“You're not living up to your potential”. If I was given a dollar every time someone said this to me, I could have retired by the time I was 13 years old. When I was young, I was a wiry little lightning ball of energy. I was excited by everything. I was curious about everything and acted on impulse to satiate my curiosity. I excelled at academics, but had problems following directions, staying on task, and sitting still. I performed scholastically at a level grades ahead of me, but I struggled to successfully accomplish tasks like coloring inside the lines or putting my name and the date on the correct lines of my papers.
As a result of behavioral issues, when I was 14 I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and classified by my high school as emotionally disturbed. I scored high marks in school and was in gifted and talented programs and honors classes, but my home life was a disaster. By the time I was seventeen I had been kicked out of 5 high schools, arrested four times, once because my own mother pressed charges against me, institutionalized three times, and was abusing illegal drugs and alcohol regularly.
At home, I was mentally and emotionally abused and neglected. I don't blame my parents for how they treated me. They were both products of abusive homes themselves. In my youth I wore tall Mohawks, a studded and painted leather jacket, combat boots, and chain link necklaces and chokers. I gravitated towards others that felt rejected by society. When passing cars hurled degrading comments or bottles at me, or when I got into fights because of the way I looked or acted I knew that it was a reaction to the way I chose to look and act, and that I wasn't being rejected for who I was on the inside. My appearance allowed me to preemptively invoke rejection shielding myself from the emotionally damaging feelings of rejection I had experienced throughout my childhood. I summed it up in a song lyric I wrote when I was 17: "If I don't let them close, they can't hurt me."
Throughout my adolescence I had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, intermittent rage disorder, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and a bunch of other mental disorders by various doctors. Each doctor had a different diagnosis sprinkled with depression and/or anxiety, but they all agreed on the ADHD diagnosis.
As a result of suspensions and expulsions I didn't have a great high school education, however, I scored well in classes and on my SATs. After a total of five years as a high school student, I attended Northeastern University in Boston pursuing an undergraduate degree in their five-year Electrical Engineering program. After two years, I took a six month break to transfer schools. During those six months I taught myself Systems Administration, got industry certifications and landed a job as a helpdesk technician. I was making more money than I would have made with a college degree, so I never went back to college to finish my degree. By the time I was 24 I had a wife, three kids, and owned a business providing hourly IT outsourcing for small and mid-sized businesses. I spent most of my spare time studying computers, systems, and computer programming. In 2005 I was faced with the decision to grow my business or leave it behind to pursue a new opportunity. I chose to sell the parts I could and I accepted a job as a Windows and Linux Systems Administrator at large, global software company.
From an outside perspective, I was a success story. I had overcome a lot of adversity in my life and had a great job, a family, a house, and everything that most people dream of. Unbeknownst to me, I was a mess internally. I didn't realize how much I was affected by the abuse I suffered as a child. I also wasn't aware of the depths that I had been using compensatory mechanisms to control my observable ADHD and autistic manifestations or how much energy I was spending to appear "normal" so that I could be successful in life. I didn't even know I was autistic. I spent almost 44 years living with an identity that wasn't in line with my true self.
In October of 2020 I suffered from a sever panic attack followed by a psychological breakdown. I wound up checking myself into a mental health facility for ten days to stabilize. The mask had cracked, and I could no longer pretend to be ok with acting like whoever I thought I was supposed to be. My breakdown was caused by severe ADHD and Autism masking that sat on top of a Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I've been in therapy and attending meetings for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families to help me heal from the emotional fallout.
At times, I know I can be annoying, impulsive, forgetful, seemingly unfocused, hyperactive, obnoxious, and straight-up weird, but those are just parts of who I am. This is how I was created and designed. Conversely, I can process multiple inputs at the same time, draw logical conclusions with minimal information, learn anything quickly and I am extremely perceptive, observant and sensitive to others. I don't get to pick and choose which traits I was born with, and I can't have one set without the other. As for the trauma, it's not something I chose, but I have to deal with it. Every day I must make a conscious effort to work on healing from it. As successful as I've ever been perceived, I have never actually felt successful. In my case, success will never look the way it does for most. In fact, just about nothing for me looks the way it does for most. I’ll never be able to think or feel in accordance with how anyone else thinks I should or how I assume most people do. The only way for me to be and feel successful is to always be true to who I am and not feel ashamed or embarrassed about it. With the help of trauma counselors and my Adult Children of Alcoholics support groups I am getting more and more comfortable with sharing who I really am and letting go of my fears of rejection. It turns out what they said was true all along. I wasn't living up to my potential. They were just wrong about what my skills are and what my potential is.
