Personal

We’ve been doing an experiment on me and my autistic, unfocused brain. Things were getting desperate last year with my depression and general mental health. Some of this was related to where we lived, but many of the symptoms were simply worse versions of what I’ve been suffering with most of my life.

My dear ones, whom I trust implicitly and literally with my life in this case, did the research and came up with a supplement, but we agreed I wouldn’t know what it was in order to eliminate any expectations I had about the effectiveness.

I had suspicions about what it was, but went along pretty happily for the next couple months. There were subtle improvements over all, but the most significant was a much less drastic and awful menstrual cycle. I have PCOS, so this is a massive, important change.

Then our move happened and they had trouble locating the supplement and I went off it for a little. It was bad. It took a couple weeks to feel the effects of not having it in my system and then, once we found the supplement again, a couple more weeks to work it into my system again.

After a round with that supplement back into my system, they did a bit more looking around since the original was difficult to source locally and told me they found a new supplement that included the original but also had the potential to be even better. I said yes to this one as well, again keeping it a secret from myself.

Cut to a month later and I’ve been feeling like something is very different. Yesterday I had a little time to think and realized that what I have been feeling is a clarity that I have literally never had before. There’s no background noise in  my mind. I’m only thinking about what I choose to think about instead of being bombarded with random, chaotic thoughts.

It’s so foreign to me that it took me a couple weeks to understand and recognize what is going on. It’s pretty life altering. I am now starting the process of relearning how to think about things, how to write, how to be creative, how to move through the world in what feels, from my past experience, like a zen state all the time.

I’m grateful for the experiment because it means I have confidence I’m not just convincing myself this is working. I’ll double down with the fact that the change was so unexpected I never could have imagined it and to me that verifies the efficacy of this supplement for me.

I’m now using Host Defense. As with anything like this, ymmv and see a professional.

Let the relearning begin.

“When you were little, you were so carefree. But these last few years, more and more, it’s almost like I can feel you holding your breath… You get to exhale now, Simon. You get to be more you than you have been in… in a very long time. You deserve everything you want.” - Emily in “Love, Simon” This morning when I woke up everything felt tight, strained. I’m 43 and that means that things have indeed started to hurt more in odd places, but this was more than that. I felt clenched.

I turned to a guided meditation on my phone. It helped a little, enough to get the ball rolling in making me see where the clenching was coming from, or so I thought. I was looking at how stressed I’ve been lately for various reasons.

I can feel the burnout creeping in around the edges, enough that it might start effecting my work. I can taste it on my tongue and feel it in the way I interact with the word. I knew when I signed off for the day I needed to unplug for a day or so, at least from writing code and wrapping my mind in those logical thoughts, useful as they might be.

I lit some incense, took a deep breath, and started to unclench. Then the noisy neighbors came home and wrecked the mood I had so tentatively started to foster. Fine then, I’ll just watch a movie, right?

I had heard about “Love, Simon” from a friend and they were pretty passionate about it. All I knew going in was that it was a teenager’s coming out story and I was guaranteed a happy ending, which is so welcome right now.

I liked the characters, enjoyed the soundtrack, and was very much appreciating the whole thing. And then I got blindsided by that bit of dialogue above. In the moment I didn’t understand why, but I started crying. Okay, sobbing is more like it.

The words are what the mom, Emily, says to her newly outed (by another student, not by choice) gay son. A little while later, the dad says some similar kinds of things. I could not stop crying. It’s been a half hour since the movie ended and I’m still crying.

In my spiritual tradition (as much as what you can what I do a tradition) we call this kind of experience a “heart opening”. Something comes along and just breaks you wide open and the feelings are overwhelming and intense and beautiful, if a bit painful as well.

I realized how much I needed to hear those words. In that moment I realized how much I, too, have been holding my breath. Unlike Simon, though, it hasn’t been four years. it’s been more like thirty-four.

I’m queer, this isn’t news to most and definitely not news to me, but my parents don’t know. I don’t have a partner. They’re conservative. I know they would still love me if I told them, but they wouldn’t get it, I don’t think, just how like they don’t get that I’m on the autism spectrum, though I have at least tried to explain that.

They don’t know about my spiritual path or lots of other small, personal, fragile things about me, either. Being exposed to them for the better part of the day yesterday left me feeling both tired and wired. Nothing was wrong, we had a nice time, actually, but I felt that gap between us, that secret. I was holding my breath all day.

This movie hasn’t made me suddenly want to tell them. I’m not planning all of a sudden on coming out. It has made me, however, realize that I hold my breath a lot. I have all this tension just balled up in a tight coil inside me. It’s not just my queerness, my spirituality, my personal beliefs. Not just being afraid of the world we’re living in and how it all feels so wrong.

It’s about how I’m approaching things, too. I’m not finding enough joy, or making my own. I’m not taking care of my health, spiritual, physical, mental or otherwise. I’m clenched all the time, with fear and nameless (and named) anxieties. I’m not resting enough.

I’m not breathing enough.

I don’t know what the next step is from here. I’m open and raw right now and that’s okay, it’s good. I vaguely was aware that there was a barrier up around me and it’s wrecked now and that’s good, too.

As Robert Fripp once wrote, “It is necessary to know the next step, but not the step after that.” My own “next step” was to sit down and write these words, to get it down on the page and find the connections.

There’s more digging to do, as well. I’ve got unreconciled feelings of something that might be regret, but it’s waiting for now. I also know that the world will do it’s best to come creeping back in, the good and the bad and that the intensity of these feelings will fade and it’s very possible I may even forget that this evening even happened. I like to hope not, though and to also hope that I can start building from here.

Is it strange to say that I wish any of you reading this a similar experience? It’s not fun, it’s not one of those “nice” feeling things. There is a chance though that it can be very healing and will do more good than harm when you recognize it for what it is. You may even feel like yourself again, though a slightly different version, when you come out the other side.

It’s not too difficult to start. You can begin by taking a nice, slow breath…