A lesson I have had to learn over and over and over again is the need to be myself.
There was a time when I understood what that meant, but as I got older, the social and cultural pressures started weighing down on me, squeezing me to conform to more “sensible” standards, and in the process, for a while, I lost some of my imagination, and I shelved parts of my personality that were seen as inconvenient to deal with when other people were around.
Of course, when my mom got sick, I began my role as her caregiver, and it expanded to being a 24/7 caregiving role, because as we all know, being a fully realized person is a 24 hour a day activity, and just because one becomes disabled doesn’t make them any less of a fully realized human being.
So I started tucking even more of my personality away from others, as I got down to work making sure her needs were met, emotional, physical, and even spiritual needs because she needed someone who could commiserate with her, someone who could empathize and understood where she was coming from as she worked out her own difficulties with the world around her and life in general, just as we all do.
As a result, I started saving my personality for my online presence, but even that became curtailed and dampened after a while because social pressures online are somehow even worse than they are in meatspace.
Yes, I like the term meatspace, yes I use it as one word, and no I’m not changing that.
I felt like I had to be respectable and non-controversial because I am, as some of you know, a real people pleaser. I love making people happy, I love making them feel comfortable and accepted. Sometimes that means holding back on certain personality traits because you don’t want to scare them off like a wary racoon around your best garbage cans.
So my delicious garbage personality was tucked away and the bricks of conformity were placed on top to keep them secured.
Then I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I realized at that time that my brain really *was* wired differently, because my whole life had been spent trying to communicate with people who didn’t seem to get the heart of what I was trying to say. Some knew, and I suspect they were also ADHD/Autistic, and could pick up what I was inadvertently laying down.
So while I was being quieter and less flamboyant in meat space, I was doing something similar online because I didn’t want to lose the friends I had made there, and I do consider them equivalent. Some people like to say that online friends aren’t as real as the people you meet in person, but that simply isn’t true. Those feelings are real, those people are real, we’re just connected by a different medium rather than face to face.
I’m still struggling with being myself, but when my mom died, something inside of me flipped a switch. I’ve always been a person who would rather know a cold truth than a comforting lie, something which has often bit me in the ass because sometimes my soul could really use a comforting lie to keep its shit together, but in the end, the truth is always preferred.
That said, I have been more open, more bold with my choices these days, even going as far as wearing openly “rebellious” clothes in the real world. Some of you might wonder how wearing a pink hat with “Damn, I should have called in thicc today” is rebellious, but I live in a deeply conservative part of the country where wearing pink makes you incredibly gay, while watching a show where half naked men are oiled up and grappling each other is very very straight (I’m referring to professional wrestling).
My ADHD/Autistic brain doesn’t do well with conflicting data, something has to be parsed, understood, refined, and reasserted for it to be seen as valid. So I do that with these cues from our society that say one thing and act on another.
I should note the Autistic aspect of myself is not officially diagnosed because in the US, that kind of diagnosis can get you into trouble in certain parts of the country, where the state can take away rights, so while the ADHD diagnosis is official, the autism is unofficial, though my doctor agrees with it, we don’t mark it down for those reasons.
Anyway, that’s another reason why I’m working more to be myself. If I’m really wired differently, why deny it? Why hide it? Why not embrace it and enjoy it? There’s nothing wrong with being ADHD, Autistic, or both. It’s just another way of interacting with the universe, and I think everyone should embrace the parts of themselves society tends to shame without cause.
So you be you. I’ll be me, and while I know there are going to be coming storms for how my personality continues to re-develop after years of suppression, I welcome it, because I have the right to breathe free as who I am, and so do you.
.Red
