If you’re expecting me to tell you not to be disappointed in this edition of The Pickup Truck Diaries, you’re going to be disappointed. Ha!
After all, I come from a life of nothing BUT disappointment, in which being a strange neurodiverse person in a small town frequently made me an outcast.
Disappointment abounded, as every small interaction with another human being has always usually been tinted with internalized ableist beliefs or expectations placed upon me without my consent throughout my childhood. I was often prejudiced constantly and without remorse or regret.
Just the facts, people.
Hell, both of those two words, remorse and regret, were, and likely still are fairly foreign in my small hometown – both in the 1990s of my childhood as well as the strange bourgeoisie-laden gentrified present. How could you be remorseful for something you don’t even understand in the first place?
See, being a person with disabilities often meant that any social interaction was viewed by the “other” through a few specific lenses – the first being a strange sort of pity, and the second being manipulation, or as an object to be used. Both involve being looked down upon in some context.
Knowing what I know now about my disabilities, even the specialists that were supposed to support us often only got as far as “gifted kid” and left it at that.
Now, at least pity comes from a somewhat good ethos in origin. People pitying you because they might have already internally labelled you as retarded is always extremely uncomfortable, but at least they often look down on you as disadvantaged somehow, rather than as some disgusting animal to put down or sterilize via Aspergers-style eugenics based thinking. That meant (and often still means) they likely weren’t going to try and take advantage of you. Hell, in an ideal situation, they might even want to try and help you in some way.
I know some of you are likely still hung up, as you’ll notice I used a slur there.
100% intentional.
If I had a dollar for every time somebody tried to hurt me in my lifetime by using that word, I’d be a very wealthy creature in the present.
However… I refuse to whitewash or tone down my own lived experiences for a gentile audience, sorry not sorry.
See? Disappointment abounds.
I told you that already.
At least the people who pitied me against my wishes only gave me a grotesque self-worth complex, and weren’t trying to use or abuse my neurodiverse savant superpowers for their own benefit.
I have to throw my logger-father under the bus for this one (Sorry Dad!) – as I’ve watched him be abused for his knowledge and skill sets for free, pretty much my whole life.
There’s a danger to people knowing you more intimately in this regard. With our unique blend of neurodiversity in my family, we’re cursed with a goldfish short term memory, but an eidetic long-term memory. Meaning that if we can somehow retain information and shunt it into long-term storage, it’ll almost never go away. It’s incredibly handy when one is often wont to hyperfocus on subjects of interest and subsequently internalize and memorize entire mental databases on specific systems, patterns, or fields of interest.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite the perfectly eidetic photographic memory I’d prefer.
I’m sure you can immediately see how being too trusting can thereby mean that people will come to you to try and get the information they want for as little as possible. In my father’s case – this meant people siphoning industry knowledge and insight without paying the consulting fees we expect in the modern day. He’d be a gazillionaire if he had merely charged the industry standard hourly rate!
I cannot COUNT the number of times I’ve told him that he is far too nice and prone to manipulation, because of his inherent good nature. But I simultaneously admire his innocence and good heart. He’s an honorable man.
The scenario asks the ultimate question – is he at fault for being FAR too kind, good-natured, and trusting, in wanting to help and educate everyone he meets? Or is the person abusing and using him at fault for treating him like an object or tool – an easy-to-access free encyclopedia?
You can see how disappointment proliferates in these sorts of scenarios.
I digress.
If we sit here and talk about my own disappointments I’ve lived through, or the disappointments of my family, we’ll be here for decades. And I can only speak to what I’ve seen as an individual. So let’s break it down a bit.
Disappointment comes from the same source as anger, in essence. Subverted or betrayed expectations. Often it’s originating from a belief or a trusting of another person or system to act in good faith.
Most government systems I’ve already completely written off – I’ve been an employee of both private and public institutions, and while formal hierarchies love to pretend they give two shits about things like justice, fairness, transparency, and honesty… Anybody with half a brain cell knows that it’s often only lip service for perceived public image. The people in charge are usually completely unafraid to act in self-interest insofar as they can hide it.
Corruption abounds.
We also KNOW humans are self-absorbed as a norm. The research doesn’t lie. (And no, fuck you, I’m not citing it here. Learn how to perform a google search.)
I think that’s part of my ongoing frustration and disappointment with a lot of my life, especially as a neurodiverse person. Many disabled folks see the world in black and white. If a person or system tells us it’s going to do something, we expect it to follow through in good faith without being arbitrary. We expect honesty from everyone without realizing that people can, and will lie or distort truth.
And they will insofar as it benefits them and they can get away with it, usually.
I’ve learned throughout my life that such beliefs as honesty are the biggest lies. Grey-scale coats everything we engage with, and people like me often can’t tell that somebody is betraying us, using us, or straight up stabbing us in the back.
At least I’ve learned to reign in my black and white thinking to some degree. I’ve garnered a healthy skepticism and cynicism when it comes to other humans. I still can’t stop believing in archaic chivalries such as truth and honor, but here we are, eh?
There’s a great Dan Ariely speech on dishonesty that I highly recommend. The cliff’s notes are that everybody will cheat a little bit if they think they can get away with it. A thousand people will steal a dollar if they can do so without being caught, which will usually eclipse a total sum of the one or two people we DO actually catch embezzling hundreds or thousands.
Maybe that’s the greatest disappointment – that I still hope to expect people to behave logically, rationally, and to have good hearts and values that act in the best interest of everyone involved in a situation or scenario.
Recently, I’ve had a string of disappointments that push me ever further towards Misanthropy.
As much as I’ve stated again and again that I want to somehow save humanity from guillotining itself to extinction, I keep encountering bad faith actors that have ulterior motives or who don’t deal transparently and honestly.
Makes it tough to not want to just let Homo Sapiens Sapiens continue to off itself in shortsighted self-destruction…
Yet, the small disappointments can also have positive learning outcomes, even when everything is going to absolute shit. And trust me, I know how hard it can be to even begin to look for them when you’re mired in depression or complete nihilism.
To avoid completely checking out, you need to look for these silver linings, even if only in the lessons learned.
Par exemple, I was stoked for the snowboarding season! Despite gaining a bunch of weight around my recent move in November, I scored a great deal for a disability pass, and was eager to have a physical outlet for exercise through a season that typically does some damage to overall health via stagnation.
But… On my first half day on the mountain, a calf injury I passed off as nothing in the summer, which stopped me from running back then – came back with a vengeance. Intense pain was followed the next day by barely being able to walk. Not only was my entire snowboarding season in jeopardy, I had pushed myself without much regard for my own health and wellness.
Talk about disappointment, eh?
It was quickly followed by two more blows – a long-running project imploding, and my book deal being cancelled out of the blue with no explanation or followup.
Talk about a triple whammy of disappointment!
I don’t want to try and convince you that these things are all airy-fairy rainbows and sunshine. They sucked. I finally felt like I had gained an advantage over my depression symptoms, and a rolling series of disappointments brought me lower than I had felt in at least a year prior.
But I’d be a stupid asshole if I didn’t try to wring even the smallest of silver linings from each instance, right?
I learned some life lessons, some as an individual person, and some as an artist and creator:
I need to actively work to have multiple irons in the fire at any given moment. Because things can sputter out and die without notice or warning. Sometimes people are talking shit behind your back or even sabotaging you, and you’re better off focusing your energy and skills elsewhere rather than trying to salvage the unsalvageable. Instead of letting people disappoint you again and again, ensure your happiness, success, and well being is not reliant on others. A tough ask, but a necessary one. Therefore, know when to walk away when you are not being appreciated or treated well.
Every failure is an opportunity to avoid similar circumstances or scenarios into the future. You can take the parts of something you appreciated or enjoyed, and seek out those specific components of the experiences. Through the three major disappointments, I learned that I want to laugh and be joyful, so I need to hunt those experiences and environments more often. I need to avoid situations where I am unfulfilled or feel used and discarded.
Now, it’s a hell of a task to always be logical and driven first and foremost. When disappointment hits, the first task before looking for small silver linings is to seek solace and emotional comfort. Hit the gym, eat some soul food, or spend time with friends who are going to lift you up, make you laugh, and try to help you talk things out.
Shoot for the small victories, right?
Once you stabilize, then you can begin to recalculate, learn from your mistakes or disappointments, and start to build back up.
Trust me, I wish us humans weren’t so frail.
I’m pretty damn resilient and full of grit – I’ve taken rusty spikes to the gut, had exes perform surgery on me while drunk on vodka, been punched in the head, etc.
But sometimes it’s not about the hits you can take and keep going regardless of. Just because I’m some punk ex-logger kid who can fight and fight and fight, doesn’t necessarily mean my best course of action is to fight and fight and fight.
I learned that from both my various Logger Gurus and my martial arts Senseis.
Sometimes becoming a center of calm is more important than standing right back up and throwing haymakers in a second round of combat. Metaphorically or not.
It’s part of why I’m vowed to pacifism outside of defense. Oftentimes the first thing we want to do when disappointment strikes is stand up and go nose to nose with our enemy, scenario, or aggressor. But it takes a lot of balls to know when to quietly nod, before you then politely turn around and walk away to find some sort of stability before making your next move.
Discipline can often defeat all challenges. Yet discipline itself is one of the most challenging things to master in and of itself.
Can you stand perfectly still in the eye of a raging storm, be it real or rhetorical?
Can you seek peace before violence and destruction?
Can you sit with the pain and suffering you endure, and process it calmly and wisely?
These are all good questions.
Because let’s face it, disappointment will find us. Be it my cancelled book deal, or losing a job, or having to live through a nasty breakup – disappointment is a mere fact of life.
The question is how we rise above it and continue on when our hopes and dreams have been dashed across the floor. When we’re called foul names, or treated like shit because other humans have yet to learn compassion or even a modicum of respect.
I’m not perfect by any means. I frequently have to force myself to see every other living human as a peer, and not an obstacle or user. But part of expanding upon one’s own persistence of self is doing just that. Trying to see people as people first, and to treat them as equals regardless of how much misanthropy might be flowing through our veins in any given moment.
Even if you’re trapped in the depths of despair after disappointment strikes again and again, such breaches of trust don’t have to be the end of the world.
They can be new beginnings, instead.
So ask yourselves – how are you going to use your trials, tribulations, and struggles to overcome disappointment?
You can either succumb, and suffer endlessly… Or you can choose a new beginning for yourself.
Ultimately, the choice is yours.
Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.
-McRae
