How Do You Know If You Really Know What You're Doing?

There is something strangely unsatisfying about describing my life in the first person here, as if it is too easy to merely relate the things I did or thoughts I thought, and that if I were any good, I'd figure out a way to write something that wasn't directly about me but would remind anyone who reads it of me in some subtle yet illuminating way. I've come to terms with the fact that I do not possess that gift for writing that allows one to capture every minute detail of a moment that happened; now I am faced with the sad realization that perhaps I can't even inspire a mere brief flash of illumination of something more real. Maybe the only thing that ends up being captured within these words is the profundity of my confusions.

Two things come to mind right now, for no reason in particular. Both fall under the general category of musing about the path I've taken, the path I'm taking, and the path I'll take. One thing has to do with school, and the other has to do with my father.

The one that has to do with school, more specifically has to do with the third grade, which for me was really the fourth grade. As much as I hate trivializing an entire human being down to a few childhood events, skipping the third grade (technically, fourth grade), while obviously being something that put me where I am today, is also important because of the effect on my psyche. Not that I was ever all that social a child, but to be pulled up bodily out of the third grade class and placed into the combined fourth/fifth grade class is something at least as traumatic as transplanting a tree. But at least the tree doesn't feel younger, (and consequently, inferior) to all the other trees. It really is strange how even children recognize the importance of a year's worth of experiences, or even just a few months. Or perhaps it makes sense, when a year is so much of one's young life; what's the difference between 46 and 47? I remember learning the word "yeblow," from a fat Hispanic kid named Julio; I have no idea what "yeblow" means now. I remember buying my first football card for $1, a ridiculously high price for Chris Slade, a fairly mediocre linebacker with the Patriots. I remember lying to my parents about what I did with that $1; perhaps that is where the seed of my poker-playing/lying was planted. I remember the Miami-Dade County Geography Bee, where we took 4th. I remember people paying attention to me, because at least in a geography bee, I had more useful knowledge than they did. Life on the other hand, was an entirely different story.

And wouldn't you know it, after a year spent frantically alternating between hiding in social corners and scavenging for knowledge about the new world I was thrust into, we moved. Now, had we stayed in Miami another year, had I gotten the chance to stay in the same school, and stay in that combined fourth/fifth grade class with my old classmates from the fourth grade, who knows? Maybe I'd actually be a decent human being right now.

Move we did, to Pinellas County, to Larghetto, to Ridgecrest, to Mrs. Wall and Mrs. Smith, to my first D on a test, to my first-place essay in the Public Library's Writing Contest (whose topic was "The Far Side of the World," and since that's where I came from, it made sense to me that my story was a little more authentic, a little more detailed, a little more fake). Then to Seminole, to MEGSSS, to MATHCOUNTS, to Chicago, to missing the bus to walk her home, to detentions for cursing and awards for... for being me. And the whole time, I was an outsider trying to hide, trying to learn enough about the way this world worked so that I could wash away the marks of my foreignness.

Then it was high school, IB and TOK, HL, SL, and AP, dances and poker and skipping lunch and socializing in French and staying after-school and going to State's and ... and then it was over. And then 4 years of non-stop effort, of working my way into a hidden little niche of this world where I would not stick out, where I could belong, all that went out the proverbial window.

Then it was summer, it was China, and it was being alone. Alone like I'd never been before. If I thought I was alone before, it was only because it fit the pure dictionary definition of being just one person by myself. But now, now I knew what it was to not be alone, that when things fell apart, I finally saw how deep that particular hole went.

The other thing, the one about my father, I would really like to say it was about my parents. But it was something that only my father ever really believed in and talked about; my mother's responsibilities lay mostly in keeping my ass in line, for whatever a proper Chinese line was supposed to be. For as long as I can remember having my own memories, my father always told me this, that he trusted my judgment. His parenting, his teaching, his nurturing and his scolding, they were all supposed to generate in me an independent faculty within myself, to judge externally and internally. He didn't so much as tell me what was right, as let me decide what was right. In this, I now fear I've failed him.

I've failed myself.

I can't judge shit.

I want answers. I said that once, at a conference on gifted kids where they invited us "gifted kids" to participate. I said my gift was for curiosity. I wanted answers.

I would rather someone give me the answers.

I would rather cheat.

And somehow I'm here, still. Somehow I haven't fucked myself too hard, yet. But it has certainly been a mess. Looking back, the last year-and-a-half/two years have been nothing short of the beginning of a muddled, blind, half-stumbling, half-groping face-forward fall. My face has yet to make contact with the ground in that metaphor (though ironically, the same could not be said for my physical face and the physical carpet in the current Joline game room).

It's like slowly forgetting how to walk.

It's like waking up.

I ask myself what I'm doing. The answer I get, the only one I can get, is what I think I am doing. It is impossible to actually know. I think I am slowly choking myself. I think it's already too late.

I think it is already too late.

I will salvage what I can.

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I know the only one for me can only be you.
My arms won't free you, and my heart won't try.