I have worked since I was fourteen years old.  I grew up in a household where there was nothing given, nothing taken for granted, and expectation was laced into every encounter.  I was not a child, I was a babysitter, a student, a tutor, a daughter, a caretaker for the chicken farm and dogs, and I was expected to contribute my fullest in each of these roles.  What no one knew at the time was that I am neurodivergent.  Each role I was called upon to play necessitated the development of a new character.  Every character was constantly evaluated, evolved, and coerced to be the least objectionable to any stakeholder… except of course myself.  I discovered just how malleable I can be, mirroring the changing expectations of each situation to ensure maximum approval odds.  I became the “gifted” child who couldn’t live up to the predictions of how successful I had the potential to be. 

Eventually my awareness extended beyond my own repercussions, and I began to notice where other people could be doing “better” objectively.  Interpersonal conflicts of my parents, peers at school, and eventually supervisors.  I hadn’t learned any empathy or understanding, because I wasn’t given any.  The role and expectation was to adapt, regardless of circumstance; there is no excuse for not living up to someone else’s expectations.  I would imagine how I would handle future relationships and roles, laying the groundwork for future characters.  For example, what kind of wife and mother would I be?  What opportunities for improvement did I witness in my own mother that I would avoid?  This isn’t some teenage angst-fueled query, but a genuine desire to fill the role as excellently as possible.  (For a time I was saying “humanly possible” but then I realized that I didn’t particularly care for “humans” and wanted to be better than them.)  Here’s the rub: being proactive about laying the groundwork for future characters ended up being the origin point of some of my biggest failures as an adult.

I never got the chance to meet myself.  Then one day in my 46th year, I found myself in a field without expectation.  No roles to play.  No goals to reach.  No clear road to follow.  Literally 1000 miles from where I was born, I hit the disconcerting wall of “nothing”; unsure where I was, where I was going, what I wanted, or even what made me happy.  To some people, that may seem sad, to others it may seem frightening, and while there is an element of both, I am mostly filled with frustration and neurodivergent urgency that has no outlet or necessity.  That approach to burnout that has become part of the middle-class American grind?  That was my life for all my adult years.  Meeting those multiple layers of expectation and opposing demands stretched my mind to unhealthy lengths, constantly adapting my character to meet the needs the roles insisted were necessary to exceed the expectations of others. 

This space is dedicated to the emptiness of the adrenaline hangover, the paralyzing vastness of possibility without a path, and examining some of the “grind” that resulted in the complete upheaval of my known world.