What I Want

What amazing words there are in our vocabulary..... to actually say what I want. Not what I need, or what I can do for you. Need is entirely different than want. I need sleep. I need to brush my teeth. I need to eat and drink. But what do I want? That has not been one I have focused on too much in my life. Much more, what  others wanted so my life could run smoothly. That sounds odd, but it was the way it worked for me. It kept the fear down, the bugs out. The boogeyman at bay. I read minds, anticipated needs from a very early age.  Of course it was all fear based. I needed to have things controlled. Work for me in a very out of control household. I was not a disciplined child. I have become an extremely disciplined adult. This has taken many years to change the bad habits I grew up with. Work in progress.

How that came to be, I think desperation, and there was nowhere else to turn. I had to clean up my life.
Quite simply there was no one left to blame. It was not working,  very seriously out of control and not getting better any time soon. I was lazy, and was relatively okay with it from an early age.
I thought studying was stupid, when I could be out having a good time. Hmmm, good thinking!
No wonder I am such a late bloomer. I thought smart people rocked, had deep respect, envied them like nobody's  biz. Just never in this lifetime saw myself in that category, and no one was racing to tell me
I was Einstein. So.......... I took a very different road. The hard headed kind. I didn't know that all roads eventually lead you back to where you originally came from. Sooner or later you have to face what plagues you. I called it my "Retarded Gene." I truly feared I was retarded. I felt like something was wrong with my brain. My mother had told me time and time again, she spilled  hot water from the spaghetti on her stomach, when she was pregnant with me. Could that be when the gene kicked in?
In no way  am I mocking anyone with special needs.  I truly felt like I was special needs.

Only later in life in High School, when my teachers would comment that I had good writing skills,
did I begin to feel slightly humanoid. Of course at the time I did not believe them {my teachers}
when they told me to go to College to  be a Writer. I just thought they were on crack. {Well, maybe not crack, whatever was popular in the horse and buggy day.}I never heard a peep from my mom about College, or any silly thing about being smart. These teachers were definitely on something.
So in one ear ~out the other. Enough of that nonsense. Writing, who would ever want to read my stuff?
I hid it, kept it very close to the vest for many, many years. Actually until this year.
I set it free. Made it public. How many years later? I have never taken a writing class since High School.
It has been the Clare Spencer College  of one. I have been gun shy ~  about being self taught.
Didn't know the rules about Real Writers. Until I finally got out there and figured out there are no rules. I had to just learn, be a part of it. See for myself. Everything I took in College, interestingly~
not writing. Hmmmm? Immersed myself in everything Psychology. Just didn't want to pick that scab.

Here I am. All these years later. Can't stop writing. Some will like it. Some won't. That is no longer my problem. I write for me. To tell my truth. That's all I can do. These are my feelings , my experiences.
This is who I am, as I go. This is what I want. Simply to be me.