Silence
I have been struggling for a long time with silence. With every violation, I found myself in a spin, unable to communicate until it is way too late. This has been a shroud of mine since girlhood. Each time is worse yet easier; it is like saying the water is way deeper yet warmer. Left alone, my mind is an incredible thing, for better or worse. My brain is my greatest ally. I was taught young “mind over matter” is what gets a person through life. I was raised around broken bodies who made the best life they could given what they were taught and what they knew. My body was not much better: sick often, disabled, weak, tiny, and achy all the time. So, my brain became my focus. I knew if I could hone that, I could overcome anything because I could teach myself absolutely anything. If my surroundings taught me so much that it defined me, why would it not me any different if I taught myself in order to define myself. That way, I could take the lessons learned otherwise and modify them to suit my brain. My brain loves patterns, tracking, and synthesizing. It has had to do it all its life! When you do not hear most of what is happening around you, every sentence a person utters becomes a cryptogram (I secretly thank my mother every day for handing me the cryptogram puzzle book. I still remember hearing the “awwww” of the angels when the pencil and the cryptogram book touched my hands). I do the same with all information in my surroundings in order to get ahead in life. I know that every disadvantage can be an advantage! I will give you a few examples: I am deaf in my left ear – Sweet! I do not have to put up with hearing certain people (this was great perspective when I was being bullied). I am blind in my right eye – Sweet! I can highly focus on specific objects with fewer distractions (However, 3D is out). My brain gets overwhelmed and is differently wired – Sweet! I must slow down and take my time plus I have different perspectives on life. I am a silent person – Sweet! I am a natural observer who carefully considers everything. Notice that none of these things involves communicating with other people, except my brain being different: there is an opportunity to teach others my different perspectives. However, that requires breaking silence, my ultimate struggle. So, what is it about this silence?
What is this silence? Is it vocal? Can I still write? Will I share what I write? How about recording a video? Will I share the video? If so, on which platforms? How do I go about this? Where do I post? And so on…. Even the silence question is met with a lot of questions. These questions are the beauty of anxiety in that they allow me to go into the details. I, however, can slow myself down enough to hear the questions without feeling overwhelmed (it took me years to hone this practice). What am I being silent about? Why is this silence feeling necessary? Ah, there are the qualitative questions!!! Qualitative questions get into the experiences and feelings. Why? Fear is the simplest answer. Fear of my masks being exposed. I maintained them for so long, the masks of normalcy, the masks that tell other people that I fit in, the masks to cover my odd habits, and the masks that make me feel safe and hidden. People, like my parents, have always held such influence over my self-perception that I fear breaking it because then it would feel like I have lied to them about who I am or even who I was. I have heard, “that’s not you, Amanda” a few times in my life. Then what is me? Or even who? Oh, there I go into an identity question. Ah! Silence is a part of my identity! It is one of the few aspects of myself that has stayed true throughout my life. I would hear, “you’re so quiet Amanda”, “do you talk?”, “hey, you spoke! There she is!”, and so on. I have been goaded into being social more often than not because the social is confusing enough to me that I avoid it for the most part. And yet… I am so curious!!!! That is the flipside to the silence: curiousity. I am just so friggin’ curious about everything. So, I quietly observe. Then something happens… someone asks me a question about a special interest of mine, and I light up like a Christmas tree.
My special interest has been librarianship for more than a decade now. It was a fantastic mask!! It allowed me to live a life fulfilled by helping people navigate information sources. Being a part of the medical community in my role made my heart even happier as a quiet person working in the background. I had reason to uphold high standards, ethics and expectations without someone tearing them down unnecessarily. Eventually though… it all fell apart as my masks became cracked and I became unable to perform my duties as a librarian effectively while trauma brain caught up with me and took me out. Then the standards and ethics of my job were flexed to the point of breaking. Depression had already taken out my other special interests: reading, jewelry making, bass guitar playing, photography, and other interests that I have held for many years and that I truly enjoy. They all feel so far away despite efforts to reconnect. Heck, even writing! I have all of my journals and have maintained, quietly, several blogs and yet my fingers struggle to type every word that itches to be released. I miss when I lived all of these freely, with love and curiousity. Burnout took the rest of essentials needed to be a “functional member of society”[1] such as time management. I used to be on time to every meeting, now I am lucky to be only 5-10 min late. Ability to prioritize and make lists became more challenging. Stimulus became more overwhelming making group work very challenging, going shopping a minor version of hell and social events impossible. I try not to say that none of this matters as I have been dismissed by my family doctor (I feel bad for the person who wrote my CPP disability denial that despite the 9 conditions [fibromyalgia & pain, vision & hearing impairments, anxiety & depression, migraines, endometriosis & scoliosis] that they know about, I am still able to work). On the upside, I started my autism assessment and will continue with it as long as funding allows (which has been seriously restricted in my current situation). The assessment will help me figure out other advantages I possess. However, I worry that the damage done to my special interests is worse and that I won’t get them back. My mind also knows that it CAN overcome any matter, including this one. It will take time and patience.
The trouble is that I have less than a week to become more functional or else things will be much worse. Really, I should adopt “resilience” and “survivor” as my special interest if it was not already a natural part of who I am today. I will crawl, broken and miserable to get to better circumstances. Especially now that I have the mama bear identity to haul my ass into gear. I try not to be sad by the giant grey zone of my special interests and move forward. Well, I am proud to say that I have moved forward enough to free myself from of a lot of stressors that dimmed my world into monochrome. My wish is that by the sea, my enthusiasm will be restored. Frankly, I need my special interests as they are my income makers! I miss my technicolour world. However, the technicolour is loud. Am I ready to break my silence and embrace the world again? Yes, once I warm up my heart, I will. When I feel safe enough, I will. I am starting with my heart and home. Then, I will. Today, I am starting with breaking some silence with this blog post.
[1]A functional member of society is someone who works full time, maintains a household, and social connections.
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