I keep coming back to identity. I think I have one now. Still figuring out what it is. I think it’s like a walnut.
But you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. As an autistic person who is masking to themselves, I guess this is extra true. When my processing was smashed out of the park right after diagnosis it was easy to slip into black and white thinking.
Now I can be more granular though. I had to dance to the neurotypical tune of work and sausages, sure, but did my family make me dance? I don’t think they ever did. They taught me. They didn’t make me. There’s a distinction.
And did they love me or did they love the constructs?
Again - monotropic thinking has subsided and it’s clear they didn’t actually care about the constructs. Some of the things I achieved might have impressed them, sure, but they never cared. It was never them who needed the validation.
The reality is that this is nobody’s fault. It’s not even from when you fell off that slide. It’s because you were born James Baird and you are of a certain lineage, and you have achieved great things through the suffering. But the great things were all self-oriented, because the suffering was of the self. Now the suffering is of the other and there is the high motivation from ari again so back on topic.
My family love me and they always have. They never asked me to be somebody else; they just asked me not to be a dick.
I wasn’t a dick. I was sick. But nobody knew; not even me. 2mg now at 25% the strength of dopamine. So even at 100% uptake over 3 days that’s only 2mg of extra perceived dopamine on the receptors. I know it’s a tiny molecule but still…
So - the people love you. Good. You love them. Good. That’s a foundation.
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