A broad collection of media that discusses my experience with sensory overload, ADHD, Autism, and a disorienting uncontrolled internal dialogue.
View All TagsI've been struggling with the idea of who I am for awhile now and it's been a major block in exploring who I want to be post-coming out. There are too many parts of me that I faked, never explored, or just refused to understand and distinguishing between them is painful to say the least...
I've always struggled with self care. Things as "basic" as showering regularly have been a constant issue for as long as I can remember and it's made nearly every other aspect of my life so much harder. Maintaining any kind of routine, feeling comfortable in my skin or clothes, and adjusting to new things are all way harder when you can't shower, brush your teeth, care for your hair, or keep your skin from breaking out without feeling like you're wrong for wanting to.
I'm (somewhat) sorry about how wordy this is. It's been awhile and I have a lot to say!
This is a letter to my younger self. Things that I wish someone I trusted had said to me. But I never opened myself up enough for anyone to know what to say.
It feels really weird to talk about this because some of the things I mention are tropes in TV shows, Books, or Movies that I relate to, and I'd imagine that's because I can't really know how other people order their thoughts unless we talk about it. The issue being that the topic of how we think isn't very common, but it is something I seek out in the media I consume. Some more of the discomfort comes from the fact that if I try to find others talking about it online, the search results are overtaken by discussions of the media it was mentioned in instead of people who also feel the same way, or even just find that way of thinking interesting.
Suffice to say, I'll be using words and structures similar to some media you might have consumed, but I'm trying to convey something entirley unrelated to the media. The media from which I have taken these words only gave me the ability to comunicate these ideas in words.
I want you to imagine an alarm that constantly going off around you. It’s been there as long as you can remember and you’re the only one who can hear it. Every time you ask anyone else if they hear it, they look at you like you’re insane, dismiss your question, and move on.
This is a topic that means a lot to me so I’ll be keeping it pinned to the top of my blog, and it would mean even more if you’d be willing to read what I have to say.
The past few months have really torn me up in more ways than I can count, but I’d like to think that there’s some good coming out of it at least. When I started to rebuild myself after being sick for so many months, I realized that there is something that I can’t ignore anymore and that I hope will start to change me for the better. While I’ve known about it my whole life, I’ve always ignored it for one reason or another, or just being a suborn moron to be honest. So now that I’m having to rework my life style basically from the ground up, it’s time I start being who I know that I am.
This is a simplified explanation of how I got to where I am today in regards to being transgender. As with most things in life, there’s more to it, but this hits the important points. It’s important to stress that this is not how everyone experiences it, and quite a few people get a lot more doubt about it than I did. I have my amazing Mom to thank for me being able to accept myself and my best friend MiniPixie for being there when I needed her. Suffice to say, I wrote this to emphasize the importance of accepting your friends and family, even if they’re not sure about what’s going on yet.
-Natalie, written with love and hope to everyone who needs it
As time goes by it becomes harder and harder to trust my senses, to know exactly how and why my body reacts to the world. My interpretation changes by the second and some days it’s impossible to keep up. Each sense working on a scale that changes with every new piece of information I gleam from it, a drastically fast kaleidoscope of broken images and feelings. Brighter lights, clearer sounds, sharper temperatures, and a swaying scope of scale attack me constantly, wearing at my view of the world. Each shift defines a whole new set of actions and reactions to reinvent, a constant game of mix and match, find the value, adjust and prefix.
My senses have been at war with me for as long as I can remember, always tricking me, forever showing me more than I need to know. My earliest memory that I have a date for is 9/11 on a military base, and in it I remember nothing but mechanical screams. I remember standing on my porch as the base rallied itself, sirens and flashing lights on every car, tearing at my body with monotonous pulses. I remember the jets overhead, the bone wrenching blast of movement that they left behind. I remember the cracks in the concrete, wavering in front of my tiny face as I trembled in the wake of the neverending onslaught. Just waiting, watching the world shatter in my mind.
The world screams in different tones. From the thoughts of fleshed minds comes the multi toned cacophony of need that permeates our world. We all desire something, those desires changing in intensity and focus every moment of every day throughout our lives. Desire fuels our actions and by those actions our next desire is defined, our thoughts formed by our surroundings.