I'm twenty-two. A million years ago, when I was twenty, I wrote that I was like a mosaic that was always working on itself to make its squares smaller and smaller so the picture could be more detailed. I guess in this metaphor everyone else was like some really high-definition photograph and as much as I worked I couldn't get to their level of complexity because I was made by trial and error instead of nature. There was always something about me that wasn't as fluid or as soft or sharp.
If you're wondering what kind of human being would say something like that about themselves, I actually don't know because I am not like that anymore and it really does feel like a million years ago.
I have bad brains, probably the worst ever. Sometimes my bad brains shoot out horrible things like a geyser of shit and other times they just stall and wait around in the same circles. Most of the time the shit geyser and the stalling and waiting just combine themselves and feed off each other. It's pretty impressive that I manage to get anything done around here. I mean, frequently I don't, and I would never say that my bad brains are a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but I have come to some conclusions about them.
They are my brains, so I love them as much as I can.
I am not worth less than people who don't have bad brains. I'm also not better than people who are less able to get around their bad brains than I am.
I'm not obliged to trick other people into thinking that I don't have bad brains.
I love my bad brains because they are the apparatus I experience Creation through right now.
Back when I was a mosaic and not an unrepentant bad brains, I never knew how horrible things would be when I started experiencing them for real. But I didn't know how safe I would feel and how much I would love people, either.
I'm really glad that you will be working with people with ASD or intellectual disabilities. I am going to write down that line "I love my bad brains because they are the apparatus I experience Creation through right now." I need to remember it because I have often lost a developing friendship when my bad brains leaked out. I always thought survival depended on keeping my messy brain under wraps and my primary strategy for coping was to try and keep my mouth shut...that works sometimes, but I'm a born blurter. Now I am in the tricky position of trying to teach my 20 year old daughter how to value herself inspite of having ASD even though I have always beat myself up for having ASD (I only know because of her...I was in the position of sitting down at my computer for many days with the admonition to myself that I could keep hiding that there was something wrong with me, or I could find out what it's called and thereby help her. Now I know, but I can't get a diagnosis for her. I don't know where to turn next, but this post is a good reminder that she maybe just needs to see that I am acceptable to myself as an example of how to go forward. At 53, I feel too old to learn that new trick, but I love her so I will keep trying.
ReplyDeleteCool! I'm glad if anything helps.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to say that just being happy with yourself is always enough, sometimes stuff is really bad and you need more support--maybe it's privileged of me to be able to go around acting like being happy with yourself is the most important thing. But I just feel unrecognizably different since I stopped hiding (I don't necessarily tell the truth to everyone, but I do to myself at least).
I never understood that entry, to be honest. I mean, I understood the borderline trans stuff but not the stuff about being a fake person or being a mosaic. That was always pretty alien point of view to me.
ReplyDeleteI've always felt more real to myself than other people have ever felt to me. Which I think means I'm a pretty self-centered puss.
I mean, it may have to do with knowing you're disabled when you're younger and growing up with the label but not the community, hence not the feeling that it is acceptable to be that way.
ReplyDeleteSelf-centred describes it somewhat. I didn't use the mosaic concept either, but I also felt like somehow I wasn't real, like I was a caricature and other people were real, or as if I were two dimensial while other people are three-dimensional. And the overreaction to environment felt selfish but stopping my overreaction was next to impossible. I felt just as much like I was being selfish when I had asthma attacks or rashes. I haven't been able to eat fish for years, but I still dabble in some of the things I have had reactions to if the reactions are mild, because people just think you're putting on airs if you don't eat what you're served. If you asked me what's different now, well, I have to spend a good deal of my time alone performing ritualistic types of work (housework--on any given day, some part of my house will be spotless while another area is a mess, or inventory at the place I volunteer--not that the inventory is unnecessary but that I relish doing it in a way that is alien to most people; it comforts me). It's like I can't do anything unless I can overdo it. Also, I often find that my lack of earning power makes me question my value as a person (as if just being made by God didn't award me dignity). I spent a lot of my youth being told to get over myself (and it felt like I couldn't overcome myself).
ReplyDeleteI know this is somewhat off topic, but when you were describing your bad brains, it made me think of a t-shirt I saw once, of a unicorn sh*ttin rainbows, and it made me smile, cause some days its like that. It may be Sh*t, but Its Pretty sh*t none the less. ;)
ReplyDeleteI kind of think that telling people that happiness is seriously important for life isn't wrong, because being happy with myself made me able to deal with a lot more shit than I would be able to otherwise, and that was pretty much both a survive thing as well as a life thing.
ReplyDelete