over the course of my adult life, i’ve had 14 different jobs and failed out of college twice out of the three times i’ve attended. only one job lasted longer than a year.
that should have been a huge tell that i wasn’t like most others, but somehow, i didn’t figure out that i had adhd until i was almost 26. and then, two years later, i found out that i am actually twice-exceptional— i got diagnosed with autism.
looking back at my time in school, these diagnoses retrospectively make things make a lot of sense.
i was a gifted kid and spent one day a week in a special class where we learned about art, riddles, ancient egypt, and went and saw the valdosta symphony orchestra every year. we mummified a guinea hen and dissected owl pellets.
great for enrichment, not great for my social skills when it came to interacting with anyone outside of these classes.
sometimes i jokingly tell people that i peaked in elementary school. i never had to study, didn’t really have to put in any effort at all to make straight A’s. won the spelling bee, AND the geography bee (twice.) i was always “a pleasure to have in class”, parent-teacher conferences often were just my teachers gushing to my mom or grandmother how much they loved me. it made my sisters life hell and i didn’t make it much easier on her.
my first burn-out happened when i was in sixth grade. upon entering middle school, i had to start putting in effort and i literally did not know how to do that. i went from being the big fish who already just knew everything, to just slightly above average, and my mental health tanked because of it. if i wasn’t the smartest person in the room, i did not know who i was at all.
i wasn’t able to learn how to get out of that mindset before i joined the workforce, either. i’m not sure anyone really knew what to do with me. entering a world with specific procedures that made no sense, under people who’s authority i did not inherently respect did not make for a good time.
as i write this i notice a tightening in my chest. my heart is beating faster, and i’m breathing manually. the stories i told myself over and over— mostly, that i would never be good enough at anything to make money from it for very long— are coming back up and snarling in my ears. there is so much shame and discomfort that comes with not having enough money, and not feeling good enough to make it.
when my daughter was very young, we would stay at my grandmothers house while my wife would go to work, because i didn’t like being alone. on one of those days, sitting outside on her screened-in porch, she recounted a story HER mother, my mama jackie, told her.
mama jackie grew up during the great depression. HER mother, mama estelle, was a very severe woman, to my understanding. she wasn’t exactly nice, but did whatever it took to take care of her child.
the details are hazy to me, and both of these women are long-departed, so i can’t just ask for more information. but, what is clear to me is that mama estelle had to make work herself in order to have work at all.
at one point, she owned and operated the taxi cab in our town. at another point, she brought men home, sending my still-young mama jackie to her room while she entertained them, and that is how she paid for things.
i am not ashamed of this story, of this part of my lineage. all the women in my family have always done what needs to be done. at that point in time, what needed to be done was my great-great-grandmother needed to be a sex worker.
before hearing this story, i never really ever considered that working for myself was an option at all.
but here i am today, with stories of my own childhood that kinda rhyme with mama jackie’s. my mom never had to do the same things mama estelle had to do, but i remember several occasions of our lights or water or phone being cut off, and watching my mom do her best not to buckle under the pressure of providing for us as a gas station cashier.
my mom tried to not burden me or my sister with what was going on financially. she wouldn’t really talk about it, and i could tell she hated it when a commercial for the next new toy came on the tv because inevitably we would ask for it and she would have to tell us no.
at least weekly, i have these same interactions with my own children. i can’t speak for my mother, but for me, there is so much shame, guilt, frustration, anger, visceral rage sometimes at the situation i’m in. even more rage for how hard it is to get out of this hole that was dug long before i was ever born. as eminem says, these goddamn food stamps don’t buy diapers, and knowing today how my mom must have felt in those interactions gives me insight into my childhood i never could have gotten otherwise.
as a person in poverty who is trying to break free by building a business, there is immense pressure coming from all angles all the time.
i cant look as desperate as i am, because that will drive potential clients away. but if i don’t look like i’m suffering, i can’t get the help necessary to keep my lights on. there is pressure to just get a “real job,” but with my disability that came with COVID, which took my last “real job,” it is simply not attainable for me. and then the bill collectors call, three times a day, every day, reminding me how much money i am not making.
sometimes, i feel like i’m going to pop from all the stress. sometimes like a pimple, but sometimes like a volcano.
it is very clear to me that i am on my own. so here i am. there is no other way for me but this, so i am doing what everyone in my maternal line did and i am making it work.
i spend my time in circles with people who have been where i am. i no longer fear not being the “big fish” like i did in middle school… in fact, i prefer to be the least experienced in any room i’m in so i can learn from everyone in it.
one gift autism gave me was the power of keen pattern recognition. it is effortless for me to find the data among the bullshit, and while it may take me a good amount of time to process that data and actually do something with the information gleaned… once i have a lightbulb moment, it’s pretty profound, and i can get to work making adjustments.
it is through this gift that i am learning the ropes of building my business, and it is through this business that i am breaking the cycle here for good.
the same pieces of me that forced me out of traditional employment, i am using to build my own place of work from scratch. the child who was chastised for not showing her work or skipping to the final draft instead of outlining and writing rough drafts, is using those pieces of herself to create a legacy.
i’m still working on the social parts. social media feels constricting, and marketing on it does not come naturally to me. i am timid, and traumatized, and my calls to action are not urgent enough. it is hard to find the voice in which to convey who i am, through bite sized snippets.
i write this here today because i know it won’t be like this forever. one day soon, i am going to figure it out and come back to this and send myself a hug from the future. i can feel my arms around me already.
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