Study for Obedience

by Sarah Bernstein

In this process, I would become reduced, diminished, ultimately I would become clarified, even cease to exist. I would be good. I would be all that had ever been asked of me.

My efforts over the years to obtain a continuous contract of employment had been in vain, the process had been explained to me as a bureaucratic and not at all a personal one, and yet when I responded in kind, that is to say by invoking the usual bureaucratic processes and fully within my rights making a request according to the general data protection regulation guidelines under the suspicion something fishy was going on, the application was treated as a personal affront and it was made clear to me that I was not helping myself.

autism-coded?

I had made an essential error when organising my consciousness early on in life, my brother explained, and this was by entertaining the idea that it was reasonable for me to form my own judgements about the world, about the people in it. It was not an uncommon error, my brother went on, but it was a conviction particularly unwarranted and also deep-seated in my case.

It would not be easy to remedy, no, it would be my life’s work to reorient all my desires in the service of another, that was the most I should expect to achieve. Seemingly, my brother told me, I was a girl, would perhaps one day be a woman, and it was up to me to ascertain how to gain mastery over myself.

I composed myself, as perhaps others all along the suburban streets composed themselves too, before the bedroom mirror and descended the stairs in the skin of a sister. I took the role seriously, intentionally, and in time and with practice it became me.