Why do I feel so guilty for writing something which isn’t linked into with a more broader critique of society and political strucutres? As I do. But the guilt of not making a political statement can often make you write things you don’t even enjoy writing yourself.
My next big venture may be a way of asking this, as it may involve asking the question of whether self-care and the wider goals of, say, the “left” are compatible on an individual level?
But for now, I just want to write about something that’s become more noticeable on a level of self-reflection, that may or may not be of use to others.
I tried to apply for an autism diagnosis last year. I’m not holding my breath on hearing anything back. I felt bad about admitting it, like I was jumping a bandwagon or something.
But it also felt like in my struggles to live in ways that didn’t feel erroneous and littered with poor choices and habits, like there was something staring me in the face: that ever since childhood I’d be made aware that I did things ‘wrong’.
It wasn’t anyone in particular, and it wasn’t anything in particular that I recall, I just recall from an early age growing up and internalising something that made me feel like I was in essence “Wrong”.
I wasn’t discriminated against, nor disliked, even if I was often the butt of jokes (none of which is uncommon); I was generally liked, and more or less accepted. But by the time of teenage life I was plagued by the sense that I couldn’t exist normally. This, amongst other things, contributed to teenage eating disorders, as a way of monitoring a body, paranoid that I just couldn’t eat normal amounts.
As I reached adulthood, a lot of fears of being Wrong kind of became self-fulfilling prophecies, as I dealt with being wrong by almost performing it, resisting any attempts to accept adulthood on a ‘normal’ basis, as I feared I would be drowned by it.
My ‘indie-locks’ and smoother skin of my 20s afforded me a life of avoiding that I felt I couldn’t do; like, literally exist as I was. It was also a time in and out of therapy, consumed by a sense that I did most things wrong, in ways that were not going to ‘help’ me. This was channeled into my ‘artist’ persona; as in “I can’t do normal things as I’m an artist”.
But it was all just a flight from what felt like the inevitable coming face to face with being an adult that was just Wrong by default. This happened in my 30s, when the comforts afforded me of my 20s evaporated, and I was a man now ageing.
I tried and tried to “righten” my ways, learnt to drive, tried looking for better paid work, and went back to study, and even tried dating sites. Driving test and studying were doable, the other two, next to impossible. I was consumed with self-dislike about who I was, I just felt like such a Wrong entity in the cosmos. And started to be consumed with an awareness that everyone else knew it too – something I’d not experienced since my teens.
After years of trying, trying to break through compulsive behaviours that were there to combat daily feelings of Wrongness, I started to look back on my life and try to understand where all the self criticism and feelings that I was unable to ‘do human’ came from.
I focussed on class, environmental, and still think they are contributors, but it couldn’t explain it away. The only conclusion was that I’d been told from an early age that I wasn’t doing things right, correctly, in so many ways, because, by and large, I did things in a way that was never exactly how I’d be show, sometimes laughed at for it (which was always the part that is etched into your muscle memories). Consequently I spent most my life simply assuming I was wrong, and this then developed into a warped approach to adult life.
Nobody had ever really done me any harm. Not intentionally, and no more than others. But as I became 30, a sense of paranoia I had in my early life returned, expecting people would treat me with scorn (and the thing is, people/groups of that inclination are far more likely to when you’re expecting it). I attributed this to people seeing my flaws in ‘adulting’ (“he still lives with his parents”, “doesn’t know how real life is” etc) but it was underlined by a feeling of never being able to ‘do human’, being Wrong with it.
It doesn’t really matter now if I get a diagnosis, but it does matter that I try to unlearn this theory about myself, which has at times become self-fulfilling and has had big impacts on my ability to live a life.
John B Ledger 