self

A coherent self depends on time. You can't have a song without a beat.

Prior to medication and understanding I had little coherent self; I had achieved all these things and worn all these masks but none of them were me, and they had all fallen away.

What aripiprazole has given me is a self. I don’t think that’s an overstatement. It’s worth noting that a lifetime of meditation likely helped, but not so much until the processing was freed up.

So all these parts are floating around I take this pill and they begin to coalesce. These asteroids have been pulled together and are forming a planet, thanks to treatment and understanding. I can now take parts of my past and try to build a ‘real self’ based on intent, rather than impulse.

Early days - childhood - the land is malleable and the weather tumultuous. Your endocrine system shapes your nervous system. Then over time the land cools and becomes less malleable, the tempest calms, and you have a ‘normal’ brain where solid neuronal structures hold the bull share of control.

In my brain the weather never calmed down so I developed some pretty wild land as a result. This is my autism, my 'real self', and he is finally visible thanks to medication calming the weather.

So this is what I believe to be the self, but I think the storm kept things from being seen clearly. 

The self has two parts: one fast-changing and one slow. There has to be a beat for cohesion, and medication which regulates dopamine hgave me that beat.

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