adult on the outside kid on the in.

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I feel that I am an adult in some ways and not in others. By age I am an adult. As much as I'd like to be an adult its hard. I have a crappy job that makes little money. I am kind of an electrician (I'm color blind, lots of color wires... I can't be a real electrician, or ever get paid the big bucks for it even if I know how all of this stuff is supposed to be done), half the time I'm an electrician, the other half of the time I do other things.


My dad's an Electrical Contractor, essentially he runs his own business. After realizing I couldn't do the whole army thing and I came back home a job for him is where I ended up. I make ten bucks an hour, enough to pay some bills. but to be honest if I wasn't living with my mom (who I can't even see because she's in Rehab for Alcohol problems) rent free then theres no ways I could afford to make ends meet on what I make especially in the area I live. Rent in my area starts at about six hundred dollars a month and only goes up from there. You could put a tent in your backyard and probably get someone to pay at least five hundred for it.


Now I'm not really that good with money. I think that stems from the fact that I never had money before I had a job. My father didn't believe in allowances for chores. He said that children should do what they are told and that being paid to clean or do any work for their parents in their own house is a form of communism. Until I got my first job at sixteen I had never had any more then a few dollars at a time.


I don't really save up money. All my money either gets borrowed or spent on things that I want (I recently stopped letting people borrow money from me, I now tell them I don't have any... I reckon I've been giving out about a third of my paycheck every month for about the last two years). In reality I never seem to understand where my money goes only that after most paychecks I don't have any or much to show for it.


Moneys only one problem... Theres transportation. I have a truck that was given to me by my grandpa. I loathe driving. It gives me a lot of anxiety. Not just driving, the fact that I rarely know where I am going, and that in this business I am often forced to put more then what I feel is safe in this truck. I can't even begin to retell horrer stories I've heard of people going to jail or being given large fins because they were forced to do this and stuff flew out of their truck and were pulled over by a police officer for it. even worse all the stories of how guys caused a pile up, bolted, and got away with it.


Now my biggest problem with transportation is I never know where I'm going and I'm bad with directions. I hate it when someone tells me to go east or west on a street. East west, north south... Thats for freeways because on freeways that is marked. People expect that I always know which is which, and when I tell them I don't, they can't understand that. They tell me that they have a map inside their head that tells them, I really have a hard time imagining where things are inside my head.


My dad is constantly pissed off at me because I can't find these places. He talks for a really long time when he gives me directions and he gives me too much information, he could not simply tell me go left or right (and he almost never tells me what I'm looking for)... he tells me in a really complicated way that by the end of it I never understood which way he wanted me to turn (I've tried talking to my dad about this, but he never listens to anything I say).


I hate that everyone expects me to know where all this stuff is. I hate that people expect me to know how to read a map. No one has taught me how to read maps, how am I supposed to know this? Was I supposed to learn it in school or something (I was home schooled most of my life so even if it is normal for kids to learn these things I sure as hell didn't)?


I feel like the only reason people know where this stuff is, is because they went through all of that first car, right of passage stuff when they were sixteen. Because they were always doin stuff they weren't supposed to, because they had friends to drive around, and party with, and get in trouble with. I feel that maybe because I never went through the normal process of growing up, my life is going to be harder then others. I have a fifteen year old sister, she knows where every mall within a hundred mile radius is and if she had a license could drive to any of them. I only know where the closest one to me is (even then I don't really want to go).


I may view ten thousand different things, but at the end of each working day, between the time I get off work, and the time I go to bed, I sit in front of this computer and try to make time pass until I am ready to sleep. People ask me, what do you do... I do the internet. I'd like to have friends to do stuff with, but... How does that work? I have two friends and there both a few years younger then I am. Neither of them can drive... When it comes down to it I don't think I've ever had friends my own age... I don't know people my own age, and am not even sure if I would like people my own age. The things I value the most are openness and acceptance. I don't feel like I've ever met any group of people that really believe in things like that. I've seen groups of people that say they do, that say they are accepting of others, but I've never really met any group of people who really is.


I don't want to be different from everyone else. I hate that people always walk up to me and ask if I'm lost, or say I have a confused look on my face... I hate, that simply by being a bratty teenager most kids know more about living in this world when their sixteen then I know... I'm twenty years old. I hate feeling different, I hate not having friends... I hate the fact that I never seem to really know whats going on or understand simple things that EVERYONE else understands. I only wish, that I was like other people, that I could be normal... I wish life wasn't so hard. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably end up dead before I figure this world out.

Yes that describes me to some extent. Many of my interests could be described as "child-like" for a 47 year old man. Never had any real interest in going to like a discoteque and trying to be "cool". In all honesty, I would be a flop at that sort of thing. As for living with my parents, don't have much choice due to present circumstances. Hopefully, that will change in the near future.

Wow. That is a good list of issues. The things missing are not difficult to learn. I see it as no one has bothered to tell you the tips. I taught my kids, step by step, how to read a map. I also taught them how it fit into their head.
My parents "adopted" a 21 year old girl a few years ago. She had a lot of the same bits of missing education as you, because her mother did not want to let her grow up. My mom and dad taught her how to read maps, write checks, be self confident, etc. Maybe you need to find a mentor to help you out too.

A mentors a nice idea... I don't think I know anyone who could/would do something like that. I don't really know anyone that basically has their life together, or is actually "about" something.