I could never handle school, at any age, in any form. I repeated classes, got poor grades, disappointed and enraged my parents, played hooky, never studied.

I lurched through life like an enraged drunk, blowing up everything around me, running from one place to another, always finding me in the mirror when I got there.

I was too smart to fail, too sick to succeed. Since I never knew what I wanted, I could never find what I wanted.

I groped and hid my way through school, and could not learn.

I dropped out of two colleges, I still can’t do long division or multiply, have no interest in perfect grammar, and have a severely impaired attention span. I hid during gym class.

I had no friends, remember nothing of any class I ever attended, had no beloved teachers to remember, and disappointed every good one that I did have. I stole things, burned things, lied about things.

I failed all of them, and all of them failed me.

Everything I know I learned away from school, I could never belong, not to anything.

Some teachers thought I showed a spark of talent as a writer, but even they were disappointed with me, I never did my homework, learned my lessons. Everyone I met labeled me someone with untapped potential, and deep troubles, including my father, who I nearly drove mad with my learning problems.

I wet my bed at home, had accidents in school, was targeted by bullies and angry boys. I gave off every alarm signal a kid could give off, and absolutely nobody heard me. My pediatrician asked me to draw stick figures of my parents once, and tsk-tsked when he saw them.

I had no friends, fit in with no group, felt misunderstood and disliked by everyone and carried my troubles into the adult world.

I stormed out of a dozen great jobs, fled from a long marriage, failed my family again and again,  and always in a rage or huff. I moved 14 times and came to hate everyplace I ever lived until I came to the country. I was very good at my work, dumbfounded by life.

I always ran away, until I finally couldn’t run any more, and was startled to find myself home.

I could always get great jobs, I could never stand to keep them, I blew up my life not once, but again and again. I was just completely out of sync with myself, my family, my work.

It’s good you are a writer, the specialist said, I see a lot of those. They seem to end up here.

Much later in life, after I broke down in my late 50’s and early 60’s, I was finally diagnosed by a specialist in New York as having some pronounced traits both of ADD and mild or “benign” autism.

My symptoms were many and varied – a frenzied mind, severe anxiety, a tendency to think in images, not words or complete thoughts, self-destructive choices, rage and much anger and disconnection.

Before, the therapists had always called it severe anxiety disorder. Finally, I was labeled in a broader way. I’m glad they didn’t know this when I was young, I hate labels.

I had a name for my inability to relate to many people, a tendency to be direct and tell people things they didn’t wish to hear, and an inability to  make friends and keep them. To make people uncomfortable. I guess I’m on the spectrum, but we never talked about that. The specialist said labels didn’t matter to him either, he said they were generally meaningless.

This new diagnosis was a great shock to me, although not to the therapists, I am sure, that I had been seeing for decades. I knew it was true the minute I heard him said it. But where to go from there?

At this point in life, my new specialist and I agreed, there was no real value to medication, treatment or drama.  I wasn’t sick, I had achieved much in my life, I just didn’t know how to be well.

There was no real reason to go back and try to learn the things people like me can learn now, or point fingers. The thing was to move forward, and do better for the remainder of my life. My remaining time was precious to me.

“Some people will always be uncomfortable around you,” the shrink told me. “Some people will really get you and appreciate you.” You are, he said, quite  valuable. Nobody has the right to make you feel badly about yourself, he said.

If someone does, get away from them and stay away from them.

He was the first person to suggest a blog to me. it was a revelation. It’s okay to apologize for something you do, but not for who you are.

It would, he said, be a healthy way for me to grow and change, and figure out who I really was.  He also suggested I take up photography, the tests he gave me, he said, showed a great disposition to images and composition.

I often suggest a blog to people who roll their eyes and think I am crazy.

I am crazy, but I know what it did for me.

And the blog was perfect for me. I could do it by myself, I didn’t need teachers or people, and I could do it my way, I could add my pictures,  I didn’t need professors or editors. And there was nobody to make uncomfortable, because there was finally nobody at all.

I just had to please me. I lived in a castle, surrounded  by a moat.

Photography, like the blog, would be healing for me, would provide a healthy outlet for my suffocating visual gifts and also my need to express my self creatively and continuously. An outlet, if you will, for my runaway energy. Now, my mind had a place to go.

I began to heal, the anxiety and anger receded – dramatically – and I calmed down and settled, like a smoking engine after a very long race.

The therapist was right on all counts. The blog and my photography helped to ground me – I had a way to express the images in my head –  and when I met Maria, who had her own disabilities and issues, we each got and appreciated – and loved – each other right away. The shrink was right about that too.

My wife at the time was bewildered by my picture-taking, Maria got it right away and called me every night to talk about the photographs. I asked her about her art.

It was the birth of us.

My life had emptied out, my life is filling up.

He gave me one last bit of counseling that I have taken to heart and absorbed.

“Don’t ever apologize for who you are or what you are,” he said, “none of this was your fault. It drives people mad when they are not known, affirmed or understood, crazy people are sometimes born, they are sometimes made.” This was also good to hear, I couldn’t quite understand how he knew that I was always apologizing for my life.

Every time you apologize for who you are, he said, you are cutting off a piece of your self and giving it away, making yourself  smaller. Who you are is a precious thing, be proud of it.

It was true, I felt  guilty all the tine. For disappointing my parents, my teachers, so many friends and mentors and bosses, my family.  For wreaking so much havoc.

I did think it was all my fault, I was forever apologizing to everyone I knew for the mess I had made of things, for my errant behavior, for being so different, for finding the things that most people did so difficult.

The therapist told me my writing, my pictures, the discipline and continuity of the blog would steady me, give me a way of understanding myself, a structure for my chaotic head. I didn’t need to take any more valium, he said – I had been taking it for 30 years, I was addicted –  I didn’t need to take pills to focus my mind.

In recent years, this hard and good labor of the mind did save me, and stabilized me, and helped me give rebirth to my life, a spectacular and transformative experience. It was just what was missing in my life.

It gave me a routine and a foundation that was new to me. And good for m e.

Most of the anger is gone, it bubbles up from time to time, but is faint and fleeting.

I have no desire to move, I have made wonderful friends, I have found a community, I have learned much from the acceptance and adaptability of animals, in dogs and animals I have found a stability and steadiness and learned much about loving and patience and acceptance, three things I could not comprehend.

I also had a subject I loved to write about and that people were interested in.

The fear and panic are gone. It seems I don’t need them anymore to hide behind, finding out who you are is a great medicine. I could finally learn, it seemed. Life was the best teacher for me, she didn’t mess around and knew how to get my attention.

My relationship with Maria has taught me how to love, and also that I can be loved. And we have an unspoken rule with one another. We never apologize for who we are.

I think that must be the best advice I got, this business of not apologizing for me.

Iin some ways it is the most  important lesson I learned.

Not apologizing for myself, accepting who I am helped me learn how to stand in my truth, and be comfortable in my own shoes. And accept  myself. And when you do that, there are other people who will accept you.

And they are the ones that matter.

I will sometimes make people uncomfortable, I will sometimes make them comfortable. I yam what I am, said Popeye, and good for him. I always loved  him for that. Me too.

I no longer blame myself when someone doesn’t get me. Some people will get me, and some people won’t, and those who can’t or won’t or don’t wish to can move along and find somebody better for them.

You can’t talk other people into accepting who you are, they either will or they won’t. My life is not an argument for other people to make. I do not need to apologize for what I think and believe. Or for who I am.

And that is freeing and healing and liberating. I suppose the first step in finding acceptance is to accept yourself. I like where I am. I am happy in my life. I am in love and I am loved.  I am just where I want to be and ought to be, and it is the strangest and most wonderful.

I am sorry if I ever harmed or hurt anyone, it is never my wish to make anyone uncomfortable. Pehaps that is just the price of me.

But I am not sorry for who I am. I kind of like me these days, it is a new and very good, even beautiful,  feeling.