darkness before passing on. In these pages, I read about other women, their experiences, their difficulties, their strengths. But it feels exactly like I’m reading about myself—the way I copy my peers so I fit in; the way I don’t understand them but I pretend; the way I used to hide under the table at parties to avoid the noise and the chaos and the stressful social interactions, much to my parents’ embarrassment; the way I need rigid structure in my day or I can’t function; the way I can’t stand to focus on something unless it’s interesting to me and then I get tunnel vision; even the way I’m
darkness before passing on. In these pages, I read about other women, their experiences, their difficulties, their strengths. But it feels exactly like I’m reading about myself—the way I copy my peers so I fit in; the way I don’t understand them but I pretend; the way I used to hide under the table at parties to avoid the noise and the chaos and the stressful social interactions, much to my parents’ embarrassment; the way I need rigid structure in my day or I can’t function; the way I can’t stand to focus on something unless it’s interesting to me and then I get tunnel vision; even the way I’m tapping my teeth right now. I’m stimming. In secret. In broad daylight. I’ve been doing it my entire life. Just like the women in the book, there’s always been a lot “off” about me, so much to change, to suppress, to hide—to mask. It was painstaking, often exhausting, work, but my efforts were rewarded with my family’s approval and the acquisition of friends and a boyfriend. By changing myself, I earned a sense of belonging. But maybe I belonged all along. Just with a different group of people. I did all that work. I experienced all that confusion and pain. And maybe I didn’t need to. Maybe with the proper insight, I could have been accepted the way I was. When I’m done reading pertinent sections of the book and everything in the manila folder, it’s the golden hour. This used to be my favorite time of day to play the violin because it feels like there’s magic in the air. Logically, I...
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