Where I've Been
Physically:
Out west, with the best.
Mentally:
On a road that has been equally painful and beautiful to walk. But, to explain, I have to take you back to March.
It was a Friday afternoon and I was talking with my mom, struggling to explain how it is that I feel things and then express (or, more often, suppress) them. And I didn’t have the words. I left the conversation frustrated and a little down and immediately went home and started throwing searches at Google.
I typed in whatever I could come up with, words strung together in ugly half-sentences and hurled out into the great vastness of the internet. It was desperate and quick, my eyes barely skimming the results before the next search words popped into my head, based on the belief that, no matter what it is I feel/am/do, I am not the first - and there is someone else out there who can impart their insight if only I can find them.
And the search that finally produced gold? “Emotional Masking.”
Though, interestingly, it wasn’t an article on emotional masking I clicked on. It was an article about autistic masking, specifically as it relates to women and girls. And my world exploded.
I’ve always been labeled as sensitive. As artistic, as intense, as quirky. But we never considered autism. True, as a child I would bang my head on the floor if I became too frustrated, or spin until I puked simply because I loved the feeling of rotating round and round - but I was not non-verbal, always had friends, didn’t seem to struggle to relate to others’ interests. As I got older, I was an excellent student and seemed to move through the world as any other kid might. I didn’t fit with the classic description of autism, which was based on studies of boys specifically.
But these things made it easy to overlook how desperately I would study characters in tv shows and movies, trying to understand their thoughts and motives. Or how I could numb myself down during the day only to come home and have an instant meltown. Practicing expressions in the mirror was not something I did to try and look pretty, it was a matter of survival because I simply didn’t know how to match my face to my feelings or the mood of a group. And the way that I obsess(ed) over animals, drawing, gardening, health…
I could list examples all day of things that are my normal which ALSO fall firmly on the autistic spectrum - but the point is, I’ve spent my life studying how to appear “normal.” To tone down or hide much of who I am. This means that in most situations, I now know how to respond in an expected manner because I’ve practiced - at least in my head - and can move through the world largely stress-free. But I was not born with these skills. I honed them. I am exceptionally proud of the fact that I can lead a group, be someone’s shoulder to cry on, act as a calming influence even though these things don’t necessarily come naturally to me.
As with anything one might do, practice leads to less effort being required to produce the same result - but there is still effort involved. For me, that effort can add up before I know it because the things that most people have on auto (like where to hold their hands or how to greet another person) are always on manual. An unplanned trip to the grocery store can wipe me out for the rest of the day. A change in plans can mean I am mentally unable to complete another task. An unanticipated question can have me fighting tears as my brain scrambles to make me look natural and think of an answer at the same time. In conversations I’ve had since the spring, I’ve been told time and time again that it doesn’t look like this from the outside…but that’s on purpose. I’m very good at only letting the world see what I want it to see.
Though I’m ultimately able to get very close with Eric, with a few friends, with my family, what I’ve come to find is that I am never fully myself unless I am completely alone (as in, no one in the house) because it’s only when everyone else disappears that I can drop all masks and just BE. A big goal of mine, that has now become a someday-necessity, is to build an external studio space that will allow me to find that blessed solitude whenever I need to recharge.
On the night I made this beautiful, terrible, discovery about myself, I just walked around and around our house saying, “oh my God…oh my GOD…I’m not crazy!” After spending my whole conscious life feeling like I was different (and trying to bully and harass that variation out of myself), I got the “why” I’d been searching for. And it wrecked me. My old life ended, just like that.
But in the same moment, my new life started. The one where I can say, “I’m having an autistic moment right now, I need to step away.” Or where I can decline a hug because I know it will overload my system. Or make choices that allow me to be at my best for my animals, my people. And I can do these things without feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. I didn’t know (I just didn’t KNOW) what a load I was carrying, trying to be someone I’m not.
This is the reason I’m stepping away from the business I’ve so lovingly built on Instagram, the business structured around selling my work. Because I know I cannot scroll or post or read comments without beginning to feel as though something in me is wrong or bad or other - and I've also realized how tied my making gets to the fear of my work being TOO expensive or TOO different or TOO…whatever.
Perhaps, going forwards, I will pursue gallery representation to give myself a small buffer from actually selling myself. Perhaps I will just grow my skills on my own and forgo the selling altogether (I am still quite excited about the teaching, after all). Time will tell.
So - there you have it. The reason I’ve been away from my bench, from social media, from the world outside of what I can physically see and touch. Though I don’t yet have an official diagnosis, autism is one of my truths - and it’s not the handicap I’ve treated it as all this time.
Instead, it’s just another one of my superpowers, allowing me to see and experience the world in a way that’s different but beautifully my own.