Gonna talk about the lack of challenge in my life some more.

It mjight seem cool to be the kid who is smater than all his teachers combined and who can, whenever he feels like it. demonstrate that he cannot be forced to do things against his will and must be dealt with rationally and intelligently because he has absolutely no fear of adults because he can think rings around them. The kid who makes it abundantly clear that his participation in school is voluntary.

It might seem cool. But it ain’t.

In fact, it kind of sucks.

But it sucks on a level that is not immediately obvious. It sucks on the level of discipline,l which is a level that can be hard to see in our individualist culture.

It sucked because it meant nobody could push back at me. I never had anyone who could put me in my place, so to speak. No powerful authority figure who could stop me from doing stupid things. No will superceding my own that could give me the comfort of structure and limits and discipline.

And these are not things a child can provide for themselves. Not well. anyhow. And in my case, what that lead to is a profound insecurity and an unwillingness to test the limits based on a great fear that there won’t be any.

And what’s to keep me together if that turns out to be the case?

It is profoundly frightening and depressing to test the limits only to find that there isn’t any. Kids naturally seek limits because they want to know where the walls of their reality is and they are programmed to learn and follow the rules of their society.

But when nobody in the life of a child is “powerful” enough to do the job, that child gives up on the whole idea and is left to their own immature and inadequate devices.

In my case, that meant collapsing even further into myself. Outside my mind’s inner garden was a scary world where I had been abandoned to my fate like a unwanted Roman child left in the woods.

Inside my mind, I was safe. My life therefore became about keeping the time I had to spend outside that inner garden to an absolute minimum, and thus my terrible inward tide was born.

I’ve often said that I never rebelled against my parents because they didn’t give me anything to rebel against. Ditto my teachers, to a lesser extent. And that is true up to a point but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

The truth is that I never rebelled because I knew I would win. I knew, to my very corfe, that I could win any contest of wills or battle of wits without even trying, and far from taking pride in that I found it extremely depressing.

So what would be the point of rebelling? All it would do is shatter whatever tiny sense of order and structure I had, and to what point?

To confirm that I am, indeed, totally alone in the world?

To prove I am smarter than everyone else? That’s self-evident.

To defeat the forces of evil? What force? What evil?

There are times when I wish someone had done me the favour of trying to control and suppress me. At least then I would have had a focal point for my restless and defiant energies. At least then I would have had the stimuli that creates character.

At least then I would have had the validation that comes from someone caring enough to fight me.

But why would someone put themselves through that? Having an elementary school student kick your ass to a bewildering extent in an argument must be humilating. and disturbing. Very few people are going to want to put in the kind of energy it took to struggle with me on a long term basis.

And few people are as intelligent and articulate as it would take to deal with me the way I wanted to be dealt with, which was rationallky. I was, am, and always will be open to a reasonable and sensible argument. It’s how my parents controlled me back in those golden days when they occasionally attempted to parent me, and it worked.

In fact I am, by default, a highly agreeable and accomodating fellow. It’s how I am built. I figure that life is easier when you keep your hard limitations to a minimum and do what you can to help if you can at all manage it.

To put it plainly : I am eager to please. Pathetically so. at times.

But people have to be able to explain what they want from me. I am not equipped to fill in most of the blanks. There is a minimum amount of information I need before I have a hope of intuiting the rest and if people can’t meet that burden, I am helpless.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve enjoyed customer service jobs so much. In customer service. I have a role and thus a defined relationship with the customers and they come to me asking for things simple enough to anyone to articulate clearly and that I feel fully competent to provide for them.

As a result, I don’t feel out of place or awkward at all. That, in turn, lets my naturally friendly and warm personality shine through, and the customers and I get along great.

Now if only I could apply that to the rest of my life. Devise a defined role for myself, something I can communicate to others in order to make me less mysterious and undefined so that I have a good starting point for making a connection.

I can be incredibly charming and personable when I am relaxed and not beset by social anxiety. I have a powerful personal appeal. And I can be very pursuasive. \

But for now, all that is locked behind walls of anxiety and depression.

And I can unlock it any time I want.

I just have to be absolutely sure that’s what I want.

Because letting myself means letting everyone else in.

And that thought terrifies me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.