There is something about finally understanding yourself..your own self…that is in itself confidence building. And when you go half your life not..maybe a little but deep down not understanding your own self and why everything seems to be harder for you..why you felt the things you did..there was no foundation for true confidence to take root. I’m seeing this clearly now.
And I’m just talking about CORE things. Things a lot of people take for granted and don’t realize it’s not a natural thing for everyone. The security in yourself of understanding why you even feel something is some basic foundation of self things. The security that builds confidence within one’s self about very basic things like understanding how to naturally socialize and just BE around others. These are core things you learn at a very young age and it develops and evolves as you age.
It’s something I never developed as a neurodivergent. Never felt deep inside. To suddenly start understanding this or at least understanding why I never naturally felt this deep inside…is nothing short of a rebirth for me. It’s seeing things in an entirely different light. It’s understanding things with an entirely new perspective. At 50 years old I suddenly have some understanding why my very core of who I am deep inside struggled and couldn’t connect feelings with explanations. I could not understand why I couldn’t understand things. I was a dog chasing my own tail and never catching it. I mean really…I can’t think of a better way to explain it. I tried. But at some point you just accept there is no explanation and I’m just different.
I put an incredible amount of weight and reason on my upbringing. On my untreated for bipolar mother. On the religious cult she latched onto and the very unhappy marriage she was in. And with good reason. All were traumatic for me. All was unstable and for sensitive to me things..sad or angry vibez or moods were a huge trigger for me. I can in fact feel moods very easily and my home life as a child was thick with it almost daily. It was very hard for me. I do not have a lot of happy memories from my childhood. The good I remember was the good I created being alone. Reading the many books I read. Being alone out in the field behind my house looking for my number one special interest..rocks. Being in nature. Playing pretend with my sisters and being anywhere but near my mother and father. Of course there were moments when I wanted to be near them and wanted them to be proud of me. But I never felt a genuine pride in me. I never truly felt I was a main concern. I felt like they were very busy most the time with their own things..my mother with her god and religion and religious events…and my step father so wrapped up in his own struggles and just not in any way emotionally present. Ever. I would force him to be a “normal” dad who wanted to do dad things and show me love. But it was never natural to him. He never took the initiative to be a dad. He didn’t show up to school concerts without showing me it was the last place he wanted to be. And those things hurt. They make you feel you are not important. My mother to with her religion. I always felt her god came first. If her god and I were crossing a street together…and a bus came out of nowhere…she would save her god first. That’s how I felt and STILL feel around my mother. Another way I felt that what I felt was because of this truth I lived with every day. And it’s partially true. I no doubt have real trauma from my childhood. Generational trauma. She too was treated like she was not first and foremost the most important person in her family’s order of concern as I believe a child should be. That I can forgive. That I can understand clearly now. But there were core things that she nor I could ever understand about how our brains worked and our personal survival techniques we used to explain it and simply survive. And it’s no fault of our own. The information wasn’t there. And had the information been there at that time when it was so incredibly misunderstood about what autism actually was and how to “treat it”…..it might of been worse for us. In a weird way…we avoided that fate of being misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.
So now I spend my days in between living my daily life ..trying desperately to begin building that core foundation of who the fuck I am. Now I actually begin this process instead of it just being a floating question mark. Daunting. Scary. Exhausting. Are all words I feel daily now. But at the same time…joyful…amazing…constant lightbulbs being finally turned ON. And with knowing and understanding myself slowly but surely..I am beginning to feel this unfamiliar thing to me. This deep feeling of confidence..security…and it is showing. I see it in my art work mostly. I see my inner confidence slowly peaking out with each piece I create. A “whoa” moment. A wow I didn’t know I had THAT in me. I create with more intention now. My lines are lining up better. I look at older work and compare how much more confidently I am expressing myself. I can SEE the intent better. Even if no one else can. I see it. And it’s something I know I lacked having in my toolbox prior to my journey in understanding my neurodivergent brain. I can understand it in a way I have never before. I feel so fortunate for this above all else. To finally genuinely feel what I imagined everyone else was feeling. And I’m not saying everyone has pure confidence and doesn’t struggle too with different NT things. I know as humans we are the same in feeling our personal to us insecurities. But there was a feeling of others knowing who a person is that I felt was very much not something I would ever be able to attain. I had accepted my fate in a way. I had accepted I would always question my core of existing in a place not created for me.
My, my, how the tables have turned. Nothing short of a plot twist. And as scary as it is in moments…it feels incredibly powerful. So THIS is how it feels to just KNOW. My world is suddenly bigger. My potential suddenly doesn’t have a brick wall that I couldn’t possibly get through or around. There is a whole new world out there that has been slowly been built by people like me, for me. We aren’t anywhere near where it should be in understanding, acceptance and knowledge about what it is to have a neurodivergent brain..but we certainly are not no near where we were. There is progress. And in each self discovery and diagnosis and self realizations…that world grows. Because its growing I knew where to start. I know where to continue searching for answers. I know now that core confidence is something I can have too. I get to have this too.
You Had To Be There… 