Haven’t wrestled with this bag of thorns in a while. So allons-y.
I’ve come to realize that I have a sort of protective innocence mode that has both helped and harmed me.
When I am shocked or surprised, I go into this mode where my eyes go very wide and I move very slowly and I look the person who shocked me right in the eyes, silently pleading for clarification, and I might as well be a trapped fawn, I’m so innocent.
This is all subconscious, of course. I don’t think I am capable of doing that kind of thing consciously and deliberately. I am not in the habit of faking anything.
Everything you see is real.
But you don’t see everything.
Being subconscious does not preclude it being a learned response, however. I think I learned it as the youngest of four very brainy kids, and what I am doing when I am in that mode is waiting for someone to explain things to me.
FruBot need iiiiinput.
At least, that’s how it started. I think over time it developed other functions, like :
- Giving me time to think when I am too surprised to be able to think right
- Covering for me when social anxiety is creating major conflict in my brain
- Passively punishing people for not just spitting out what they mean in a way that forces them to put their thoughts into words
- Protecting my own innocence – a strange notion
It’s that last one that has cost me sooooooo many sexual opportunities. So many people wanted to get with me but I was too socially clueless to pick up literally any sexual clues whatsoever and so I went into my innocent routine instead.
To be fair, when I was that young, I had trouble imagining anyone being attracted to me on any level, least of all the sexual.
So no matter how blunt the signals, my mind would still interpret them as non-sexually as possible, as with any nervous nerd.
Thank god both my self-esteem and my social sophistication have improved since then.
It’s also part of my “learned helplessness” suite of responses too, I suppose. That wide eyed pleading look screams “rescue me”. Often from my own clueless nature, which each rescue only reinforces.
I still need to exit that mode. You can’t develop adult self-esteem when you are relying on others to handle reality for you. I will never be the strong and self-sufficient person I know I can be if I don’t learn to stop running away from everything.
Perhaps that is obvious. I don’t know.
I want to grow up. I want to be a real person. I want to be able to hold my head up without shame. I want to live without being in a constant state of cringing apology.
I want to stop living in fear of the moment when someone asks me what I do for a living.
Nothing, okay? Absolutely fucking nothing. I exist entirely because society takes pity on the halt and the lame and the fucked in the head.
I desperately need a way to make money that I can handle. And get.
There’s plenty of work out there in the gig economy that I could do. I could always go back to UpWork or similar. It’s all out there waiting for me.
But…I can’t. My guardian ghost won’t let me. Freezes me with fear when I try.
So that’s why I need to heal this goddamn wound at my center.
Nothing will get done until it is gone. Gone for good.
More after the break.
The Unwanted Child
Typed this in as a comment to this video :
I was unplanned and unwanted. I defied my mother’s tubal ligation to get here. My whole life every resented me for being around and having needs. I grew up feeling like a guest who has vastly overstayed his welcome but cannot leave. I was never once treated like I was an equal member of the family. There was my parents, my older siblings, and me. Every time my parents had to buy me a winter coat or winter boots or really buy anything for me, they resented if. They made me do my own clothes shopping starting when I was 8 years old. I could never go to anyone for comfort, advice, guidance, or even just a hug. My vast inferiority was simply one of the rules of the universe. I should be glad they let me stay, I deserved absolutely nothing.
Me, my life, such as it is
Not even life itself.
None of that is news to my regular readers, but I liked how succinctly and powerfully I put it and it seemed like a good enough jumping off point for tonight’s bloggage.
Obviously, a Reddit video about unwanted children kind of triggered me, having been one. In fact, one of the reasons I keep coming back to this subject is that I still don’t think I rightly measure and comprehend how vastly I was betrayed.
And my surviving family have no idea they did it, or at least, how bad they hurt me. I remain in the same hermetically sealed compartment that I have always been in to them, Even my mother.
Like I said in the above….there were my parents, my siblings, and me.
And I simply did not count. I deserve no attention, resources, time, or effort on their part As always, they prefer to simply pretend I do not exist, and resent reminders of my existence. Been that way since the goddamned day I was born.
And as always, I deserve so much better. At the very very least, I deserve them acknowledging how badly they raised me and how little they thought of me and how I had this dazzling intellect and even didn’t care because they didn’t care.
What I am owed is a decent childhood like the one they got. Impossible to get now, obviously, but it’s still what I deserve. A childhood where I was respected and valued and given the same guidance, protection, and support they got.
Honestly, that’s all I want from them. Acknowledgement. I don’t want money and I am not looking to punish them in any way other than via their conscience.
All I can do is point out how horrible you have been.
It’s up to you whether you feel bad about it or not.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.