It's 4:33am Saturday morning and I'm propped up with my pillows in bed writing on my laptop.
Writing happens at my desk, writing happens after I do my morning routine: get up at 5:45. feed cats. hot drink. poop. morning pages. strength class on apple fitness. yoga class on apple fitness. That's the rule.
But I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep, and my brain started thinking about when I got sober and I would wake up at 5am and write my blog first thing, and my ADHD was like "Let's do this!"
My autism is not happy. It wants the rule. "We are not doing this."
Usually when this happens I just lay in the dark and listen to my brain argue until my alarm goes off. I hadn't really realized it, but when this happens I'm a spectator, watching their back and forth. This morning I stepped in. "We are trying this."
Most of the time there are several conversations going in in my mind at once. They're all threads and I'm weaving them together in a tapestry of thinking that creates my day to day. Sometimes it's real pretty, sometimes it's a tangled mess. The weavers never stop weaving. The rowers keep on rowing. "Is it raining is it snowing is a hurricane a-blowing..."
It's been 4 months since I, at 53 years old, was diagnosed with autism, 10 months since I, at 52 years old, was diagnosed with ADHD. Since then I've learned that giftedness (I was identified as gifted as a kid) is also a neurodivergence, and so I'm actually 2e, and I'm definitely alexithymic, and maybe dyspraxic. My continuing deep dive into neurodiversity has explained a lot about my lived experience. I'm not used to it yet, it's kind of like moving to a new city or starting a new job, when you sort of know where you are or what you're doing, but not really. I do understand now that who I am and how I experience the world is not me having a bunch of character flaws that need work. It's because I'm neurodivergent.
In a way, this feels like an excuse, mostly because it's hard to shake all the things we're taught about being normal and how if you can't live up to that simple benchmark it's your own fault and you should work harder to fix yourself. And also I'm 53, I lived over half a century not knowing this information- does it really matter? (YES IT DOES) I'm slowly getting used to the idea that the way I experience the world is not like neuronormativity. The layers of ways I contort and shut myself down to approximate normal life are becoming more and more apparent.
It feels like I have been operating without a manual the whole time. Like someone assembled me, shipped me off, but forgot to include the instructions. Having these instructions would have prevented me from living in a state of confusion, dissociation, and forcing myself to do things (self coercion) a very large percentage of the time.
I had 3 busy days in a row this week, and I could feel it. I knew at the end of the 2nd day that I was pretty fried. My ADHD gets revved up when I'm busy like that and it wants to go go go, it feeds off of the momentum and is an unstoppable gremlin gobbling up my energy until I am almost shaking with the mental and physical exhaustion. By the end of the 3rd day I wanted to just crawl into bed and turn off all the lights. But I had to take my daughter to an appointment, and then go to Costco, and then put everything away, and then feed the cats, and then make dinner for me and the kids, and then clean up, and the exhaustion turns into a weird wired energy that wants something who knows what that often defaults to snacks and tv and I can get frozen in that loop which is yet another kind of exhaustion. Sometimes I end up sitting on the couch for 2 hours trying to figure out how to get myself to get up and go to bed. Last night, I found myself at the kitchen counter with a glass of milk and two chocolate chip cookies at 10:30 after watching 3 or 4 episodes of Love is Blind, still searching for a thread of comfort, still trying to just go. to. bed.
Sometimes I wish I had someone to help me. Someone I wasn't obligated to who could see that I was in a busy/ADHD cycle and would kindly help me off that loop. They would put me in comfy clothes and cover me with light and fluffy cozy blankets, turn on my fan. Sit down next to me and stroke my hair with the right amount of pressure while I tried to settle down. They would tell me what to do- how to breathe, what parts of my body to relax, what to let go of. They would close my door, take my daughter to her appointment, and go to Costco, and put everything away, and feed the cats, and make dinner, and clean up. They wouldn't need me to tell them how to do any of it. They would be in charge and I would be...not in charge.
I cannot even imagine that. It feels like I have been in charge of everyone and everything for as long as I can remember. I want to learn to do it differently, but I have made myself the capable one through a lifetime of overcompensating. It's a weird place to be. Why would I want to be less capable? Why would anyone want to get worse at anything? And then there's the cost of changing my behavior- so many new things to monitor, to figure out how to do correctly, to adjust.
I often surprise myself when I notice how hard I'm working internally to maintain the appearance of being normal and self sufficient externally. Like at Costco, where it is bright, crowded, and loud, and just generally confusing. Without all the intensive regulating I would have sunk to the floor in the first 5 minutes of my shopping trip, right by the chocolate chip cookie display, and curled into a ball. Why? Because I was already past my capacity and it was too cold in the big vegetable cooler part of the store and then when I came out a man stopped in front of my cart and wouldn't move and other people were moving around me and I couldn't understand what he was doing. But instead of losing my shit or dropping to the floor I remained friendly and polite, patient and normal.
It's weird to be in the middle of Costco, imagining what your meltdown would look like while at the same time you are acting like everything is cool.
Originally my idea was to write about breaking patterns of behavior that are simple- like what I'm doing this morning- writing in bed before my morning routine. But it feels like there are bigger patterns to break- like letting myself get worse at life. Like leaving the cart next to the chocolate chip cookies at Costco and walking out because it's just too damn much. It feels like a breath of fresh air to think of not making myself keep going, or saying "I'm bad at _____" out loud and someone who is good at that thing helps me. It feels very lonely and disjointed to try to just be okay and capable at everything all the time.
I think when you know you're different, but you don't know why, you tend to try really hard to be what your perception of the ideal norm is to keep attention away from the fact that you aren't that norm .
A few of my perceptions of the ideal norm are:
-being capable and self sustaining
-being totally flexible with needs and boundaries
-not drawing attention to yourself or asking for things
-not being inconvenient or a burden to others, including strangers, including people in traffic
-always let other people go first, try to stay out of the way
💗😍