On fear of being misunderstood & being in right season

A story about how context matters:: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNe 6th 2022

With this substack newsletter, I am challenging myself to write from the core again.

I don’t know about you, but the past few years have made me feel afraid to have a voice online. I am practicing again.

It’s kind of like that meme that’s like if you say you love oranges on social media, people will be like, Well what about apples and bananas? Or blackberries? You’re so ignorant.

Listen, although I have really thin skin, I also have a thick armour of protection when it comes to making art and being a “public” sort of person.

I started this when I was 19. I know what it is like being called a monster in the comment section of the Toronto Star because your journalist friend who is interviewing you quotes you saying, “I think pills are sort of a band aid.” But doesn’t add that I am on hella amount of benzo at the time, and I also think pills saved my life when I needed them. All he says is that quote, and then people think they know every single angle of my nuanced opinion and experience and BAM… I am bad.

I am not new to people disagreeing with me or misunderstanding me or even being hurt by something I said.

I used to feel really comfortable with that. I had tools in place to be able to navigate that and not let myself get too outside my window of tolerance. And then… the pandemic happened.

Then a lot of social justice movements happened (which very good). But then cancel culture happened. Huge polarization started occurring also in my industry.

It was confusing.

I know I love gay people, but then I also know I love body sovereignty and all of a sudden you couldn’t be in a camp that loved both, ‘cause the people who were into body sovereignty were now seemingly suddenly completely anti-vax and conservative, and that camp of people are usually very pro-life and not safe for the LGBTQ+ community.

I come from a country in which we don’t really debate abortion, or gun rights for example. We don’t have access to guns freely, and we also provide free abortions under our health care system that we all collectively contribute to via our taxes. So in my circles at home, I do not have to even think about this. Everyone seems to agree. Abortions are life-saving and important health care for various reasons and certainly people don’t have abortions just to have them for fun or out of carelessness, and guns are generally not needed.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t christians from Canada I know who I have gotten into an intellectual scramble or two about abortions with. They exist too. But we do not have many billboards urging us to be pro-life, you know? As I am thinking about it, I can only think of one huge religious billboard in Toronto that says, “When Jesus comes, will you be ready?” And each time I see it, I’m like fuck ya. I love Jesus.

For me, I had a very bad experience with how Ativan was prescribed to me. I was 12/13 years old. I was not given informed consent, and nor were my parents. I was prescribed as needed .5 mg of Ativan but was not limited in how much refills I could get my hands on. I did not know I would risk physical dependence if I took Ativan for more than 4 months. I took Ativan for 10 years. I was hurt and extremely damaged by this experience. And I think at times, it made me be very obviously against pharmaceuticals as a line of treatment. For myself, in most cases, I still feel this way. And simultaneously to that, I’ve since healed a lot of my pain around my doctor’s care, around the systemic industry and societal culture of handling humans, instead of attuning to humans, about my parent’s care at the time, about how I had to take Ativan as an autistic person to survive the neurotypical world. And it’s liberated me to choose and pick pharmaceuticals now that could actually benefit me: for example, the covid-19 vaccine. Even some Tylenol when I need it for example.

But what happens when this is a really huge big nuanced topic and opinion and talking about it could result in being cancelled or being misunderstood or even people feeling betrayed by me? How do I navigate that as a writer? How do I still communicate with people who have been damaged by a vaccine or by the covid vaccine itself that I believe them, and that I totally stick by their own body sovereignty and I do not think they are bad people or don’t care about others. How do I say, how do we say, and hold space for and assume that as we share ourselves online, that we most likely all have really nuanced opinions… (?)

I say this all the time but mostly everything I have an opinion on is on a case by case basis. I rarely make huge declarations of opinions of, “This is what you should do always” to myself or to others. Context for me really changes everything and defines things and allows us to make proper decisions for ourselves.

In nervous system health, context is queen. We have to defer to specific context to get it right.

I know this about myself - that I work based on individual context - but I often wonder if people will know this about me and it scares me that they won’t and they could perceive me in a wrong light (my autistic brain hates not having the truth understood and commonly acknowledged). Just because I do something for myself, does not mean I think everyone else should. Also if people are doing something and it seems like everyone is doing it, I won’t do it if it’s not right for me. Or for my context. For the season of my life that I am in.

I am so scared of being misunderstood as an autistic person. I think that’s one of my deepest social differences when it comes to interaction with neurotypicals. It is a daily practice for me to find safety within my body even if I am misunderstood. (Or I try to be understood another way let’s be real LOL). The need to be understood, or the fear of being misunderstood, either or, is probably one of the reasons I write. Writing - it’s a way to get it all out because it’s harder for me to speak the complexity of my humanness out loud. When I write, I can take my time and actually say what I am trying to say and be understood correctly. Hopefully. Most of the time. I am an “alone processor”, meaning I have to be alone with my thoughts and body and feelings to know how I actually feel and what I actually think. When I am around people, I lose access to my truth a lot because of the stimulation and my first or “gut” response amongst others (except maybe my mom), is usually not accurate when it comes to my true authenticity. Thus, I write to get it right.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how I am a very cyclically sensitive person meaning my hormones (and what they are doing through each phase of my cycle) really make a difference.

When I am ovulating, I am much more social. My friend Louise will often say, “ah, your estrogen is rising” because I make a bunch of instagram stories. I was talking to a dear one this week about it, because I was ovulating. I told her about what Lou said, and she said, “Yeah and then they just stop and you go away.” I felt a twinge of shame in my throat when she said that. Is it bad that I am like that? And then I felt into it and I said, “Yeah, I just allow myself to be exactly who I am. And honestly, you benefit from that. Everyone who’s around me benefits from that, because when I allow myself to be exactly who I am, you all get to be exactly who you are.” She pondered that was true, whatever we allow ourselves, we also allow others. That’s really nice.

I haven’t always been like this though - able to allow myself to be exactly who I am. Respect and actually be in the season of my life, of my cycle, that I am in. Make decisions that are representative of my context at the moment, knowing my context will change and then I will require a different decision.

But I have gotten better at it.

And it makes me think that a decision you make about your life in one season is not right for the next. I wouldn’t think I could go swimming in the winter and I wouldn’t push myself to. And I wouldn’t expect to not be sweaty in the summer.

I wonder if we could allow ourselves that grace… how much of our nervous system health would come back - because that would be living in true consent, wouldn’t it? To be in right season with ourselves. Just like we accept being in right season with nature.