Brilliant … But Bouncy

YOU ARE NOT OKAY.

I have always known I was weird. It’s hard not to know when my mom – who was one of the popular kids in high school – and my dad – who was a superstar athlete – regularly referred to me as a “square peg.” I wanted, early in life, to insert myself into the round holes of the world, but I just didn’t quite fit. Instead I was bullied and trod upon and ignored. I spent a lot of time with animals, or alone.

Years after I’d grown up, I realized that fitting into a round hole with my square self was unnecessary, and I started to learn that I was okay.

I never really looked for other square pegs. Sometimes I found them accidentally, but for most of my life, I just wandered around being lonely. I thought I was supposed to find a husband, which would make me feel less lonely, so (from afar), I admired every, single boy I saw. Some of them were fictional characters. I just looked at everyone else, searching for someone like me.

I didn’t necessarily like being surrounded by people, ever, but even when surrounded, I have always felt lonely. And today – putting myself on paper for all the world to see, judge, criticize and guffaw – it’s possible that I feel lonelier than I ever have before.

I found someone back in the 20th century who made me feel less alone. He was a square peg, like me. But he was smart and funny and gorgeous and a total loner. I thought being a loner was “cool” and he thought I was cool, so I latched onto him for a few years. Being with him verified that I was okay – not because I was with someone gorgeous, but because the gorgeous man was like me.

Not surprisingly, I was still lonely in this relationship. I hadn’t learned yet to love myself, so I couldn’t be successfully close to anyone. Eventually, we broke up. Almost immediately, he started dating the roundest of pegs – a pretentious, snooty woman who had none of my traits. And I felt unverified immediately.

It was essential that I spent a couple of years alone, working on myself, by myself. It was the only way for me to figure out how to fully be me. I had to be relationship-free. I needed to know who I am without someone standing next to me, reminding me that I was okay. I needed to be okay without anyone telling me: Hey, you’re okay.

Eventually, I learned to like myself. I no longer had to be verified: I was just okay. I was not perfect, but I was a decent human. I had things to offer the world, even though a lot of the people in the world didn’t seem to want what I had to offer. Most people didn’t get my jokes. Most people didn’t get me.

But I got me, and I decided that my understanding of myself was probably more important than their understanding of me – whoever they were – and I built upon that. I determined that I was okay, just as I am – a square peg in a world of round holes, but still okay. I was in my early 30s by the time I realized this.

Then I met a man who got me. Bill laughed at my jokes. And he made me laugh. This may not sound like enough for a solid relationship, but it’s the reason I married him. After almost 35 years, I found someone who was crazy-funny and brilliant, who saw me for who I was and liked me anyway.

Then I had kids – two of them – who liked me, too. They made me feel like I had a real reason for being on this earth. We loved each other unconditionally. I didn’t worry anymore about being a square peg. I was a mom, and that was the most important job in the world.

Bill and I worked as a team to raise the kids. They both had issues. One had issues that were glaringly like Bill’s issues. The other one had issues that were glaringly like my issues. But both kids were perfect just as they were, so Bill and I realized that maybe we were perfect just as we were, too. We were all a little weird, but we were all okay.

And then they were teenagers. Dylan started screaming and swearing at me, whole paragraphs and lectures that said: YOU ARE NOT OKAY. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO HURTS ME THE WAY YOU DO. STOP!

This has gone on for five years. You are not okay, Dylan says, again and again. You hurt me just by being you, he says.

For ten years, Bill has said the same thing. You are not okay, he says. You don’t communicate the right way. You don’t say things in a way that makes sense to other people. You need to change the way you talk to people, he says. You need to change the way you talk to me. You need to change who you are, so that I understand you.

Bill and I stopped listening to each other years ago. I stopped because I was bored with chit-chat. He stopped because he didn’t like what I said. When we talk now, we don’t support each other. We don’t know how.

We went to therapy decades ago. The therapist said, “If you didn’t like each other so much, you wouldn’t be so hurt by what the other person says.” Ten years later we went back to therapy. The new therapist said, “If you would listen to each other, you might get along better.” We quit going to therapy because we both wanted to continuing saying the things we wanted to say the way we wanted to say them.

I turn to God. Every day, I turn to God. I pray: Please help me. Please let me know what to do. I want to do better. I want to be better. Please help me be better.

I don’t know what I can do differently. They tell me I should say things in a different way. I try. I don’t feel like I am criticizing. I don’t feel like I am being cruel. I just feel like I am saying the things I need to say. I am trying to help. When they say I’ve said something wrong, I get quiet. I get defensively silent. If I can’t say anything right, I won’t say anything at all.

But this helps nothing. You are not okay, Bill says. You don’t say things the right way. You hurt people. You hurt me.

You are a monster, Dylan says, now that he is an adult and he can speak freely. You have ruined my life by being you. You were not a good mother. You were the worst mother a child can have. He doesn’t use those words, but he says it again and again and again. Usually he screams it. I have taught him this, somehow. I have taught him to scream because he feels like he is not being heard.

I start to believe – again, after 20 years – that being me isn’t going to be enough. I feel like a square peg in my own home. I pray some more. Please God, I say, if I need to be locked up in an asylum, please give me a sign.

When I reach this point, I always get a sign. Something will go wrong and I will fix it. I will help. I will show that I am a good mom, a good person, a good friend, a good helper. I will do something right, and then I will know that I don’t need to be locked up. It always happens. I always feel good, instead of feeling insane. It lasts about ten minutes.

Or my sign will be that I spend time with a person who is so controlling and egomaniacal that I suddenly feel like a saint. That’s when I remember that Mother Teresa and I share the same birthday, so I must be okay.

I shove down the need to be locked up, and realize that there are plenty of people who are worse than me. I think I am okay. In fact, I am sure of it.

Plus, I still have one reason left to live: Shane. Shane is perfect just as he is, and he’s so much like me. So I must be perfect just as I am, too. Shane is my verification that quirky people are people too. In fact, Shane is brighter, funnier, bolder, stronger, better than I am – but he is a familiar kind of “weird.” His brain works the way mine does, in many ways.

But he’s always had more self-confidence than I have. He’s a square peg who has never tried to fit into a round hole. He just fits in the world. It’s like he came with a pre-made square hole that suits him and the world just fine. He doesn’t have to work at it; he just fits.

Then one day, Shane says: It’s possible that YOU are the only person like you, and that I am actually not like you at all. Maybe I am fine and only YOU are messed up.

And I think, now: Yes, that makes sense. You are fine; I know this. So I must be messed up.

Shane has said it now, too: You are not okay. He said it in the nicest way, but he still said it. And I realize he’s been thinking it for a long, long time.

And then I know: I am not okay. It doesn’t matter if I am a lovable square peg. It doesn’t matter if I am a good, kind, decent human who wants to do better. It doesn’t matter that animals like me, because there are no people in this world who do. It doesn’t matter that I have tried and tried and tried, or that I have prayed and prayed and prayed.

It doesn’t matter that I have given everything I have to motherhood, because I thought it meant that I fit in this big, round world. It doesn’t matter because I wasn’t a good mom. I am – deep down – a flawed and imperfect mom. And I have hurt the people I love, 100% unintentionally, which is worse than hurting myself.

Because I am not okay. Something is desperately, agonizingly, deeply wrong with me.

I understand the Big World, where I don’t fit. I know I am weird. I am off. I don’t get along with people. I know that. For many years, I pretended to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be, and I learned that I was only hurting myself.

So I stopped pretending. I started caring for myself. I spent years discovering – and letting go of – self-destructive behaviors. I wanted to be okay with me. Then I spent more years just trying to learn how to be healthy. I am still desperately trying to learn to be healthy. I gave up drugs, then alcohol, then cigarettes, then caffeine, then gluten. I’ve taken up walking and sports and reading. I’m trying to rebalance my serotonin-screwed brain.

I want to be okay. I want so badly to be okay.

I realized years ago that I didn’t need the Big World to love me. I only needed to do what I could for My Family. I knew that the only thing that mattered is that I was a Good Mom. Because being a Good Mom means teaching other humans how to be kind and decent and strong for themselves, and that kind of teaching has a positive ripple effect on the whole Big World.

So I devoted myself 150% to motherhood. And then I became a teacher, too, because that positive ripple effect could be everywhere if I share it with everyone.

But when Shane said – in the nicest possible way – maybe you are not okay…? That’s when the blinders were ripped off my face and I was suddenly staring into a cesspool at my reflection.

Even after all these years, after fifty-seven years of being me, I still don’t know why I am not okay. I know I have issues. Here are the issues I know I have:

• I always want to be right.
• I talk too much.
• I am too controlling.
• My being “helpful” comes across as critical.
• I don’t know how to communicate properly.
• I don’t enjoy being socially appropriate.
• I am too selfish.
• I should be more grateful.
• I am too negative.
• I am not affectionate enough.
• I don’t trust people.
• I am naive.
• I don’t give enough of myself.
• I think too much.
• I need to live in the moment.

There are more issues, I’m sure. But I can’t seem to fix these issues. No matter how many times people tell me what I’m doing wrong, no one tells me how to do it right. And I am stuck in a house full of people who strongly believe that being me isn’t quite up to par.

I am not good enough, just the way I am. I have to become different, or I will forever be lonely in my own home.

Unfortunately, I can’t wake up tomorrow and be “okay enough.” I am stuck being me. I have gone to therapy a thousand times. I have spent nearly thirty years sober with the resources of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have changed my eating habits and taken supplements to try to balance my brain. And I have read every self-help book known to man, plus a thousand autobiographies of people who, like me, have issues that they’ve overcome.

I always think reading the books will give me just the right insight to become okay. But no matter how fast I pedal, I am still right here. No matter how hard I try, I get nowhere.

You’re not okay, they say. You’re not changing fast enough. You’re the reason our family will never recover. You’re the reason we will never want to be with you when you are old; we will never want to visit you. You’re not okay.

They say.

And I look into the mirror today, into the cesspool that is me again, and I wonder: what am I supposed to change? How can I be less of all those awful things, and more like all you people who fit in the world? How can I be like you, when I am always going to be just like me?

I really thought I was okay. But if the people in my own house believe I am not, then I am not okay.

My choice now seems to be: I can try to be okay so that I fit into my own home, or I can be me and be lonely. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine trying any harder to be okay. After all these years of giving it everything I’ve got, I honestly don’t think I have anything left to give.

So I guess I will just go back to being lonely.