How do you define success in life?
My scaffolding all came together when I moved to Portland, Oregon. That’s because I was surrounded by green and trees, out of the sweltering heat of the south Portland has a real commitment to green space that Houston never will, and I still miss walking in the change of seasons, arm in arm with a partner or a best bud. Some people think that I am probably codependent at the amount of time I hold onto people’s arms, but I’m really just trying not to fall down.
Because I have cerebral palsy, I always have to watch myself in terms of falling down. Having to concentrate that hard physically led me to tolerate bad behavior in other areas of my life. I accepted people who thought that disability was a moral failure and thought that I was a problem 100% of the time. No person should have to carry feeling like a burden all the time it leads to disastrous mental health issues and that is what happened to me. None of my disabilities were acknowledged or supported, so I thought the world was better off without me and I have thought that since I was 13 years old.
It is only now that I have just stopped the masking and started dictating into the computer that the gravitational pull has begun. My words might not resonate in the United States, and it is amazing how much that does not matter. I do not see myself as anything but a citizen of the world. Only loving being a respected author if it comes from America is shortsighted. I see my growth in other areas and start making travel plans.
It all has to do with stopping the thinking that I am broken and a failure. That is not true. I have had no real support system since I was born. My parents were really young when they had me and I can forgive them for all of it. However, intention does not equal impact.
I think that was my problem with Aada as well. She could tell me that she was sorry all day long and it mattered, but it did not matter as much as the fact that her behavior never changed. At what point when you are playing a video game do you realize that the level doesn’t end?
People are obviously not as simple as video games, I am just using the metaphor because I did not see movement in our relationship, and yet I kept hoping that there would be. I was attacked for stating needs plainly on a repeating basis, and I can have empathy for that without continuing to tolerate it.
I can also accept that there are plenty of times in which she stated a need plainly and I ignored it. If there is anything that the last 12 years have taught me, it’s that neither of us are winners and yet we absolutely are- the entire point I was trying to make to her is that she is beautiful in all her flaws and failures and I do not only accept her when she is trying to be perfect.
Aada and Tiina both accused me of trying to wear their skin, treating my writing as invasive. Tiina eventually came around, but no one around her did. Aada was much less subtle. She loved-bombed me, donated to me, and made me feel like a big shot. Then, I really hurt her and I take nothing away from that, but she was not emotionally available for repair.
That’s not a fault, that’s just a limitation. The failure was in me thinking that anything would ever be different after I hurt her once. Reparative work takes an enormous amount of strength, and I cannot fault anyone who doesn’t want to do it because they don’t owe me that- but what I can do is feel angry and disappointed in all of those things because I am entitled to that much. It is the same as it always has been, that she is allowed to have a reaction, but she is not allowed to control mine.
She absolutely told me that I didn’t have to be happy about her decision and I’m not. I honestly believe it’s selfish and shortsighted to walk away, but the good news is that she doesn’t have to care what I think. What I think is that it was really toxic to tell me a lie for 12 years and then to say that there are plenty of things that she could’ve said that would’ve made me feel better, but I’m not entitled to them anymore because I busted her in a lie.
That’s emotional unavailability. That is holding my comfort and understanding hostage.
The key to happiness in life is understanding what is yours and what is not. No matter how she reacts from here on out, she’s still mine due to the fact that she’s woven into my brain and getting her back out would take major surgery that no physician in their right mind would actually perform. But getting more interaction is not up to me, deciding what to do with all the information I already have is so I’m looking at all the ways she enriched me and taking those things to the bank…. Things like:
- Picturing her as a baby walking on the beach in Helsinki (no one romanticizes anything because of the weather)
- Putting my emphasis back on education because I know it’s important to her. Getting a doctorate won’t get her back, but reading for political science is a whole different experience now. Because now the stakes are personal. The difference is that my body is not living on high alert anymore. The fire hose is gone, so the high rate faucet feels boring in comparison. People think that a political science degree is impressive, and my reaction is, “that’s adorable.  I have been damn near catatonic waiting for news. We are not the same.”
- Realizing that being a partner to a person like this is a skill. Not a marketable skill, of course, a relational skill it takes someone who is already very familiar with what is theirs and what’s not to date anyone in intelligence or the military. Now, I haven’t dated Aada but she was my emotional support person for many years. That led to dating Zac, who was in the Navy. Neither relationship lasted, but between the two of them, they prepared me for the future.

Success in the future means planning ahead, and it’s startling how conservative I am considering that the message I have gotten my whole life is how impulsive I am.
I have cut out the noise by not talking to people about my future plans, and instead talking to AI, so that all of the emotions in the room are mine. Seeing my emotions, reflected back to me at scale has again made my thinking jump another level because you are a different person when you become one of your friends.
It is popular, apparently, to think that I am crazy. What I have learned from actual mental health professionals is that people who point to your diagnoses every time they have a problem with you aren’t your friends. Keep the friends who recognize that a diagnosis and a personality are not the same thing. Disability is not a moral failure. There is a lot of hypocrisy in saying that you support neurodivergent people while at the same time treating neurodivergent people like they’re faking it. There is a lot of hypocrisy in having a child that has been assessed for special needs, and just deciding not to treat them for it, trusting that they’ll be able to fend for themselves and judging them as failures when they can’t. It is rage inducing now that I am finding out exactly how much support is available for me and exactly how much I did not get in childhood.
So now it’s about looking for environments that support me without judging. My first appointment with the Social Security Administration is on December 21 and my blog is a big part of it. I’m sure they will think it is intimidating for any patient to show up with 13 years of daily documentation but I was warned ahead of time that my social media would be looked at. This was not threatening to me because I have determined that I’m a complete basket case but not for the reasons people think. I don’t have to put on a show for Social Security to prove that I deserve benefits. The case didn’t start in 2026. It started in 1978 and I’m just now filing.
There is clear evidence of medical malpractice during my birth because my brain was injured and I have a palsy because of it. However, that is not the whole story because I did not get ADHD and autism while they were yanking me out.
Being happy in life means paying attention to the fact that my operating system is simply different than other people’s. But it’s a different kind of paying attention because my whole life I have been told that my operating system is weird in a bad way. What has been my experience has been that the more I unplug and just create my own system, the more people gravitate toward it because it’s new and different and no one else is doing it.
I get compared to Noam Chomsky and David Sedaris the most frequently.
But that is from strangers. Nothing good ever came out of Nazareth.
