An absolutely stunning lack of awareness has been a reoccurring theme in my life, and not just self-awareness because that is kind of expected. While I can spot a rare piece of midcentury pottery from two stores away, my situational awareness for human interactions is almost zero.

Recently I went to see a movie with someone and it took me a week of them not talking to me to make me realize the subject of the film had raised issues for them that I failed to process at the time. And I can’t apologize for it as it’s now firmly in the dreaded: I will just make it worse, or even more horrible make it about myself. So I guess I’ll just let that one simmer, which I guess means eventually evaporating completely or boiling over and ruining everything.

There is no third option.

I’m starting to think that not all the spectrum dust sprinkled onto my children came from the wife’s side of the family. I just assumed they got her brains and my anxiety and decent eyesight. Maybe they got dusted from both sides? Or possibly I am just emotionally broken from external events? I would prefer it was genetically hardwired to be honest, because that would mean I wasn’t 100% to blame for constantly having my head in the clouds, or up butt depending who you ask.

Maybe I don’t have the bandwidth to run all the emotions at once? I have definitely been deeply in love and I am sure that took all of my function braincells and funneled it into grand romance mode, which ends badly as you might imagine. At various stages I have been good at one thing at a time, or at least most adequate. Partner, parent, child, friend…but I struggled to juggle two let alone three. Probably why I am so damn miserable these days as I am pretty much a machine to fix the farm and side hustle enough cash to keep a roof over my head and the kids feed (both human and fur). I would love to convince myself that I was capable of finding even a tiny bit of balance, but the universe seems to be pretty keen on stomping on my fingers if I attempt to try pulling myself out of the current ditch. Of course I’m also just as likely to bite the hand of anyone that tries reaching into the ditch to help me out. Please don’t mistake the tortured metaphors for a cry for help, I am pretty sure the “bite your hand” was more of a disclaimer than a metaphor.

As I said at the beginning I am awful at being a person, awful at human interactions… but maybe that counts as a small step towards self awareness?