moi

Hadn’t meant to post this which is why it ends in the middle of a sentence

No! No! No! Really off blogging until Monday but the more I think about the attorney on Boston Legal as compared to me, and as much as I adore David E Kelley and the cast of the show, I think that they did people like me a big disservice.

I’m not looking for empathy or accolades. Need to tell this story but damned if I know how to.

I once tried to get doctors to sign off on papers that would have let me be admitted to the Rusk Institute for rehab. Was glad that I could amuse them so much.

Tried scanning in a picture of me at seven because my face still looks the same; but of course the scanner somehow became disconnected, and reconnecting it felt like work. I was the person who screwed up the Xerox machine, at work, but you never minded because I was so cute about it.

When I quit Social Security, the District Manager couldn’t understand it because I was so “perky” and “vivacious.” She was comparing me to the living dead so it meant less than it seemed. All I could think about was the first Mary Tyler Moore show, when Lou called her “perky,” she thought that it was a compliment and he said, “I hate perky.” Something like that. At the job after Summitt, everybody called me “Mary,” and uh, Lucia was my “Rhoda.” She didn’t work there, but was invited to every party.

We were the White Girls who would go to parties in Harlem, stay after 11 and dance up a storm. We were equally at home downtown where Lucia managed an architectural sculpture plaster store and installers on Lafayette. Met John Gotti almost directly across the street.

I had pneumonia at thirteen months. As I had lived in a foster home until I was four months old, my parents didn’t want me to go to the hospital as parents couldn’t stay with children then. The doctor set up some kind of oxygen tent and I was better by the next morning. But the initial fever was high. I had many bouts of tonsillitis and strep throats.

My father had been sent to the hospital when he was very young, with his cousins, to have his tonsils taken out. I think they got a group rate. It scarred my father for life, and he was determined that neither of his daughters have our tonsils taken out. I forget the number of doctors who said my tonsils should come out. Finally a life long friend of my dad’s, a doctor in Texas, who would in his life be married six times but only to five women said that I shouldn’t have them out.

Do you remember the first time you dived off a high board? I don’t either but I remember the smell of the pool, the gym, the absurd weight loss machines; such as the belt that women would strap to their waist, or hips and they would jolt back and forth to a machine that looked like a doctors scale. As I was ten I found it very funny. Remember the smell and how the changing area looked, and the woman who asked me my age. “Ten,” I said proudly as I was sure she was going to tell me how pretty and tall I was, and how I looked old for my age. “You’re tall for your age, but you look about eight.” It was the first time an adult hadn’t gone on and on about how pretty and mature I was. I sulked.

But not as much as when my paediatrician(s) told us that I couldn’t dive anymore because I had one continual sinus infection. Yes I had paediatrician(s). The one in Great Neck was for everyday problems; and the one on Park Avenue for consults and more complicated things. Think that my Aspergers actually evolved from Central Audio Processing Disorder, which made me not hear words correctly. Therefore I misheard words nor did I understand all words. My biggest problems, and only problems with words according to my school were my horrible handwriting and my total inability to spell. Did have the highest reading scores in the grade. Still have an incredible vocabulary. If only I could sound out the words enough to make good mistakes and let the spell check find it.

When my slight lisp was cured, I no longer had to go to speech therapy. If my problems processing words had been tackled when I was in elementary school or even junior high, I think my life would have been much easier. It’s easy to say that they didn’t know; my problems were more common in boys, I was exceptionally verbal. I was and am overly concerned about other people. I never acted out in school; I was a good girl.

And I was adopted. The adoption issue clouded and masked everything. At nine I was offended when my child psychologist brought up being adopted as a problem. Why should it have been? I liked my family; and couldn’t imagine being part of another one.

So much time wasted. I do resent it.

When I began college I felt like a kid let loose in a candy store who had to choose between all the best candy. The boy who was to play important and many roles in my life did introduce himself to me many times, and gave me small presents. It took me a long to realize that he was the same boy, but for some reason that added to my appeal.

I began college during the height of the hippie era and there was much room for individuals. Didn’t feel normal; didn’t feel calm, but I didn’t need to be.

Knew many people who were to become drug war casualties. But I knew people who would calm down on coke; and I knew people who really did become more interesting on pot. In my case it calmed me down, and slowed my thinking just enough to let me interact more easily with people. I didn’t understand that then; therefore I probably should have inhaled more. I’m probably the only person who would appear spacy and stoned straight, and was your favorite person to talk to when I was stoned and you weren’t.

Not sure that it slowed my thinking as much as allowed me to think like most people. As all my basic problems manifested before I was sixteen; it’s safe to assume that recreational drugs only helped me. My stance on recreational drugs isn’t the usual one, but I can’t help believing that one day the exact interactions between the brain and THC, for one example, will be shown to help people lacking something still not known or understood.

Obviously I have thought about myself and my problems a lot. There were years, decades when they didn’t apear to affect me. I knew something was wrong. Just didn’t know what. My therapists, in my adulthood tried, but we all knew that there was something more something, something at the core that had to be physically based, or misshooting neurons. That’s probably when I began thinking about truth and perceptions.

This past year I reached out to many people. It was more than insulting to get a list of occupational therapists; and a aren’t you disabled tude. I’m perfectly capable of finding the best myself, and giving myself more than enough tude for ten people.

I wasn’t disabled before; except for the tests that showed me to be extremely learning disabled. But in the almost two decades since then I have accomplished much as I had before, and I want my accomplishments to be highlighted. Also I have paid a fortune in therapy over the years.

In blogging I have found an incredibly supportive community. It both helps me and