What Went Wrong
A couple of weeks ago I almost died.
I was staying at a cottage situated next to a most remarkable piece of river. As you approach the river from the house, to your left the water tumbles over rocks in a small cascade, filling the air with the sound of rushing water. Ahead, the water bounces and spins past, releasing the energy it picked up over the rocks. And to your right, the far half of the river continues to rush and tumble while curiously, the near half widens into a still, glassy lagoon.
It was in this uncommonly perfect topography that I faced my own mortality.
It was our last day at the cottage. We were sunbaked and relaxed in the way that only mothers after 48 hours without cellphone service can be.
My friend, who was raised on the water, body surfed the rapids a couple of times. But she found that unpredictable collisions with the rocks of the river bed, the Canadian shield up close, took some of the fun out of the experience. (She’s really different.)
I had spotted an inner tube floatie in the recesses of the cottage when I was poking around, so in the interests of a better ride, my friend walked back to the cottage to get it.
(It wasn’t a real inner tube, mind you, but a pool floatie designed to look like an inner tube. Probably somewhere in the impossibly small print about not leaving children unattended and not using near fire there was something about not it using to navigate rapids — I dunno, I didn’t have my glasses on.)
I tried the inner tube ride once, and it was fine, but wallowing was really nice too so I just watched as my friend rode the fast water a few times.
Then she offered me one more go on the inner tube.
I thought, this is probably the last time I’ll ever be here. This is the kind of excitement I’ve been looking for. If I don’t do this, I’ll regret it.
I decided to go for it.
On my first go I hadn’t really gotten into the fastest part of the water, so the ride had been rather tame, just skirting the edge of the rapids. I decided that in order to get into the fast part of the water and really make the most of this experience, I would throw myself and the inner tube into the middle of the rushing water.
I rather liked the idea of launching myself athletically into the water, like a sporty young man, fearless and accustomed to doing daring things with his body.
Perhaps suspecting the enormity of the gap between my vision and reality, the inner tube excused itself from the situation almost immediately. I was suddenly in a desperate state, thrashing about haphazardly in an attempt to first, not drown, and second, reclaim the inner tube. Time slowed down and it seemed like hours passed as I gasped and flailed.
Not Working Up to My Potential
A recurring trope in the lives of gifted and ADHD children is the report card comment, “not working up to their potential”. It’s not a message I ever got because I was agreeable and a people-pleaser, and because little girls are not generally seen to have much potential anyway. If I was handing in my assignments and not acting up I was meeting the bar.
Now I’m firmly in midlife and I don’t get report cards any more. I don’t even get quarterly reviews, because I’m self-employed. No-one knows if I’m living up to my potential or not, except me.
I’m not.
I’m smart — very smart. I’m compassionate and loving. I’m funny and charismatic, and I’m a talented communicator. (Also very modest.)
And yet I’m struggling to launch my second freelance career. I don’t earn any money to speak of, I have almost no influence or audience, I have never written a book or even a thesis, I have no advanced degrees.
It doesn’t add up.
And so one of the defining questions of my life has become: What went wrong?
What Went Wrong
I chew this over a lot. There are lots of reasons why my career has failed to thrive, and over years of thought I’ve been coming to understand the whole picture. I already knew about a few of the causes — my upbringing, the way my brain works, a soupçon of systematic oppression. In the last few weeks, though, a new factor has come into focus.
The Patriarchy
Let’s get this one out of the way first, because it’s the one I understand the least. It’s too pervasive, I have trouble seeing it the way a fish has trouble seeing water. (I need a fact check on that metaphor — maybe fish see water just fine! But it’s easy to imagine they don’t.)
Lots of things have gotten in my way as a woman in the patriarchy. The low expectations I faced in grade school were just the start. In my first year of university I was given a scholarship designed to encourage women to go into STEM majors, but it was the early 90s, and no other support was offered. So I was funnelled into a field which was probably not right for me, then left to deal with stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, and regular old misogyny all by myself. I barely squeezed out of university with a degree.
At work, all the issues I brought with me intersected with the misogyny of the tech industry, which manifested in the assumption that I wasn’t capable of much and the refusal to offer any mentorship or support. Failure was inevitable.
After I left the workforce, the patriarchy did its work in the domestic sphere, leaving me mainly in charge of two small children and a house with very little support from the government or the community. It was a wonderful experience personally, but my already-fragile career crashed and was unsalvageable.
Now, it’s true that lots of women leave a career to raise their kids and then manage to do something useful with themselves while their kids are napping or at school — launch a business, retrain for a new career, write books.
So there must be more to it than that. And there is.
A very weird upbringing
My parents’ marriage was forged in ambition and hope — they fell in love while working together to get a palliative care home built. But just around the time they got married, they were excluded from what they thought of as their project (my mother expected to be appointed head nurse) and kicked to the curb.
As a result, my family of origin was built on a foundation of disappointment and shame. That coloured everything: in response, they created a family ethos of scorn for people who try too hard and the belief that it’s not worth bothering about things, really. If you try too hard and care too much, it will only hurt that much more when you get knocked down.
Combine that with the unexplained subtext of shame that pervaded our family life, and you can imagine how I flew from the nest ill-equipped to rise to the challenges of life.
At this point I should acknowledge that the fact that I’ve done as well as I have — I am happy(ish) and plump and well-housed, have many friends and no addictions or debt — is a testament to the privilege I carry as a white cishet non-disabled woman. If I had been faced with racism or homophobia or anything else, I would have either crumbled or been forced to figure my shit out (no saying which) a long time ago.
ADHD
The jury is still out on whether I officially have ADHD or am just easily distracted (etc etc), but regardless of whether I get a diagnosis or not, the fact is I struggle.
I struggle to find focus, and I struggle to retain it. It’s hard for me to get started on tasks, even when they’re clear and I know why I’m doing them. Once I start, it’s hard for me to resist distractions, mostly the ones from inside my head — ideas, questions, things I need to do.
I struggle to remember things. My short-term memory is measurably deficient, and as a result it’s hard to get things into long-term memory. Things like syntax, rules, processes, and vocabulary evaporate before I can impress them into my brain, so it’s very hard for me to learn things like programming languages, natural languages, protocols and systems.
I struggle to stick with hobbies and interests beyond the initial excitement and novelty. My perception of time is weird, so it feels like I’ve been working on things for a lot longer than I have, which leads me to feel frustrated at how slow it seems I’m progressing.
You can see how these tendencies would intersect in unpleasant ways with my family ethos of not trying too hard. People with ADHD can do amazing things, but there’s no way around the fact that they (we?) have to try hard.
The New Kid on the Block: Fear
Those factors are important and I’ve been developing my understanding of their impact for years. But in that last few weeks I’ve realized there’s something else, something insidious in its invisibility and ubiquitousness: fear.
Fear has been lurking on the sidelines, unseen, nudging me here and there.
In the last few weeks I’ve learned a great deal about my relationship with risk, fear, and danger. I already wrote about it in this essay about adventures, and since then my understanding of the influence of fear in my life has deepened.
Within me there are two warring impulses. (What fun!) On the one hand, I am drawn to challenge and risk. On the other hand, I’m governed by fear.
See the imbalance there? “Drawn to” versus “governed by”. Fear has had the upper hand for as long as I can remember — it has defined the very perimeter of my life.
For forty-six years fear has, imperceptibly and in collusion with the other things I listed, nudged me away from the life of excitement, challenge and purpose that I want to have lived and into a life that is comfortable, socially acceptable, and safe.
Fear made me keep abandoning blogs, never giving them the air and light to thrive because I was afraid of being seen and so, disliked. Fear stopped me from pursuing a career in writing. Fear made me turn down opportunities, and more insidiously, hid opportunities from me. Fear stops me from inviting people into my home and into my life. Fear stops me from asking for what I need. Fear stops me from hearing what my body needs. Fear stops me from speaking up when I witness injustice. Fear stops me from being myself.
What am I afraid of? An incomplete list:
upsetting people, disappointing people, annoying people, being a bother, being bored, being boring, making mistakes, looking stupid, being disliked, getting my feelings hurt, getting physically hurt, hurting people’s feelings, being overwhelmed, getting behind, paperwork and administrivia, letting people down, difficult conversations, being thought poorly of, being typical, being fatter, being older, being poor, chronic pain, dementia, losing control of my bodily functions, car crashes, death
(Yes, I see the ableism and the ageism in this list.)
Back in the water
I probably didn’t flail, in the river at the cottage, for more than a few seconds. I kept my head above water, barely, while the river swept me and the treacherous inner tube further apart and then back together again. Eventually I got my arms around the thing and clung to it like a baby ape until the fast water slowed and I could paddle myself into the lagoon.
I don’t think I was in any serious danger (although drowning seems to me one of those mysterious and sudden things that happen to the most well-prepared people). The stretch of fast water is short, and I could probably have just floated my way out of the situation. And if I was in real trouble, my friend is a strong swimmer and she was watching; I’m pretty sure she would have at least tried to save me.
I came out of the situation with a humdinger of a bruise, a pretty good story, and a deeper understanding of what it’s like to choose to do the scary thing, have it go wrong, and survive anyway.
These are all important things. Well, not the bruise, but it was spectacular.
The Antidote to Fear
I’m not sure if fear needs an antidote, actually. An antidote neutralizes, and maybe fear shouldn’t be neutralized. Maybe it should be seen and respected and understood.
What fear needs is a companion, something that can make scary situations easier to face, failures easier to recover from. Something that can turn risk into opportunity.
I think the best companion to fear is trust.
Trust in yourself that you can recover when — not if — things go wrong. And trust in the people who love you, that when you fall, someone, or many someones, will be there to help you get back up again.
I trusted my own swimming abilities (and inherent bouyancy), I trusted my own judgment of the situation, I trusted the inner tube (fool!), I even trusted the river a little bit, although I probably should have gotten to know her better first. And I trusted my friend.
So with fear and trust hand in hand, I did a scary thing and I survived. And I can do it again.
Coda
I hate that I’ve spent so much time, not just writing this essay but in my life, thinking about what’s wrong with me. It goes against what I believe as a coach, which is that you should lead from your strengths instead of trying to correct your weaknesses.
But I think this is a useful exercise.
Understanding the systems of oppression that work against you gives you permission to stop beating yourself up so much, and it helps you understand what you’re dealing with.
Understanding the patterns and beliefs that you learned as a child lets you spot habits of thought and cognitive distortions, and choose to think differently.
Understanding your own brain, what it’s good at and what it struggles with, can allow you to devise strategies to do an end run around your weaknesses, and also to forgive yourself when things don’t go well. And you don’t need a diagnosis to do that.
Understanding leads to acceptance and allows for strategy and compassion, which makes room for growth.