#i kept telling myself it's an autism spectrum thing but she's just selfish it's not neurodivergence | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jolie-auletta · 6 years

Text

Lose Yourself, To Find Yourself.

So, I had the honour of being part of an international women’s day seminar yesterday. Hosted by the beautiful Gaia Rose, at her annual awakened woman gathering.

Part of a 7 woman strong team, I made my first public speech.

Stood in front of 50 women I didn’t know, I spoke about something that had impacted my life. How I fully and completely lost myself, but found my true self by doing so.

So here goes;

When I first found out I was going to be speaking today, I was an anxiety ridden mess, I was almost automatically filled with all kinds of insecurities. What if my story isnt as exciting as everybody elses. What if people judge me. What if I dont even inspire any one?

And as normal as that thought process is for someone who has never spoken in public before, it isnt actually very logical.

While I was writing this speech I sent it over to my friend to read over and I told her I felt somewhat guilty for mentioning someone from my past.

I am literally about to say things to a room of strangers that I've never even said a loud before!

But that's when it hit me, I want to be part of teaching our daughters and the next generation of women to not be afraid of simply speaking the truth!

I was always an intelligent kid. I taught myself how to speak other languages, play musical instruments, top of the class.. so I should have been a grade A student, gone to uni and I could have been living 'the dream' right now.

I know that the dream is just perspective. The dream is what you make it. But what I’m trying to say, is I could have had a smooth and easy life, if things had been different.

I don't dwell on that though, devine alignment is something I speak of often. All that is meant to be, will be.

My secondary school days were awful. I started later than I should have, so perhaps that had something to do with it? I don't know. But I felt like I was just always having to try harder than normal, just to make friends. Constantly seeking approval from my peers, constantly trying to be ‘one of them’.

What I've realised it comes down to, is I've just never had good social skills. Which no body believes when I tell them because I come across so confident and eccentric!

But honestly I'm what I like to call a social chameleon. I can blend in with any group, but it's all down to analysis of behaviours and mimicking. In a sense it's just acting.

And that's what school was like for me, I shuffled between groups, making friends then falling out with them over things I just didn't understand at the time

It's like I just didn't know how to integrate with people , or be myself.

So along with feeling like I has no real friends.. I was actually bullied too. The entire time.

I remember having to leave school early just to avoid confrontation. The worst part is, I didn't tell a soul I until I was 25? So a whole 10 years went by without even telling my own mum that I was bullied!

That's something I really regret now. Because I believe it all stems from there and if I had reached out to someone, it could have all been different.

Anyway, the last year of school rolled round and I'm obviously so happy to leave!

But then this fear kicked in. What if I get bullied again!?

So I had an ingenius plan. (in hindsight this was not an ingenius plan at all)

I firstly completely went off radar. I chose a college in a new area, where no one would know me and heres the ingenius part. I made a new personality. Who is the most unbullyable person, I thought? All my previous bullies where quite 'rude girl' personas, so thats when i pieced everything together and decided who I’d be.

And it worked. No one picked on me and I was actually popular.

The mask was working, but that’s all it was, a mask.

I was still constantly seeking approval from people, always trying to be what I thought other people thought was cool, not what I actually thought was cool.

About 8 years ago, i was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and BPD. I was on medication but I took myself off of them when I fell pregnant. I did see a psychiatrist for a number of years, but I'm due to have another evaluation because I tick a lot of the boxes for autism!

This was literally a lightbulb moment! When I found out I could be on the spectrum- everything in my life made sense. And it turns out its really common for women with autism to go under the radar, or be diagnosed with depression, anxiety or bipolar/bpd like I was, and that's it, autism isn't even considered.

I am quite obviously high functioning, but every day scenarios like dealing with my emotions, sensory predicaments and simple socialising are a daily battle for me.

I have done A LOT of self healing and I have made a lot of progress, but I have come to the conclusion that whether I'm one, none, or all of the above , I just don't fit in a box and that's okay!!

I found my release in music, it was a coping mechanism, a world to get lost in.

But this leads me onto the second part of my story. During my music years, I met someone who would change my life.

A narccissist.

As i said before i do believe everything happens in devine order and its all lead me to where I am today. And I don't even hold a grudge towards this person. What's done is done.

And we were actually friends for a long while before getting together, we were best friends in fact, I can't even fault the friendship.

But the relationship was TOXIC!

The mental abuse was off the scale. And he also introduced me to cocaine. Now, in the beginning, it was all fun and games. Parties, recreational and I had no responsibilities in life so I thought why the hell not.

But it became more than that. He got me involved in not only taking it, but selling it too.

The entire relationship became based on that.

And ultimately it was detrimental to my soul.

I didnt even recognise myself. My family didn’t recognise me. It was like I had all these layers of personality I had invented to hide behind, but I couldn’t even remember who I was underneath it all!

I became more and more involved in this crazy lifestyle, so much so I ended up in prison because of it.

Honestly I look back and just think, how could I be so STUPID. It took me so long to admit that I was in a controlling and abusive relationship.

This guy had a hold on me. The kind of hold only a narccissist can have.

This wasnt some teenage crush where i 'loved' him so much and I'd do anything for him. I was a crushed soul, bowing down to a dictator.

I did what he wanted, when he wanted. I didn’t even exist. It was all about him.

My mental state was in pieces.

Im honestly so embarrased to tell people Ive been to jail. I mean even saying the word jail. It makes me cringe. I rarely tell people. There are family members that don’t even know!

But that prison freed me. From the jail that was my own body.

Its almost heartbreaking to think of myself all alone in a cell, no friends or family , but I had time to be on my own. With ME! The actual me, not the me I had been playing the part of for the last god knows how many years.

I honestly remember the day the penny dropped, it was when I put my nose ring back in. It sounds so crazy, but when I put it back in, all the pieces of me started to sort of fall into place too. I wore the clothes I wanted. I wore my hair how I wanted and I was starting to love being me again.

The mask was off! I existed again! And that was a beautiful feeling!

I can’t believe I’d kept up this charade for so many years! I should have been an actress, seriously 😂

So fast forward to today, I have a daughter, My Isabella Amethyst. I honestly love her more than I ever thought was even possible and she has played a major role in me becoming the person I am today, because she deserves me at my best and no less.

Another point to make is… As some one who was too foreign for the white folk; yet too white to be black… my whole life I had never fit in to a ‘group’.

I started researching my ancestral heritage and had a deep spiritual connection with the Italian and Spanish parts of my DNA. I even discovered I had Amerindian and oceanic DNA. Which was amazing and even more soul grabbing for me, it gave me a sense of belonging.

A lot of people say wow jode, you've changed so much!

But i am now, who I actually was before I was pressured in to believing I wasn't good enough as myself! Before I invented a new me, just to fit in with everyone else!

So along with becoming a parent, Ive managed to start my own holistic business too!

I do everything I love now, everything that makes my soul happy. I say yes to my intuition and say no to anything that doesn't serve me. We as women have to learn put ourselves first! We have to learn to trust ourselves, love ourselves and actually learn to be a bit selfish!

Life has given me some lemons, as they say. My world was incredibly sour at times and I have found my self in the darkest of corners, alone. But as clische as it is, after the darkness comes light.

I can wholeheartedly say that although I may not be 'living the dream' I could have been, if I had chosen all the 'right' paths in life, I am infact HAPPY. My soul is content and I am ME.

No matter what any of us have been through in life, we not only grow through it, we can flurish beyond it. These awful things happen to us, but they do not define us.

Sometimes we just have to lose ourselves, to find ourselves.

1 note · View note

casual-confessionsxwhynot · 5 years

Text

SO! I have a confession. I've been a serial monogamist most of my dating life. Since my first real boyfriend in high school i think i've had over 30 boyfriends. Whether they were long term or short term I was bouncing from "relationship" to relationship for almost half of my life. Since it was high school and i have a healthy amount of shame i didn't sleep around with all of the people i dated, only a relatively small fraction. Still it seems weird that I spent so much time getting tangled up in someone else's mind.

Fast forward to now; I'm single and actually kinda happy! But the biggest downer i encounter is when i realize how alone i feel (and actually am).

You see, i have a lot of siblings. Like 10, no joke. But i am the second youngest, and my mom had me when she was 40 years old. My next oldest sister was 12 at the time i was born. That also means in her late 50s she was trying to deal with two teenaged girls. And while i have my reasons that i don't speak with my mother anymore, that whole situation still sounds like a certain kind of hell to me.

The point i'm getting at is that my single working mother was perpetually exhausted. Also neglectful and manipulative and emotionally abusive and a whole slew of things I will likely delve into later on my psychological deep dive. Anyway! I never felt like i was given enough attention from....anyone. I had no dad in the picture, a mom who was too exhausted, and a ton of siblings growing into adulthood and balancing their own lives. I have one younger sister, but as we are only a year apart in age growing up we didn't really like each other.

Despite what my dating history might suggest i was quiet and shy. Definitely have always been an introvert. Dating was a way i found myself finding a type of attention and a way to fill a void in my life. I think the void was someone to know and to know me intimately. And not intimate in a sexual sense, but someone to talk to, some one to know how i think and feel and process the world around me. And vice versa of course. I didnt get that from my family, my mom talked a lot but never a lot of details about her life. And my younger sister kept to herself too (may have also been a serial monagamist? But i don't wanna speculate on her psych too, love you!) I would always be jealous of my childhood friends, who were sisters. They knew each other so well it seemed. They would argue sure, but always came together in the end and be there for eachother. If my sister and i fought it would never get resolved it seemed. We would just carry that anger, go our separate ways and just remember we didnt like each other (things are different now)

It had me feeling like i was different, i honestly wondered if i either fell on the autism spectrum or if i was a socio or psychopath because there was something wrong with ME. Because i didnt have these relationships with my mom and my sister. I see now my situation didnt foster the healthy kind communication and attention that comes with those relationships.

Fast forward again to now. I am single as of early May 2019 and it is now September 2019 . Only last week did i delete my tinder app. I started swiping just before i broke up with my ex, (together on and off for ~ year and a half/emotionally abusive narcissistic selfish asshole) i wanted to rebound and find someone better to prove to myself that i deserve and can find better! But it was hard! Online dating sucks ass. Pardon my phrasing. But for real my dudes. I dated around a little but i realized that i dont really know what i want or what i like.

Here we are

Ladies and gentlemen, after this long unorganized rant i've finally arrived to the point of this blog.

I'm documenting, in blog form, my journey to discovering my true likes and dislikes. Being tethered for a good chunk of my life didn't really allow me to know what I like. And yeah i mean i know some stuff, like i really hate bowling, and mini golf. But i mean, i've been tangled up trying to attend to my significant others emotional, mental, physical needs. WHAT ABOUT ME? I haven't made myself a priority. So this is it. My selfish time.

So yes, i deleted tinder and have stopped looking for someone to date but that doesn't mean i'm closed off to finding someone. It just means i'm making my self my number one priority and if in my quest to push myself to do things i didnt think i could do by myself and i happen to meet a really nice guy (OR GIRL!??!) Then dooooope.

I have done 3 things so far that i feel were me making myself try new things.

1) Yoga

2) walking at a park

3) pierced my nose! (Most exciting)

The yoga thing isnt all that exciting honestly. I didnt want to go to the gym one day and pulled up youtube and did a 20 min beginners yoga thing. I actually didn't really like it. I had never done yoga before and its difficult to watch a video and have them tell you to close your eys and then move thos foot forward this back and this is a warrior pose etc. And pull your navel to your spine but also deep breathe in and out! It was too much. If i want to continue with yoga i need to try a class with an instructor and a more hands on experience/guidance. (Minds out of the gutter please).

Walking outside at a park! This one isnt really a big deal to most people. But being the serial monogamist that i am i'm uncomfortable being alone and i have told myself that it is UNSAFE to walk at a park alone. That and all of the true crime/murder podcasts i listen to dont help. But i did it. One friday night i told myself i should go on a walk at a park i had been to with friends before. So the next saturday morning, ya girl did it! I walked back and forth on a lake front for like an hour. And i could have done it almost all day because it felt peaceful....but i had other shit to do lol.

THEN on a whim i decided i wanted my nose pierced. But not really on a whim, i've wanted to do this for like a year but never had the courage. Also my emotionally abusive ex was abusive to the environment around him and didnt really care about not hurting me by "accident" so i never felt safe having a fresh hole in my face that could be damaged by mistake around him.... ANYWAY this whole week. Starting monday i told myself that i was gonna go get my nose pierced on friday. By wednesday i was too excited and i went to a tattoo shop 11 min from work and got it done. I had seen the videos and read the after care instructions and done my research. I was ready. It was done and now i have to care for it everyday and let it heal for 4-6 months. HELL YES QUEEN! I really want to get a hoop but for initial healing the stud is best. Also, not many people at work have noticed ( i work at a job where piercings and tattoos are ok). Which might have upset me about a year ago. But i truly did this for me. And not anyone else, so i feel that's why i wasn't disappointed that some people didn't notice. I'm feeling good! I feel this is a positive change for me. I'm excited to meet myself.

I think i want to get another cat?

New work out routine?

Plan a solo vacation?

Actually go to the library?

Dye my hair?

Go for a drink at a bar by myself?

Paint the trim in my house?!?!? (lol not adventurous, just something i need to do.)

Challenge yourself! Take a chance and do all tje things!

0 notes