Sometimes, when we find new ways of understanding why we are the way we are, that enlightenment changes our world. More often the old insights have all the validity they always did, and the new insights just open new cans of worms.

I have learned to see my struggles as academic. Spelling is very hard for me most of it makes little or no sense to me. I saw this as a barrier to my success in school and in the work place. So, I worked hard at it, very hard. With almost no success.

Then came along spell checkers. For years they could make little sense of my spelling and synonyms confused them, but they helped. YAY adaptive tech to the rescue. Now all I had to do was learn to type. Turns out I can’t put my finger in the same place twice without looking at it. It also turns out that with 108 keys it is an important talent. It also comes in useful when playing a piano or guitar. I have spent years trying to learn them too. Without success. I can play the radio just fine thank you.

I could work longer hours? I am salaried. I mean I am slow, but I do good work, it just takes me longer to do it. Turns out it is just about impossible to work harder enough. Even when they don’t pay hourly. They lock the doors 30 minutes after quitting time. And even when I work long enough to get everything done, and I put up with the crap better, and out last other people who get frustrated and quit, I am the one let go early with cutbacks. I am the one who never gets a cost of living rase.

You just don’t fit in hear. You make people uncomfortable. Could some of that be my transtasticness, or the emotional radiation from trying to keep all that hidden? “I have a secret, but I promise not to tell you what it is.” Is pretty creepy after all. Just coming out and telling people I am a woman who lived 50 years as a man turns out to be less creepy and puts me into a protected status.

Now I am in a trauma informed care class, aimed at teaching social workers and health care givers what sorts of trauma affect a child, how to recognize it, and how to treat it. WOW it is a wonder any of my children turned out sane, or that I am functional at all. Every week I learn something new about how screwed up my child hood was, and how I screwed up something for my children. It often is about what happened to you more than it is about what did you do.

So, goody I have this bleeding wound where I have ripped off 50 years of emotional tape. And a new set of insights to understand what happened to me. And a new set of insights to understand what I did to my children. May be an insight to why I never developed the kinesthetic sense to know where my hand is without looking at it. And why the emotional work I am doing to get through the class is making it hard to do anything else. Great, but I still can’t spell or type. I still have multiple systems to learn. And I still must keep up with my work load.

In short. All the old struggles are still there. The new knowledge helps understand what might have caused some of it, but so far mostly distracts me from mastery in my job. Dealing with text and learning the processes are enough work for now. I am too tired to take on any more, or my laundery.