A Bit On The BRAIN!

this is my brain …

I think in my own voice talking internally nonstop. Like in a movie where the character narrates everything. I imagine conversations and imagine myself reflecting on whatever I’m doing right now - as if in hindsight - like I’m recalling it to someone else. My brain talks to itself - like a conversation.

Sometimes yes, I can picture things and I’ll have songs in my head most of the time, my brain jumps around from thing to thing, remembering things, talking, looking forward, thinking about what I want, asking myself questions. I have a great recall of faces and weird factoids. There’s a lot of ways in which my neurotype helps in my creative endeavors with lateral / outside-the-box thinking and solutions…

But, I may forget something immediately or my brain may hyper focus on some shit I can’t move on from that happened a long time ago, while struggling to be present or gather the energy to perform any new tasks. I sometimes zone out for long periods of time losing track of time/space and just in my brain. Pictures, talking, music, feelings - it’s madness.

It’s chaos. It’s why I say so often it’s really not good for a person like me to spend too much time alone bc it’s so easy to get taken away by trains of thought headed in sporadic directions or think myself into despair and no,

I can not really control it honestly. I have to deliberately MAKE MYSELF think other thoughts that counter the intrusive thoughts.

Like the thought may be like “nobody likes me and I should give up” and then I’ll have to jump in and deliberately think “some people like me and I’ve only just begun and we’ve barely left this town, etc…”

I refer to myself as WE sometimes but it’s like a “Freudian slip” bc there’s like so many “me’s” in my head. I’m not sure which one is accurate. I have too many conflicting beliefs that sometimes I don’t know what to trust.

They say trust yourself but that’s not a good bit of advice for me bc I may have two completely opposing views at the same time. And I just FREEZE in place and do nothing.

I can not always tell what’s trauma and what’s intuition. I can not always tell what’s anxiety and what’s truth.

But being alone all the time worsens that because between the overactive brain and being in a small environment without structure or change or movement, it’s easy to get derailed. It’s why it’s gotten so bad in the past bc I need structure and I need people - even just accountability partners here and there to feel me in and keep me focused on the present.

To understand me is to understand that I have to work with a brain like that every day and I wish people could experience that because they’d be a lot more forgiving and understanding of me if they knew what it was like to BE ME…

A musing on self and the paradoxical nature of healing and perception...

I feel have too much going on inside, too much considering of too many things. As far as WHO I AM goes, I've had people tell me I'm opposing things, I have felt so confident and then been told I am NOT who I thought I was, and I've never ever felt like whoever I was, I was ALLOWED to be that person and ACCEPTED as that person.

In the deepest and most existentially dreadful sense,

I have never felt like I CAN just be accepted as "me" and I have been told that everything I AM is a "disorder" I somehow need to "heal / fix" and it's gotten to the point where there is no possible answer, no version of me that is WITHOUT a thing I need to fix, no version of me that ever seems acceptable to anyone, and no version of me I can even mentally conceive OF other than this one at this moment, because I can only conceive of as much as I have already conceived, or experienced, or witnessed....

The entire nature of life is paradoxical, and there is not a right answer. There's no beginning or end, there is no objective, there is no right or wrong. I never know who the heck I'll be, I change over time, and as such who you knew five years ago may look similar, but it isn't the same "me".

The ego is changeable. We just really believe that IS us. But I am standing BEHIND that ego, and that ego changes, as more qualities sorta form. That's why it's so strange, because I CAN be a lot of things - but it's hard for me to tell anyone else what I'm like. Because I can't be sure if what I see myself to be IS what they would see as well.

How do I know what THEY perceive?

Now in terms of self-love - which parts of what I consider "myself" am I supposed to love, and which ones am I supposed to "change" - and what IF the things I'm asked to change are the things about myself I really LIKE? And what if the trauma I'm struggling with IS the trauma of having NEVER FELT like I was "good enough" and constantly having been ASKED TO CHANGE rather than ever being considered "acceptable" or "liked" the way I am?

A lot of the time, I have ended up liking the parts of myself that many may have felt were the parts that needed changing. I'm resistant to the term "healing" because it suggests I am defective or broken somehow, or that I am not already healing, that maybe all of life is a continual process of ADJUSTING and there is no broken or fixed or measure for who we should be!?

And everyone has a different idea of what "okay" or "healed" or "normal" is - but who's version of ME am I to judge by? Should I change one part because YOU don't like it? What are the parts of me I am to recognize as "keep" and what parts of me are "fix that"?

Really... it's NOT that simple - people just don't really consider the complexity of it...

SELF-LOVE to me is more about HONORING and accepting whatever I am right now, whatever I feel, my perception, etc. The idea that there is something WRONG carries the energy and suggestion of "fault / bad / defect" thereby is contrary to LOVE - which is akin to acceptance, appreciation, ENOUGHNESS! AWESOME AS-IS!

When you introduce the concept "healing", there's resistance. Because now - "What's wrong that I need to fix?" and now you feel BROKEN or defective...and that's not self-loving. When one is looking FOR PROBLEMS, they find them!

Wanna know when I've felt MOST CONFIDENT?

When I was around people who didn't question me, and had a similar energy, and we had a good time together, and I was allowed to be whoever I was. That's it...it's so simple.

If I am neurodivergent by nature, so "normal" isn't even a thing I can be, by definition. Thus, how would I know what normal was FOR ME? If I have never been considered to be where I ought to be, and I'm apparently always "not there" and I'm always defective someway, and I spent most of my life depressed, then REALLY - "normal" for me is depressed and hating myself, thus isn't "healed" or "self-love" - so am I trying to heal, be normal, or be happy? Become HAPPIER? ?

That won't really happen as long as I continue to poke and prod and criticize myself and let others dictate what about me I must fix or change, because that's already BEEN the issue getting in the way of me loving myself. SEE? SEE? It's a trap!

-MM