The punishment of being me - What is wrong with me

I have always been a person that needed to know how things work and more importantly why. I have spent most of my life lost in this search for answers and a general understanding of my world. Feeling like an alien in this world an wondering what is wrong with me.

I didn't ask for the brain I got but it is the one that I have to live with. I have spent most of my life asking myself  daily  "what's wrong with you?" This began early when I just wasn't interested in the mundane routine of our household. My mother in frustration ended up just banishing me to the basement to entertain myself and I happily did.

When I got to school it got much worse.  I remember standing in the hall the first week of school without a clue of what I had done wrong. My teacher was a college friend of my mothers so this was going to be ugly when I got home. 

I didn't try to fix myself until after my mother died. Until then I had learned to accept the punishment for being me and took it all in stride. When my dad remarried there was psychological  punishment for being me. Before being physically punished just seemed like part of my routine and I didn't really see the connection between my behavior and the punishment.

This is where the self loathing began. In my logical mind I did everything everyone told me to do as perfectly as I could and still it was not good enough. I was not good enough was and without my mother I was isolated with people who did not love me an made sure that I understood that every day.

I did leave which was the best thing still but I knew something wasn't right about me. All of my relationships were with guys that had a lot of their own issues of not belonging. They drank they had anger problems and I understood this and I knew could help them. 

I started my road to recovery through the 12 steps and it helped me discover the me in my head that would never be happy. I thought this was spiritual and could be fixed with prayer and meditation and it definitely helped. I stopped taking myself so seriously and I became "my brothers keeper" I stayed so busy I didn't have time to listen to the voice in my head.

This works until it doesn't and I burned out. I was at the bottom thinking again "what is wrong with me?"  I have come back from this but my life is empty of the people that I supported who could not support me. It is okay I did this to myself the caretakers and those that need to be taken care of are two different personalities. 

I have learned through all the years that it is just the brain I was given.  There isn't anything wrong with me because I am not like other people.  I could pretend but that takes too much effort. I do realize that I can do things that change my brain that is based on pure science. I can also take care of my body knowing that what I eat affects my emotions more than I ever imagined it could.  I don't like it but it is not worth trading in happiness for sugar. 

I guess my point is you have control over 80% of what goes on in your head. The brain is bent towards fear naturally more for some than others. The primal fear of being someone's meal. We create a path in our brain early in our childhood and our brain chooses this path over and over again because it is easy.  We have to make new paths with daily out loud proclamations to over write these old paths. This really works. 

Writing here helps me to see where I have been and how far I have come. I do get lonely sometimes for the distraction of chaos but there is still enough to show me that it isn't what I want. I am re-inventing myself or just returning to who I was as a child. I have pulled out all of my art supplies and doing something ever day. Even when I would prefer to binge watch something.  The path of my child hood a well worn path. 

Reading - Re-inventing myself - Fiction -Spring

Spring has come here in the south and it was particularly beautiful today in the 70's and breezy.  My flowers have been blooming for over a month but not in a good way. It was cool sometimes and rainy and hot other times and they are confused.  Just like we are right now.

This makes me think of an old song with a line that says "should I stay or should I go now?" You can't really keep people cooped up forever and when spring comes it is even less likely to work.  The mind just says "look how beautiful it is it can't be that dangerous. Right?

I have to admit I drove to Lowes today and it was a mob seen so I didn't leave my car.  I did stop at a small Ace and bought all of one kind of plant that matched the ones in my flower bed. I would tell you the name but I don't know. 

I am sure I could have gotten them cheaper but I also could have gotten Covid along with the discount so I think they were a bargain. Besides the Ace stores are independently owned and this one was struggling before the pandemic. They could use the business.

I have started reading again and I am finishing two books a week which is interesting since I haven't read for pleasure in years. I am also listening to Trevor Noah - Born a crime - read by him and it is hilarious and pretty unbelievable his success given his childhood. 

Something he said reminded me of myself. He talked about how if something didn't seem logical he would just refuse to go along with it. He was raised Pentecostal but went to a Catholic school where they wouldn't let him take communion because he wasn't Catholic. 

He explained to the nun that Jesus was not Catholic either and it was his blood and body so that was not acceptable. He felt like an outcast so he stole the bottle of grape juice and bag of wafers and finished them off. When the nuns told his mother she said his argument was perfectly legitimate. He is a pretty smart guy and with his mother's tenacity and guidance he became who his today.

I feel like I am re-inventing myself with reading for pleasure. My whole adult life I have read mostly self help or spiritual books looking for answers. I was trying to figure out what I was doing to cause bad things to happen to me. I turns out that life is pretty random and you can waste a lot time preparing one thing and then something else happens. We have to find peace in the midst of the turmoil and love ourselves and the mistakes we have made. Fill our time with small pleasurable things and let go of our past hurts. 

With reading I have found a lost pleasure. I not a fiction fan because they seem predictable to me but reading memoirs like "Brain on Fire" that I finished this week and "A Year of Bee Keeping" they feel less formulated. When I read Angela's Ashes and "An Education" both were a little to real both long and sad even if they ended well.  It felt like every story of addiction and mental illness I have heard and experienced myself in Al-Anon. How no one matters but the one afflicted good but heavy.  

I need to escape even if I loved to work lately it has taken a toll on me and I feel that I need to see what else is out there with the limitations of the pandemic. The reading has helped me to vacation in my own mind.  I know that one day I will eventually leave work and have to find something else to do with my time.  My coworker that had Covid is home from the hospital and may not come back to work. We are alike in our love of work so it really made me think about what is next.