Today’s prompt, which I cannot officially answer again, is about “a risk I took that paid off.” I don’t remember what I wrote about, I just know I have the tags for it…. So it must be in here, somewhere. I am not a risk taker by nature unless I am writing. Because of my ADHD, I lack impulse control- so I get out of my comfort zone until my autism says, “dude. It’s late. You’re done here.” This is my eternal battle. Sometimes, autism and ADHD have the same symptoms, and others are diametrically opposed. I think that’s why my sister is able to keep track of a million gazillion details and I can’t.
Lindsay and I are both neurodivergent, and she is the one that started me on the path toward healing. This is because when she was diagnosed with ADHD and her therapist said it was genetic, I started looking closer into the issue. I do not have hyperactivity, therefore I was not the Lanagan sister who had a sweatshirt with the word “HYPERWOMAN!” airbrushed on it when I was a kid. I was, though, the kid who rarely had any idea what was going on at any time.
The first time I was ever truly embarrassed by this was when I was walking the halls wearing a t-shirt with Jesus on the front in some sort of configuration. On the back, in cursive, it said “I once was lost.” One of my teachers thought he was funny when he said I should change it to, “I’m always lost.” Of course it’s funny when you’re the adult looking at the kid, but when the kid already feels like absolute shit about themselves because they’re expected to be perfect by so goddamn many people………….. I wasn’t thinking about the joke then. I get it, but it’s only funny 25 or 30 years later.
For all of you who may think he was making fun of me because I’m a Christian, no he wasn’t. He was Jewish and we both have a great sense of humor about religion. I was just already anxious and overloaded, so his comment sent me into shutdown.
I completely dissociated and didn’t hear anything anyone said for the rest of the day. That’s what’s so frustrating about autism. When your body decides “no,” you can’t override it easily. There are all kinds of tips and tricks, but I wasn’t even diagnosed with ADHD at that point, much less a combo meal (Autism + ADHD= AuDHD, or “gold star ADHD”).
Mostly, the combination means “I say ‘it is what it is’ a lot for someone who has no idea what it is.” The flip side of the coin is that I am an expert on the things other people don’t notice. I am not often sure what is east or west, north or south. But Jesus has me covered….. “In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north.”
Your move, Witkov.
Where I excel is honestly on a whole different plane, and I absolutely mean it. An INFJ is not built to live in this world, and that has been true of all of us since time began. We are built to live in the next one, because the world we live in is created by our own minds, the utopia ideal of how the world should work. What’s really insane is that we seem to be in agreement. I agree with Jesus, Martin Luther King, and all of the other historical INFJs out there. It’s all about tapping into energy. Whether you call it prayer or meditation, the object is to get your ego out of the way. That’s why it’s easy to be an atheist in AA- they don’t care what your god is, as long as it makes you realize you are a part of something bigger than yourself. That the energy is already running.
I can’t remember what year it was, but an audience member asked Oprah Winfrey what advice she would give to a young black boy who was just starting college. She said something to the effect of “the crown is already there. The only thing he needs to do is reach out and put it on.” It was about standing on the shoulders of giants, getting him to think of all the enslaved people that had paid the price to get him to where he needs to be today. All he needed to do was tap into that feeling of emotional unity with his current family and friends, as well as all of his ancestors. All of that good energy is coming toward you, so use it.
And if I know Oprah the way I think I know her after watching her every weekday from the time I was nine until I was 34, her response would be “that’s what I said? It sure sounds good.” Roll the tape, Oprah. Roll. The. Tape. That’s because I can’t remember shit except good lines that stick in my head for years and years. However, as time goes by, I will remember the essence of what they said and can paraphrase. Because I’m a writer, sometimes the paraphrase comes out as good or better as what they said originally. The other thing is that reading back over my blog entries reinforces my memory, because I absorb everything I read like a sponge. If I don’t wait to record a memory, then there’s no way for another memory to overwrite it or squish in with it so that two memories that are completely contradictory don’t come out as the same story.
A lot of the time, people think I’m waffling, and don’t seem to realize that feelings are allowed to change over time. I don’t waffle. I evolve. My biggest problems center around people thinking that if I write something negative, it means our relationship is bad. As a general rule, how many of you are completely 100% happy in every relationship all the time?
Show of hands.
You fight. You make up. Or you don’t. Life is a series of conflict resolutions, and if you don’t like conflict resolution, your relationship won’t be as fulfilling because you won’t have the emotional accomplishment of working through something with someone you love. Those peaks and valleys are what make you valuable to each other. The more you overcome, the less you want to separate, because the feeling of “you and me against the world” feels better than “I have to do everything all by myself and no one cares that I’m struggling.” Meanwhile, the problem is that no one will notice if you do not say anything. There is no prize- not a Cadillac El Dorado, not a set of steak knives, not even lunch- for taking up the least room in hopes of being acknowledged for being so saint–like. You will never win anyone’s approval so that you can stop resolving conflict. Life doesn’t work like that. Either you’re out with your frustrations, or you’re internalizing a storm of enormous proportions. But you’re bringing the storm on yourself every day because you won’t talk about it.
If you don’t say anything, you are part of the problem.
I bring things up because I would like to discuss them. If someone is conflict avoidant, one of two things will happen. The first is that they’ll change the subject, the second is that they’ll say you’re attacking them. It’s a method of manipulation that doesn’t feel like manipulation because that person is not trying to control you. They’re trying to put concrete walls around themselves so that you can’t get in. That’s because they see a threat, and therefore unable to participate in a meaningful way because they’re overwhelmed and overstimulated.
Fewer people are narcissists and more people have trauma responses than anyone thinks. It’s more fashionable to reject people than it is to see that they’re broken and need help. It is easy for your anger/defensiveness to override your compassion. Rarely is a problem all one person’s fault, and a narcissist’s method is to prove you’re wrong at every turn. I come off that way easily in writing, because I am not thinking about the other person at all when I write. I am laying out my thoughts and waiting for a response instead of trying to get into someone else’s head and assume that I know their story. I assume that you know your story better than I do. However, I can’t get to know people and be able to keep conflict from coming up in advance. Knowing someone well is the best way to do that, because you’ve been told what makes them angry, what makes them sad, etc. and you do your best not to irritate their hot buttons. If you expect people to respect your opinion, you have to respect theirs.
When I don’t understand something, I need people to stick with me until I do. People generally get frustrated with me and give up before I get it. It’s not that I don’t understand and am anxious about it, it’s that I’m trying to prove I’m right and I dislike them. I do not have a god complex. I’m just precise with language and when other people aren’t, I get lost.
But.
“In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north.”
If I know Jesus the way I think I do after studying him since before I was born, it’s that some version of Mr. Witkov told him his head was in the clouds, too.
Stories That Are All True 