Today in group we learned an energy passing game called “Zip, Zap, Zop.” The object of the game is to make the energy go seamlessly between people, the next person picking up the word in the series where you left off. If you mix up words, you’re out. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve actually felt energy leaving my body toward another person because I actually had it to give. But the game was the end of the session, after we all learned about how to take care of ourselves.
Or rather, what we are doing to take care of ourselves. My answer was exercise, because it just makes me feel good whether I want to or not. There’s no way to avoid the rush of endorphins when I’m finished. I can better handle everything else when I feel solid in my body. However, I have noticed something that is very, very true. If you skip a day, the next day is harder.
So I only skipped a day, Wednesday.
It’s akin to the second lesson I learned. Pausing a program on the machine just makes it harder to start again. That’s because when you pause it to take a drink of water, your heart rate nosedives. I walk on the treadmill because I have balance issues, so as soon as I hit the restart button I go from zero percent incline to nine. It’s ridiculous. Steady wins the race, apparently, because I stopped pausing the treadmill in order to avoid the swings. The incline to get back up to a healthy heart rate was too steep for someone who already feels uncomfortable in a gym in the first place.
Reminds me of something my dad has told me over and over, because Doc Severinson (former bandleader on The Tonight Show) told his band this at SMU regarding practicing his trumpet:
- If I miss one day, I notice.
- If I miss two days, my band notices.
- If I miss three days, everybody notices.
There is no one that pays attention to my body that close, even me. What I’m talking about is everyone noticing my emotions. When I am not secure in my body for any amount of time, I will fold into myself. Autism is an undertow for which I have not discovered a solution except forcing myself out into the world and hoping for the best. I am a different person when I cannot gather the energy to connect with others. I am prone to self-indulgence and I know it.
It is hard to decide what is my story and what is just straight up cyber-bullying when you are trying to show your own mental illness in real time. That’s because in order to show what is genuinely me, I have to divorce myself from my emotions about others. I say things that I would never say in conversation because in conversation, I am not disconnected from them. There are lots of entries, particularly about Aada, that I should take down. But I won’t, because like as not the same entries that are angry will also contain a line she liked.
I cannot take anything back, but I can move forward with other people. I do not know what her consequences were except to say that the thing she was the most worried about has not come to pass because I was never out to get her… and in no universe would she ever send me anything that couldn’t be published. She needed a way out, and I gave her one. If this is not true, she can come back and say that. But my suspicion is that she won’t. She has always been too proud to admit that vulnerability solves anything, and she did not see how her lack of vulnerability beat me down over the years. In that way, I am glad to be free of her. You don’t judge the sum total of a person based on one thing, though, especially when it’s clear they need help.
She did not understand the position she put me in; I didn’t understand hers. I also genuinely made a mistake, because I was working too fast. Luckily, I was able to delete the entry before too many people saw it, including someone who could bring my heart rate back down to normal when she disappeared. I gave her too much power and I freely admit it. I will also not apologize because I trusted her with it.
She did not see how she broke my trust over and over that she would show up eventually. That I wasn’t giving her all this energy for nothing. That, in effect, the reason our relationship crashed and burned is that I was very polite at some times and very demanding at others; it didn’t matter. Nothing worked. There was never equilibrium in our relationship and it was something I desperately needed.
But being demanding wasn’t my modus operandi. That’s the ’tism. I get into “explaining mode” and think I am doing a very good job of it. Then, Aada would lash out at me for questioning her smarts. That never occurred to me in a million years. I just sound like a professor because my archetype is Bert from “Sesame Street.” And in fact, I know someone she loves that sounds just like me when I get going, and they don’t have that relationship at all. I know for certain that we’d have gotten along in person, if only she’d given me a chance.
So much of this relationship fell apart because it was so rich AND ALSO never there.
She was offended by nearly everything because her threat meter was so high. I wish I could have done more to take it down, but I was threatened in return. A piece of my heart was walking outside of my body and she wasn’t taking very good care of it. Neither was I, because it wouldn’t come back to me so I could shore it up. There were no words of affirmation, there was only fear and doubt.
I suppose the biggest lesson for me is that she wanted to save the world, and I wanted to save her, specifically. I thought she was falling down on the job at home because she was so work-focused. But the truth is that I couldn’t see her entire life at home, I could only see my part of it. Her attitude towards me routinely made me cry. There was no solution because her answer for everything was “buck up, Buttercup.” My answer for everything was “we can work on this together.” Never the twain shall meet. Any attempt to bridge the gap was over the line, Smokey. Mark it zero.
My job over the next few years is to figure out why I’ve been attracted to that my whole life.
Aada is not the first emotionally unavailable person to charm me, but I hope she’s the last. To be clear, she was never my partner, but I learned how to be…. and not to be…. the partner I wanted to show others I could be if I got my ducks in a row.
The first was giving up any substance that allowed me respite from anxiety, because it was numbing me out too much. No alcohol, no weed, no benzos…. just breathing techniques at first. The alcohol was first, weed second, benzos last. All of them cold turkey because I do not have an addictive personality. Telling myself that I could be a better person if I didn’t have them was enough, and I was right.
Because I quit everything, I was able to add a long-term anxiolytic called “Buspar.” No one really knows how it works except that it interacts with both your serotonin and dopamine receptors over time. It takes about six weeks to get it to maximum efficacy, so I’m looking forward to seeing how my life changes in that time. The most notable relief (if it works) will be not having a constant hum in my brain around which is hard to think. It’s loud enough to block out entire thoughts, which is why I write every day, but often not enough to publish. I have hundreds of drafts on this web site that have never come to light because of this noise.
It’s another way my mental health drags me into the deep end of the ocean. My quality of life is sometimes poor, because my thoughts are quite literally drowning in sound. Imagine that you are asked to write anything and your constant companion is the Emergency Broadcast System:
There is a reason for every single thing I have done, but it is this sound that has isolated me more than anything. I cannot connect to people when I cannot hear them. My head is too painful.
All I can do is run away, on a treadmill that stays in place so I don’t wander too far from home.
That’s because on the days when my Buspar works and my workout is fruitful, someone can shoot me a zip, and I’ll be there to catch. Whether someone is there to receive my zap and their zop is thankfully not up to me. I cannot control any of that. All I can do is put energy into the universe, and hope it comes back to me.
Maybe Aada doesn’t believe in forgiveness. Maybe she shouldn’t. That’s not for me to say. But what I do know is that happiness is found one foot in front of the other, and finding out two friends also go to my gym.
You find angels when you’re not looking for them, and they’re always in disguise. But you won’t be ready if you’re not even looking, and that’s what my mental health does to me. It limits my ability to look for the angels in my midst, because I do not believe I deserve them.
Or I didn’t until I started putting energy into trying to be an angel to someone else. I don’t know who that is, but what I do know is that it’s the purest thing I’ve ever said.
Stories That Are All True 