things in no particular order

I'm not sure what to write about this week- I have several topics swimming around in my head. So maybe I'll just write a little about them all.

The first one is friendship, specifically neuroqueering friendship which is what my last podcast episode was about and I have more to say about friendship and relationships and how they form and what makes them good and the assumptions we operate under that complicate things and make bad communication and haphazard connection. How drinking and sobriety and neurodiversity are in all that too.

The second thing I'm thinking about is emerging systems and how to disrupt the norms and standards to create a change that is not continuously too late and also willing. Some of my clients are in the corporate world and it is interesting to see how the corporate world needs cycle breakers just like generations do. Being a person willing to go out on the limb for ways of doing things that are more human is a hard place to be, and something that makes that hard is capitalism- which is why I want to shift our sense of security from monetary to social. So that if you go out on a limb at work and it costs you your job you can be resourced from the pool of humans who are part of your life/community and not just wiping out your (possibly) existing savings account or amassing (more) debt.

Another thing I think about is gender identity, and how my quest for femininity and acceptance as female in culture has created such a dearth of self esteem and care in my own system. The harm that has been done to me by trying to hold up what a "good" woman looks like and talks like, walks like and fucks like is one of the saddest things I hold. The time I have spent norming myself for the gaze of acceptance, desirability, and approval, using my body as a mask to ease some of the never ending labor of social interaction has hurt me so much. What have I not gotten to create or be since so much of my energy has gone into looking the part? Ughhhhhhh.

I am so disappointed by the institution of education. I think about how fucked up a system has to be to take children who are naturally curious and eager to learn and how it turns learning into compliance and overfunctioning. What it robs kids of is shocking and appalling and yet here we are, 35 years since I graduated from high school and it seems like it hasn't changed much at all. It baffles me that we put so much emphasis on these years being the things that set you up for the rest of your life and that we have so few ways to actually do that.

Other things in no particular order:

The pain and trauma of growing up ND in a NT world has taken so much from so many of us, sometimes I feel like I could just drown in the oceans of tears we have all cried in the loss and frustration of lives lived without knowing or being supported, seen or heard. The rhetoric around autism being overdiagnosed and therefore taking resources from people who "actually need them" is such a screwed up way of looking at how resources work. I think so much about little kids who are lost and can't figure it out and the system that makes the kid the problem and so it's behavioral, pathological, and not natural. I know what it feels like to be that kid, waking up to go to school every day, and the fact that I am the problem and not the system I'm trying to survive in. How amazing it is that some of us live through it.

I wonder a lot about sex and intimacy and how being ND influenced my ideas and my sexuality, along with the affects of my drinking. This is part of my life I have not really done a long look into because it feels like a hot stove to me. Interestingly enough, having a therapist that I trust is making the stove less hot. Truthfully it feels ridiculous to be 54 and just now getting to this but here we are. Intimacy is a world that is often sexualized and I have often sexualized the world, how love folds into that, and care, and touch. I don't see anyone talking about this, so if you have please let me know, and if not then it will be me talking about it.

I am entering into another phase of ND diagnosis/discovery land and I think it's the phase where you start to let yourself get weirder and also more boundaried and I am excited but also scared. I ordered 2 pair of sweatpants and because they fit and were $11 I ordered 2 more because I feel like my fashion statement is now big all the way buttoned up button down cotton shirts or tank tops with sweatpants and Birks. I wish I could wear my black cotton long coat but it's too hot now. It makes me so happy to not be trying to be socially clothed in ways other people will like and instead be dressed like an Amy..like me. I am also not answering texts and emails right away, doing less things, less self coercion, and taking up space while taking down protections will be the next frontier.

I did crying on purpose with my Grief playlist again, which turned into a dance party and I can feel my protectors relaxing and trusting me more. It's interesting to try to wrap my mind around the idea that the ways I try to protect myself are actually hurting me a lot more than they are protecting me. That it is counterproductive. And so then how to readjust and create a new truth? Well, crying with my Grief playlist seems like it's opening up some things. Also, I've been doing yoga 5 or 6 times a week since New Years Eve and my practice is helping me be in my body, which is a whole other thing that I want to explore. The way I hold my body is to sort of levitate above the ground, I am afraid of my body and of getting hurt, and my proprioception is not good, my sense of my body in space is not good, but yoga is helping me understand where the parts of my body are in space and I'm getting stronger too.

A lot of what directs me is not getting hurt- either physically or socially or mentally and so I am in a permanent state of trying to be as small and tentative as possible, like I'm in the matrix trying to not hit any of the laser beams and they are everywhere. My body in space. My interactions with other humans is a laser beam. My responsibilities and responses are laser beams. My work is a laser beam. My writing is a laser beam. My parenting, my boundaries, my needs, my wants- zap zap zap. What I'm learning is that living in service of not getting hurt is hurting my sense of self and it is never getting better because I vibrate at such intense levels of watchfulness and caution. Me not having needs and being unobtrusive means I vanish not get safe. In other words- My body is in space and my body is also the laser beam and I can experience it all. The idea of too much and what I can and can't do when I am the one who chooses. I am not used to that kind of agency even though I have been clear all my life that I want to be in charge..the ways I forget that or operate out of fear that look like being in charge but are actually something else. It feels like one of those magic eye puzzles, and I have seen the picture so now I know I can see it again.

All of this is happening all the time, and I am also happier now than I have ever been. I feel so interested in the experience of being me as me that it outweighs my fears of looking foolish. I wore my noise cancelling earplugs at the grocery store the other day and it's those things that are the little victories that give me a sense of self. The vulnerability of it all that keeps feeling more welcome and less threatening, even though the world feels more unstable. I'm caring and knowing about what is happening in the world without avoiding it because I am not willing to be numb to suffering, and my heart is strong, my heart can take it. I also hold delight and joy with the suffering because it is all happening at the same time and life is complex so I hold both. I don't juggle them or choose one or the other. I am willing to be with it all, and I am not alone. One of the biggest things that helps me is when I remember even though the world we live in tells me to look for happiness and the comfort of sameness, I remind myself that I am an animal and I am part of the natural world. The natural world is not fair and it is not the same- it is alive, like I am alive.