I listened to I’m Free by St. Finnikin as I wrote this, so I feel it’s only fair that you listen along as you read. I mean… only if you want to, but I’m pretty sure you should. So, please?
I woke up again with a bruised neck and a head full of sore from it being yanked around. Acting as a real-life ragdoll is not all it’s cracked up to be. In case you’re wondering why I’m Raggedy-Anning-it; I am a single mom to a profoundly autistic almost 13-year-old boy with aggressive behaviors.
I just know that one day the answer to unlocking the systemic issues that limit his quality of life will be found, but until then I will have to encounter fits of rage that seem to overtake on a whim. I will deal with the pathological necessity to avoid demands (PDA), whether that be to allow me to ask simple, non-threatening questions, or to ask him not to fondle himself in the living room… I guess he’s a (SIGH) pre-teen boy, after all.
My son’s regulatory system is on perpetual high alert, meaning that he is in a near-constant state of fight or flight. And booyy, do I get fought! There is elopement involved as well, so existing in a sometimes low-level, sometimes high-level but constant state of anxiety is an understatement.
It’s like caring for a violent two-year-old convict who resides in a grown boy’s body and is regularly devising ways to escape whilst daring the ‘unsafe-est’ of feats. Kids like mine have limited to no understanding of consequences — any consequences. Or control — any control.
Ooo! A mini-Hulk. That’s a much better descriptor than convict, as he isn’t at fault and is generally a congenial little guy. Although he did try to shank me with a pen once, so there’s that. At some point, I will post about my experiences parenting a child with autism but today I’m here to talk about isolation.
For those of you unaware of this condition/setting/state/experience (don’t know how you could be unaware after the year 2020, but just in case) here’s a little screenshot of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states are the health risks associated, plus a concise and totally upbeat definition:
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/emotional-wellbeing/social-connectedness/loneliness.htm
My point in relaying my current situation is that the behaviors resulting from processing difficulties, overstimulation, executive function, interoception, etc., in conjunction with my fears, lack of adequate support, and not being a Romanoff, have led to the newest period of isolation I’ve experienced in my young forty-three.
This segment of my life I will call 100 Literal Years of Solitude. Okay, more like nine-ish (and even more so in the last six), but that’s pretty much 100 years, yeah?
There have been two other significant periods; my childhood — let’s title her Hush Little Baby Fend for Yourself, Momma’s Gonna Buy You a Funky Attachment Style and Lifelong Abandonment Issues, and another when I was in an off-and-on-and-way-off relationship with the undoubtedly diagnosable ex, also known as the Baby Daddy (once again, another post for another time). We’ll call that particular segment Love and Loneliness in the Time of Delusion. You know, the classics.
I’d also like to categorize the three types I inhabited; Foisted Upon, The Un-Spanish Self-Imposition, and The Combo with Special Sauce. I do love me a good title.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a therapist or mental health professional. This is my personal experience. I’m not professing to know what the actual eff I’m talking about. I’m chatting sh*t. My sh*t. Read at your own risk.
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Hush Little Baby Fend for Yourself, Momma’s Gonna Buy You a Funky Attachment Style and Lifelong Abandonment Issues
When you’re a child you really haven’t any choice. If you’re left to your own devices without proper instruction/attention/investment, you will run amuck within your psyche — eventually building walls in all the wrong places and constructing attachments to all the wrong people. And/or, you might just shut the loneliness out completely. Deny it. Bury it. You will learn to convince yourself you are whole and amuse yourself with creations that live entirely inside of you.
Guys, if I could have gotten paid to daydream?! I would have put these modern YouTuber children to shame. Financially, that is.
This by-my-self-edness that was foisted upon me was what I was raised by/in. It made me resilient, sure. Persistent, in very specific ways, and f*cking weird. Deliciously weird, but still… weird.
What I absorbed then sometimes presents in all the wrong ways now. I keep on when I should quit and quit when I should keep on — and that’s regarding any noun (i.e. person, place, or thing). This period of isolation aided me in my future path toward more of the same. Which brings me to:
Love and Loneliness in the Time of Delusion
We fall into a feeling with someone else — be it love or something mimicking it. “Schmlove.” We get honeymooned or love-bombed until we think, “You know, this dude/chick/person could be my dude/chick/person!” Sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes it’s a lie. In any case, we might engage in a little self-imposed quarantine where we give our all to them because they seem like the only pretty, shiny thing that we should focus on. While this might be okay in small doses and if the relationship is healthy, we should still be aware that we are isolating ourselves. Individual boundaries must always be respected, and self-expression made important for this not to turn perfectly nice people into raging maniac giants down the line.
There’s another hybrid form; the kind that begins as self-imposed, then slowly transitions into the combo (half self, half external), and ultimately devolves into that which is primarily foisted upon. This is when you know you’ve been exposed to too much gamma radiation. Now I realize that during the course of my last relationship (which was 13 years ago…) I was slowly separated from what was “me.” I was strategically corralled, gaslit, degraded, word salad-ed… It was devastating, but also, I’m me. I fought it and questioned it at every turn. #I’mAFireStarter.
However, I also faded. I was the one who had a job, so I did interact with others in-office, but that was mostly all. It didn’t matter how much spirit I had; I began to collapse into myself. When this happens, you tend to insulate. Sadly, this serves whoever needs you to be whatever they need you to be.
Get yourself a Geiger counter and monitor that sh*t. If your radiation levels spike, analyze your situation. If the levels are beginning to manipulate your very sequences, go! Get yourself some Potassium iodide or Prussian Blue and rid yourself of internal organ-damaging seclusion or the entities that seem to oblige it.
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Now, isolation isn’t all bad if it’s not a result of emotional or physical abuse. Besides potentially giving you a heart attack and driving some otherwise “normies” into pure, blinding madness, it can fortify you. It can help you to appreciate slowness and silence (but only for so long). It can stiffen the spine and harden the lip. It can force you to face your ugliest demons. Will those fugly hell spawn rip at your self-conceived notions? Absolutely. Will they break down the carefully constructed barriers that you’ve erected over the years? Mmm hmm. Will seclusion potentially trigger a Dark Night of The Soul (DNOTS) experience for some? Sure, but all these happenings will drive you closer to the more authentic you.
I do feel empathy for those new to this experience. I know the Great Sickness of the 21st Century (are we still getting flagged for referencing this?) brought in a slew of new initiates. Welcome!
Luckily, all the years of walling off and fantasizing when younger was the best form of practice. It was all training for an Orwellian future in which external institutions and personal circumstances have dictated a pretty rigid existence. I do get restless at times and feel like taking a long walk off a short pier (don’t worry, I can swim!), but it only lasts as long as it lasts. Remember that.
The road can be wrought with bouts of melancholia or malaise, even for us seasoned practitioners — but should you persevere, you will have an assortment of strength notches on your belt that you can gladly show off to your other battered and beaten brethren. If you let it, this will make you into the superhero you always dreamed of being.
Music works. Meditation works. Writing works. Painting works. Masturbation works. Anything that’ll keep your hands busy and your mind free of, or at peace with, the dark thoughts. Try one!
I want for you to thrive, even if you have to do it in solitude. I want for you to know that people feel the same as you, the same pain or frustration or loneliness or desperation or desolation. Many of us endure trials that we struggle to reframe in a positive light in the moment, but I believe it’s possible — and I want you to believe the same. I want you to know that we can rise from these periods of hardship and that we’ll be stronger for it, if not a little welted.
We can eventually transmute our feelings into understandings — into the lessons that we had to learn in our current story to make it to the next chapter of the next novel we are to live (graphic or plain ‘ole). I want you to give yourself grace. It’s okay to be affected by isolation, by loneliness, but it might behoove you to find the beauty in being alone; To take the time to figure out who you are within the silence and what strength it took for you to survive it, green skin notwithstanding.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
 What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? |
 My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me |
 The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex |
 The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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Photo credit: Annie Spratt on Unsplash
The post My Unbidden Truth About Living In Isolation appeared first on The Good Men Project.
