Thoughts

You frequently see articles guiding us to know our worth. We are encouraged to believe the best in ourselves, to trust that there is a place for us in the world, that we belong and are important. These sentiments are always given with the best of intentions, but what happens when you cannot find value in who you are? What do you do when a number of indications arise that point to your lack of value?

I recall one of the first times I really questioned whether I had value in this world. I was a young engineer at a cable company in East Texas. I don’t think it is completely uncommon for someone my age to leave college with less than a full compliment of experience and maturity necessary to adequately assess every scenario and adjust accordingly. I was eager to begin, dressing in a nice shirt and khaki slacks to impress those who hired me. The minute I entered the facility, I was judged as a typical engineer, too important to be with others where I would get dirty and sweat and struggle. So, I kicked my first day off at what I figured was pretty much bottom. 

When I left work around 6 pm that night, I bought work boots, jeans, and comfortable shirts to fit in. I was living alone at the time so I did not have anyone or anything demanding me to be away from work, so I decided a good way to impress was to work hard and stay until I was done. Given I was staying until 7-8 pm most nights, I was not super concerned that I might get in around 8:05-8:10 pm. Looking back now I realize how naive I was to think that those paid twice what I was making would consider it part of their duties to gather more information than arrival time, but then I figured that anything I was doing wrong would receive the same brutal response I received for my attire on day one.

Fast forward 6 months. I had started to develop a strong relationship with my fellow engineers and, more importantly, the operators and maintenance crews in the plant. They watched as sweat poured from my brow while I turned a wrench in 130 degree heat above extruders. They appreciated that my degree hadn’t clouded my respect for their effort. Yeah, I was still a city slicker, but I worked as hard and as dirty as anyone else there, so I was doing ok. I walked in on that fateful day and my boss immediately pulled me into his office, where the HR manager was sitting as well. Jimmy was a sniveling jackass who spent the first 1-2 hours of his day juggling his testicles while he slurped black coffee and socialized with everyone in the office. In the movie of my life, Steve Buscemi would be the perfect actor to play him. Bill, the HR manager, was a really odd guy. Not so much a bad person, as just the typical HR rep – plays like he is your friend but will slip a knife in your back while telling you the cut won’t be fully covered by insurance.

So, I settled into the couch in Jimmy’s office. Things seemed pleasant enough until Jimmy stated that I would be put on probation for 6 months due to my tardiness arriving at work. I was dumbfounded. Never once did a single person state that what I was doing wrong. There were no official hours. People came in much later all the time, and few stayed as late as I did. I asked what prevented them from mentioning the issue to me before, and they mumbled something like it was up to me to recognize the issue. I stumbled out of the office and worked my way back to the oil pits, a place few people wanted to be. I sobbed quietly, feeling like a failure, but more trying to understand how much people must have hated me to not even warn me that this was an issue.

I survived and worked there several years after that. I royally pissed Jimmy off by forcing him to shred that piece of paper the second he arrived on the day my 6 month probation was up. It was my first of many experiences where I should have learned that people won’t extend themselves to help or mentor others.

Today I have a similar low feeling. I have worked for my current company for almost 12 years. I have worked nights, weekends, holidays. I am always up for a challenge and consistently deliver results and performance that few others seem capable to offer. There are plenty of places where I do fail. I have grown tired and wary of interpersonal work relationships. I have been burned more times than I wish to recall, so I am probably someone people consider cold or unfeeling. I can be blunt and even brutal in my assessments and statements, and people know I have little patience for wasted time. I have never made the mistake of ever thinking that there is a workplace that would want me at a higher level, so I have always kept my goals reasonable. I rarely voice an opinion about my work, foolishly hoping it speaks for itself.

I have a coworker, a peer, who is moving to a new role. She is being backfilled and shared the job posting with us to see if we might know of anyone interested. When I checked the posting, I realized it was for a level above me. My shock turned to anger when I realized it unsurprisingly listed my exact job function. Not once did my manager mention to me that he was thinking of adding someone at a level higher, encouraging me to go for it. He has never stated what it is about me that limits my potential, something most all of my managers have struggled to offer in my career. What they fail to understand is that telling that me I am not performing to their expectations may be painful, but not telling me is far worse. My guess is had I not paid attention to the posting, my boss would have been perfectly fine hiring someone else for the roll, paying them more, and expecting me to support their success through training and guidance.

Mind you, I have no problem with someone being hired over me. What is so difficult is I have been doing all that was listed and more for years. I have helped by bosses look like geniuses. I have even saved the career of one. I tackle huge projects and regularly save our company large amounts of money. What hurts is what came when I asked about the role. I IM’ed my boss, asking what happened and why this wasn’t mentioned to me, even as a courtesy. I could tell this caught him off-guard, because the “XXXX is typing” kept flashing on and off. When he finally mustered the courage to say something, he told me that I offer a lot to the company in many ways, and that I should apply to the job.

So, the person my boss comes to in times of crisis, who is regularly the guy who supports huge, urgent projects, doesn’t merit enough consideration to be approached to say “Hey Greg, just so you know, we are backfilling Ellen’s role with a position that is a step up. I will be happy to discuss why we are not automatically promoting you to this role and backfilling your job, as I am sure this may be potentially disturbing news.” I know people generally have little concern for my emotional well-being. Somehow I have forged this persona that people seem to believe is impervious to pain or harm and doesn’t require gestures of care. It is absolutely stupid to think that someone would ever take the few seconds necessary to think more of their fellow coworker. So, here I am, crying next to the oil pits, wondering how I earn that place of value in the eyes of others.

So, yeah, fuck off with that “worth” bullshit. I work hard to own what I am worth to this world, but I am also aware that others rarely feel the same way. 

I have tried to write this at least half a dozen times, not really knowing what to say or how to say it.  I have thousands of words stammering around about my childhood, my struggles, my epiphany, never really hitting the right note.  I couldn’t help but wonder if it was procrastination; me being unwilling to come to grips with the inevitable conclusion. I realize now that is not the case.  The time and care I am taking with this message has nothing to do with apprehension and everything to do with respect to the issue at hand.

I will eventually get around to a deeper assessment of how I got to this point, but suffice it to say that I have never felt fully comfortable in my own skin.  I have always marveled at people who just own themselves.  It isn’t about arrogance or even overt confidence, rather, it is about calm existence.  I have never enjoyed this peace.  I have always felt too young, too old, too wimpy, too intimidating, too creepy, too caring, too emotional, too angry, too weird, too opinionated, too quiet, too talkative, too drunk, too sober, too persistent, too ambivalent, too ruthless, too dispassionate.  I hoped I could think my way out of it, but that was never possible, in part, because I am always thinking.  I thought that the fact that my brain seemed to be managing dozens of threads of thought made me some sort of savant.  I never realized that it was actually a survival mechanism.

I made it about 48 years propping up an unsteady facade, putting on a face that seemed capable, confident, intelligent, caring, and strong.  I had hit a stride where I was so convinced that me being abnormal was normal that discomfort was just the way it was meant to be.  Then I had an event that changed everything.  Seemingly minor, and likely so for most people, it shook me far more than it should have.  I could not come to grips why this likely unintended questioning of my integrity had such a profound impact on me.  I sunk into a deepness I had not experienced before.  I monitored every interaction and tallied every affront.  I started to obsess with how I was treated by others, and how I reacted to everything.  The harder I worked to achieve success, the more I seemed to fail.  Granted, this had occurred before, but never in the triumvirate of my life – family, occupation, self.  I sought out the advice of a therapist, which was a momentary boost to my morale, but failed to identify the root cause of my distress.  It was actually one of the people I seemed to consistently fail who broached the potential reason for my crisis.

When the possible cause was first mentioned, I had the immediate reaction that I was too smart and did not show any of the signs.  For a kid growing up with Rain Man being a favorite movie, I always viewed the two characters as halves of the perfect being – Tom Cruise as dashing, charming, and supremely confident while Dustin Hoffman as the brilliant, regimented, focused, and sensitive.  I guess as a kid I would have always said Charlie was my favorite character, but I also had this odd reverence for Raymond, not because he was nicer, but because he was special.  It always stuck with me that I had some sort of connection with Raymond and found Charlie so distant, like an unobtainable goal.  I shared this movie with my daughter recently while I was journaling about this and it struck me that I had little in common with Charlie and so much that I could understand with Raymond.  Of course, I am thankful that my condition does not manifest with the severe challenges depicted in the film, but I realized that I was embarrassed by my initial reaction to the amateur diagnosis.  Having watched Atypical during my acknowledgement of this was a bit like an instruction manual for life as neuro-diverse, whereas, Rain nan was a bit deeper to the heart of the matter, the struggle to really gain acceptance of a condition while also being who you are.

While I have not sought out an official diagnosis yet, I have taken tests, followed TikTok accounts, read innumerable posts on Facebook, and poured over many other accounts of what makes up the conditions generally described as Autism Spectrum Disorder.  For those of you more versed in this, I apologize if I have not fully grasped the appropriate terminology.  I am still struggling a bit with whether Aspergers, which seems to best fit my situation, is the right term, or if I am just in the “highly-functional” range of the spectrum (quotes intended to demonstrate my discomfort with that nomenclature).  Once I discarded any shred of embarrassment about this condition, I was able to absorb and accept the information with growing glee.  Every time I read a symptom or hear a story about an experience from someone on TikTok, it was like drinking the freshest water on the hottest day.  I could barely believe how the symptoms described me.  Clumsiness? Check. Preferring solitary activities?  Check. Hypersensitivity to noises that don’t seem to bother others? Check.  Frequent monologues on a subject?  Yes, and anyone who knows me would whole-heartedly agree.  I have never understood why my intense black and white view of right and wrong, my easy ambivalence to situations that make others emotional, my utter confusion over office politics, and my inability to read the emotions of others put people off so much.  Rather than a world of questions, I now seem to have answers.  I always felt that somehow my incompatibility with others was my fault, that I was forever destined to be misaligned with others, and I was responsible.  While it is reassuring to know that this may be something inherently beyond my control, it is far greater relief to have a reason for my behavior and thoughts, because now, rather than exerting myself to hide, or mask, my nature, I can invest my energy into understanding myself, and offering that explanation to others.

So, yes, I am weird, clumsy, anxious, and dismissive of certain rituals or personal politics I don’t understand.  I am also honest, loyal, direct, and persistent.  I will bore those I care about with the most mundane details of local politics or the MCU, but I will also defend and support those people to my last breath.  While I can be a painful adversary, I am also a dedicated friend.  I am certain I have perplexed, or outright pissed off, anyone who has read this far at some point in our relationship.  I write this with a couple of intentions in mind.  First, my hope is that it brings a bit of understanding. I am not normal.  I did not start on the same path as most of you, I was on my own path.  I have not diverged into oddity, I was always there.  My way is as natural for me as yours is for you.  Of course, I will have to realize that there are far more people in my life who are deemed NT than ND, so I will have to adjust my interactions if I wish to have any.  These adjustments will no longer be an effort in building a false representation; rather, they will be an effort to blunt some of the more bracing aspects of my nature.  Second, I hope that, in some small way, I have given some pause to consider that there isn’t really one right way to be.  Of course, no condition that inflicts harm on others should be accepted, but I encourage people to consider the value of what they may not understand.  Appreciate that those who are different are not necessarily incongruent to normalcy, but complimentary.  There is a lot of controversy in the autism community about the original emblem for the condition, the puzzle piece.  Some view it as those on the spectrum contorting themselves to fit in with NT’s.  I do not agree with this perspective.  I view the puzzle piece as an apt description of what it is like to mesh with each other in society.  I fit in a way that is different from others, but I still fit. 

A thought about trump and his current behavior….

This cannot be a surprise. A man who mocks the disabled cannot be expected to approach this situation with grace. Even though he has lost many, many times, he is genetically predisposed to refuse to accept any form of defeat. So, maybe we just let the recounts and the delays happen? Let him fury tweet and not respond or get upset about it. He has been nothing for a decade, so why not just treat him as such. Focus on court cases and monitor the progress of efforts to disregard the will of the people, but otherwise let him flail in agony.

Keep in mind, this is the same administration that confused Four Seasons Tree and Landscaping for a Four Seasons hotel. What realistically can the Biden administration expect to learn during a transition from them? He is already demonstrating what effective, unifying leadership looks like, which his a magnificent contrast to the toddler currently squatting in the White House.

The focus really needs to be Georgia, where voters will have to do more courageous work for the Democrats across the nation. They can ensure we can neuter McConnell and ensure that productive legislation can proceed. They can ensure that Biden can select his cabinet and judges without delays.

One other thing…this is not a call for unity of our society. Those who continue to support trump deserve to be reminded of their failure to the rest of the residents of our nation and the citizens of the world. They deserve to know that we will not comfort bigotry or hate, that ignorance is not an excuse, and that America is driving to regain respectiblity worldwide. There is no meeting in the middle with those who use race, sexual orientation, or gender as reasons to disparage or subjugate others. It is long past due that we stand our ground for what is right for all Americans and establish that the only pathway to unity will involve acknowledging the disgraceful fall of the GOP and it’s platform based on hatred and abridgement of freedoms.

I get that people don’t love Biden, but you aren’t really supposed to be lead with your heart when you vote for someone. This is not your buddy or friend or uncle. This is the person who is going to lead the executive branch.

Biden won’t get M4A, won’t eliminate student loan debt, set up completely free college, institute a $15 minimum wage, or pass the laws necessary to implement the Green New Deal. Guess what..neither will Sanders. What Biden will do is reverse the dangerous EO’s that trump has implemented, return our nation to its previous course, assign capable justices to the Federal Judiciary, rebuild the state department, and restore our credibility in the world.

Bernie has established that he is not a democrat, that he will not compromise, and that he has an affinity for brutal dictators and is willing to legitimize rogue regimes. He should understand that he will be equated with socialism, and outside a tiny fraction of the party who revels at that, the rest of the electorate hates the thought of anyone remotely socialistic becoming president. Instead of working to establish that he has no interested in socialism and proving that his policies are not socialism, he just shrugs his shoulders.

One other thing, people keep wanting to make claims about Biden’s mental health, yet seem to have forgotten that Bernie had a heart attack less than a year ago.

The leftists who are desperate to institute this pseudo-socialism need to get their act together and start building support for their policies at the state and local level, then hit the federal congressional level, before they can expect to be taken seriously.