Heart Problems

I am a nerd. Always have been.

I was that kid in grade school that you popular kids teased and hated, because I always had my homework done, on time. I completed assignments early, and then asked for extra work. I remember spending my entire 8th and 9th grade years sneaking fiction and romance novels to school, reading from 7:30 am to 2:15 pm, all through lunch, appearing not to listen to a word that was being spoken in class and STILL making straight A's.

I was the kid whose parent's took them out of the public school setting and enrolled into a preparatory boarding school more than eight hours away from home at the tender age of 13. Not because I was a behavioral problem, but because the teachers and counselors convinced my parents that I was not being stimulated in a regular setting.

I loved school. I loved books. I loved learning new things and challenging myself intellectually. I loved talking to other like minded kids about esoteric or obscure philosophies and memorizing useless bits of trivia just so I could insert them into day to day conversation. At one point, I went to the dictionary each week to look for a new word that I could use. Not to prove that I was smarter than everyone else, but for the joy of hearing those $50 words passing through my 14 and 15 year old lips.

School was my place of escape. While at school, I could forget about the foolishness and dysfunction taking place in my home. At school, I was smart, articulate, confident, knowledgeable, and even witty, in a nerdy kind of way.

At home, I was an outcast. "You think you're better than everybody else." "You trying to be "white". "You ain't nuthin' but a n ___, and when you get through with all that education, you still gon be a n____." I heard about all the things I could never do. At home, I was schooled that the best I'd be able to do was to go to business school, get hired on at a factory or perhaps even at the community colleges as a secretary, and hope for a man who didn't beat me. Heck, the only reason I was supposed to go to college was to snare a husband!

Books became as close to me as friends. If I had a problem, I could always find a solution in a book. Barring that, books provided me a place of refuge or escape. At school and in my books, the only limitations on my future were those of my imagination. And my imagination is where I lived.

In my books and imaginings, I could ride horses, travel to foreign lands, meet wealthy princes and marry a man named Jared. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince was supposed to be "my baby daddy. I knew EXACTLY how and when it was going to happen too! Freddy Mercury and I were gonna have an illicit affair until I discovered I was not built for the kind of speed he was interested in. Who knew? I went on safari in Africa and fell madly in love with my guide, who also just 'happened' to be a prince. (See a theme here?)

I have escaped inside my head to avoid conflict and misery for most of my life. This survival strategy helped me to cope with a difficult childhood. However, the more I tried to escape, the more misery that was pored on my head. Remember the books? I came home one afternoon to find that my mother had thrown away close to 100 of my books into the dumpster. She was angry with me over some minor thing that I can't remember now. I was hysterical! She couldn't have hurt me more if she had made me walk over hot coals. Fortunately, my uncle came by for a visit and, finding me inconsolable, made her give them back.

When stressed, I want to escape. I want to pretend, just for a little while that I am somewhere and someone else. However, when I do this now all I get is more chaos and confusion. It's not working anymore.

So, the nerd is back at work again, plotting and planning how to confront and take on life stressors as they come rather than running away from them. I know I can do it. I've always been able to accomplish whatever I set my mind and imagination to. I've already started my research, collecting books and reading articles online; seeking out ways to solve my current dilemma.

But here's the thing: while I am confident and comfortable in my intellect and in applying logic to difficult problems, I don't think I"m going to be able to reason this one through. This isn't a head problem, it's a heart problem and it is in THIS arena that I am a functional retard.