so anyway
the other day i was thinking about how i was trained to always apologize
to always feel sorry for who i am and what i’ve done
and how that created a lifetime of shame
like
everything i do is wrong
but
it’s just not true
i mean
honestly
i know that i’m not perfect and that plenty of what i do is messed up
and i guess i should feel bad for stuff that i do legitimately mess up
y’know
but so much of what i supposedly did wrong as a child
was because my brain works differently
and i needed an operator’s manual
like
y’know
the other kids got their manual from their teachers
not directly
not overtly
just because that’s the way that the teachers operated
like i was a microsoft computer
in a room full of apples
and it’s not that my brain worked wrong but
hey hey hey
it should be obvious that if you try to run apple software on a windows computer
it’s not going to work
nobody’s fault
except the person trying to run software on an incompatible machine
and then it’s only their fault if they know better and then try anyway
which just between you and me
i think some of them were doing
point being though
that you wouldn’t expect the computer to apologize
for not understanding software that wasn’t designed for it
but for some reason
i was expected to apologize
and i still do
i still think there’s something shameful about how i react sometimes
as if
i haven’t had a lifetime of not understanding
and nobody gave me an operator’s manual
so i had to write my own
and it’s frankly not very good
very very very much still in draft mode
and i’m revising it every day but it’s still frankly not very good
so anyway
i’m tempted to finish off by saying it’s okay
but
it’s just not true
i mean
honestly
it’s still not okay and i’m still not where i want to be
but it’ll be okay
it’s getting there
and that will have to be enough for now
04.21.23