Tron

I love to learn. I am on a life-long quest for knowledge. Will I remember it all? No. I am not that special brand of autistic. My autism likes to soak it all up and my ADHD likes to forget where we filed that information.

So when I start therapy and it came to learning about the things that therapists and doctors were telling me I was diagnosed with, I went on a 6 year bender of information.

Have you ever been on a 6-year bender? It’s not great when you finally snap to reality again. I mean look at the Hangover… that was less then 24 hours and they ended up with a monkey, missing teeth, and a monk! Sadly, I came to with none of those.

But I did dive in headfirst without coming up for air for 6 years. I went from trauma to adoption to ADHD to chronic illness to a Master of Social Work degree to autism to faith and by the 6^th lap felt like I was staring into the sun rapidly blinking because all I can see is how they are all interconnected and how so much of my life has been a lie, so I have to relearn everything but…

But…

I am really good at the learning part.

But as my therapist recently said, “knowing how to heal doesn’t actually do the healing.”

I felt this was an unfair and necessary call out only two sessions into our budding therapeutic relationship, but whatever.

This week I told her that I still don’t know who I am. When I was born, in exchange for my records, a new portfolio was slid across the table to me filled with a new identity and expectations. Then when I got marriage, another portfolio was given to me. Every time I try feel glimpses of myself trying to pop into view like a ghost out of the corner of my eye, this pre-programmed safety mechanism kicks in and reminds me what the portfolio says I who I am to be.

 I know the things. So many things. People come to me to help them with the things, find the things, understand the things, and create the things. Yet. I cannot use the things because I am still functioning with a failsafe button.

They say that you know you are in a cult when they won’t let you leave.

This keeps turning around and around in my head as I wonder how do de-program this failsafe trigger? I’ve left as much as I can in this life. Yet, the internal programming that was written in that portfolio remains and all the knowledge I have about trauma, adoption, faith, disabilities, etc. cannot wipe this hard drive to free me.

I feel like time is ticking away and I am going nowhere. I am getting nowhere. I am running in circles trying to figure out who I am, but I’m stuck in this loop like the bouncy windows sleep mode icon. Just trying my darndest to hit the actual corner, but that’s not up to me. It’s up to this unwritten portfolio of expectations that I cannot seem to unlearn.

I know I am not alone. There are so many of us out there walking around like computer programs because its safer that way. Stay in the lines. Stay in the boundaries. Do what is expected. Even when we have taken on new information and updates, it’s still safer to stay as is just in case the new updates leaves us frozen with the spiny wheel of death ( I know I am mixing programming genres now), or worse, the new update overloads are systems and we crash.

I am in a space where I can safely say I am just really angry. I just want to be able to be myself. Not even because of other people or systems, but because of the internal programming they left inside me that just won’t let me break free. It is one thing to learn about outside systems that you can try to dismantle… it’s another to have to look internally to have to dismantle your own.