I’ve been thinking a lot about my complicated relationship with writing. Not so much thinking, per se — more like its been a big white elephant at the back of my mind, at the core of my being, for most of my adult years.
When I was a child, I used to write. From as early on as I remember, I consumed stories and books, and then would extrapolate them in my imagination. I often breathed and lived those stories; often, I imagined myself both the narrator and the main character, acting out a script written in real time. I imagined an audience, always watching as I played this role — sometimes a stranger in a cafe, sometimes a teacher or someone in the group… when I got to the age of being drawn to romance and wanting to create my own love stories, I imagined it to be a single love interest, seeing and appreciating me from afar.
This may sound strange or conceited. But I was a child, and this was a peculiar game I played, made more strange or perhaps completely aligned with a personality who feared any human gaze, and who would make herself disappear the moment any attention was paid — by stubborn silence, even if I knew the answer, by physically removing and hiding myself, or by quite literally shrinking and muting myself in order to disappear into the furniture.
Its quite amazing to me, still, the number of people I’ve managed to talk to, the number of crowds I’ve stood before and spoken, the amount of things I’ve done that have required meetings, explanations, negotiations, in my life. All while having the same instinct of my 8-year-old self, still tangibly felt in my nerves, almost every single time.
The scrutiny of microdetails in every interaction is exhausting. The perception of every facial or bodily micro expression, the constant decoding of the phrases, the words, the tones. The mental calculations of finding the appropriate words to respond with, the mental and physical effort to find the words and verbalise it in some coherent, socially acceptable form. The anxiety that happens before the interaction, and after, replaying the dialogue and hyperfocusing on what I didn’t say, could’ve said, said in a way that was off, at the wrong timing, missed chances, over emphasised, what the other must be thinking, here were some clues……..and so on.
I’ve often wondered if something like this is what other people feel too. Not that they ever seemed to show it, and I often wondered how others then dealt with it so well. Just about a year ago now I came across a video of a woman talking about autism and what being on the autism spectrum is like. I watched more videos, read more articles. I found and did a couple of online tests from instruments that are used in formal diagnoses. My reaction to finding out was a combination of ‘holy shit, wow, ok’ and ‘that makes so much sense.’ Reactions from close friends and colleagues I’ve told ranged from ‘no way you are’ to ‘ah. we always just thought you were super, super introverted’.
Now that I have a framework, I can learn to recognise and accept the way my brain and body is neurologically wired to respond in social interactions. My adult years, even before learning about autism, have been a progressive journey towards saying things that need to be said, even while nervous, and to say things however imperfectly with the information and capacity I have in that moment, and not to worry too much about it at all. Things are better, which is not to say that the anxiety doesn’t still arise as a visceral, nervous response. But I can be more clearly aware of it in the moment, and accept it, and move on.
Which brings me back to writing. Since my youngest years, my personal most natural way of communication and of being was through writing. It is my home, my safe space, and how I show myself as present in this world. It is a home I haven’t occupied, and a practise I haven’t made space for myself to do, however, in the past 20 years. I’ve been working, I’ve been studying, I’ve been growing older. And all this time I’ve had the feeling like I’m waiting for my life to begin, waiting for a time to draw the curtains and show up in the world.
Only yesterday I had the realisation that perhaps the reason why I’ve been feeling like I haven’t showed up yet in the world is because I haven’t been participating in the one form of expression and communication that comes most naturally to me. Maybe its time to embrace this, finally. As my partner M likes to say, in a hundred years none of this will matter anyway.
