Published on 12, July, 2020
HI I recently was waiting for the bus to come fetch me home from the gymnasium. It is always on time.
But this time it was over one and a half hours late. I got more and more agitated, sitting by the door of the Gym.
I was in this public place and didn't feel safe just cutting loose. But once the bus did come i just kind of lost it a bit, asking the driver why over and over, just being told that it just was was.
Then after boarding, very tense, I was told there would be 2 MORE additional stops and I just lost it. banging the window and kicking. I'm in my bloody 60s!
This hasn't happened in many decades. This isn't "like me.", whoever that is. It's "out of character" -- and so it is that Ive been acting out a character with a mask.
Recently, I have been delighted and horrified (as seen above) with myself more than a few times recently as I take the audience away and just abide in the truth of my nature.
I've been trying to let the mask down a little at a time in public now to find that authentic self again
and I see more and more what this iron-fisted control and the mask of self censure has been damping down.
The driver was a tad freaked out, another person on the bus just laughed. This laughing ,oddly, helped
and brought me back. I did the breathing and slipped the mask back on in under a minute. then came the apologies.
I'm working on managing these unexpected changes in myself and in my
experiences from a less masked but more gracious balance. I may seek some help on this. ..
How did it feel? I felt apologetic. That may be "trained dog" response. The episode would have earned me corporal punishment as a child.
See ?You Surprised yourself didn't you ?Liberating or what ?Nice one !
yes. A whole other person in there. peeling the layers..
Yes, me too. it's a fantastic voyage.
The incident on the bus looks like a classic 'melt down'. It happens when circumstances drive us into a place where we cannot stand the way we feel and just explode. The increasing tension of waiting for a very late bus, capped by the lack of any explanation, pushed your internal stress beyond what you could cope with and the melt down acted like a safety valve.
Uhane said:I'm working on managing these unexpected changes in myself and in my experiences from a less masked but more gracious balance
experiences from a less masked but more gracious balance
Same quote as Debbie but I think it's very true. Now I understand more, on the occasion that tailspin does happen and/or a build up, instead of the lid blowing off, I'm able to ride through it by reminding myself "it's the 'spergers". Not everytime, but more than before. And humour and laughter helps massively.
Uhane said:I'm working on managing these unexpected changes in myself and in my experiences from a less masked but more gracious balance.
experiences from a less masked but more gracious balance.
Nicely put.
I had my diagnosis at 60 and it's interesting to see how the a late diagnosis is cathartic in many ways.
I say well done you for being open. It isn't up to us to cease to exist, quite the opposite, the more open we are the more society will become aware of the way we operate.
I remember I was moving house to London. So packed a van with all our workfly possessions in, it was totally full, and then drove 3 hours to London.
As I got about 40 mins in I realised there was a problem and it broke down. An RAC low loader picked me up and took me to the car rental HQ nearby. Turned out, Eben though it was a quarter full of fuel, there wasn't enough and it auto-cutout.
So they put some more in, enough to get me to a petrol station (or so they thought).
It was Sunday, so as I pulled out of the hire yard and across the road to setup the satnav, they closed the gates and went home.
5 mins later, I started the van but again it cutout!
I was in a rough part of a city I didn't know at sundown with everything I own in a van, with 2.5 hours left to drive and the van wouldn't move.
I called the RAC again, same guy came back. But by then I was almost in tears. The guy topped me up again and radioed in that he would escort me to a petrol station to really fill up because 'ge is in some distress'.
That's the first time I really remember letting my mask slip in front of someone else