How do you tell a story that has no beginning or end? How do you put into words a life where time doesn’t flow linearly? How do you describe the ocean from just telling of it’s surface which itself is constantly moving and changing and doesn’t even begin to reveal the depths that lay beneath it? I have a story to tell and it feels a lot like that. My mind is an ocean. My story has no beginning or end anymore than a circle has a beginning and an end. I don’t know why Papa (God) has made my life a story like this when all I want more than anything is to tell my story. I don’t even know where to begin and as much that can be said about the surface, each wave, the salty smell, the movement and feel, it is so much more than it seems. Just like that part of me wants my story told because people look at my surface and they have questions. They see my scars like they can see rolling waves on the ocean. People frequently ask me about them. How do I even begin to describe it all?
I’ve always felt a calling on my life. I believe I will change the world. However, one of the most mind blowing epiphanies I’ve had was when a former roommate told me it is not my job to educate anyone. Just because someone questions me, my scars, or my behavior, it doesn’t obligate me to answer. It is not my responsibility to educate anyone about self injury or autism. Even when I do feel like there’s a calling on my life. That was so freeing and a boundary I now have that I didn’t even know I was allowed to. People feel quite entitled to information from others. It’s seen as rude when you withhold it. However, the more I have learned about boundaries and been able to see I am allowed to have them and need to have them, the less concerned I am about coming across as rude. Even Jesus had boundaries and didn’t answer every question and didn’t feel the need to constantly prove himself. I know my heart and the people who matter in my life know my heart too. I am never intentionally rude or hurtful. Of course I still have room to grow just like we all do, but I will grow in my own way and not the way the world thinks I should even if it seems like at times I’m losing progress.
I say this because if it’s not my job to educate about self injury or autism, what is the point of telling my story? What do I hope to achieve? I don’t want to educate people about autism and self injury. I don’t enjoy it. I’m not a professional (though I’ve read way more books and studied it much more extensively than most health professionals get in their college education). I don’t feel like debating with people whether or not they agree or hear redundant, frustrating, and ableist informed comments about that gaslight and invalidate very real and difficult realities I face and many other neurodivergent individuals face. I have no desire to give advice or even my opinions to most people. There are very few people I’m willing to actually do this with and they’re also the people that don’t demand my knowledge and sincerely care about what I have to teach. That’s just with autism. As far as self injury, I honestly have no desire to educate about it or give advice or opinions because for me, self injury was directly because of my autism and the lack of supports and understanding into my mind. However, self injury is a symptom/side effect/by product of MANY different neurodivergences which includes many different mental illnesses. Something someone in the mental health profession said to me once that still makes my blood boil when I told them the doctors had misdiagnosed me and I did not have borderline personality disorder was, “pretty much everyone who self injures has borderline personality disorder.” It’s a harmful stereotype that existed and might still exist and while I have healed a lot from the trauma caused from being in the mental health system and receiving misdiagnoses due to stereotypes and really ableist mindsets, I still have a long way to go before I can ever really move past the injustice inflicted upon me. Let me say this again though for the people in the back: self injury is a symptom of MANY MANY MANY different neurodivergences NOT just borderline personality disorder and NOT just mental illness, but MANY different developmental disabilities too like autism. Yes, even specifically self injury by using razors to cut their skin.
I don’t like the way it makes me feel to think about these things. I feel angry and resentful and frustrated with where I am in life today even though I don’t normally feel that way because I know how far I’ve come and I love my life so much today even with all the hardships. I think that’s a lot of why telling my story would be difficult too. There’s a lot I don’t want to remember and there’s a lot that I feel overwhelmed by the depth of such small pieces of it which from the surface doesn’t even look good, but below, it goes so much further. And underneath the surface it’s all connected, but your mind doesn’t see patterns like my mind and your mind doesn’t have the connections to different parts of the timeline so however I tell my story, it won’t flow or tell like it really is because books do have a beginning and an end and they move in a certain way and that’s just not how my mind or my life works. So what do I do?
I want to write a book. I love to write. I always dreamed I would write a best seller. A memoir. The current working title is “Written in the Scars.” But words, written words, they fail me here. My head is pictures. Words only describe the surface. Beneath the surface you have to see. In my inner world, pictures are language, not sound. Not letters. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and my mind is filled with thousands of pictures, then to try to translate each one, I could write until I die and still have revealed so little.
I wrote all of this and didn’t even begin to tell you my big news that I started to write this for. It’s the reason for the title, but now my words are evaporating and you won’t know the news until a later time.
Until then,
Love,
Elizabeth
God, Autism, and Me 