Better late than never

A late-flowering daffodil.

I've spent a lot of time in the rain today.
I usually avoid the rain, and I can't say I enjoyed any of it but it's distracting.

In 12 hours from now a psychologist is arriving to assess me for Asperger's Syndrome.
I'm reassuring myself with the thought that this also means it will all be over in 16 hours.
So I just have to get through the next 16 hours now. 'A piece of piss' says Richard.

I picked up some old school reports from Mum's house today. She handed them to me in a brown envelope. My name was written on the envelope in Dad's handwriting. He was good at compartmentalising things.

I haven't had a chance to re-read all my reports - some of them are too upsetting anyway. I can see how my life and my education gradually fell apart bit-by-bit over the years after a really promising start.
The word that crops up the most in my reports is "Quiet" - that seems to have been a problem according to some of my teachers. Maybe teachers would like to think about exactly whose problem that is! One teacher actually marked me down precisely for being quiet when I was 10 years old. A whole page of As disrupted by one quiet B for not talking.
I can see once I reached secondary school how teachers struggled to interpret me or even ascertain my abilities, and my grades fell and fell and fell until eventually I was letting them fall because I stopped caring.

One thing I was surprised by was how well I was doing at art at school. I didn't remember getting such good grades and comments for art. I guess it was because my elder sister was so artistic and I wasn't as good as her.

The best comments, by far were about my writing. It reminded of comments in Tess's recent school reports about creativeness and humour in her writing. My mum had always said I should be a writer but I never really believed it was something I could actually do, so I let it go. For years and years. And then I realised it was something I have to do, good or not.

I've come late to a lot of things. Starting writing at 39, getting a degree at 41, So it's fitting that I should be getting a psychological assessment at 44.

I can't help thinking being allowed to be quiet when I was young and not misinterpreted for years would have been bloody helpful, and i might be feeling less damaged now.

I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to sitting here in 24 hours from now typing Monday's blip entry...

Phewie.