I just recently got back from a family trip. To be honest, it was mainly for my mother’s benefit, so she could see her uncle and cousins in Georgia. I know them, but I can’t say as that I’m awfully close to them. Most of the family I was close to has long since passed on...

But the trip crystalized some things that have been eating at me for the last few years. I’m 40 years old, disabled, no career, no real traditional future in front of me. Out of choice I have decided that I should not consider being a parent. I’m not nearly stable enough, financially, emotionally, psychologically, to even consider taking on that kind of responsibility.

In the last 20 years, I’ve watched as my cohorts from High School, the last real social institution that I shared with others in a regular day to day manner, grow up, find mates, have children, build families and careers, find a place in the world to be, find friends to commiserate, and move on with their lives. Meanwhile I stumble along alone trying to find a place where I fit, trying to find a place where I can be happy, a nitch I can fill, as I watch them from outside the glass... And envy the shit out of them...

I was an only child. The uncle and cousins in GA are my Grandmother’s ilk. Of my Grandfather’s side of the family, only two siblings had children, both only children and both of us never had and were never fit to have offspring...

This means that my family line ends with the two of us.

And when I’m gone... What will have I left behind? What will my grandfather and grandmother and mother have left behind?

This reality hit home, seeing my Uncle seeming so old, bent over from a bad back, his frame slighter than I’ve ever seen him be. In cousins that I remember being somewhat youthful, both with their hair drained of color, gone solid gray...

I’m not getting any younger either...

When I was young, I was told over and over about my potential. About the 140 to 160 IQ I possessed (the variable due to the fact that IQ tests tend to notoriously under report a learning disabled person’s IQ by as many as 20 points), my ability to see things that others couldn’t. To understand intrinsically things that other’s had difficulty grasping.

These gifts came with a cost, of course. Maintaining concentration is remarkably difficultr and physically draining. One teacher likened teaching me to walking a labyrinth. You walk down one path, only to find that it dead ends, and you have to back track, and come at the problem from a completely different angle..

I have severe generalized anxiety disorder, OCD, PTSD... One does not visit the realm of genius without also being visited by the very broken edge of insanity...

Anyway, I want to start putting out a regular record of my thoughts, my ideas in a way that might be successful in reaching other people. At the very least, it will be out there, for someone to read. Proof that I existed. That I had thoughts. That maybe even some of them were good ones, worth listening to...

Some of them will be ideas with a the capital I. World changing stuff, maybe? No clue. One could hope that maybe it might contribute positively, at least.

Other times, I’m just going to just plain geek out on the most trivial. On my hobbies. On my life. My friends.

And sometimes it may be something completely different from either of these things, delving into the emotional, as I try to work stuff out. Sometimes it helps to see how someone else went through something and worked out some sort of solution? At least that’s been my experience when I learn of others, mental illness, or maybe just life matters...

Anyway, I hope some of you find what I post to be of some use in the future...