Hello from the box

[Abuse, Ableism]

I needed a break from Twitter. Social media is too many voices screaming in my head. I had to deactivate my account entirely, because otherwise I could still hear its tinny, self-righteous voice ranting at me from the pocket where my phone resides. I’m sure I’ll reactivate it before I lose my account, but I’m almost beyond caring.

My PTSD therapist spent a long time trying to teach me the difference between a credible threat and an imagined one. When trauma becomes ingrained in your body you become a marionette, all your strings pulled by fear, your limbs twitching at any and all provocations. The goal is to get some slack into those strings, and perhaps one day install reason in fear’s place as puppet master.

The problem is, when you’re neurodivergent, your body is like a perfectly sealed box of lead. You’re trapped inside. No matter how many times people tell you that light exists, that you are not the darkness, darkness is all you see.

I remember what light looks like, and it just makes the darkness seem thicker. After so many years, my muscles sore and my fingernails bloody from trying to claw my way out, I start to lose hope of ever being free. I know I’m not the darkness, and the darkness is not me. But I’m trapped in here, and I can’t find a way out. No matter what people say, it isn’t from lack of trying or from some perverse love of my prison. It’s because the only exits I’ve been able to find end up leading to other places I don’t particularly want to be. At least I know this box. At least here I can write, and I can feel.

It’s hard to interact with people when you’re trapped in a box, though. Voices tend to get muffled by the walls and lost in translation. A lot of what I hear ends up pulling my little marionette strings and making me twitch.

Twitter, much of social media actually, is an energy vampire for me. I’ve had extremely bad experiences that have tightened my marionette strings until they feedback like a heavy metal guitar. I put so much effort into crafting my words perfectly so that no one will be able to twist them into weapons to hurt me with. Because, as we all know, there are bands of trolls who roam the internet looking for weakness. Looking for an opening to harass, to hurt, to bully.

Then there’s the other folks with tight marionette strings, who see threats where there are none.

I put a lot of energy into my words, but it isn’t enough for some people. After all, saying all the perfect words isn’t difficult for them. So why should it be for me?

Except their words aren’t perfect. It’s just that some people are completely oblivious to the way their own words wound. The millions of little ways they show how little respect they have for people like me. They call us psycho, delusional, freaky, spooky, crazy, dangerous. They’re ashamed to admit they have people like us in their families. And they always think their second- or third-hand experiences with people like me are all the experience anyone ever needs to understand us completely.

We’re people to be avoided. The best they can ever say that, well, you are one of the good ones. You aren’t like most psychos. In fact, I’m sure you’re not really a psycho at all: if you did, you’d struggle more. You’re probably just using your mental illness as an excuse to be a bad person.

Shit like that didn’t used to bug me so much. It was part of the background noise of my life. But after putting so much energy into trying to craft my words carefully enough so they can’t be twisted…after trying so hard to learn and grow and be a better person and a better activist, it just makes me bitter.

I don’t like to be bitter. I don’t like to hate people, to mistrust them. I don’t like to see daggers under every cloak.

It’s not okay to try to change other people’s behavior, unless they’re hurting us and we’re acting in self-defense. As a society, we need to learn to distinguish a credible threat from a non-credible one so we don’t spend all our time fucking with other people and becoming the credible threat ourselves.

We need to give people the benefit of the doubt more often and offer kindness instead of cruelty. We need to not be the parent that screams at our kid and then punishes them for screaming back.

It’s 2020. It looks like we’re headed into World War Three. We don’t have time to be jumping at shadows.

So I need to take a break so I can loosen my strings a bit and not be part of the problem.