Absolute Rights

I wrote a post about regrets. Most people over a certain age have them though we tell everybody that we have none. How can that be?

There’s always something; a road not taken; a love broken too quickly or too slowly; a friendship ended for the wrong reasons; a job taken that doesn’t fit or one we walk away from that later we realize would have been a perfect fit.

Regrets doesn’t equal unhappiness. Regrets doesn’t mean that we have a “gloom and doom” attitude. It means that we’re human.

And I’m more human than most.

When I was involved in the NLD groups too many people told me that I had a Pollyanna attitude about life. That life for a person with NLD is horrible; always has been and always will be. No. It’s. Not.

If I ever have another discussion about what “success” is and that nobody with NLD is successful I will probably track the person saying that down—it’s a good thing I don’t believe in guns.

Because I know my life has been both successful and a good one.

Happiness? Happiness is that wonderful moment of pure joy when everything converges to go right. Or it’s however you define it.

It’s OK for me to look back and say “I would have made a good wife and mother. A strange one but….”

I held myself back from too much because I didn’t know what was wrong.

At the same time I was “braver” than many.

I can’t imagine not traveling across the world by myself at 20.

I can’t imagine not doing many of the incredible things I did that help define me.

But I had an absolute right to know the name of the disorder that I have. I know the doctors knew–later, when I asked they told me they did.

I have an absolute right to not have had to figure everything out on my own.

That was an exhausting full time job and I had real exhausting full time jobs. And a life outside of work. And obligations. And….

That’s all I was trying to say.