@actuallyautistic I'm not sure why I feel like sharing this, maybe because I need to understand things or because somehow I feel like everything is about to end soon...
My mother had a very basic education, barely the third grade. She was in a coma from a calcium injection she received as a child, at age 8, because "she was too thin."
This caused very serious thyroid and parathyroid problems that led to thyroid cancer as an adult.
Almost illiterate, she taught me the first letters, and I taught myself the rest to read, from magazines, my father's books, and street signs. I was 3 years old and wanted to go to school like the children who passed by our door.
My father was unusual for his time and wanted to be a soldier or a police officer from a young age, and he succeeded despite my grandfather's disapproval. My father was an avid reader from a young age, while my grandfather was illiterate.
When I was 8 years old, my father bought a large encyclopedia and a library with almost 80 classic and contemporary works.
But also at that same time (he was 28 and I was 8), he was already a police officer and one of the founders of the police academy in San Luis, Argentina. He ran the school and taught classes in criminal law, ethics, shooting, and criminology. He was a rare animal of his time.
So, at 8 years old, I spent half my time observing animals and insects in the countryside and half my time reading. I read everything from Edgar Allan Poe to Unamuno, Cortázar, and Nietzsche. I also read my father's books, so much so that I learned fingerprinting at that age and amused myself by taking fingerprints from glasses and personal belongings of my family, visitors, and school teachers.
My father took me to his job, and I learned how to train police dogs, shoot guns, and drive cars—in other words, everything he did as a police officer. Sometimes he would go to the countryside to investigate a crime, and he would take me with him. I became a young criminologist.
At the same time, I learned electronics and built amplifier circuits, radios, and alarms. I watched Star Trek and dreamed about science, performed chemistry and physics experiments, and sometimes electrocuted myself without serious consequences.
By the age of ten, I had read more than any normal person reads in a lifetime and was already writing some insipid poems. I also worked as an apprentice in a radio and TV workshop to buy components. I had a box full of silicon transistors and wires of all colors on my nightstand.
All this was before I turned 12. I couldn't get into military high school because of a birth hernia, and a year later, when I could, a coup d'état had already occurred in my country, and I was disappointed. So I decided to go to a regular school.
In high school, I was terrible at sports and very good at science and math, and when I finished, I had my own FM station (illegal and against the dictatorship's rules), with the added bonus of living half a block from the intelligence headquarters. One day, they almost discovered my radio, although I hadn't intentionally suppressed the harmonics to make it difficult to triangulate. My father worked for them, and I was lucky that instead of going to prison, they hired me for the telecommunications team (I was also an LU).
Then the war came, and although I was spared from going to the front because I was in college, I was a reserve because I worked for the agency. That wasn't my first job, because at 13, I earned money finding houses to sell and doing electronic repairs.
I slept little because I spent part of the night reading and studying.
At 21, having my first crisis (I later learned it was a depressive episode due to my bipolar disorder, or perhaps my first bout of autistic burnout), I joined the army and served for a year, including special training and courses, followed by a year as a civilian. Some of my high school classmates died in the war, and I became very ill during military service; pneumonia nearly killed me, which was a lot for me.
After the army, thanks to my studies in electronic engineering, I got a job at a construction company. At the same time, I played guitar and began joining rock and jazz bands.
I think I had no direction because I liked everything and everything was easy to learn.
But at the same time, a shadow hung over me, and I felt like life was a pointless mess. Between the experiences and the illness, I felt driven to seek answers and discovered yoga, martial arts, and Zen. I was 25 at the time. Two years later, I got married.
I'll follow the rest another time...
#bipolar #autism #actuallyautistic #gifted #neurodivergent #neurodivergence
