The First to Fall

Tag: love

  • Nothing

    A new performance always starts with hope.

    Not the naïve kind…more like a quiet, aching belief that maybe this time, I can hold it together. That if I give enough of my effort, energy, and attention, something solid will finally form around me. Something real. So I say yes. To jobs. To invitations. To marriages. Yes. Yes. Yes. To any expectation that hangs in the air unspoken. I say YES to being useful. YES to being tireless. YES to being wanted.

    Everything about ME makes people uncomfortable, but at the age of eight, I find out hard work is always applauded. And that’s something I can do. That’s my first in. Never fewer than 2-3 jobs at a time. My. Whole. Life.

    At work, I become a machine. Relentless. Competent. First to arrive, last to leave. I never say no, because no one ever says no to me. I make myself indispensable. I perform stability, drive, charisma. And people love me for it. My performance is a flawless reflection of their expectations…changing in real time as they’re perceived.

    Everything about ME makes people uncomfortable, but at the age of sixteen, I find out my face is attractive. And that’s something I can use. That’s my second in. Never without a partner. My. Whole. Life.

    In relationships, I become another mirror. Attentive. Affectionate. Charming. Safe. I show up like the ideal partner, because part of me genuinely wants to be that person—for her, for myself. I make promises I don’t realize are promises: I’ll always be this available, this engaged, this put-together. It works. I’m praised, admired. I feel chosen.

    But the gap always shows up.

    At first it’s a small delay or a quiet sense of dread. Tasks that seemed easy feel heavy now. Conversations drain me. My moods swing. I can’t keep up the pace I set…not at work, not at home. But I don’t know how to say that. I don’t know how to say that I’m breaking. I don’t even know that’s what’s happening. I just feel tired. Agitated. Trapped. Off.

    Then comes shame. The unwelcome knowledge that I’m slipping. I can’t be the person they count on. I can’t.

    C-A-N-N-O-T. Not as in “choose not to,” but NOT ABLE TO.

    I know I’m about to let everyone down again. The thing is, I want to keep the promises. I’m just not built for the way I made them. But by the time I admit that to myself, I’m already failing. Already withdrawing.

    So I disappear…emotionally first, then physically. At work, I start missing details. Resenting the schedule. Loathing my own reputation. At home, I get quiet. Stop initiating. Smiling less. Sleeping more. I avoid questions. Avoid eye contact. Avoid being known.

    And they notice. They always notice. My boss. My partner. My friends. They can’t understand why I “changed.” Why the star employee lost his spark. Why the attentive husband grew cold. I can’t explain it either…not in a way that doesn’t sound like excuse. I hate what I’m becoming, but I can’t go back. The mask is too heavy. And I don’t know who was underneath it anymore.

    So I end things. Or they do. Or the universe does.
    Then comes the silence.

    And then, eventually, comes another chance. Another invitation. Another flicker of hope.
    And I think: Maybe this time.

    Over and over and over and over and over and over.

    I know the environment I need now. That I need. Now! After nearly five decades. But I can’t build it. I can’t go to it. I have insight in one hand and a lifetime of relational debt in the other.

    I go back to pretending.

    Or I collapse.

    Or I live in this unsustainable torture of the in-between.

    Is nothing real? Where am I? What have I done? What do I do? Is it me? Where am I?

  • My “Alexithymia” Isn’t What They Say It Is

    When I hear that someone is suffering (really suffering, with no way out) it hurts. The destruction of nature hurts. Reading about people in North Korean prison camps hurts. The quiet death of ecosystems, the slow violence of poverty, the stories I read here from other autistic people, the way the powerless get crushed by systems they didn’t create…this kind of pain gets in me and doesn’t leave. It’s like background radiation. I carry it everywhere.

    But when someone is suffering because of something they refuse to change, when they clearly could, but don’t…I don’t feel sad. Not really. Not even when I’m supposed to. And apparently that’s a problem. That’s not empathetic, I’m told. That’s cold. That’s…autistic?

    So I’ve been thinking: what does “empathy” mean to most people, then? Does it mean feeling what someone else feels, no matter what? Does it mean echoing their distress, even when that distress comes from avoidable choices, repeated again and again?

    To me, empathy includes being able to discern what’s really going on, and responding from a place of integrity. Otherwise, don’t we just cheapen words like “sad?”

    It’s strange to hear people say I “lack empathy.”What I feel isn’t absence. It’s selectivity. It’s proportional. It’s based on whether the situation actually warrants emotion, not whether I’m expected to emote.

    It’s strange how not reacting becomes the problem. Not the incoherence of the situation. Not the person refusing to help themselves. My failure to perform the right emotion at the right time is what gets flagged as a deficit.

    And maybe that’s why I’ve also been having such a hard time with the word alexithymia.

    Sometimes I look back on an experience…a conflict, a celebration, a goodbye…and only afterward realize it was happy. Or it was unjust. Or it was sad. At the time? I didn’t feel much of anything. I wasn’t there in the way people expect. And I find myself wondering, is that alexithymia? Is that what they mean when they say I can’t identify emotions?

    But here’s what I think is actually happening: I wasn’t allowed to be present. I was too busy tracking the expectations in the room. Too busy trying to be appropriate. Too busy masking. The part of me that might have felt joy, or grief, or wonder, wasn’t at the front of the line. It was buried under a survival protocol.

    So maybe it’s not that I “lack access” to my emotions. Maybe it’s that I’m not given access to the conditions where those emotions can surface.

    Maybe it’s not that I can’t feel. Maybe I’m just too busy surviving.

  • My Abyss

    My father lived in a dark place most of the time. It was deeply uncomfortable to be around. He’d rant and spiral, consumed by things that felt wrong to him, things he couldn’t let go of. The world became an enemy in his eyes. He raged outward, with a kind of schizophrenic intensity. The air was thick with it.

    He would obsess over some perceived injustice or corruption and inflate it beyond recognition. He’d talk about it for weeks. He couldn’t stop. And what might have started from something real would get buried under the weight of his fury. It got ugly. He was ugly. In the end, it looked like nothing but rage…a need to be right.

    That’s probably me now.

    I feel the same storm building. The same fixation. The same alienation. I walk around already knowing the look people get when they start to back away. I see it. And when I get “like this,” the only thing that’s ever let me forgive myself for being so awful to be around is the belief that what I’m working on matters. That it has to be done. But on the days when I lose hold of that belief, days like today, I just feel monstrous. And ridiculous. A negative force, making everything I touch worse.

    What if I’m not fighting the madness I think I am? What if I am the madness? What if this moment, the one where I think I’m beginning to understand, is actually the total loss of my grip on what’s real?

    I truly met my father when he was already twenty years older than I am now. I don’t know what he was like at my age. Maybe he was nothing like how I knew him. He might’ve been more functional than I am now. More self-aware. Maybe I’m falling faster. I always have this version of him in my mind…unhinged, over-the-top, shouting…and I swore I wouldn’t become that. But that wasn’t who he always was, was it? Nobody is born like that. He was like me once, believing he still had all the time in the world.

    Sometimes I think I’m running the same race he lost.

    I’ve spent a lifetime waiting for someone to really see what’s inside me. Not in a vague “I believe in you” kind of way, but someone with the understanding and the means to give me time. Breathing room. A protected space to develop the thing that keeps flickering inside me. Not a free ride. Not praise. Just time. Space. It’s a childish fantasy. I know that. But I’ve spent a lifetime waiting for those people anyway.

    And some days I’m sure there is no such person. That I’m in a world of one, like my father, and that my ideas only make sense there. Only make sense to me.

    Today, I feel rage. Toward myself. Toward the world. I’m disgusted with how seriously I take myself. But I’m still angry at everyone else for not taking seriously the things I see. People mowing 40 million acres of lawn, stupid or demented…I honestly don’t know which. As if nothing ever gets through. A mirror has been held up a million times, a much better mirror than I could ever hold up, and they just keep brushing their hair in front of it.

    Confusingly, I feel a lot of rage toward autistic people online. I’m ashamed and embarrassed to admit this, but I feel abandoned. I pour myself into something, try to name what I think we‘re really feeling…something deeper than just day-to-day frustration or sensory overload…and I watch it get buried. No replies. No spark of recognition. Just more talk about dating and work anxiety and video games. Or I get torn apart. “So you’re saying [strawman argument]” (followed by 37 replies equally outraged by that particular false interpretation of my thoughts). I feel rage, not because I don’t care about them, but because I need someone to say, this is it. This is what I’ve been trying to say, too.

    Instead, I feel like a freak. Screaming into a void.

    It makes me feel ridiculous. Like maybe this is just a blown-out-of-proportion hyperfixation, after all. Like maybe all of this…the thinking, the writing, the physical stress…is just some “autistic loop” with an inflated sense of importance. And I feel so, so ugly. For my parents. For my partner. For anyone close. And I wonder, no I scream…WHAT IS IT ALL FOR?! What exactly do I think I’ve earned? What exactly do I think I deserve?

    Because by society’s standards, I’ve gotten exactly what I deserve. Nothing more. Nothing less. And everything I gave…every piece of myself I tore out and offered…it looks like less than nothing. Just another strange, intense person with grandiose ideas and no ground beneath them.

    Sometimes I think I’m brilliant. But I also think I’m trivial. Laughable. I don’t trust my reality. Not at all. I keep waiting for confirmation. Not from a crowd. Just from someone. Someone who can say, without hesitation, you’re not insane.

    Because I’m fucking terrified.

    Not that I’ll fail, but that I’ll become twisted beyond recognition long before I can save myself. That I’ll lose the thread entirely and end up in some permanent shape the world finds repulsive or sad or best hidden. And that the world will come for me. That it will come for my masks. For debts owed. What will those people find? Something unable to defend itself. Unable to explain itself.

    I don’t want to be that.
    I don’t want to be alone in that.
    I want someone to see me, not as a burden, not as a cautionary tale like my father, but as someone worth helping before it’s too late.
    And I don’t even know if that’s possible.