Un-fucking My Mind - An Autistic Awakening in a Fucked-Up World.
Learning to Feel After a Lifetime of Numbness: The Beautiful Pain of Feeling Again & My NeuroDivergent Rebirth
I started learning what it felt like to be in my body in my mid-twenties, thanks to a stroke of luck (being introduced to a community that was all about bodily experiences).
The Flow and Circus Arts Community, though I didn't know it at the time, was full of NeuroDivergent People (even if we didn't yet know that's what we were).
In those days (fifteen years ago, maybe more), I didn't know I was NeuroDivergent or even what NeuroDiversity (or NeuroDivergence) was, and so I didn't know who I was (other than a person with a great unnamed discomfort trying to "figure things out").
After a lifetime of uncomfortable experiences (thanks to living in a society that didn't support my needs and expected me not to have them), I'd mastered the art of "not feeling" (emotions, discomfort, boredom, and even physical pain).
I thought this ability to "turn myself off" was a superpower, but I didn't realize by using this "skill," I was hurting myself.
"I've got a VERY high pain tolerance!" I'd brag, with zero awareness, that this pain tolerance was something I'd developed as a coping mechanism (a trauma response in reaction to the uncomfortable and, in some cases, unbearable world I'd been living in).
For as long as I can remember, people have described me as having a "vivid imagination," but I doubt those who have said this truly understood the contents of my mind.
Sure, people could see I was creative, but did they know my imagination was so vivid that I could venture into a 360 VR world in my mind (long before technology allowed us to do so)?
Couldn't everyone?
Did they know that the world inside my head was so realistic that sometimes I would be unsure if what I'd experienced had been in the physical realm or the world I had created inside my mind?
Was it just me?
Did they know that when I said I had "a CD player in my head," I literally meant an "in-mind version" of a specific anti-skip portable CD player that I put CDs in (and that I can play entire CDs or just single songs on repeat)?
Did they know when I described playing entire songs, I didn't just mean the lyrics, but could also hear all the instruments?
Probably? Maybe? Couldn't everyone?
Did they know that while I used to have to put songs on manually, at some point, things became automatic, and music started overflowing into my mind almost constantly?
I assumed most people probably had some idea what this (having a vivid internal world) was like because I heard people talking about "getting songs stuck in their heads."
What's it like in your mind?
Do you have visuals? Are they detailed?
Do you have sound? How much detail is in the sound?
Do you have smells associated with your memories, or can you recall smells on demand?
Do you have taste memories, or can you recall tastes on demand?
Can you remember or feel the sensation of being touched (if you think about what it feels like)?
Do you have all of the above, a combination of the above, or something entirely different?
What's it like inside YOUR mind? - was a Question I'd never asked myself (before learning about my Autistic brain - when I didn't know what NeuroDiversity was).
Back then, I didn't know that some people have no visuals in their minds (or that some people have visuals that are not as detailed as mine) or about the many other different ways our internal experiences of the world can vary from person to person.
In those days, I didn't understand that there is a vast spectrum of experiences humans have (or my place within that constellation).
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- Lyric Lark Rivera
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