idea I was autistic or ADHD, and thought everyone was crazy because they didn’t notice things that literally hurt me physically and emotionally, especially as my emotions are very physical, and I thought everyone’s were.

Talk about hyper empathy!  I felt worse for “Cookie” than she felt for herself because I thought her heart was like mine.  I was wrong.  But that’s a long story for a better planned post.

I learned a lot about myself in 2020, and about what a normal human does under abnormal levels of isolation and unceasing stress during quarantine….and all while repeatedly rapid cycling from the wrong medication because I was convinced I was just depressed, not bipolar.  Wrong about that, too.

I didn’t know I had a developmental disability that everyone is aware of, but even other people who have it have a hard time describing it…since it affects communication and processing of information, as well as disregulated body temperature issues, disregulated emotions that lead to meltdowns people who aren’t autistic will call us abusive or send us to jail, or kill us, beat and violate us, take all we have and leave us to the wolves while telling us we’re lying about needing help.

And nowadays, science supports the idea that an imaginary “average human” doesn’t exist, and therefore I think it is stupid to not look at real concrete data based off real individual people instead.

I am an anthropologist. That’s my degree number 1. And The MFA in Creative Writing was hard. I owe over $230k in student loan debt, which I thought I would be able to pay off on a Florida Secondary School Teacher salary!

That’s how bad at math I am.

I took the PSAT one time. 790 verbal, 570 Maths.

When I applied to UCF, the woman laughed at me and boisterously, “Wow! Not so good at Math, are you?”

In my memory, she slaps her thigh, but I’ve learned enough about memory as a memoir writer who also studied Psychology, to figure my subconscious is exaggerating what actually happened to match the filter of how I felt while it was happening.

Humiliated. Hiding tears.

In 2011 I published my first memoir, having no idea I was autistic, or ADHD, or bipolar, or OCD, or panic disorder, or audio processing disorder, or dyslexia, especially since I read 1000 page novels by Stephen King when I was 10.

I’ve finally figured myself out.

I finally feel at home in my own body, no matter where I am. Missing teeth, obesity, awkwardness and all.

I’m writing my new memoir with a sense of confidence I faked in the first one. I’m laughing because in hindsight, I know it’s true.

I’m not afraid of myself anymore.

I’m not ashamed of myself anymore.

Life is good.