May 21, 2003

• Another Happy ‘Blog
  
  Note: If you want light reading, skip to something else.
  
  Laying in bed trying to get to sleep, I kept thinking about overwhelming things. I’d almost be asleep, and then I’d start thinking about something from the huge list of things I need to do, which would be followed by something else from the list, and so forth, until I was overwhelmed by all of them (a process which lasts only the smallest fraction of the most split second you can imagine). Someone listening outside my window would have heard me go to bed, and then every 3-4 minutes, they’d hear some kind of growl of frustration, or me saying something like ‘Why the fuck do I have to go through this?’
  
  I began to see through it, though, to the thing this process is protecting me from. There would be the occassional glimpse, as through a door that’s slightly ajar. The real thing was a sort of agoraphobic silence, and past that, a deep, deep sadness.
  
  My time doing meditation let me say to myself: there won’t be any more talking. No language inside our outside my head. The chatter evaporated, and there I was in the agoraphobic silence. I hung around there for a while, observing how quiet. Any stray word seemed like a shout. The phobic part went away, and the agora part became inviting.
  
  And, from this metaphysical staging area, I dove into the deep, deep sadness.
  
  Sometimes, being sad is like puking. You know you have to do it. You try to put it off, you use palliatives, you think that maybe you can just wait it out. Not a chance. Your belly is full of alcohol, or poison, or whatever, and you must induce vomiting in order to stay healthy.
  
  So that’s what I did. I decided to ride that emotional state of deep sadness wherever it went. I spent a bunch of time curled up in a fetal position, frozen and gasping and sobbing, all muscles tense, as if I could squeeze the sadness away from the inside. This is also an austim trait; many autistic folks are calmed by pressure and restraint of their body. Some ignorant psychiatrist who happened on the scene would have given me sodium pentathol or something, and thus prevented me from doing the healthy thing. You don’t give someone with alcohol poisoning an antiemetic, do you?
  
  Finally, when my sinuses were clogged with snot and I couldn’t breathe very well, I pulled myself back. Whenver stuff like this happens, I’m amazed at my ability to switch my emotional states on and off. I can’t deal with the world, because I can’t turn off the overwhelm, but I can turn off sadness when I don’t want it any more. Unfortunately, this reflex comes into play with more happy states, too, so I end up tossing the emotional baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
  
  Went to the bathroom, washed the face with cold water (BC always said to wash your face with cold water), blew the snot out. Spent a while pacing the house, feeling the afterglow of intense feelings. After about 15 minutes of that, it was time to return to some old distractions, so here I am at the computer.
  
  No doubt this sort of experience sucks, but it’s an undeniable part of who I am. Some people say I have problems with delayed gratification. The irony is that I have problems with delayed emotional response, since my first-impulse emotional response is usually not appropriate around normal Earth humans. If I want to keep having any kind of meaninful relationship with them, that is.

  • 10:47 am
  • 3 Comments