When I Grow Up…

Reconsidering a Life Misunderstood & Misremembered.

Over the past few years, I’ve found several small caches of report cards my mother squirreled away in various boxes, drawers, and under the eaves in the attic. A few are missing, but together these documents form a chronological record spanning my entire academic career, from nursery school through my one and only year in college.

The earliest are mimeographed trifold forms filled out by hand by my nursery school and kindergarten teachers. Each one disclosed my unwillingness to interact with adults and other children. I’ll take their word for it. I can’t remember what probably felt regulating to me. I do have actual preschool memories—specifically, anxiously waiting for nap time, because that was when I got a pause from the already difficult work of being educated. I even recall feeling aggrieved while learning to write my birth name: Melissa. Seven letters! And two of them were S’s—a letter I was corrected over and over for writing backward. That I can recount this astonishes me, but more than that, it’s depressing to realize that even before the age of five, I was already associating learning with worry and shame. 

In kindergarten, I was held fast by a near-constant state of dread over the possibility of being called on to tell the time on the big analog wall clock or, god forbid, tying my shoes in front of the teacher and class. I had a distinct impression that I might be different from the other five-year-olds and, increasingly, the suspicion that I was somehow a problem and less teachable than my peers.

In elementary school, mimeographs gave way to Dittoed report cards, still filled out by hand. My teachers frequently noted my inability to pay attention and, even more often, directed my parents to work harder with me to memorize my spelling and math facts. In these years, I was placed in remedial classes and labeled a “weak” and “reluctant” reader. I did summer school for the first time to improve my feeble reading skills. 

Middle school commenced, and with it came tutoring and more summer school for my now clearly abysmal math skills. My performance was all over the place—As, Bs, and Cs. Oh, and these grades were actually typed onto preprinted forms! Despite these stirring institutional advancements, I continued to lag behind. I began spinning myself an unfortunate yarn: that the only thing I was any good at was pulling the wool over the eyes of my teachers and friends. Those As and Bs were proof of that, not evidence that I was capable or that I had actually earned them by virtue of my intelligence. Isn’t that something? Even if that were true, it never occurred to me that this sort of deception and obfuscation might be an indicator of a certain level of skill, intelligence, and savvy in its own right. 

High school was different. Worse. It felt like I was reaching the limits of my capacity to fool everyone. These report cards showed me scraping by with Bs, Cs, and now Ds, and included the annoyingly constant reminders that I wasn’t living up to my potential: try harder, stay focused, apply yourself. No one understood how hard I was trying to pass—both in my classes and as a normal, nothing-to-see-here child. An occasional A would pop up for an art class or graded “club,” but every other grade sank into a mysterious Bermuda Triangle of educational performance whose depths fell between “distressingly average,” “stunningly poor,” and “entirely uninspired.”

And so, over the last few years of formal education, my inner experience shifted away from any lingering belief that I was a smart kid who just needed to work harder. By senior year, I had diligently internalized the narrative that I was someone who could only fake being smart and, as such, would not amount to much.

And worse, my worry that I would somehow be found out—unmasked as a shameful fraud—was nearly relentless. In these years, I stopped all clubs and activities: no more chorus, no theater, no extracurricular art classes. I don’t think it was a conscious decision; flying under the radar became my primary mode of survival. I graduated with little to show beyond shitty SAT scores, a (to my young mind) meaningless diploma, and a searing inferiority complex. 

I managed to get into the only college I applied to—why I even bothered, I have no idea. I was already convinced I couldn’t pretend competence at a college level, and while that felt painfully obvious to me, the precise reasons remained stubbornly opaque. After only one year, I dropped out. That was 1993.

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. Looking back at those report cards, I can see autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and dyscalculia revealed in every comment about my shyness, poor attention, and lagging skills. It’s clear to me now that my teachers’ comments and my grades were less a reflection of my overall intelligence and more a measure of how misunderstood and unsupported I was by the public education system and my family. 

That I was never evaluated for any learning disability is, in my mind, corroborative of a few things. Primarily, the extreme gender bias around these diagnoses was even more pervasive in the 70s and 80s than it is now. And not to put too fine a point on it: how goddamn smart I actually was and how I could mask like a fucking boss. All that camouflaging allowed me to hoodwink my teachers, my parents, and, I’ll admit it, myself. The story was never that I was smart and disabled; it was that I was neurotypical and insipidly mediocre. 

My professional life has also been earnestly unimpressive. In the thirty years since I graduated from high school, I’ve stumbled into four jobs, none of which resulted in anything notably rewarding. I never got a promotion. Seniority never did anything for me. That’s okay, though. I get it. I would joke with friends and colleagues that I never figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up, and it was like every employer could smell that on me—a whiff of uncertainty and indecision that registered in both my mind and theirs as “zero ambition.” All I could muster was a life lived paycheck to paycheck.

Now, there is nothing wrong with living paycheck to paycheck. For most of my adult life, it’s honestly felt like a relief. For decades, I did not think I could push myself toward, or grapple with, more significant work. It felt safe and reasonable to have so little expected of me. Something shifted when I hit middle age and became a parent, though. I was no longer living with roommates who shared financial burdens, and I was approaching what was probably my first taste of a midlife crisis: how could I support my tiny family? And then came the classic quandary—was it possible to expect something consequential and heartening from one’s employment? If not, what was it all for?

Over the years, supportive friends, therapists, life coaches, and even a job counselor or two have encouraged me to explore the idea of finding more worthwhile work. More times than I can remember, that suggestion came in the form of genuine inquiries about what I wanted to be when I grew up. This goddamn question. The conceit is that your childhood dream may hold the key to ideal professional fulfillment as an adult. For years and years, I answered the same way when asked this: I never wanted to be anything. I could not plumb the depth of some younger version of my goals and dreams, because, I claimed, I never had any. 

The problem is that this was not true. Of course, the ideas I entertained as a little one were fairly whimsical. They did at least get more sophisticated with time: horse rider, artist, Egyptologist—even! As an adolescent, I was convinced I wanted to be a model or actress. As an adult, I’ve always regarded these ideas as too fanciful to take seriously and thus would never deign to mention them when asked to reveal my youthful aspirations.

Though, to be clear, I was not the only one who had a hand in discouraging these dreams. I got little to no encouragement from my parents. In fact, at times, they actively discouraged me. I remember my father telling me that Egyptology was a waste of time because “they have already found everything,”—a claim I think the literal Egyptologists I know would assuredly bristle at. My mother, for her part, firmly shut down my entreaties to find a talent agency with uncharitable admonitions about the kind of girls who modeled. 

My parents never suggested I seek something else to replace the ideas they so tidily dismissed. They barely encouraged me to attend college. To be fair, my mother took a friend and me to visit a campus or two, but when I told my parents I wanted to apply to a handful of colleges and universities, my father replied with a question: Where are you going to get the money for all those applications? My mother stayed silent and offered no suggestions. The implicit message in that query was abundantly clear to me—I did not have my father’s support. So, without further discussion, I trashed my lofty aims and prepared a single application—to the university where he worked. This he did not object to, and even if he had, the path forward would have been swept clear of at least the financial obstacles. He worked there, so my tuition was free. I applied, got accepted, struggled for a year, and dropped out. My parents did not say a word.

In the end, though, it was the undiagnosed learning disabilities and neurodivergence that got hold of any lingering ambition and flushed it resolutely down the toilet. And I studiously did the remaining work, unconsciously dismantling my hopes so thoroughly that I refused to let myself even remember them. I am not being figurative here. Like a Hollywood case of traumatic amnesia, some protective part of me would not allow me to remember, let alone acknowledge, these dreams. Turns out, in my case, hindsight is more like 20/200.

Here is a truth, that I have only recently permitted myself to uncover: after the ideas of Egyptologist, actress, and the rest, I did have one other thought about what I wanted to be. One wish that outlasted all the others and somehow stayed lodged in my heart and mind, despite my parents’ and my own lack of support. Okay. Ready? In rare, bold moments, I occasionally professed exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up: a writer. 

Imagine that. And remarkably, I was actually writing! And almost the whole time! 

My first memories of writing for pleasure are from middle school. I wrote fan fiction! The Lost Boys fan fiction! It was so much fun, and I found such delight in sharing it with my friends. It’s worth noting that there was zero chance I would ever let my peers read my handwritten stories. I would have died of unmitigated embarrassment if anyone had seen my poor grammar and spelling mistakes. Instead, I would call them and read my work to them over the phone. I have vivid memories of hunkering down in my parents’ bedroom, tethered to the wall by the short cord of the landline, and thrilling my girlfriends with extended romantic scenes featuring brooding, alluring vampires. Awesome, deeply embarrassing stuff. 

From that point until well into my early adulthood, I journaled, wrote poetry, and short fiction. I had notebooks full of the stuff. In my 20s—after the internet was born but before “blogs” were a thing—I had a web “diary.” There, for four years, nestled in some very badly coded HTML, I brazenly posted poorly edited (though heavily spell-checked) thoughts on my life. People actually found it and read it! Even then, I was enjoying the satisfying validation of writing and being read. 

Here is the essential detail I need to confess: that one year of college I muddled through, I did so as a creative writing major. When I say, “let that sink in,” I am doing so more for me than for you. I almost don’t believe it, but my mom also faithfully tucked away a single, crumpled, stained college transcript. And it’s all there, detailed in all its dot-matrix glory. Turns out, I did know what I wanted to be, and that major I declared in 1993 might have been the last time I wholeheartedly owned that hope.

But here is something else I need to concede: while I did drop out after only one year, and I definitely believed I could not hack it at the collegiate level, my transcript does not support that assertion. From the grades recorded there, one might have gathered that I was a perfectly competent and successful college student. I dropped out with a 3.5 GPA. And here is the last revelation I need to share: before throwing in the towel, I won second place in a freshman writing contest.

Christ, Parker. Way to tell yourself a story. And stick to it. I have no memory of feeling proud of myself, pleased with my grades, or gratified by that award. What I do remember is struggling, panicking, and dropping out without a second thought. Because the enormity of how overwhelmed and bewildered I felt was second only to my complete mystification about why.

As the years passed, I diligently authored and reauthored a tale of incompetence so I could stay safe by continuously giving up on myself. Insisting that I had no goals or desires was a far safer bet than facing the profound humiliation and confusion of my situation. Staying out of school and staying in jobs that expected so little of me was far more tolerable than consistently slamming up against mortifying limits that made no sense and had no explanation.

Toeing the line became my life’s MO. Anything that contradicted my stunted sense of self felt dangerous and had to be dispelled. I literally blocked it out because remembering, acknowledging, and honoring any intelligence, ability, or drive would have meant my whole world would have to shift toward a set of expectations and responsibilities that terrified me. Everything I understood about myself and self-preservation was rooted in shame, fear, and solid confidence in my ineptitude.

My intelligence was never validated or reaffirmed in any measurable or meaningful way. I know that the higher grades I managed to achieve from time to time—or that freshman writing award, for example—could have stood as evidence, but clearly, that was not enough to confer a sense of truth or safety. Every adult around me—my parents, my teachers—seemed as puzzled as I was. No one cheered me on to shine, explore, or excel because no one (including me) expected anything beyond lackluster performance and steadfast disinterest. 

Ah. There is another misrepresentation. Some people did champion me. There were those who tried to make it clear to me that my intelligence existed and had unique value—my friends. I have had the privilege of knowing individuals who have constantly tried to buoy me up and let me know how brilliant I was. For much of my adulthood, however, I had a hard time seeing these opinions as valid. These were my peers, and I still labored under the absurd belief that I had hoodwinked them as well. In my own esteem, I was an impostor who had somehow managed to fool even these lovely and adoring people.

For the sake of all those kind and supportive friends, as well as my own, let me repeat this simple truth: I want to be a writer when I grow up.

And still, a very vocal part of me thinks that’s utterly preposterous. My psyche has these very well-worn grooves that play minor chord-filled tunes of denial and self-sabotage on repeat: Who do I think I am? I’m good but not that good. Why would I even dare? Don’t embarrass yourself. God, what am I even thinking? I’m better off not even trying. 

Even as I am tempted to scold the egoic part of me that wails these laments, I want to pause and grant that this is a record of my educational and relational trauma, wrapped up in self-protection and masquerading as self-criticism. I know all of this—from the misremembering to the giving up—was me trying to survive. It was unfortunate, but given everything I endured and could not understand, it was necessary.

So what does it all mean for this community college-attending perimenopausal neurodivergent trauma-healing human? Great question. Discovering this long-obscured truth, coupled with the profound joy and healing I have experienced through boldly putting words into the world, tells me something vital: What I love above all else is communication. 

So, first step—an Associate in Arts degree. Beyond that, I can’t honestly predict what bachelor’s degree I will pursue, what career I will choose, or what I will be when I am finally grown. Even now, at age 51, it’s too soon to tell. I have no real sense of whether “writer,” vague as that is, will be my future profession or part of some ideal job description. But I can confidently say that what I intentionally choose to do for a living will involve writing and interpersonal communication. ‘Cause, there is no denying that I love wrangling words and ideas, and expressing myself in a way that’s both helpful to me and to others. 

It just feels so goddamn good. I can’t wait to see where I go with it and how I get there. And I am gonna enjoy the fuck out of each word I write along the way.