Letter to myself

Dear me,

So, here I am again.  Another day in this strange old world.  Or maybe that's not quite accurate.  Maybe it's not the world that's strange and old.

Maybe it's me.  I'm strange.  And if not exactly old, certainly getting that way.

Sixty in a couple of months.  Old enough.  Old enough, perhaps, to have a better understanding of myself and my place in the world. 

But do I?

I knew from my first year at school that I was different.  For most of my life, I didn't understand what that difference was all about.  It was a puzzle.  More than that - a mystery.  I could have tried seeking answers.  But what was I seeking answers to?  Where would I go for information?  Who could I turn to?  Who could I casually take to one side one day, over a coffee or a beer, and ask 'What is it?  What's wrong with me?  Why aren't I like you, or anyone else I know?  Most likely they'd have looked at me oddly, then finished up quickly and left by the nearest exit.  Minutes later, I might have heard sirens approaching, seen blue flashing lights outside.

Then finally, at 56, I got what I thought was my answer.  My autism diagnosis.  Aha!  Eureka!  Here, at last, was the key that enabled me to fit all the pieces together.  So... that's why I've always felt strange.  That's why I've always found it difficult to make and maintain friendships.  That's why, perhaps, I've never managed a successful romantic relationship; why I could be married to a woman whom I felt, deep down, that I loved as much as my own life, but couldn't show it to her; why, during our five-year marriage, all I really felt was a flatness of emotion - like I was bewildered and lost.  She would cry in distress... and I could do nothing except watch, or turn away.  I loved her, yet I couldn't say it.  I felt the emotion - I know I did.  It was love.  But what did it mean?  And why couldn't I show it in the way anyone else would?

Now, with this piece of paper, I had the answer.

Or did I? 

In some ways, instead of explaining things, it's complicated them further.  There are confusions and contradictions that still vex me.  I have emotions. I feel empathy.  I work in care with people with learning disabilities and autism. Being with these people brings joy to my heart and meaning to my life. It is a natural identification that I feel with them - as I feel with all disadvantaged, dispossessed, marginalised and vulnerable people. I know what it's like to be 'outside': not part of the common run of things.  Yet how could I love a woman, but not show it?  How can I embrace humanity, but not want friends?  Through choice, I live alone now and no longer seek any form of romantic attachment or real human contact. Outside of work - where I am liked by both colleagues and clients - I see no one. My mother was the most important human being in my life - my emotional anchor. She was the one person I could go to for support and understanding, which is why I never lived very far from her and saw her most days. She knew I loved her - and yet, I never told her. Perhaps I never felt the need to. But it was also something that I was incapable of saying. Why might this be? I don't know. I gave up work to be her full-time carer in the last seven months of her life. It was simply something I had no choice about doing. I needed to be with her as much as possible during her final days, and give to her what she gave to me: nurturing, care... and love. I was with her when she drew her last breath. Her passing left me bereft. And yet... I simply got on, calmly and rationally, with dealing with the aftermath. I cleared her house, largely alone. I gave a eulogy at her funeral as if I was reading a lecture to a class. Then, after a couple of months, I went back to work, having rarely shed any tears. My flat is almost a shrine to her. I have her ornaments, her photographs, some personal items.  I know exactly how many hours, days and weeks she's been gone.  I keep stuff, packed away in three suitcases, that I most associated with our last months together. I will never part with them.

And yet... what do I feel? Grief? I don't think I can even begin to define what 'grief' must feel like. The same with love. Those things are puzzles to me. I think I know what they are.  But do I?  Do I really? I'm a writer - someone who deals with emotions.  I'm told by people who read my work that I write with sensitivity and insight.  That I seem to have an understanding.  I'm currently attempting to write a novel about the experience of living as the person I am, feeling the things I feel. Yet I find myself barely up to the task. I keep running into dead ends. I'm trying to explain, almost, something that's inexplicable. To me, anyway. There are three quotes that I keep on my desk:

"I write to find out what I didn't know I knew." - Robert Frost

“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” - Flannery O'Connor

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” - Joan Didion

In these senses, I'm somehow failing. The whole thing has become a contradiction. I have discovered the secret of my life. And yet... I still don't know what it is.

I feel, in some ways, as lost as I always was.  And if I can't know myself, then how am I to know anyone else?

Yours sincerely,

Tom