I call it being stupid. I’m not supposed to. I am not stupid, just (unfortunately, somewhat) forgetful. I’m surrounded by kind people, who say: ‘No! You’re not stupid!’ every day, but try standing at the school gates without having a clue which door your to expect your children to come out of, even though it happened just like this yesterday and indeed, every day so far this term. The school gates are at different sides of the school and there are only two choices; stand in one yard first, or the other. And I still get it wrong, so it doesn’t feel ‘unfortunately somewhat forgetful.’ It feels stupid.
Its the big little things that trip you up.
The big, big things you pay attention to. But the momentary struggles, the ones like the gates, as the killers. Small enough to forget to make the effort to write it down afterwards; big enough that you feel like a wally.
It’s easier to remember feelings than facts. Hard to remember which gate to go to; easy to remember how you always get it wrong and squirm and feel inadequate. In the same vein, I see people coming and know I feel angry with them, or frustrated by them, of that I’ve disappointed them, but not why or how.
And don’t assume that other people don’t have bigger problems. Many of them do. Too big to have to try to understand mine. So sometimes you have to be patient and stop trying to explain yourself too much.
Get used to the idea that people will judge you, because people as a species aren’t very good at real empathy. I know that I’m not. The number of times as a vet I *knew* there was no way a client could have forgotten that, because of the way I’d spelled the facts out and double-checked and triple-checked in the consult the previous day. And they had answered me that they’d understood…. and it turned out later they hadn’t….. how many of those clients have I judged?
How differently I’d have done things if I’d known that, statistically, at least some of those clients might have been like I am now. That there are people who think they are normal with memory as bad as mine, although they’re used to it and grew up with it. It probably hasn’t occurred to some of them that most other people actually can follow whatever it is the vets’ saying. I am aware of having met three people in three years, with problems like mine; there are more.
Anyway, Treasure the people who try to ‘get it’ and be uber-kind to them, because there’s a reason they are so emotionally generous. They had struggled with something themselves. They know.
The worst folk to deal with are the passive-aggressive ones. The ones who don’t walk up to you and tell you that you got something wrong, but put up a general Facebook post, or make a general comment, slagging some or other behaviour off. Vague enough that it might be me; I know that I’m duplicitous, get mixed up and I peer at that post going ‘was that me? wasn’t it?’ and then find myself defending a poor judgement of a hypothetical person, just because it’s the sort of thing I might accidentally do.
I was doing that recently when the woman posted underneath something like: ‘it’s okay. Someone’s now posted something that confirms they know it was them.’ I read back through the posts. Mine is the only one challenging her comment. So was it me? Now I’m really confused. Sometimes I think I’d be happier without social media; other times I think I should simply be more liberal with the defriend button. But I know it’s someone who might need a friend sometimes and maybe I am just being paranoid.
Forgetting to thank people for things is typical one. Whenever someone posts about people ‘taking things for granted’ I get a pickling feeling down my spine. If you send me something and want to know if I got it / liked it, please call me up and ask. I’m quite good at thanking people for things normally – if you’re older than me, you may know how I like writing thankyou letters. If I forgot, or my children forgot, or I forgot to double-check that my kids actually managed to get the letter into the post-box (recent example), it’s not because I’m ignorant. I was probably doing my best at the time.
I think now, on balance, if I have offended you and you haven’t got the gall to walk up and say, ‘Did you mean to do this offensive thing?’ you probably aren’t going to last in any kind of friendship with me at the moment. I am aware this isn’t okay and working hard on my attitude, and I am also aware that that requires an amount of empathy and emotional maturity that a lot of people don’t have. Expecting people to step inside shoes when they don’t want to is like expecting me to remember what day it is; some days it’s fine, but other days not. Meanwhile, I need to get better at getting through my day without getting lost or losing anything, and spend less time getting stressed about people who are determined to assume the worst however you try to explain.
Yesterday evening my kids both left their coats in their Dad’s car; this morning they couldn’t find their coats and went to school – one shivvering in their fleece, the other in a coat they were lent when this happened a previous time, and forgot to return. I don’t know what other mothers do in this situation; do they wrestle their kids to the floor and somehow force them to wear one of the many oversized ‘spare’ coats in the house? Mine don’t want to. Once again, someone’s kindly given me a coat for one of my children. My children honestly have really good coats. This isn’t the problem. I’m just shit at connecting coat, child and door at the appropriate moment. I had some checklists written out, but they haven’t translated across the house-move. I need to sort out new lists.
My Body, My Own 