Unreliable

My mother did it again. She says something, she doesn't do it, and seems surprised that I'm angry.
She said she would cook something for us to eat today at noon. I tried to call her 3 times. It's 1pm and she finally called me back. She just woke up, and doesn't know what we are going to eat.

She doesn't owe me anything. But I never asked either that she comes at my place, nor that she brings something to eat. She said she would do it, so I counted on her to do that. Now it's 1pm, I'm hungry, I have nothing to eat, and I need to work.

I think I used to be rather unreliable too. Now that I try to achieve something in my life, I find unreliable people extremely upsetting.

I mean what I say, and I do what I say.

When somebody tells me "ho you did it", I answer "of course, I told you I would do it". And I'm secretly upset, because I think people that are surprised that I do what I said, are surprised because they know they themselves are unreliable.

To be further examined

Yesterday my brain classified the capacitor...

...and the pipe bomb...

...close to each other. Of course both are about concentrating energy. What else...

My poor decision-making, my uncommon path through life so far, the odd ways in which my brain seem to work, all those things makes me unique. But it can either be good-unique, or bad-unique. Of course I'm not interested in being a very original failure.
It only has value if I end up winning.

Topple

Without thinking to much about it.

People are unreliable

How I hate people that don't do what they say.
This person was supposed to come to adopt 2 of my guinea pigs at 2pm. It's 5pm and she wouldn't even send a message to apologize. I have very few time, and need a strong organization. She said she would come, I organized my schedule accordingly, and now what?! It's the second time in a row that somebody do that with me. It seems people don't have any plan. They wander randomly through life like rats in a labyrinth. They randomly turned left and ended up with kids. Now they happen to feel like adopting some guinea pigs, they should turn right for that, but suddenly they see some cheese straight ahead and they forget about the guinea pigs.
People are unreliable. The worst part is they don't even seem to think it's a problem. I don't even understand how they happen to survive.

Why can't they just leave me alone ?

I am the kid on this photo.
This is one of my mother's favourite photos of me. A friend of her had put her hat on my head, and they found that so cute that my mother took this picture.

A few years ago, during a dinner with my family (I was still living with my parents at this time), my father expressed some concern about me. I was going through especially harsh times. I don't think I was actually more anxious and depressed than usual. It's just that I was so tired that I couldn't hide my inner state very well anymore.

He told me :

There is this picture of you as a little kid. You are playing, and suddenly somebody put a hat on your head. You turn towards this person and look so sad. It was like your face was saying : "why are you people annoying me? Leave me alone". Well, those days you have that same look on your face.

My father was not considering young children just as cute objects, but as persons. And as such, they had feelings and deserved respect. He cared about my feelings and as a consequence was neither the person that put the hat on my head, nor the one that took the photo. He is the one that perceived my sadness but probably thought it was useless trying to explain to people around why this picture was not actually cute.

"The Child's Right to Respect" is a book from Janusz Korczak. One of many that are patiently waiting on my reading list. I still didn't read any books from this author, but from what I currently know about him, I think he must be some great man. Someone that could contribute to restoring some of my faith in humanity.

Maybe there is a connection here with my grand father shaking the hand of babies to say hello, which always shocked my mother. She perceived it as an impossibility to display, or maybe even feel, tenderness. She perceived it as some important issue in any way. Knowing myself a bit, knowing my father a bit, and having no hard time imagining my grand father having similar traits, I always considered she was right about "our" difficulties with displays of emotions. But my grand-father's behaviour may also have had the purpose of showing the people around that babies too were persons. After all, he was a psychiatrist. And I think he actually liked children. I remember that he would give positive comments about the fact my parents bought little chairs, tables, and armchairs especially for their children. I did hear him say something like "Good. I see that's a littles-friendly place".

I wish I had talked to him more. I'd like to go on his tomb. I'd like to see his name on the stone. My name.
He published around 50 papers, studied all his life, and left us thousands of books. I wonder whether he had found something about life. Something that could help me.
But he was no-one like "the old rabbi". As I remember him, he was rather constantly discoursing. But that's ok, because I don't think I would be satisfied with "all you need is love, be a good boy". And I am not certain that would really be an answer from someone that actually went to the bottom of life.

I think my grand-father was constantly flooding people with loads of informations about entire worlds they had never even heard of. He must have felt very intellectually lonely.
At the end of his life, he had a "girlfriend". There is an ambiguity in French. The word "copine" is a common word for either "friend" or "girlfriend", depending on the context. One often plays on this ambiguity. He never said anything about her. But we know she would come several times a week. He even paid for her tickets as she used to park in front of his apartment with no consideration for the law. My aunt said she saw them together. They would just sit next to each other in front of the window and watch the park. We didn't know her name and had a hard time finding her when my grand father passed. What they were talking about, together, in front of the window, we'll never know.

"Whoops, that was weird. I don't know why I did that."

Silicon Valley, season 1, episode 2.

Quote 1:

- Did you just take a sip from an empty cup?

- Yes.

- Why did you do that? 

- Just something to do. 

 Quote 2:

Whoops, that was weird.
I don't know why I did that.

Quote 3:

- Um, but first, if you don't mind, I'd like to use the restroom.

- Yeah.

- You don't have to ask permission to do that.

- Why, have you not gone since you've been here?

- I have not. 

I feel a bit better now, but this describes well how I behaved during an important part of my life; because of social anxiety. I would have strange moves, say strange things, or refrain from going to the restroom to the point it would become a real emergency, a matter of life and death, just because I was afraid.
Those strange moves, and those strange things, I would have them against my will of course. I was aware of being weird, which would increase my anxiety, which in turn would make me do more weird things. I couldn't help it.

I remember once, my parents and I visited some friends of theirs, that I had never met before. I was probably around 8 years old, and they had a girl a bit older than me. Her parents suggested that she should lead me to the playroom. I said nothing, and felt compelled to follow the girl. Indeed, they had a nice large playroom full of very tempting toys. We stopped at the door-frame, and she asked me what I wanted to play with. I just froze, and said nothing, for long minutes. And more minutes. With time passing, as I was aware of the weirdness of my behaviour, I would feel more and more anxious. She sighed, and leant her shoulder against the door frame. I did the same, and kept waiting. I was hoping that at some point she would give up and just leave me alone. She didn't, and I finally gathered enough courage to move silently towards some toys. She followed me and tried again to talk to me. I never answered. Then the parents called us because the dinner was ready. It was a huge relief to go back to my parents. At the moment she got to her own parent she said that I was "really a moron".

I'm not a moron, I'm just a weirdo, and today I'm fine with this fact.