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In praise of "nervous energy"

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In praise of "nervous energy"
Photo by Camila Quintero Franco / Unsplash

“Hey mom,” I asked a couple of visits home ago, “how, and why, did you have me in ballet, soccer, and Scouts all at once?” Both my kids had started public school, and the pending juggle of extra curricular activities felt daunting.

“You had a lot of nervous energy,” came her reply, in trademark deadpan style.

I won’t say which, but one of my kiddos definitely had something that looked a lot like Restless Leg Syndrome for awhile there. If we didn’t have friends with kids whose demeanor was the polar opposite, I’d be inclined to believe that ALL kids have a limitless supply of energy. I mean, I DO think we’re all more energetic as children than we are as adults, but let’s save splitting hairs for another time.

Maybe you’re one of the people I’ve told “I operate at a different OPTEMPO.” Maybe you’re one of the people who’s described me (for better AND for worse) as “intense.” To each I say, Amen.

It’s true, I AM intense. I DO operate at a different OPTEMPO. It’s taken me decades to admit it because the other thing I have, which I also find difficult to admit, is high intelligence.

A couple readers were fellow employees with me back in 2016 when we combatted Islamophobia together under the banner of Veterans for Peace. They were CCed in an email from our boss browbeating me for “analyzing and philosophizing,” an echo of the screams of Drill Instructors reminding recruits they “aren’t paid to think.”

As a kid, I didn’t see myself as smart. The word I’d use was “bored.” My high school GPA was 2.38, and the first words out of my guidance counselor’s mouth was “So, we’re looking at a JC [junior college] then?” I maxed out my credits for sports but never spent more than a year on any of them, from volleyball and water polo to wrestling and track. My brain is part of my body, I just didn’t know how to exercise it properly. That changed when I joined the military, where the lessons I learned from Scouting would be put to the test.

The Army taught me that my limits were bigger and wider than I ever could have imagined. A drill sergeant told us we were gonna scale an inverted wall and I scoffed. Until I actually did it. A lightbulb popped and I never felt better. I knew I’d max my PT score, but I never would have believed you if you were to tell me that I’d win my first Army Achievement Award for scoring the highest in my first Division Artillery test, a hands-on field exercise lasting a week.

It was my therapist that pointed out I probably have a high IQ. She said it repeatedly, that’s how I know she was trying to make sure it sunk in. It’s not that I don’t believe it, it’s that I hate making other people feel like they’re not. Even I fuk up and fall into the Zero Sum mentality, as though if I’m smart then someone else must be dumb.

I would have gone on forever telling folks “I’m intense,” or “I have a high OPTEMPO,’ from friends and family to myself and strangers. But something clicked when I was scrolling through a TikTok channel called ADHD Chatter. There were WAY too many ‘coincidences’ for me to shrug it off. My favorite new way to think of my brain is that it’s like a pen of many colors;

@adhd_chatter_podcastThe struggle is real 🤯 #adhd #adhdawareness #neurodivergent

Sometimes I have censored myself for others, and I won’t go into details here. But usually, I censor myself. I try to make myself a little smaller so I won’t hurt others’ feelings. But by masking, I’m keeping myself from living up to my potential. And that’s the other word I remember from my childhood, in those utterances between my mom and the guidance counselor;

“He has so much potential.”

I didn’t believe them. Not because I thought they were lying, but because I thought they were mistaken. It took the military, a loving family (original and 2.0, love you Laura!), and a good therapist to realize that it was me who had been wrong all along. I didn’t know myself as well as others knew me. And the best friends were able to see that “intensity” can legitimately be both a blessing AND a curse. It’s up to me to bear better fruit as I mature.

If you were one of the many people who saw an unexpected uptick in material from me around the election… I know, it was a lot. Because I AM a lot. Those who reached out learned that 2024 was the 20th anniversary of the worst part of my combat deployment. It was also a shitty time to be a conscientious voter in America, so combine the two and a picture begins to emerge. Can you imagine, if you had seen American soldiers (and an Iraqi police officer) get hurt and killed for democracy, only to come home and have to choose between a convicted felon and a former AG who ignored civil rights?

Talk about Iraq and a hard place, amiright?

My favorite ✌️concerned citizen✌️ was that New York Times reporter who assumed neurodivergence was the same as “mental illness.” The truth is, he saw me as dangerous because I had caught him in a few F-ups and he needed to project his angst onto me in order to avoid facing his guilt. Like the outcome of the election, I was “disappointed but not surprised” that his editors circled the wagons around another civilian savior rather than uphold the moral obligations of their craft. Am I surprised they also protected their own after defaming a veteran they used for their Victim trope? Nope. I just hope Damien T Rodriguez hasn’t un-alived himself for being forced into retirement.

So why the long post?

ADHD is a super power, not a mental illness (Don’t believe me? Listen to the episode accompanying this How Stuff Works article). And if I’m gonna believe in myself it is gonna take a lot of writing. I processed a lot of shit by composing Reborn on the Fourth of July, and I need to go back to that place to process the trauma of anti-military bias. Remember? I told you it was;

I will be following this ☧ost up with a little housekeeping; what my plan is and where I see myself going so you can have a clearer idea of whether or not you want to follow along. In the meantime I did want to make sure everyone knew where else to find me on the web now that it has been overrun by muskrats and penis-rocket salesmen. Meta and X are out, Bluesky is in; HMU if you’re on there too!