Good evening, I’m back for another blog.
Quick note on what I’ve been up to. Working on the music, it going pretty well. I’ve gone back to my earlier track and hacked and rebuilt it and it is in better much shape now.
I can say now that I’m actually working on two songs at the same time and this week I’ll start on the artwork and be working on three parts of the project. I’ve decided to hold off on putting myself back out into the world until at least getting the songs and artwork published. Some pressure to get it done asap but it’ll take as long as it takes to make it good enough.
Some thoughts this week to chew on. It’s a good sign of the progress I’ve made that digging into the my deepest, darkest skeletons doesn’t fill me with dread anymore. In fact it’s been a source of deep profundity. I only normally get this insomniac obsessiveness over a train of thought when I’m anticipating some profound wisdom about something that has a deep logical beauty.
Like a beautiful mathematical concept that has so many facets.
I should say at this point that there has been a eureka moment where I understand the autism related factors and how they made me who I am in conjunction with external factors outside of my control. The deep burning shame I felt about things that weren’t my fault.
It is what it is and will continue to be. What I see differently now is the logical consequences of being forced to grow up too fast and how it left me playing catch up, playing a game I couldn’t possibly win.
Playing is completely the wrong word to use there. Quite the opposite in fact.
I had to work when I just wanted to play.
Even now, all I want to do is play. Even when needing a rest, just want to play. We humans grow up so we can look after ourselves and become independent, become productive and contribute.
Become responsible.
We become agents in the world and perform actions to achieve things. To do something with our lives. I don’t think I was ever prepared for adult life.
The first time I was told that when I grow up, I’ll have to get a job and work for a living, that may very well have been the first traumatic shock.
And I feel like an imposter in any job. I’m not ready for this and I don’t belong here. Only a matter of time until I’m exposed and punished.
At 40 years if age now, I’m still looking for adults to tell me what to do and how to do it. But asking for help is just so embarrassing. It was embarrassing when I was a child let alone now.
Why don’t people understand I’m still a child in an adults body. Why do they think I’m going to do the responsible adult thing? Well I do a good job of pretending.
I’ve heard it said that us autistics like role play and it’s the case for me too. That’s the real difference between work and play. Play is freedom.
The freedom to do what doesn’t need to be done. The freedom from demand and outcome in the real world. To act in the imagined world where reality can be simulated with no real danger, no real consequences for losing.
I was a fairly bad loser as a kid because of how seriously I took play time. Even when playing, you sometimes lose and experience outcomes you don’t want. It’s almost like meaning nothing objectively in reality means everything subjectively.
So why have I not yet followed my own blog-writing advice? I’ve been a hypocrite criticising everyone else’s childishness when I’m far more childish than most.
As I keep telling myself “I’m not ready”. And I don’t know if I ever will be. But I’m no longer ashamed of it. Not willing to beat myself up anymore.
This is something I would never have said before my autism diagnosis. I hear it a lot that autism shouldn’t be seen as disability but as a set of superabilities. It isn’t how I see it.
Now I have a diagnosed medical condition that resulted in a developmental delay that keeps me in a child like state without having fully matured. And it’s me that has to live with it, has to try and function as adult. And has to struggle day after day.
I don’t much look forward to having all my skeletons exposed to the world but it’s probably going to help me to finally get over a lifetime of hurt if I just go fuck it and spill the beans. Wash away all the muck from my inner self and have nothing left to hide.
Other than hiding my naive, vulnerable, sensitive soul from would be predators and exploiters that is.
It’s a test of how truly I can defeat the shame and be at peace with who I am and hence others too.
I’m only going to do that if I decide I want to do it and it doesn’t feel too much like work. And I don’t pressure myself either way. Treat it like role play.
In this regard it’s probably best to just write that in the journal rather than publish on the blog. Maybe publish if it actually succeeds in bleaching the demons and makes me sound cool in a dont-give-a-fuck way.
Anything that helps me shed the rotting corpse of who I was and allows me to finally be reborn is welcome.
Why should I continue to be afraid of public shaming when is stop shaming myself? A gentle reminder perhaps, something to always keep in mind, is that everyone has their own weaknesses and insecurities.
Anyone who would shame me for my weakness is more than likely projecting and deflecting. It would give me great pleasure to dispense justice and twist the knife.
But alas I’ve already been that person who hurts people I care about to deflect. And I’ve been hurt to the point that I don’t ever want to be hurt again. This is why I still believe mental health issues make us all worse people than we could otherwise be.
I don’t wish to stigmatize or demonize mental health struggles but I know more than most that it is a poison that spreads and does so much damage. The moral of the story is that we all seek happiness and fulfilment. We shouldn’t ever hide away from what we do to sabotage ourselves and why.
Use what we do have within ourselves to make our lives better. Work when we can. Rest when we can’t. Play when we can.
It’s your life and you are the boss, whatever happens. If you’re not the boss, rebel against your master.
Thanks for reading. Kindest Regards as always x
Jamie's Blog 