The dissolution of myself

The speaker reflects on their experience of growing up with neurodiversity and the struggles they faced in fitting in. They developed a mask to protect themselves and appear more acceptable to others. However, this mask hindered their growth and self-discovery. They have spent years trying to correct the impact of the mask but still struggle with vulnerability and understanding certain things. They emphasize the importance of being present and accepting oneself. They have found solace in expressing themselves through recordings and value the reflections they receive. They appreciate having a friend who listens and communicates in a way that works for them. I didn't know when I was growing up that I was experiencing neurodiversity. All I knew was that I struggled to fit in. I wasn't being supported in a way that I would have needed to by those I was being brought up by. And because I realised, or because I could get hurt so easily that it almost seemed illogical, unreasonable, that I should I created a protection mechanism around myself I would later come to call that a mask and felt that it served me and protected me and helped me appear less strange and therefore more acceptable. I felt that it was necessary. I didn't know any other way of being in the world I was in, around the people I was with unless they thought I was like them or at least more like them. I don't know how successful I was but the feeling I got was that I was successful and that seemed to make things easier for me. Now I say seemed because actually it didn't. It made things a lot harder because for many, many years I protected myself behind this mask and lost my way as a result. I couldn't be myself, I never practised being myself in my formative years so that I could get a real sense of who that was. I was so affected by essentially being around the wrong people who couldn't see me at all, which wasn't their fault really because I was projecting something that could never reveal it. I didn't know how to reveal it. I felt so vulnerable when I did could be hurt so profoundly when I was that there was no way I was going to continue doing that. The mask seemed to be what was required. Maybe it was, but the problem with it was that it affected the way I grew up. It messed with me in a way that I have spent a lot of time trying to correct. I am as least masked as I've ever been. I still keep myself separate from most people because of the vulnerability and the fact that I don't understand or get certain things but yet still don't feel comfortable in that unless I'm around people I really trust. And even then I still struggle to be who I am because there is no real definitive idea of that. The reality is that beliefs and definitions and ideas and projections and ego have all sort of been dissipated. Thoughts, fears, memories they're all being dissipated because the reality is that it's not that I need to find a version of myself, a character, a personality to express my individuality, my creativity. In fact, I feel like I can express myself more creatively without any of that. But it's taken decades to realise this. I don't know how things could have been different. I would have needed to be around a different family. I would have needed to have my diversity recognised some kind of support structure, some kind of understanding and then maybe, I don't know, who can say. But the fact is that's not what happened so it's pointless to speculate on whether anything could have been different or should have been different. I still tend to feel that what happened was exactly what had to happen. And that seems like the best thing for me to do because to feel anything else, to think anything else to define it in any other way would only make it hard. There's no regrets. Sure, made tons of mistakes. But there's no regrets because the idea is that there's a learning that comes from it, evolving, growth. I don't know if I'll ever not make mistakes, if I'll ever always get things but by being more still, simple and present it makes it easier for me to, on the whole understand what's going on for me in my small world. I still have to deal with fear, irrational things obsessive, compulsive behaviours can still appear patterns, long-held, avoidance. It's, yeah, it's challenging. But that's just what I have to deal with. We all have our issues to deal with. What matters is whether there's recognition of those issues and whether there is attempt to deal with them in some way. I have to still love myself and accept myself as I am that there's no, I don't have some idea, vision of a perfection this is where I have to get to, I'm not in the right place but over there, no, this is all there is this moment, where I am, what I'm doing, that's all there is. I am the sum of my thoughts, my experiences, my feelings and I am here in this moment. There is no past, there is no future there are only ideas, there's only memories which are all just thoughts, without thoughts If I'm doing it right, or doing it better then I can be in this moment without having any anxiety or fear of the future or any regrets or negative or bad feelings depressive feelings about the past. I mean, maybe these recordings have helped maybe it's not that I was thinking about things for ages before I picked up the recorder moments really but I've learnt that instead of taking things around my head in some internal fashion it makes more sense to express it because I don't know what I'm going to say I don't know what I'm going to talk about but I open the door to stream of consciousness out it comes and somehow afterwards it could be good, it might just be average but it has freed me from something I have released something, I am lighter as a result I think that's good, it's good for me I would recommend it to anybody to have a go even if they never share what they record just to have a go, see what they say I don't know how many people do this I've not come across anybody else who does things like this but I dare say there must be, I just don't know them So, the fact that I struggle, I've struggled with my very specific upbringing whereas others will have struggled with abuse and all kinds of difficult things that have totally changed to the point where perhaps it's almost impossible for them to find their way back to some prior state before the corruption took hold I've been working on myself for a long time my sort of spiritual awakening for want of a better word happened thirty four years ago and in the following thirty-four years the process of understanding more of who I am who I am, what is this what is going on here is still ongoing but having said that I am not actively needing something, I'm not feeling like something is missing anymore I may not have a full understanding, connection, realisation to my truer self, inner self, my prior self whatever you want to call it but I have more of it that I am able to be in the present which to me is what matters yes I've simplified my present considerably so that actually the vast majority of the time I'm okay with what occurs in the present, what I do how I deal with things but there are some moments where old patterns take over if I'm not aware enough, conscious enough present enough I don't know that I can find myself going down the road of an old pattern of behaviour and then catch myself at some point but the fact that I can still go down that road tells me that there's more releasing, more awareness more consciousness, more presence um so yeah I just, I don't know why it was so important for me to suddenly talk about this I mean for many people with Asperger's and autism and so on they can relate struggle, but I suppose putting aside those who were diagnosed, recognised as because it was much more obvious and so on when they were young, but there are many of us who weren't diagnosed until well into our adulthood so certain behaviours and ways of being were kind of created as protection mechanisms and coping mechanisms and so we've all gone through a certain thing, some are still going through it some maybe just accept that those things are who they are and how they are and there is no real way to do anything and they don't feel any need to and that's fine and it's not like I have a really powerful need to do something because that actually in a sense would interfere it's simply that I am open to understanding myself better and talking about myself like this helps a lot having it helps receiving reflections on that is lovely I thought that I would need many people, I would want many different kinds of people to reflect, but actually I suspect that the reason that isn't what I am experiencing is because if it were it would create a tremendous confusion of all these different perspectives that's why life has given me essentially one person that I do this with I have connections with others physically but I don't talk about myself like this I don't share recordings I don't have any need to do any of this in their presence and as I said before I am very grateful that there is someone I feel I can do this with and would of course and do and willing to hear whatever comes back that's why you can say you can write me a novel almost a chapter, doesn't matter how long it is I find it interesting how you respond to what I've said essentially a sort of one real time expression it may take a while for your thoughts to come out and for you to say what you feel and that's fine it would be I suspect quite a different experience were we to ever have a conversation in the same moment in real time and that may be why that's not possible that that isn't necessary because how we interact is exactly how we're supposed to interact it doesn't need to be changed just because of there are other ways to interact I've made that mistake before I was interacting with somebody where it seemed to be working but there was some issue but anyway it seemed to be working and I decided that I needed to change it and I insisted in a sense that it should include a real time face to face electronically experience and that blew everything up, it changed everything and in a very short space of time we had no further contact with each other mostly my feeling and that was because I insisted on something that I actually didn't need to I wasn't angry, I wasn't happy maybe on some level it was designed to make or break I don't have that feeling in this instance I'm very happy with how we communicate and how it works I appreciate having a friend to talk to and can be a friend who listens because you may need that too and as things may change for you quite profoundly over the next few years or however long it takes I also feel like I'm ready to be someone that you can talk about things however often you feel the need to share something if you need to friendship for me has always been a strange affair over my life people have come and people have gone things have been intense and some things have moved from a kind of idea of friendship into something more and some things have disintegrated, dissipated that made no sense why? and I've always wondered is there a way to have any kind of friendship that somehow just is, that isn't subject to suddenly doesn't exist anymore I often wondered that and I sometimes came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't that everything changes, nothing stays couldn't, can't even have that in connection I see others who seem to have long term friendships often going right back to school they're still in each other's lives, they're still having a family feeling from it I have none of that, nobody from my past exists in my present, at least my distant past and those who exist in my present who were in my past, Kay and Eliza Steve, her partner my relationship is different, I'm different, it's different I'm living in a different reality, a different parallel earth you could say, where it just works better, were I the same bloke who was in that first van, I didn't have that this kind of a relationship, but then their life has changed dramatically with their daughter becoming unwell or her autistic epileptic, psychotic nature was triggered and I wasn't around for the beginnings of that but now I'm part of the support structure, the caring structure, for not just her, also for her mum and sometimes a little bit for her dad, but mostly it's her and her mum, and I feel like that is important yeah, thanks for listening