I’ve recently had a birthday and i find myself in the final stages of being in my thirties. One year to go to the big 40. So apparently by age 40 you should have all your shit together. Steady career, married, children, home. Know who you are and what you believe in. Know what you stand for. At peace with where you’ve been and know where your going. Comfortable with who you are inside and out. In my thirties i should of experienced something along the lines of going through some kind of transition and figured out my passions, realize my purpose, and be now focusing on my priorities. I should be a strong confident woman full of wisdom and looking forward to moving into the best years of my life.
So what does one do when they reach age 40 and don’t have all this going on. No career, married yes, but now divorced. Children, check got two of those, and i am grateful to be one of the lucky ones with a home. So i have some of it going on. Why then do i still feel like an 18 year old. Still asking myself what will i be when i grow up. What does one do when they don’t posses the skills to get ones shit together. I know, i hear you ‘Go and learn the skills’. Sound so easy, just learn the skills and start living the expected life.
Well in my 39 years i have learnt many skills and done many things. However i’m still at a point where i just don’t know who i am. Career wise definitely. I literally am still trying to work out what i want to be when i grow up. Unfortunately due to skills lacking in confidence, lacking in know how, lacking in knowing where i fit in the world and simply not being able to believe in myself. I am resigned to not a career but a job. Something i am comfortable in, keeps centerlink of my back and pays the bills. However there is no pride in having just a job, no passion for what you do day in, day out. Not the kind of stuff that feeds your soul, your inner self. However this isn’t what keeps me up at night. No matter what i do for a living it doesn’t define who i am. Who i really am. That is what keeps me awake at night. Trying to work it all out. Trying to work out where i fit in and who the hell am i.
There are so many labels out there these days. Everyone has a label of some kind. You have diabetes or your overweight or maybe you have ADHD or dyslexia. Perhaps your an exercise junkie or an alcoholic, suffer anxiety or have OCD. I could go on and on. Well that’s what i have spent my thirties doing trying to work out where i fit in. What’s my label. For some strange reason i believe that if i find my label. If i have a label i’ll be magically fixed and i’ll know who i am and life will just fall into place and i’ll be at peace with who i am, what i have and where i am going.
So what is my label ?
All my life i have felt different. I don’t seem to fit in any where. I don’t seem to be able to work out how to function contently in the world i live in. I don’t like how society tells me i have to live. I’m not saying i don’t want to follow the rules or be a contributing member of my community. I just seem to struggle with so many everyday expectations and that’s what i’m trying to work out. In the past 10 years quiet a few possibilities have come about as to why. Possibility #1 I was suicidal when i was a teenager. I hated my family, my alcoholic mother, my up bringing. I felt left out constantly with friends, because of my mother’s rules, i felt ugly as i wore glasses and i believed this made me ugly. Also i was told quiet rudely many times i was ugly and worst of all those words came from people who were close to me. I also just had this constant feeling of not wanting to be here. I just found life tiring and worthless, i had no purpose. It was many years later, in my thirties in fact that i discovered i suffer from depression. It comes and goes.
#2 At age 25 i had my first child. My now 14 year old son. He was a beautiful boy, however he was also a problematic child. He never slept and this lead to me being extremely sleep deprived. I had no friends or family to help me through this difficult time. He had to have gromits. The poor boy couldn’t sleep due to pain in his head, however this was a long process of diagnosis. After that he was diagnosed with sleep apnea, which lead to the removal of his tonsils and adenoids. Around aged around 3 and half we started noticing other problems. Delayed speech, lining up his toys, fussy eating habits. As he became older he began showing more disturbing behaviors. He would fall down for no reason, trip over nothing. Still very poor speech, no eye contact, blaming things like chairs and tables for tripping him up. He really believed they deliberately jumped out on purpose to trip him up. He also showed very little signs of love or affection. Never wanting to give or receive hugs or saying i love you. He was very empty and cold like. I was very concerned he was going to grow up to be a murder. Finally at age 8 we found out he has Aspergers Syndrome. It was such a relief to have that label. Anyway he has come along way since being diagnosed and i’m proud to say he has grown into a fine young man. Having said that he still has struggles, mostly with the outside world and society. So my reason for telling you all this is, i have come to learn a lot about myself through my sons aspergers. We are very similar and i see now that a lot of my traits and things i do and struggle with are all symptoms of aspergers. So i’m wondering if my label is aspergers. I asked one psychologist and a psychiatrist both said definitely not as i could look them in the eyes. Something i have forced myself to do growing up as that is what society expects. It makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. So i was disheartened and have not tried again for an official diagnosis. I believe it is or could most likely be my label, or one of my many labels.
#3 Anxiety. All sorts of situations give me anxiety. From speaking to strangers, teachers, neighbors. Answering the phone or front door. Going to new places. Different routines. The past, the future. Being a parent. The list goes on and on. Although this could come under the label of aspergers as they do go together. Is this my label? Anxiety?
#4 I recently stumbled across some quotes on pininterest. Quotes about introverts. As soon as i read them i felt at home. These quotes were describing me. The not answering the phone, not wanting to stay long at social gatherings. Needing a lot of quiet alone time to recharge myself. I felt like oh maybe this is who i am. An Introvert. It described me to a tee.
I started to feel relieved, a feeling of this is it. This is what I’ve been searching for. Maybe just maybe now i have my label and life will magically be all good. My everyday struggle of trying to fit into a society that doesn’t seem to think like me or feel like i do is over. Well for about a day it was. Then i went back to feeling inadequate, uncomfortable in this world, sad and still asking myself Who am i ? All i had accomplished was adding another label to my list of possibilities of who i could be. Another label to think about at night. Am i depression, anxiety. Do i have aspergers, is it because of my bad up bringing, or my lack of friends or support network, perhaps i’m an introvert. Or maybe my label is i’m just a loser, incapable of conforming to the right mold to be happy and content, a model citizen. Maybe i’m just lazy and don’t try hard enough at being what is expected. Maybe I’m a failure. I could be so many labels. And why i believe that if i find the right label it will fix everything, i have no idea. After feeling so positive when i stumbled across the introverts, to then just going back to those feelings that have haunted me most of my life. I began to realize that having a label won’t make any difference to who i am. It won’t fix anything. It won’t free me of all my inadequacy, it won’t free me of myself. However even knowing a label won’t change who i am a part of me still desperately wants to have a label. Then i can say to the world i am this ‘label’ and they will then understand who i am. Then i will no longer feel different, unwanted, outcast. Instead i would know what it feels like to belong.
So who am i?
Well i guess i’m all of the above and so much more. I’ll just have to keep working on my good points and try harder at learning to live with the bad ones. One things for sure though. All my struggles, anxiety, depression and what ever else i am is something today’s society simply doesn’t have time for, a world that will constantly be pushing me to the realm of un comfortableness and constant feelings of being an outcast. The fact is some of us just aren’t wired for how this society runs and no matter how much we work to fit in or work to overcome our differences, we are who we are and just because society says we have to be a certain way doesn’t make it right or us wrong.
shebenlee 