At this stage of life, I am realizing that the social conditioning of my youth has not been good for me. I was fed attitudes, opinions, and beliefs that were not my own but were presented as right and proper. Men were to be catered to, a woman’s role was to care for her husband and children, authority was to be obeyed, God was omniscient –not just saw everything but willed it into being.

Consequently, I think I was an intellectual cripple until my 40s when my blinders were ripped off by the circumstances of life. My marriage was failing, my son was grown, and authority was abysmally wrong on so many things.

It all came to a head in 2002 as I entered my last year of full-time college.  I had dropped out when young and unfocused and hampered by my social conditioning, but returned in my late 30s when I was restless and confident there was more to life than I’d been led to believe.  Sociology, anthropology, and philosophy classes taught me to question everything I had been indoctrinated with.  It was tumultuous, but also comforting. It wasn’t too late to have a meaningful life.  I could still achieve self-actualization.

I had always been told I could do anything, and I felt guilty for not having achieved much. But in retrospect, that was just pablum fed to me as everything else directed me to be a plaything, a servant, a doormat.  How can you be anything when you are busy finding and maintaining a husband, a home, a child, and a job all while looking good and cooking delicious meals.

That return to college in the late 90s created a line in my life.  What happened before and what happened after.  I have been far happier with the after in spite of trials and tribulations.

The difference has been I have ignored that early conditioning.  But I feel like a maverick—an outlier.  I need to unlearn that shit completely.  Wipe it from my memory banks so that I can look aghast at all the other social conditioning that I’ve been subjected to and just don’t realize yet. The first 40 years of my life culminated in my understanding that authority had been wrong and I had been hoodwinked. The past 24 years have taught me there is a bottomless depth of bullshit installed in my head – much of it I’m probably still unaware it’s there and ticking.  Yes, ticking, like a bomb to catch me unaware and unready for the challenges to come — aging, eldercare, and all the other still unknowns. Lord only knows what’s in my head waiting to unleash misery and mayhem due to early teachings.  I need to unlearn that bullshit now.  Now.