I come from a background of abuse of all types--physical, mental, and sexual, but the vast majority of it was mental. The feedback I've gotten about myself, from family members and peers alike, has always been some variation on, "I don't care how intelligent you are. That's just book-smarts. When it comes to living real life, you're dumb as a stump."

"You're book-smart, but you don't have any common sense."

"If you're so smart, how come you can't figure out...."

"You mean to tell me you're on the honor roll, but you don't know how to..."

"It doesn't matter how well you do in school. You're never going to get a good job, because nobody is going to hire a woman your size." (That's me with my husband, in my profile picture. I'll leave it to public opinion to decide if I'm too fat to be employable. And by the way, it was my mother who said that to me.)

I can't count the number of times I've been called a word that is now considered impolite but formerly meant "mentally slow," with technicalities such as IQ being dismissed as immaterial. I won't say the word, but it rhymes with "she started." The message has come through loud and clear. "Wow, you're sure good at that thing you just did. But it doesn't count. That's an empty skill. It won't help you succeed in life. In fact, being good at it only brands you as a geek anyway. What really matters are these other skills which, by sheer coincidence, you happen to be weakest in. The fact that you can't X or Y proves you're actually (that word). So you see, you really aren't very smart after all, and you have no reason to ever like yourself."

I was the oldest of four siblings, and I'm now nearing 49 years old. I was never taught to drive. The school I went to didn't offer driver's education, and although family members were willing to teach my younger siblings, they refused to teach me. I asked several times and got promises of, "Sure, I'll teach you to drive," but no one ever actually stepped up and did it. I was still in my teens when I heard my mother telling one of her friends that I had "some kind of mental block" when it comes to driving, and "just can't learn it." She had never even taken me out to try. Then directly out of high school came an abusive first marriage to a man who, I now understand, did not want me to be competent and independent and able to stand on my own two feet, because if I was, why would I need a creep like him in my life?

Circumstances are different for me now. I have a supportive husband who thinks I can do it, and had both the willingness and the means to pay for private lessons. I completed them.

But failed the test.

Which tells me, all those people who told me I was (that word) and couldn't learn it, were right after all. Sure, other people may fail the first time, or maybe even the first several times. But that's when they're 15 or 16 years old, right? Not when they're of an age when most people have been driving for two thirds of their lives.

I'm book-smart, but can't do a basic skill a normal adult does. Which has been pounded into me, is the real definition of (that word).

And I'm having an awful lot of trouble shutting those old messages UP.