On this date, twelve years ago, I was in the psychiatric ward of North Park Private Hospital. I'd had my first child, and although I'd wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember (even though I found babies kind of annoying and squishy, but I was sure that would change when I had one of my own). It didn't. Motherhood is the place where you need to know who you are and what kind of mother you want to be. You need to back yourself and your decisions. You need to scream for an epidural if you want one. You need to tell the brestapo to fuck off if you want to use bottles because you can't stand the feeling of breastfeeding and it's making you insane. You need to look in the mirror and be able to tell yourself that this is hard and messy but you can do this because you are strong and that YOU ARE THERE FOR YOU. It doesn't matter what happens, you back yourself and you know you can do this. I had none of that. I had a chameleonic sense of self that changed with the room I was in, to make you like me and approve of me because I didn't like or approve of me. And so every bit of advice that I was given about parenting, the person who seemed so sure that would work, I thought they knew better than me. I thought everyone knew better than me. All I saw were the mistakes I had made in life and the ways I was wrong and I became obsessed with how these mistakes and sense of wrongness would surely spill onto my child, and that they would probably die or stop breathing because I WAS DOING IT ALL WRONG.
Let me give you some context, in 2003, I had a rather messy car accident where I got sober and started going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I walked into those meetings knowing that I had a problem with my emotions, a problem with excesses, a problem with guilt, shame and remorse. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was 26 and sure that I was too young to be an alcoholic, but the sessions with a counsellor I'd been having since I was 23 didn't seem to be taking the edge off my behaviour and the embarrassment I felt when I came to. It was out of proportion, too big and too scary. That kind of echoed the way that I felt about myself. Out of proportion, either too loud or too quiet or too messy or too tall or not thin enough, angry and jealous and messy and incapable of finding anyone to love me, least of all myself. I drank to medicate the feelings of not being good enough, the social anxiety and sensory overload I faced when I went anywhere, and when I drank I became like Pepe Le Peu, I went on a magic carpet ride of total weirdness where I couldn't be relied on, I drank drove, I did things that I would never do sober. I had no idea who I should be, I was a chameleon. And I sought approval from those around me constantly, because I didn't like anything that I did and thought I ruined everything, but also that the world was unfair and that happy people were sheep...that if only I wasn't so aware of all the suffering in the world then I wouldn't be so unhappy.
I got sober, and was terrified of being alone. They say in AA to stay single for the first year at least, so you have a chance to find yourself. I couldn't wait, because the idea of being with the bitch in the mirror I'd been trying to avoid was anathema to me. I had stopped drinking when all my friends were still going, so I DESERVED A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR DAMMIT.
My ex was my partner in my sister's wedding, and we were both at a period in our lives when we'd never been in love, wanted to settle down and we moved fast. Within two months we were engaged. And so began the biggest act of my life, where I blamed the bright lights of Canberra for my sense of dis-ease... I could reinvent myself as a wife in a conservative Christian community. I never realised how much of a leftist feminist greenie I was until I moved there. I had literal culture shock, and I tried so hard to push myself into being who I thought I needed to be. I was miserable.
Many twists and turns later, it turns out that I am autistic, a recovering alcoholic, a person with big feelings.
I am only now, in leaving that marriage, being able to see all the ways that I stifled myself and blamed my ex-husband. The anger and confusion I felt because I wanted him to fix me and he refused. I am the only one who can fix me, when I realise that I am wrong about everything that I ever thought about myself. I'm not too messy, I'm not too sensitive, I'm not too much. I am amazing and wonderful and filled with light. I have faced, in the past twelve years, many of my demons and had many pharmaceutical interventions, electroconvulsive therapy, suicide attempts, and yet I have survived.
Tony Attwood says that teenagers with Autism often become depressed, not because of their parents or because of their biology, but because they are different. They feel different in a number of ways that they can't express, because they find the world too loud, too bright, too scary. They don't understand social conventions, they have trouble with finding friends. They are laughed at, they are bullied and teased. And these experiences become a negative filter that they put over everything in their lives. They see everything they do through them being a failure and wrong. And they get angry if people challenge that, because that is their truth.
I heard Tony Attwood say this in October this year, and it hit me in my core. This. I was diagnosed in August, and this is what I had struggled with my whole entire life. Even when I entered therapy and AA, I had found a way to twist things so that I was wrong, and even though I had mindfulness and gratitude journals and lists of letting go of things, it had never worked because I fundamentally, at my core, thought that I was WRONG.
I went home after hearing that and cried all the way home, I cried in my bed and I felt so sad for the poor adolescent Deb, who couldn't express why she felt the way she felt, but felt afraid and scared and wrong all the time. And then drinking came along and helped anesthetise things for a little bit, and then marriage and kids, but nothing helped. Well, this lecture helped me so much. Because after that I was able to see that if the way I had always thought about myself had been unnecessarily harsh, then maybe it was possible that I was worthy of being loved. BY MY FREAKIN SELF. I started inner child work, with like-minded people, and I started to tell my little girl when she was sad or angry or lonely, that I was there for her and I loved her. I started to believe that the spirit was in me, a divine white light, or the holy spirit, whatever you want to call it. I started to have experiences where I felt like I was being of use, that I had value, that I was loved. That I was mistaken. I wasn't wrong. I was just a girl trying to do the right thing, but in trying to be right all the time, I had terrible fear and anger and wouldn't let anyone close to me or love me because all I could see were the ways in which I would ruin it.
I am currently typing this at 9 on a Saturday night listening to the hits of the 90s. In the past, I had a terrible fear of not being somewhere important on a Saturday night, around people or being seen. Now, I feel like I am where I need to be and I don't have to push myself to do things that I don't like. My time is precious, as am I. I love my life. I love my friends. I love my kids. I love the people who have held space for me this year, have listened to my feelings, looked at my memes, laughed at me, with me, held me, helped me. I'm so grateful that I have all of you in my life. I also realised that all my family of origin wanted was to love me. They weren't actually looking at all the ways in which I'm crazy. Plot twist! I saw how much I was loved, because I let myself love me. It's the most important love affair any of us will ever have.
Comments
Post a Comment