I’m recording from the bath after a week of connection, shutdown, insight, and sensory overwhelm. At our neurodivergent meetup, another person’s boundary brought up memories of being treated as too intense, and I watched myself apologize, dissociate, and go quiet. Processing that experience helped me see that I can respect someone’s limits while also asking for the response and support I need. I’m grateful for spaces where we can practice communicating differently, and I want to facilitate them myself. Alongside that, unanswered job applications have stirred a frightening sense that my skills, creativity, and full expression may never be seen. I’m beginning to connect that dread with the freeze I experienced earlier in the week, while acknowledging that I didn’t understand it as it happened.
| Primary Energy | Overwhelmed, vulnerable, and searching for connection |
| Secondary Energy | Reflective, frustrated, grateful, and determined |
THREADS
1. Holding Space Within Different Capacities
Summary
I’m grateful for the neurodivergent meetup community, and I want to curate spaces where people can choose how they participate. Watching a friend share something painful and another person name her limit reminded me that supporting someone and respecting my own capacity have to coexist. I also noticed how instinctively I step into facilitating, even when I’m attending someone else’s group.
Lesson / Teaching
I can help acknowledge what someone has shared while making room for a boundary or a change of topic; I can’t make one space feel safe for everyone.
Tags: neurodivergent-communication, boundaries-and-capacity
2. Intensity, Old Shame, and Self-Expression
Summary
When someone said the conversation was getting too heavy, I respected her boundary, but her expression brought up memories of people reacting to my intensity throughout my life. I felt myself become small, apologize automatically, dissociate, and then protect myself by barely speaking. I’m trying to recognize that depth and intensity are part of who I am without having to apologize for them all the time.
Open Question
How can I stay connected to my own voice when someone else’s limit brings up old shame?
Tags: authentic-expression, boundaries-and-capacity
3. Asking for Connection Beyond the Silence
Summary
I realized that I often share an experience and the conclusion I’ve reached without asking a question or saying what response I need. Silence can leave me feeling unsupported, even though someone else may be processing, overwhelmed, or unsure how to respond. I can try asking directly whether others relate or telling them that I’m looking for someone to talk to.
Lesson / Teaching
I can ask for the connection I want instead of assuming that silence tells me how people feel about me.
Tags: neurodivergent-communication, boundaries-and-capacity
4. Finding an Outlet for My Full Expression
Summary
Repeated job applications and silence have left me feeling that I spend my energy persuading people I’m capable instead of using the skills I’ve worked hard to develop. The fear reaches beyond employment: I’m scared that the performer, systems architect, singer, dancer, and comedian in me will never get to come to life. Looking back, I wonder whether that dread helps explain the freeze I experienced earlier in the week, although I couldn’t understand it in the moment.
Open Question
How do I find places where my capabilities and creative parts can be expressed, witnessed, and valued?
Tags: employment-and-self-worth, authentic-expression
5. Recognizing Overwhelm and Honoring My Limits
Summary
After an allergic reaction, traffic, painfully loud motors, rain, and smoke, I realized I couldn’t stay out for the movie I’d been looking forward to with friends. I came home and got into the bath to regulate, only to find smoke coming into the bathroom too. This week has reminded me how unbearable several kinds of strain can feel together, and how much I sometimes understand only after the experience has passed.
Tags: sensory-overload, boundaries-and-capacity
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, hello, it’s me, JGB. It’s Friday, October 30 at 4:44. What are the odds? It’s 4:44. And I would normally say I’m in my happy place, but I’m not feeling the normal, delicious, good vibes. I’m in the bath as a form of regulation, and I am experiencing distress right now. There is smoke coming into my bathroom, and it smells like plastic, and I don’t want to be tortured by these fumes.
Okay, before I go on that little tangent, the reason that I’m here at 4:44 is because I had a whole day planned. What was I thinking? Who am I to think that I can’t believe? [wording unclear] And I just want to record this because I realized I’m capturing, and now that I’m getting into the habit of this, I’m noticing what I have a tendency to share about. And I want to make sure that I cover the tough stuff as well as the ooey-gooey good feelings, because there was a bunch of tough stuff this week.
It wasn’t a bad week. It was not. There were lots of highlights and breakthroughs and good moments and difficult moments. Such is life, but there were some challenges that actually served me well. And that’s the thing: I want to capture these things because it’s very easy to be like, “Why are these eggs out of an act of age? [wording unclear]” But a lot of them actually really did serve me well, and I want to make sure to capture these things.
Because this is why I’m sharing, my people. I know that so many of you can relate with me, and I want to hear from you. I’m sharing this stuff openly because I know people are like, “Oh my God, no, no, no, no, no, no. Is that what’s out of? [wording unclear]” Not that I’m the only person on here saying stuff like this, but this is what I feel inspired to do, is to share openly and authentically, because that comes naturally for me. And I am desperately wanting to communicate with people who get it. Oh my God, you get it. It’s fucking hard sometimes.
So today’s Friday. Last weekend—this is something I want to touch on—on Saturdays, every other Saturday, we have a neurodivergent meetup group that was organized by Martin, who has now become a friend through this group. And I joined the first-ever inaugural meetup group with Martin and friends. And essentially, the people that came to that very first get-together have become really close friends of mine, like people I spend time with on a weekly basis or that I’m in touch with. I have deep connection to them when we talk and support each other and love on each other. And it has been really meaningful for me because I’ve been struggling for community for so long.
And then, of course, you get a bunch of NDs together, and we’re like, “Oh my God, let’s be friends.” So I’m so grateful for this meetup. And it’s also challenging for me because I want to run a meetup like this, and I have the opportunity to do so. There’s no reason why Martin’s meetup is stopping me. I actually have a great opportunity to host it on every other Sunday so that there’s always a meetup available for people.
And I have a vision for how I want to run these things because I work in these spaces. And this is part of my passion and my dream, is to curate spaces where people can show up free to be who they are and to express themselves in the way they are, and to feel safe or to feel supported to process things, share, talk about all of the things, any of the things. And so, yes, this has been such a cool part of my life since finding my home. I have a community through this group, and I intend on hosting groups like this. And I have a bunch of tools that I’ve developed and that I’ve used in my retreat spaces, and I’m really looking forward to investing time into curating these spaces.
And a why: one of the reasons why I think these spaces are so important is because we really do show up differently. We are selectively social. We socialize in totally different ways. That’s the name of the group: Selectively Social Club. “SSC, baby” [wording unclear]. And the reason it’s called the Selectively Social Club is because you’re allowed to show up however you want.
You don’t have to talk. You don’t have to be put on the spot. This is just a space where you can be around other human beings, and you can choose how you want to socialize. Some of us just want to be around humans, and we don’t want to be put on the spot. And so I have a system for that where we have bracelets for people: if you just want to be present but not engage, you can wear the purple bracelet.
And also, our socials are selective in that each one of us on this wide spectrum of neurodiversity socializes totally fucking differently. It’s been so interesting going to these groups weekly or biweekly because, depending on who shows up, there’s a totally different mix of autism and ADHD and AuDHD. And it’s really interesting how much the dynamic changes based on what type of music [wording unclear]—what types of neurodivergent people are there. There are people like me who are out there and super communicative and animated.
And I guess, you know what’s funny? I feel like that’s more of my ADHD side that compulsively wants to express myself and use words and connect. And I’m also highly sensory, emotionally sensitive, so I also feel how everyone else is feeling in the room, and there’s so much awkwardness, which is just par for the course for these things. And so I tend to fall into the chattier side, where I’m trying to support the people in the room. And that’s been part of the challenge for me, is that it’s not my space to just jump in and lead or try to protect people or try to guide when difficult things come up.
But that’s also just naturally how I am, and it’s one of my gifts, and it’s what I want to do for a living. And so it’s hard for me to not follow that urge to guide people through communication challenges, because it happens a lot. We’re just a bunch of people who are trying to express ourselves in our own unique ways, and we all receive information differently, and we all share differently. It’s just so fascinating. It’s fascinating to me, and I love it so much.
And this last week, something really significant happened in my experience, and this is why I think these groups are so important. So during this meetup, one of my friends—I’m going to have to yell out fake names for people [wording unclear]—my friend Lisa. I knew she was going through a really hard time, and so when I got to the group, I asked Lisa, “Lisa, how are you doing? I know you’ve got a lot going on.” And then I kind of felt bad for putting her on the spot because it’s pretty deep stuff, and I’ve spent time with her before in these groups, and I know that she does like to share openly and vulnerably.
But I wasn’t sure if other people were okay with open and vulnerable, and I wasn’t sure if she was feeling it. So already, I entered this situation and was like, “Oh fuck. Shut up, Jess.” I already felt guilty for the way that I was showing up in this group. And this is why I love these spaces, because I get to witness myself and how I’m moving through these awkward social situations, because we’re all—we’re all so awkward.
And so Lisa felt prompted to share, and she was like, “No, really, thank you. I would like to share about this.” And she’s been working at a child’s orphanage, and she’s working with a child who’s severely disabled and who has been struggling for a long time and holding on for dear life, and just looked like they weren’t going to make it. And that is some heavy fucking shit, and I feel for her as a highly sensitive being. In these environments, a lot of the time we find ourselves in these environments because we care so much and we want to help.
But at the same time, going through an experience like that weekly, like every week you’re confronting this and being a part of it and around this energy, that can be really, really hard. And it’s hard to sit with alone. It’s the kind of thing you want to cry on someone’s shoulder. You want to talk to someone. You want to process it. You want to share it in the right dynamics, and so it felt comfortable to me to receive her.
But as this highly sensitive person who’s hypervigilantly monitoring the room, I could feel the other people in the room were like, “Whoa.” Not sure what to do with that, and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. Honestly, I should have in that moment just let us sit in that discomfort, because that is just part of the process of holding space. We don’t have to fix anything for her. We don’t have to make her feel better, but we want her to feel seen and to feel like she has somewhere to go.
And so I immediately witnessed myself trying to moderate this and to be like, “Okay, everyone, this is really hard.” And I don’t even know what I said, but I was like, “Thank you so much for sharing, and I just want to acknowledge that this is really heavy. And if anyone needs to take a beat, we can take a breath together.” And I took a deep breath. But that was very instinctive, intuitive, that I did that, and I kind of felt bad while I was doing it because I was like, “Why am I moderating the scoops of my group? [wording unclear]”.
And then, of course, what happens every time in these groups is that there’s these really long pauses while we move on to the next share or the next topic or whatever comes next. And again, that’s part of this group. This is therapy for us. It’s okay to sit through the discomfort, and it’s even better to do it as a group. But I sort of felt prompted because I thought, well, Jenna gets to share this heavy stuff that she’s carrying, so I want to mention what I’ve been carrying. But I was aware that I wasn’t going to go down, knocking on death’s door and talking about death again, but the example that I had to share was about my dog that got sick and that I thought was going to die.
And so I prefaced the story by saying, “I don’t mean to go down another heavy path, but I have this story about how my dog got sick and all of a sudden was dying.” And as I was sharing this, the person in front of me, I just happened to be staring at her while I was speaking. And I just witnessed her eyes close and her head fall back, and I saw this emotional, overwhelmed reaction that was like, “Whoa, too much.” And she actually verbalized, “This is getting a little too heavy.” And I respect that so much.
And I want to name that I am in no way offended by her response. When you hear me explain, please understand that my reaction to her response was not about her or what she said. It was what it brought up in me. And that’s so important in these dynamics and these circles, is we can really trigger stuff, but that doesn’t mean it’s the person that’s triggering us. It’s what was said or the context or whatever that brings something up in ourselves.
And so what happened for me in that moment was I immediately saw all these faces throughout my life that have made that exact look, this, “Oh my God, what are you going on—what are you talking about? Why the fuck are you talking about death? Why are you always so intense? Why are you talking about this? Why can’t you just be chill?” And this is what I reacted to, was not to her, but to the fact that I had seen that look so many times. And I swear to you, I hadn’t even thought about this before at all.
This was not in my memory until that moment. I saw my dad, my stepmom, I saw my high school friends. I saw a number of incidents that have happened to me where people have just been like, “Why the fuck is this girl so intense? Can you take it down a notch? Why are we talking about this? Why are you bringing this up?” And so I immediately felt really bad because I could tell that I had overwhelmed this girl, and I felt like I should have known better.
And so I just immediately sort of shut up and said, “I swear I was going to get to a more positive point about how this death made me realize the beauty in the cycle of—” Anyway, I had a share that was far more positive than it sounded at the beginning. And so I just immediately shut down. I felt my whole body shut down, and I felt myself apologize, and that was an automatic response. I don’t even remember. I was just like, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to talk about death, and I was going to—”
And I was scrambling for words because I felt like a little kid again all of a sudden. I was this little kid that was like, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” And I just witnessed myself regress. I regressed in that moment, and I’m so grateful other people in the group were like, “No, no, it’s okay. We’re all carrying heavy stuff, and it’s nice that we can create space like this.” And I tried to express that to her. I was like, “I think it’s important that we have spaces like this, but I also recognize it’s important when we have boundaries to say, ‘That’s too much. I have a boundary that I need to set here.’”
So everything was handled perfectly well, and I’m so grateful and proud of us. But I regressed so much in that moment. I left my body. I felt myself dissociate. I could see people talking, and I wasn’t really registering what they were saying because I was stuck somewhere else with this monologue in my head about, “What were you thinking? Why did you do that? And you should be more careful about other people’s feelings.”
And I excused myself to go to the bathroom because I felt so overwhelmed. And while I was in the bathroom, the whole time I was like, “I gotta go. I’m gonna leave. I’m having a meltdown. I need to be alone. I need to ground. I need to—I’m totally distragged [wording unclear].” I was freaking out internally, which is what happens. When I have a meltdown, there’s just this freak-out happening internally that no one can see.
And I was like, “No, we can go through this. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just go be with everyone.” And so we went back, and I sat, and I was really afraid to speak because here’s the thing: I am intense.
I know, believe me, I know. It’s so hard to live in this body. It is a part of my plight to learn how to live with intensity like this. And believe me, I understand that it’s a lot. I know. I’m the one who has to deal with it. I’m the one who has to live this way.
And so I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I realize that this is just who I am. I’m someone who cares very deeply and who is very depth-oriented. I don’t give a fuck about mundane bullshit, fake weather talk, small talk. I just don’t have a propensity for it. I am interested in knowing people. I am interested in the real shit that is lived and felt in life.
I am interested in scratching beyond the surface. I am curious. I am smart. And it’s true, I’m intense sometimes. And I don’t want to apologize for it all the time. I really do try to be mindful now that I have more awareness around who I am and how I show up in the world.
And I am very aware of other people, almost too much so. Well, definitely too much so. My world centers what’s going on around me more than what’s going on with me. But all this to say, I sat there, and I got quiet. And when people looked to me looking for answers or wanting me to participate in the conversation, I gave one- to two-word answers, and I felt like such an ass, like I was being an ass.
But I just couldn’t trust myself not to ask a deeper question, or—I don’t know. I was just in such a weird protective space where I was like, “Don’t say anything.” I was frozen. I was totally frozen. My brain couldn’t think, and I was in a place of fear, fear of doing something wrong. And everything just kept going, though. We moved on, and we got through it.
And there were no hard feelings. There was no awkward “fuck you” energy. Everything was perfectly fine, and I was able to contribute down the line in different ways. We started talking about much lighter stuff, like favorite movies, which also overwhelms me because I want to talk about four million movies, and I can’t choose one. So it was really funny to witness myself because I was like, “Oh my God, yay, this is something I could talk about.” But then I overwhelmed myself so much I couldn’t even think of a fucking movie, which—this is the reality. This is why I’m sharing: sometimes my brain just gets overwhelmed.
All this to say that I wanted to share this challenge that was actually really beautiful for me as an experience. Because this is why I want to create spaces like this, because I do think it’s important that we can come and share with our friends when we’re carrying something and ask for their help in feeling seen or heard in times of need. Honestly, the truth is so many of us are alone and don’t have anyone to talk to and don’t know other people like us. And so we carry this alone our whole lives, and we develop an independence. We develop the habit of not wanting to be a burden on other people, and so we keep all these things inside, and it’s just not good for us. And it is possible for us to hold space for one another.
But at the same time, we can’t make a space safe for everyone. It’s just not possible. We can support, and we can use our words and set boundaries and communicate. And that is why I love these groups: it’s an opportunity to connect and to be in the presence of others who get it, and also to ask for space, and also to set boundaries when you need space or when something is overwhelming. And we’re all in this together, and we want to support one another.
I also want to take care of our own needs, and so it is this balance of communicating, “This is too much for me. I don’t want this,” or “I don’t feel comfortable.” These are good tools for us out in the world because we have to advocate for our needs. Our needs are so different from the average person. People are not used to hearing these boundaries. They’re baffled when somebody says, “Excuse me, I don’t have the capacity for this.”
They’re like, “What the fuck? That’s so rude.” It’s not, but because nobody is demonstrating that boundary, people don’t understand it. They haven’t encountered it, and they’re about to. We are allowed to set our boundaries, and it’s important for us to practice this. And just saying, “I’m overwhelmed right now. I need to remove myself,” or “If it’s possible for us to change the topic.”
Then we can together, as a group, help someone to feel seen and heard and acknowledge that they’ve shared what they’ve shared, and also move on to something else because it’s overwhelming. And none of this is going to come naturally or easily, and that’s why I love mediating and guiding in these groups, because we can do this together. We can support one another while staying within our own needs. And the only way this is possible is through practicing using our words, setting our boundaries, and honoring ourselves.
I mean, I’m sure there were people in the group there that were thinking exactly what that girl was. I’m not saying, you know, but they don’t feel safe saying, “This is too much,” because our whole lives we’ve just not been able to voice that kind of stuff. So for other people too, it’s an opportunity to see that demonstrated by someone and to witness that we all moved on. It wasn’t the end of the world. No one died.
And so the other part that came up from that is, after that meetup, I was processing this for a day and a half, at least a day and a half, maybe two days, where I was just thinking about why I got so upset and so triggered. And it really did bring forward some memories that I wasn’t aware of before. And I realized this afterwards, as I was processing this, was that—“If anyone take care of me [wording unclear].” I’m always the mediator and the facilitator and the one carrying things and the one moving through things with people. And that’s okay because that’s what I want to do, and I offer it when I have capacity, and I now know how to protect myself.
But that doesn’t mean people hold space for me, and that’s really hard for me. And that experience helped me to learn that I need to ask for help. I think a lot of the time when I respond or when I share, I end up—and I don’t want this to come out the wrong way—but the way that I process things is that I actually spend time thinking about something, and then I come to some sort of conclusion. And when I share, I often end with the conclusion and just say, “I went through all this, and I’m going through this and this and this, and this is what I think about it.” And people always receive this with silence, and I can see that they’re like, “Yeah, interesting, yeah.”
They’re engaging, but there’s no response. And I can only feel this, “Hey, does anyone want to say, ‘Yeah, I hear you,’ just like, ‘I have that too,’ or—I don’t know.” I just feel like I often share and it’s met with silence, and I don’t even think that that’s silence because nobody has anything to say. I think they have a lot to say, and we’re all just put on the spot to respond. And a lot of the time, the deep fucking shit that I’ve processed already and that I share in a group, people are like, “Wow, I really want to think about that. I want to come back to this.”
And just the nature of conversation in real time isn’t always the way that some of us neurodivergent people need to communicate, right? Some of us need space to process stuff. And the other piece that I realized that I can take into practice is that I never ask questions, and I never tell people what I want or what I need. And I realize that I can end my share and give the conclusion, but also be like, “Does anybody else feel that way?” And so that way, question mark is, is any [wording unclear]—“I’m looking for someone to talk to about this,” or “I’m curious to hear what other people think.” I can just ask the fucking question instead of being upset that it’s often met with silence.
And also, this all comes back to not taking things personally. And that’s the core thing to learn, is that so much of what goes on in these spaces is not personal at all. We have different ways of communicating. We have different needs, and there’s so much going on internally that cannot be seen or understood. And it’s very easy to assume, “Oh, they’re acting like this because of this,” or “That silence means this,” or “That means that.”
And most of the time, it’s bullshit. It’s really just somebody overwhelmed in their own world or overthinking, or not even over—but they have a whole thing going on in them. And I’m so grateful for these spaces, and I would really like to bring this into my work, is to facilitate communication with neurodivergent beings and friends. And I’ve had a lot to share.
So that was early in the week. I was processing a lot of that. And then Monday, Tuesday, I was just applying for jobs and applying for jobs. And this has been my reality, guys. Every day I apply for three, four jobs. I wake up, and I’m like, “I wonder if anybody’s even looked at my fucking proposal,” and no, it’s just crickets.
And I realized a pattern this week that happens for me. I noticed or was able to name this pattern, but I’ve been thinking about this this week because on Tuesday and Wednesday I hit a freeze. I just could not bring—I recorded too. I talked about this during that recording. I could not bring myself to do anything, to move, to do work, to feed myself, to go to the fucking bathroom. And it doesn’t make sense to me why this is happening in the moment.
I just feel overwhelmed, and I have no cognitive capacity. I have no drive and no determination. And now, looking back, I realized that this does happen, not regularly, but often enough, I would say. I have these moments, and this is what I’ve been processing: what is it that’s happening? And I feel like it’s some sort of existential dread. This feeling of doom comes over me.
Obviously a form of depression where I can’t even bring myself to step out of this. There is just a sense of dread or “What the fuck is the point?” or “I can’t do this” that takes over. And as I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve come to realize that there’s this feeling inside that’s like, “Oh my God, I’m never going to get to live my true full expression.” I’m 42 years old. I have worked so fucking hard my whole life, and I don’t feel like I’m living my authentic truth and my full expression.
I have so much to give. I have such incredible gifts, and I know that I’m capable of so much, and I’m so eager to give it. I’m loving. I’m nurturing. I’m helpful. I’m smart. I just have so much that I have worked so hard to be able to have capacity to give.
And I’m in this place now where I’ve been through this big transformation, and I’m so much more capable than I was before. I’m so much more aware, and I’m sitting with all this knowledge and all this brilliance and all this power. I can feel it in me that there’s so much that wants to be expressed. I want to help. I want to fix. I want to—let me build things. Let me—I can help.
And it feels so weird to me spending every waking moment just trying to convince people, “Hey, hey, I can help with that. I could do that. I could do that probably about ten times faster than the average person. I will do it accurately the first time. I will think ten steps ahead and make sure—” It’s just baffling to me that I have to spend all my time begging and trying to persuade people that I am worthy of their time and their employment.
And it’s just this state of the world, where finding employment—and there’s just so many people who are not even worthy of these roles. I am so efficient and so good at what I do, and I have worked in so many places where I’ve witnessed how other people show up. And I’m like, “Wait, what? How did you just get away with that? This is what you submitted? This is your deliverable?” I’ll be like, “What? This person is getting paid the same as me? What is this person doing?”
And I’m not trying to be an ass here. I am genuinely at a place in my life where I recognize that I’m fucking fast, and I’m smart, and I get things right, and I think ahead, and I double-check things. I triple-check things. I care, and I’m committed, and I follow through. And most of the time, this just results in people taking advantage. The few contracts that I have had, I did the deliverables, and I submitted everything required for the contract.
And people are like, “Oh, could you just do this? Could you just—” And it’s within the lines that they could ask me this because it’s relative to the contract we have. But it’s very obvious to me that they’re like, “Oh my God, this girl can get this done so fast. I don’t want to have to do this.” And it’s just so unforgiving, man. I just keep giving and helping and providing value, and people don’t get it.
This is the existential dread that’s happening. It’s this sense of doom that’s like, “I am never going to be seen for who I truly am. No one will know how hard I worked. No one will know how smart I am and how much I care. And no one will see me perform, and no one will see my art.”
And the saddest part of all that is all those parts of me—the performer and the systems architect and the singer and the dancer and the super smart, all [wording unclear]—the comedian in me. All those parts of me desperately want to express themselves. They want to come to life. They want an outlet. They want to be heard. They want to be seen.
I can feel these parts of me that are like, “I’m ready.” And that’s the thing that scares me the most, is that they’re never going to be expressed. They’re just these internal fantasies. And this is something I remember going through when I went through my big breakup, my one long-term relationship. When I moved to Australia was after that breakup. I found it so hard going back to being alone and realizing that I was well and truly alone, and that I didn’t have the same support system or people to talk to that the average person does.
And I just remember being like, “What is the point? If there’s no one to share things with, if there’s no one to see you?” It’s like, if a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, did it ever fall at all? I really truly understood what that meant, what that feels like. And I’m so sure so many of us can relate to this feeling, because we’re ostracized, and we’re not encouraged to express ourselves and to be all that we can be.
We have so much to offer, so much to say, so much to express, and just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s not allowed. And just because the system doesn’t support it and doesn’t create an outlet for us to actually be able to express these things or to make a living out of something we’re really fucking good at and everyone needs help with. It’s like all my skills are all the things that people need help with. I build things. I know AI. I am operations. I am fucking—I can do anything.
I just want to document this and say the system is fucked. I’ve done so many AI interviews and sent out so many applications. Crickets. And I think that’s what happened to me this week, to bring it all around. That period where I just could not get my brain to turn on or motivate myself to do anything, it was this feeling of, “Oh my God, what is the point?”
This is such a scary reality, that it could be true that I will never get to be who I know I truly am. I will never get to express those parts of myself that I have nurtured and that I’ve worked so hard to reclaim, and to bring to life, and to have a healthy relationship with, and to integrate. What is the point of being here if we don’t get to be ourselves? And apply ourselves to our skills and our purpose and our passions? We’ve all got so many fucking skills.
Anyway, I’m not going to harp on the fucking system anymore. But this is what I wanted to share, was that Saturday triggered me in such a good way, and then I processed that for two days, and then I got really dark. Probably because I’ve just hit a wall after sending so many applications, and it was like, “Bar dot can handle this anymore [wording unclear].” But what’s interesting is while it was happening, I didn’t understand it. And now, a few days later, I’m like, “Aha.” And I don’t know if that’s related to alexithymia, where you don’t know what you’re feeling, but that’s a story for another time.
And then today I actually got out of the funthos [wording unclear]. See, that’s the thing: Wednesday or Thursday, I got up, and I was like, “Fuck yeah, let’s go.” And I powered through all this work and amazing ideas, and life was back to normal. And then today I just tried to go out in the world, and I had an allergic reaction at lunch, and then I got stuck in traffic. And I got triggered by being stuck in traffic, and it was raining, and this guy’s fucking motor was ridiculously loud, like painfully loud.
I can’t leave. I can’t—I just get trapped with these motors vibrating in my chest. And then there’s exhaust fumes everywhere, and they’re burning fucking everything because there is a real problem here. They don’t have the infrastructure to clean up the trash, and so the people do what they have to do, which is take care of their own trash, which is set it on fire. And it’s plastic and metals and rubber, everywhere you go.
So then I decided, “Fuck this.” I was supposed to stay out and go out to a movie with a bunch of my neurodivergent girlfriends, and I was really looking forward to that. I haven’t had social connection. I haven’t been around people. But then I had this meltdown, and then I had this allergic reaction that was making me uncomfortable, and I went to the grocery store, and I realized I can’t do this. I can’t stay out here for another couple hours. I gotta go back home.
And on my way back home, there was so much smoke in the air that my contact lenses, they burn up. I can’t even close my eyes. It’s just painful. Anyway, I came home. Sorry for all the complaining energy. I hope that this isn’t being projected onto you.
The point that I’m trying to get at is that sometimes things just feel unbearable. All this stuff happened in a week. What a week. I know I left the grocery store, and I drove home, and I got stuck in the rain, and I came home, and I got into my bath, and that’s where this whole chat started. I’m grateful to those of you who stuck around and to those of you who can relate and who get why it’s important to talk about these things. I name it because I am easy [wording unclear].
I wish you all the very best, my friends. Good luck in moving through each moment, meeting the moment, grounding ourselves when we need to. I’m going to go have a nice chill Friday night. Bye.