1. I can probably add to an already-lengthy list of mental defects a raging case of ADD, undiagnosed nigh these twenty-four years of my life. This is obviously pending diagnosis by a licensed mental health professional, but goddamn would it explain—well, much of these twenty-four years of my life, from the comic books secreted under my desk in Grade 2 to my multiple failed runs at post-secondary education.
Tracing these lifelong difficulties to their source would be an immense relief to me, because it would mean I’m not fundamentally lazy or intrinsically weak-willed. If it’s something treatable, it’s not a personality flaw. If it’s something treatable, I can get my life on a more stable track, maybe even turn a liability into an asset.
But that’s not the thing. The thing is this: If it’s ADD, I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive my parents for writing it off as a failure of character. For writing me off as a failure for something I could never control.
2. When I say I’m my own worst critic, I mean I have an almost limitless capacity for self-loathing. I forgive flaws in other people that I abhor in myself, and torture myself over flaws no one will ever even notice. It’s only been in the past couple of years that I’ve learned to accept compliments graciously—or even at all—and I hope someday I’ll be able to accept criticism without taking it personally and obsessing over it for days.
I am a very good writer. I’m attractive, charming, and funny. Every once in a while I take a really, really good picture with my crappy, crappy little camera. I’m great in bed. I have the best intuition of anyone I know. Typing those sentences literally made me squirm in my chair, but I’m going to leave them, because they’re true.
3. My long-term memory is terrible—good luck trying to talk to me about a book I’ve read just once, or a movie I saw before 2005—and it’d be generous to say I remember as much as five percent of grade school. Most of my “memories” only exist because of diary entries I’ve re-read or stories I’ve been told. I can’t blame drugs or alcohol because I mostly didn’t partake; I could blame the crippling depression, I suppose, but only for the sake of picking something, anything, at all.
What I do remember was miserable: I was the kick-around kid for my whole elementary school, my whole middle school, and most of my high school. It was mostly verbal abuse, the kind that’s worse than adults think kids are even capable of, but I had stuff stolen and things trashed from time to time, and my skull dented its share of locker doors. I don’t miss the memories, but it’s weird, having these gaps in my early life. And boy, does it make Facebook surreal.
4. I was reading and comprehending newspaper articles before the age of three. I blew my my parents’ friends’ minds discussing current events with them over a sippy cup of milk. I was into novels while my peers were still seeing Spot run, borrowed books from my kindergarten teacher’s 14-year-old son, and skipped Grade 1 entirely, going straight into Grade 2—except for reading and writing, which I took with the Grade 3–4 split class (where I met my hetero life partner Jeff).
Being a year-plus younger than my classmates probably contributed to the aforementioned bullying, and I may have been reading “at a Grade 14 level,” but socially I was way the hell behind. I can’t say I wish my parents hadn’t put me ahead like that—it shaped my entire life starting at age six—but I’d never do that to a kid of my own.
5. The first thing I regularly used the internet for was reading Gargoyles fan fiction. I was crazy about that show from the first episode, and when I discovered the online fan community—at the same time I discovered things like online fan communities even existed—I jumped in with both feet.
That community was a source of friendship and support for me in my troubled adolescence, and it wasn’t until a decade later and Twitter before I felt that kind of camaraderie over the internet again.
6. Gender constructs have felt always artificial and uncomfortable to me. Even at three years old it seemed unfair that girls got to do all the cool stuff like wear nail polish and play with makeup. Dresses? Awesome. Purses? Convenient! Sitting down to pee? Sign me the fuck up. My très conservative father didn’t like it, but he wasn’t around much; my mom compromised and let my paint my thumbnails only, or buy a Baby-Sitters Club book if I got the Hardy Boys too.
I don’t know if this had anything to do with my bisexuality—which I’ve always taken so for granted that coming out feels like a formality—but a few years ago I thought about whether or not I might be transgendered. If I have to ask, I’m obviously not—but if I woke up as a woman tomorrow I don’t know if I’d mind.
7. I met my girlfriend on OKCupid and it’s been almost a year of the most healthy, equal, exciting, and fun relationship of my entire life. I only had a profile up as a half-assed lark, but my withering sarcasm and/or juvenile taste in literature caught her eye, and here we are.
I always expect the stigma of having met through a dating site to be greater than it is: I tell the story sheepishly to neutral or positive reaction every time.
The story of how we went from flirty emails to coffee dates to monogamy is a lot more interesting than how we got to flirty emails in the first place, but that would be an eighth thing, and if there’s anything I respect, it’s the arbitrary rules of internet memes.
