I can remember hiding behind my mother as a child, around the age of three or so and not wanting to talk to the strange adult that was trying to coax me with baby talk. My mother would...
I can remember hiding behind my mother as a child, around the age of three or so and not wanting to talk to the strange adult that was trying to coax me with baby talk. My mother would make up some excuse I’m sure so that I wouldn’t seem rude, but this basic scenario played itself out for years really, until I got a little older and would talk to others even with my numerous speech impediment type of issues. But in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade I pretty much just sat quietly by myself. I just sat there being scared and anxious. I can still remember a few of those moments, but when my mother discusses it, she begins to tear up. We don’t discuss it much, my early speech impediments. My mother would go with me to school as an interpreter until we moved to a new town during the middle of my fist grade year. When I saw my new school for the first time… it looked like a huge piece of shit compared to my shiny former school. Fuck this place.
I’ve been diving into my anxiety recently, I do that from time to time, try to get better, try to understand a little bit clearer of where it comes from. It’s gotten much better recently, but I’ve also had huge dietary changes. Very low sugar, lots of veggies, almost no oil, no dairy, sounds boring but I’m feeling great for what I’ve done.
Every conversation that I had until the 8th– 9th grade was a potential disaster, huge failure, possibility of teasing, bullied, and not being understood, not heard. Spoken to in a condescending manner, the look of impatience staring at you while you begin to stutter…
As I’ve mentioned before my speech issues were letter and word mispronunciation and then stuttering when I got stuck on a word and anxious regarding looking like a dumb shit.
I was in speech therapy for years working on how to speak, but never a single lesson or therapy session to help me deal with the constant rejection, teasing, bullying, and the look of impatience in everyone’s face as I try desperately to make my voice work like yours, but I just can’t. I had years of that and never any guidance of how to deal with the underling feeling of not being understood or heard. Then how to deal with the old feelings of social inadequacies and how to program my body not to feel the anxiety that had become just part of basic communication.
This all dawned on me while picking up after my dog while taking a walk. I laughed because I audibly said, “no shit” while I was holding a bag still warm to the touch.
My addiction monkey is in its cage… it stopped eating cheesecake and well, maybe in its cage is a little inaccurate. Well, in the cage, but the cage door is wide fucking open. Like off the hinges and sitting over in the corner. So, I’m doing the really low sugar, lots of veggies, lean meat, extremely limited oil, no dairy… well yogurt. No butter, milk, milk, lemonade. No desserts, no fudge from the shop around the corner. I’m sorry for that. But please know that I’m smiling like an idiot right now.
I’m eating a lot of kale, getting a farm share from the local coop and I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight. I fucked up my left wrist and my go to of doing some push-ups hasn’t been available so it’s time to ride my bike more. I’ve got to incorporate more exercise into this in order for it to work. I’ve honestly thought about trying to find some type of martial art to study in case I run into a gang of young punks as I get older. It’s weird to be able to plan for the future as if it might actually happen. I can remember being in my 30s and just knowing I’d die any day from my demons. Any fucking day, there are a couple, well a dozen or so times when I look back and wonder how I ever survived it or what I was thinking. Time can give an insight where past depressions seem so silly, as you talk them out, discuss them with yourself. It’s so difficult sometimes to just give yourself the opportunity to heal from a really old pain. Being 50 doesn’t mean that you’re still not hurt by something that happened before your teens or after, time doesn’t heal all wounds, some wounds are still there, you’ve just walked around it in your journey, but it’s still there, and that path isn’t necessarily linear in its destination and certainly not when discussing the articulatory rehearsal loop and that little voice in your head. We all have it. Look it up.
I’ve noticed lately that I’m impatient with people… as they talk to me. If they don’t speak clearly enough, fast enough, but not too fast. I can become impatient. I need to really check myself on that, but we sometimes become what we despise, or if not become then we certainly can pick up some tendencies from the despised traits in others. Time can do that. Time can turn the child begging for patience into an impatient adult. Not remembering for a moment how it felt to receive the same treatment from others. That look from others while I spit out a collection of an unintelligible garbage mix of pig Latin toward some unsuspecting adult, them trying not to blurt out “what the fuck did you just say?” as polite as they can. I need to work on this.
