All About Love.

 Should I continue reading the book I’ve already read and reread so many times now? Or should I write. Write down all the bloody mess in my head. I say that, describe it as though it’s all horrific but in truth it is just mess. A jumble sale of thoughts. Guess this is what happens when you’re someone who talks to yourself, a lot. Ruminating and regurgitating, riffing and, and…what’s another word beginning with “R” that can round up the bullshit that goes on in my brain? 

Let’s skip ahead, or rather back a few days… Autism. That’s my latest google dive. Not that I’ve forgotten you- ADHD. No, you’re still in the running. In my attempt to fit the way my mind works into a category. This time, I have been listening to Katherine May, who wrote “Wintering” talk to someone or other about her own diagnostic process. “I’m feeling everyone’s feelings”…she talks about what autism is for her and it’s not what I’ve learnt, not what we’re taught…probably not least because she is a woman. - “go straight to the heart of everything, straight from zero to the meaning of life in thirty seconds, and that’s where I’m comfortable”.

“I can’t interest myself in smalltalk”. 

That’s where I am comfortable. But I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m autistic. There’s obviously more to it than just some sound bites.

Do I have some sort of neurodiverse version of hypochondria? Like, I had never felt before that the way that I have always felt weird needed a name until recently. Why have I become so obsessed with it now? (Oh I wonder. As the ghosts of my childhood bubble up. Of being told continually I had to be more like “everyone else” “lower my expectations” “be less sensitive” or I would always be disappointed/alone/hurt/etc bloody etc)

Recalibrating, roughhousing, rationalising.

It’s not that I think there is anything wrong with my brain. (Not now) Recently as I was talking to my aunt, questioning why someone who I’ve known all my life as very controlled and closed off emotionally has suddenly started to open and become more vulnerable around me. A woman in her 70’s who literally helped in moulding my belief that shutting my mouth unless I was spoken to was polite. That my emotions were for me and no one else. She opens up because I have opened. And my aunt tells me as if it’s the simplest thing to behold - “perhaps it’s because you make it safe for her to be seen and to be vulnerable” 

What a fucking beautiful thing to be told. 

Rambling, regretting, Raging.

Raging. 

I have become very angry lately. Well. That’s a fucking lie. I have admitted to myself that I am very angry, that I have been withholding anger since I was a kid, in a very healthy way of course…(okay. no, no. I do know how bad that actually is) I’m furious about so many things. How many layers does an onion have? Do I have to peel them? 

I am I think, especially irked- let’s make it sound a bit cuter and more palatable shall we - that I have no real sense of what belonging means. What it feels like. How I can feel safe. Without masking. An example. Working in coffee having conversations with so…many…people, inevitably means sometimes I make things awkward no matter how self aware I am. I get too honest, I ask too deep a question, I fail at being able to just continually talk about the weather in a normal way. 

I ask people how they feel and really mean it. I’m a monster I know. 

I’m angry at the fact I feel like the “weirdness” I know doesn’t solely belong to me is actually not that weird at all. In fact I think it’s really fucking normal. 

Ridiculous. 

I should be reading. It keeps my mind occupied. 

Grief and sadness overwhelmed me. I did not know what I had done wrong. And nothing I tried made it right. 

For years I lived my life suspended, trapped by the past, unable to move into the future. Like every wounded child I just wanted to turn back time and be in that paradise again, in that moment of remembered rapture where I felt loved, where I felt a sense of belonging. 

      All About Love - Bell Hooks. / A safe place.