needing little direction

One of the drawbacks of being a smart little bugger is that you pick things up too quickly.

On the surface, being a fast learner would seem to be a feature, not a bug. But if you learn too fast from your so-called 'mistakes', the very idea of 'mistake' itself gets ingrained into your psychomotor (?) system in such a way that it becomes very difficult to root out in later life.

Working backward from the premise to some kind of (possibly?) understandable explanation: Mom told several stories over the years about how I could (as a child) remain insanely clean while playing outside - one that sticks in my mind is the story of me playing in the dirt all day in a white dress and somehow managing to keep it spotless. Or, later, my own recollection of helping my dad change a clutch cable on the VW bug while wearing my favorite (at the time) white tank top, and somehow never getting a single spot on the shirt, in spite of being otherwise covered in grease and dirt nearly up to my armpits. (A skill long since lost, I might point out - I've gotten much better at learning all the tricks for quick removal of nasty stains, or wearing bibs/aprons/other protective clothing, or better yet, changing into something I didn't care about getting dirty in the first place.)

My explanation is that mom was such an obsessive clean-freak when I was a kid that I absorbed the message that 'dirt=bad', and therefore, if *I* made a mess, *I* was bad. Because my mom would completely freak out anytime I made a mess of any kind. I also attribute my early hyper-organized approach to Lego-sorting (also a story relayed by mom, I only have a vague, hazy recollection of using old silverware trays to store my Legos) to mom's nearly pathological dislike of 'messes'. But, I also really *hated* having to sort and sort to find the pieces I wanted when I was making something, so maybe some of it was down to my own impatience with inefficiency and time-wasting.

I once had a massage therapist who was more useful as a shrink than any actual 'shrink' I went to. I was talking to him about my hyper-sensitivity and hyper-vigilance and how I *hated* to have people tell me things more than once, because I usually got it the first time and was insulted that they didn't recognize my intelligence. (It never occured to me, at least at the time, that maybe *they* were the ones who needed the repetition, not me.)

I explained all that to him, about how it bothered me that people never seemed to notice how quickly I was learning, and that I felt insulted by their repetitions of things I'd already 'got'.

He said, "Well, you only need to be told once. Or sometimes only half a time. Or maybe even not at all." I was so happy to finally be understood, and heard, and have SOMEbody get what the heck I was talking about, I actually cried. And of course he understood - the relief of not having to carry around that burden of being misunderstood (at least on that particular issue) any more.

And of course this is not universally true - it only *used* to be true for things I really cared about and/or was interested in; and these days, some things don't stick because I think some of that hyper-focus has gone away along with some of the hyper-vigilance. Coping mechanism disguised as learning skill.

Another validation I got (and I think I may have told this story already, but it's *my* blog, I can tell my stories as many times as I want, neener neener :-) was from a guy I had a brief, 5-day 'affair' with (why the quotes? not sure), who said, "You're smarter than most people, aren't you?" I preened over that one for days, and savor it still. I keep it in my mental pocket-full of imaginary rabbit's feet and worry stones - things that help me get through.

***
One of the many messages from that time that I'm still trying to root out of my subconscious is that I am bad, that I am, somehow, intrinsically wrong, no matter where I am, no matter what I'm doing, no matter how I'm doing it.

I think this is the legacy of two hyper-critical parents (yes, I'm aware that I'm repeating myself; the only way to 'over-write' messages that were grooved into one's consciousness by much repetition is: Much repetition. Of the 'new', preferred message.)

Each parent was hyper-critical in their her/his own way (I think I've covered this ground enough that I don't feel the need to repeat the specifics here.) Combine that with my hyper-attentiveness, and you've got a recipe for a really fucked up, terminally anxious kid. Thank somebody that I discovered books so early and was able to create an escape hatch! Alice's bizarro world down the rabbit hole was *nothing* compared to the feeling of dealing with my folks. In fact, I think that's why so many of those twisted tales I read as a child made sense: They were pretty dang accurate descriptions of my world.