Even now, writing this, I write to escape emptiness. It is as if I need every moment to have a meaning. It was not always like this. Far from it, I could spend days staring at the ceiling doing nothing in particular. Not that I always felt particularly great doing nothing, but it was not the idleness that then was the problem. I was vain enough to interpret my despair as depth. There was no need for action. I was content letting my mind do random walks exploring terrain that did not have any discernible pattern. I could let it walk for ages without it protesting against it all being meaningless. Not so now. My mind now is on a tight leash. It always feels a need to go somewhere, mostly in a hurry. It is still doing a random walk. If I finish this text, it will be an exception to my rule. It is just that in each instant there has to be purpose, plan, goal. Every bump in the terrain can divert me from it or propel me to it. I always wonder. I almost never wander.
What happened? Did I get so deeply bored that every sign of boredom triggers me to action? Did I grow old becoming as addicted to action as I was addicted to inaction? I feel like whatever I do I only succeed in scratching the surface. An unwarranted sense of self-confidence has transformed into a bottomless pit of insecurity evident from my constant need of confirmation. A neediness that is a drag on those that are near to me as I now need them continuously close to me, to confirm it is OK. Even if confirming it is OK is, for them, really NOK. And even if they confirm it is OK, I sense the ‘really NOK’ which drives me to yet more action to try to make it OK again. So it continues, insecurity begetting restlessness in turn leading to excavating yet another layer of the bottomless pit into which my nightmares always had me falling, unable to contact the ones near to me. Unable in my restless distress to for instance dial their number as the touchscreen of my phone was no longer sensitive to my touch.
But why is this post subtitled ‘Tuesday Tutorial’? To ensure that months after starting this post, I will finally finish it. To give this post a goal, a purpose and a plan. And that goal is to edify you when reading this. That purpose is to caution you whenever you’re tempted to see the present you as the true you. The plan is to show vulnerability so as to draw you in and - now feeling your own vulnerability - to edify you in forgetting the very idea of there being a true you. The truth is you are just a product of what happens to you. Human beings are sponges. We are not meant to remain ourselves. It could be said that my autism made me self-sufficient, and that my ADHD makes me restless for a recognition that I cannot ever recognize. A meme could be made on my AuDHD and how it got me in this tangle. But that meme should recognize that being in a tangle is just the type of sponge I am. Wrestling with restlessness is what I do best. And I need no confirmation from those near to me that this is whom they see and love. I just need to be able to see that I should not be unhappy for frequently failing to be happy.
(to be continued)