I am trying to convince myself that I am not going through the stages of grief but I spent the past three days writing the same blog post and deleting it several times. This is the definition of madness. Is it not!? It is!
There's this question that I keep asking myself on what exactly I am looking for in relationships, am I looking for masculine energy or am I looking for safety? Why is this important? I am afraid of tunnel vision, that I will believe that I can only get this thing from one place that is not guaranteed while ignoring the other ways that my emotional needs are fulfilled.
These past two weeks were the worst weeks of this year, it felt like doors were closing in my life and my biggest fears were becoming true. One of those fears was experiencing a ruptured ovarian cyst while not having medical aid/insurance. Thankfully, it wasn't so bad that I needed to go to the emergency room, it still knocked me out for days until I finally started using anti-inflammatory gels and pain medication.
Physical pain always brings out the worst feelings of abandonment in me but it also makes me feel difficult. What I wanted more than anything was to curl up into someone neutral and be distracted. I wanted compassion but I didn't want to be fussed over or spoken over. I hate big displays of affection, I don't find them to be genuine because usually people prioritize their discomfort or need to feel good over your needs.
Last week brought up strong feelings of being unheard. I don't even trust doctors because I feel so unheard by them. I am waiting until I can afford to find a doctor who won't fight for a hypothetical man and a baby that will never exist over my own well-being. I don't understand how they think I am going to find this hypothetical man that they keep fighting for when it constantly feels like my body and mind are in competition to kill me.
I eventually sent a tearful voice note to my best friend and I was apologizing for being a burden. I was not going to tell her anything in detail but I needed a lifeline. I needed relief from the extreme loneliness that I was experiencing. She stopped me from apologizing and said "We're friends". Those words felt like they broke a spell. If you told 25-year-old me that she and I would have such as strong bond at 30, I would have not believed it. That weekend she called me her heart and I would be jumping for joy if I wasn't in pain.
A few months ago, I was fighting with a friend against the idea of illnesses being spiritual but last week I felt like I was going through a purgatory period. I knew I was going to come out of it with epiphanies but I am exhausted of having these experiences.
That weekend I had the crazy idea to make veg kofta, tomato chutney, and roti. I had been avoiding making that meal because I felt like it would be a lot of work but the craving had become too strong to ignore. My intuition told me that it would make me feel better. It made me feel nostalgic. It did not taste as good as the restaurant of the community that we used to stay in but it reminded me of sitting in that restaurant, 5 years ago, keeping my best friend company while she worked and I would try to soldier through executive dysfunction by staring into my laptop. When we had a chance, we would speak about my solo adventures to the various art museums in the city, we would speak about art and we would share interesting art exhibition ideas.
When I tell her that I feel nostalgic, I don't tell her about the restaurant to avoid possible bad memories. That year was the worst year of our lives but we always found comfort in each other and the humans who would pop in and out of the restaurant. Instead, I tell her about the rat that terrorized us when we were roommates, two years prior to that year. It was a determined rat. We heard it scratch and gnaw its way through the floor, we would stomp our feet but that would deter it for a few hours. One night it succeeded in creating a portal between the foundation that it came from and our room. As we watched it leap out the hole, it had us letting out a mixture of girlish screams and hysterical laughter as we clung to our bunk beds and watched it run around until it realized that we had no food and left. Our "handyman" placed an ugly metal over the hole, so it never returned.
Deep down I missed making fruit salad for her on a random afternoon. I missed our midnight snacks and secret lunches with the girls who lived with us. I miss bonding with women over food that we created with our hands for ourselves, talking about philosophy, boys, and the future. I never felt safe back then because we were confused 20-somethings who were about to make mistakes that would drastically change the course of our lives. These days my best friend and I daydream about our future that we want our healed selves to experience. One day I will have a farm (preferably by the ocean in my home city but global warming) and it will be a pitstop for whenever our friends are traveling across the country, on their way to festivals. I will feed them because my princess doesn't cook.
A quote that we hold onto is "To be loved is to be changed", it is a reminder that someday we will heal, and make fewer stupid decisions. We will learn how to regulate our emotions in a way that our families never taught us and we will be less reactive (no one is worth that intensity of emotions).
Since my best friend and I have been talking in the past week, I feel more emotionally resilient. I tried to make myself a chickpea and mayo sandwich, but when I cooked my chickpeas I found worms. I didn't soak them, that was such a stupid decision They've looked bad though since I brought them but I didn't have the heart to throw them away. On Sunday I had no choice but to let them go. Yesterday I allowed myself to buy canned chickpeas (I find them to be expensive) and I made burgers instead. It was not perfect, I didn't add salt to the actual patty and I forgot the black pepper too. It was a simple mixture of chickpeas, carrots, capsicums, and spices because I didn't want to screw it up, but I did and that is okay. It didn't feel like the world was ending in either moment where things were going wrong. Life went on. I knew I was becoming myself again.
Friendships are in no way a replacement for intimate or romantic relationships but I think this experience healed something in me. I had spent nights praying, begging, and doing manifestation rituals to feel this safety in my life. A new favorite social media quote dropped and it has been popping up on my Facebook feed through different accounts, so I guess I had to hear it."The intimacy of being heard and understood is top tier". I feel this to my core.
Last week I found myself begging a man to give me the barest minimum of communication, to make me feel seen and heard. I wouldn't say that they didn't try but we had two different ideas of what that meant. I realized that it was futile. my heart is broken. Why can it ever be simple?
Another new quote just dropped on my Facebook algorithm, "Maturity is when you don't force people to choose you." Something about this quote makes me cringe but I needed to hear it because sometimes I doubt myself sometimes.
This isn't an anti-man post. My fear is not that I will never get the safety that I want from a man but I fear believing that I can only get safety from a man because they are a man. I also don't believe that I can only find comfort in other women because they are women, I have not always had good experience with women either. I believe the reality is that safety comes from any person who genuinely cares for your well-being regardless of the relationship.
My best friend sent me a TikTok video that posed the following question "From one autistic person to another, are looking for a relationship or are you looking for accommodations?"
This has been something that has been on my mind because I fear being a burden. I tried to make myself as low maintenance as possible to not be an "intense autistic person." but deep down I search for someone who will be like a net to catch me when I am off-balanced. I struggle with communication but communication is a lifeline for me. I desire someone who can untangle my rat king of thoughts and see my plight and frustration to be heard. I desire someone who won't make me feel reactive or won't make me feel intense feelings. Someone to take away my perpetual confusion. However, my biggest fear is falling into this state of waiting for someone to save me.
My favorite mental health education content creator does videos on communication in a neurodiverse relationship. His comment sections are often filled with people who are enraged that they have to care about their partner's well-being and how negotiation is integral to interpersonal communication. It is such a weird situation for me to witness. I try to think that a social media comment section is not a reflection of the outside world...Then I remember how every time I tried to tell someone something that was important to me: to bond, to make me feel safe, or to avoid future intense feelings or conflict, it always fell on deaf ears. I know that I do need to work on my communication though.
One thing that attracted me to BDSM was the concept of negotiation. The way that communication is spoken about in theory seems good for my Autistic brain. I still love BDSM in theory but putting it into practice has been quite the challenge. I am taking a step back though to reevaluate my actions, heal, and work on healthy self-regulation. I also want to feel good internally and I want to be in a safe space to fully immerse myself in the lifestyle.
I will never burden anyone with the responsibility to save me from a dysfunctional world but to be heard, understood, seen, and chosen is a special type of intimacy.