Saying I'm Sorry: Part IV (The Scientist)

Before I start this blog post, I'd just like to say a few words of gratitude to my far-flung audience. I never intended for this to be anything other than a personal growth and exploration journal, but the thousands of page views from all corners of the planet indicates I'm tapping into something else. I'll admit I was inspired to do a deeper dive into the mental health ramifications of Autism by one reader telling me how greatly my words resonated with her, that a particular post found its way into her hands on the brink of a crisis and helped ground her. Others have shared praise for the quality of the writing and unfiltered truths, which I deeply appreciate.

As much as I am moved by the benefit sharing my experiences has to others, it is still, at its heart, my space for me, as stated in the very first entry nearly nine years ago. Thank you for reading, nonetheless.

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Female Scientist by Medic Kun

It would be irresponsible to perpetuate the impression that my perseveration is limited to botched romantic entanglements, as I likely have with the first three parts of this post. The more intimate a relationship however, the more deeply intertwined two minds, hearts, souls, the more opportunities there are for serious misunderstandings and subsequent hurt to occur. Involvement requires trust; trust is founded upon vulnerability; vulnerability makes me nervous; nerves short circuit my brain into panic; panic leads to flight; flight leaves questions unanswered, chords unresolved, words unspoken and years or decades down the track, endless loops of all the things I wish I could do and say differently playing through my mind.

When I think back on these myriad relationships and the consternation they continue to cause, I'm often struck by just how hard I actually did try to make amends in the past. How I've tried to explain the inexplicable, apologise for outright inexcusable behaviour, smooth ruffled feathers and even been pardoned, but the broken trust never heals. This is what gets me. I don't know if the other parties ever actually trust me again, but I do know that I don't trust them to trust me and so I slink away to avoid censure. This is what happened with The Scientist.

The Scientist was a stalwart woman, infinitely dedicated to her pursuits. In the many years I knew her, I watched wave after wave of tragedy, mishap, misogyny, and hardship smash her up against the rocks of life, but she never bowed. Looking back now, I can imagine she undoubtedly must have had her moments in private where she broke down and wept, wanted to throw in the towel and give up, but her public persona was so steadfast that any weakness was hidden. She was definitely one tough cookie and I seriously admired her.

In the wake of several of my own major life upheavals, I was foisted unexpectedly upon The Scientist. She didn't really want me in her charge for many good reasons, but neither of us had much of a choice in the matter. I always sincerely wanted to do right by her, as anyone would when working directly under one of their heroes, but my heart was never in the work she had me doing, and then my head couldn't stay in it either.

I've written briefly before about my cycling accident in New Zealand but haven't yet had the opportunity to fully explore the damage it did physically, mentally and emotionally. I've been toying with a PTSD-focussed post to explore its different manifestations, but my writing energies keep pulling me in different directions. I mention it now because it played a significant role in the destruction of my working relationship with The Scientist.

Hitting the ground at 30 km/hr is never a good thing. Landing head first at that velocity is an especially bad thing. In conjunction with the multitude of serious injuries I sustained that day, I was also severely concussed. I can only estimate how long I was out cold by what I can remember of the distance between where I lay crumpled and the path where the first people on the scene would have been when I crashed, but however long it was sufficient to cause significant damage that continued to give me grief for many months afterward.

I had no idea how bad things were upstairs until several sleepless weeks went by. It's hard to say how much of my memory issues were directly related to the trauma and what was a secondary byproduct of the concussion-induced insomnia, either way, my brain was fucked. It's never nice to have your brain operating at less than full capacity, but I can tell you that having scrambled brains whilst completing intricate scientific research, taking the most complex graduate coursework and trying to mop up the mess of your life truly fucking sucks. My normally brilliant mind was rendered useless. I couldn't remember a conversation from the day before let alone what a professor was talking about by the time I finished writing notes in class. My typically hyper-reactive emotions jumped into uncontrolled chaos. I was a walking time bomb.

When you can't keep anything straight in your mind and everthing feels like a race against the clock, it's only a matter of probability before one of the many mistakes you're making daily is going to genuinely cost you. The Scientist's lab was absolutely no place for a mis-wired brain like mine. There were so many protocols to follow, so many minute details to attend to every second, so much to learn and keep track of. I probably would have been OK if I hadn't been so over committed, if all my attention was focussed there, but it wasn't and I was floundering. Then one day up whipped the perfect storm.

I was stressed beyond belief and trying to juggle too many things. A dear friend, who was also under the The Scientist's wing, but didn't work in this lab, came in with me when I needed to check my experiments. There was no problem with her being in the lab, she often use the microscope therein, but she had zero training on the experimental equipment. We were talking, she wanted to be helpful, I was distracted and trying to get things done quickly. I asked her to do something deceptively simple before checking something else and realised too late that what she did affected someone else's experiments on the line. At the time, I honestly didn't think it was a big deal. The same tiny perturbation to my own experiments wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever. But the other experiments were a completely different beast. We destroyed them in a thoughtless instant. Weeks worth of someone else's work down the toilet.

My ridiculous mistake was so opaque to my mind that it never occurred to me to contact my mentor or the other student right away. I casually mentioned it in passing a few days later and the shit hit the fan. The other student was murderous; my mentor asked why she shouldn't ban me from ever using the lab again. Let me clarify here that not using that lab again would sign the death warrant on the PhD I'd been pursuing for the previous five years. It was not a happy option.

After wallowing in mortification for a few days, I wrote my supervisor a very long explanation and apology. I was seriously remorseful. It was the single biggest mistake of my professional life, one I knew had completely tarnished my reputation. The Scientist is a most magnanimous woman and she pardoned my sins, allowed me to resume working in the lab, and did her best to insure I successfully completed my PhD.

But I never felt right about things between us again. The strain on our already burdened relationship was enormous. Every interaction with her felt dangerous, never knowing if she was going to throw this or one of my myriad minor transgressions back at me.

The day I defended my thesis, The Scientist took me and my parents out for a celebratory lunch. We'd scarcely spoken outside of obligatory thesis and research group meetings since the lab debacle, so I was incredibly on edge about this small social outing. Much to my surprise, she positively glowed to my parents about what an amazing job I'd done, how much cutting edge research I'd successfully pursued, and what a fantastic student I was. I was absolutely floored. She never struck me as the type of person who would spout insincere flattery, but I can never stop wondering if she made an exception that day.

Thoughts of this woman whom I so admire, with whom I've travelled, dined, worked in the field, taken saunas, and partied, who's baby I've held and dear friends I've shared and lost, now only evoke shudders of shame and remorse. I've never been able to bring myself to connect with her via any social media or list her as a reference on my CV. Sadly, I never went through graduation ceremonies for my PhD, in part because I was too ashamed to ask her to hood me. I'm simply left to wonder if she considers me a black stain on her otherwise impeccable advisory record.

Battles in My Mind (Part II): Depression, Anxiety, PND, and All That Jazz…

I've talked a lot about my mental health struggles with pretty well anyone who could be bothered to listen, but I've never really written about them in any purposeful, meaningful, or public way. I've often turned to my journal in times of extreme distress, trying to scratch the madness out of my mind onto paper, usually to no avail. What I ended up with was a long and painful record of my lowest, most vulnerable moments. Eventually I stopped because I was afraid if anyone ever came across them and read the whole tome I would be bundled off to an asylum and never heard from again.

I originally started this blog (oh, so many lifetimes ago) in an attempt to turn my writing into a positive way forward from those incredibly dark places. In so doing, I glossed over the agonising struggles leading me to that point and completely abandoned the blog altogether during the years in which it could have soothed traumatic wounds and drained the poison from within me. I realised recently, upon receiving the highest compliment that my writing had helped someone else in their moment of need, that I actually have a lot of value to offer those in the trenches with the Black Dog.

I have gained incredible perspective on my mental health challenges in the past year, moving from a head space wherein the only thing keeping me from stepping in front of a bus was my children's dependence on me, to a place where I'm allowing myself to dream and create and open up to curiosity and possibility. I've taken active steps to put self care at the top of my priority list, let go of toxic things holding me back, ask for help, say 'no' to that which I don't really need, and conserve my spoons as much as possible. Discovering my Autistic identity has played a central role in this metamorphosis.

I have an impulsive urge to start all stories at the beginning, but I think this one is better told asynchronously. Let's begin at the bottom…

I'm in a mental ward with my five-month old baby. She's my second child, so the guilt of leaving my 3.5-year old behind weighs mightily but Anxiety is crushing every fibre of my being. I'm afraid of harming myself or my children, so I've come here of my own volition. I knew I was at high risk for developing PND again, so I sought help and built up my safety nets before my little one arrived, but it wasn't enough to fight the tide. Sleepless months, a colicky/tongue-tied/perpetual motion baby, an uncomfortable visit, election of the orange idiot, and an unrelenting fear that my new job would bring an early end to breastfeeding piled upon me and has now dropped me to my knees. The psychiatrist is pushing hard for SSRIs. I'm pushing back with the futility of kelp against the tide and crying desperately on the phone with the kind man with the answers before swallowing my first pill. I can't get my baby to sleep so the nurses push me out into the long, narrow hallway and tell me they'll watch her while she screams. I scream too. I'm incoherent, spitting mad, seeing red, screeching down the hallway past the doors of all the other sleeping babies and mothers that this isn't why I came here, I'm not here for them to "train" my baby to sleep, but they won't listen so I try to punch my hand through a solid brick wall.

The SSRIs kick in and make me think every previous anxiety attack was a gentle joke. I cannot pull myself out of the foetal position except to meet my baby's most intense needs. The walls are closing in on me; the air is crushing the life out of me; I cannot breathe. I want to die more than anything. If the kind man on the phone hadn't prepared me for this and the place wasn't designed to eliminate any possibility for self harm, I wouldn't make it through the night. But just to add insult to injury, I contract gastro while this is going on and have to be quarantined. I'm given two choices: send my exclusively breastfed baby home for my husband to sort out along with our other child and give up any hope of continuing to breastfeed her while I am transferred to the regular hospital unit, or go home. I hate this place so much, but the regular hospital ward is my worst nightmare. I call my husband and implore him to pick me up as soon as possible. My dearest friend drives an hour to watch our daughter while he comes to collect me and our baby. Due to my rapid and unexpected discharge, I have no further access to the prescribing psychiatrist and have to manage my meds on my own.

The following months blur, but I'm managing better. Meanwhile, my husband pulls away and we inhabit two separate worlds: Mine wholly centred around the joyfully beguiling little soul rapidly fermenting in our baby; His revolving around an overwhelming workload and our older daughter. My headspace improves with the medication and job satisfaction, while he recedes deeper into his own pit of depression, resentment, and rejection. Our family effectively splits in two.

I begin to find joy again through my work and friends, go off the meds, but by our little one's first birthday my marriage is toxic house of cards and salted wounds. We're so busy and exhausted all the time we have little energy to even fight, but when we do it frightens our daughter. Her behaviour, which has always challenged us, becomes increasingly difficult and we can't agree on how to deal with it. We escape into our own fantasy worlds and cannot meet in the real world at all. Threats of divorce are thrown around with increasing frequency. Then in waltzes a soothsayer.

It starts innocently enough, as most things do, with a flippant remark online to an old acquaintance about the definition of a "happy marriage". I suddenly find the trust, humour, shared interests, and common ground so completely lacking at home streaming through my screen. As my partner becomes ever more dismissive and uninterested, my new "friend" is quick to fill the gaps. To my mind, the case is closed by my husband's demand for a divorce on our dinner date. I stalk off without him and then we scream at each other from across the street. It's ugly. We try to keep up appearances for the sake of our kids and family at Christmas, but the rift is deep.

Over the next few months my anxiety skyrockets as I empty my bucket into my online "relationship". My husband and I separate. I try unsuccessfully to find full-time employment, getting nowhere with two jobs for which I'm incredibly well qualified. I'm gutted and feel my tenuous grip on things slipping. I go to my doctor begging for help to manage the anxiety that physically rips me apart at night and keeps me perpetually on edge during the day. I go back on the SSRIs and into therapy.

My husband starts counselling and taking antidepressants in parallel. Somehow in the shit storm of our separation, we discover our confounding neurodivergence and the pennies begin to drop. I'm an Aspie; he has ADHD; neither one of us is actually an asshole.

I realise he's been hurting for a long time. It's so outside of my nature to be able to give him what he needs or recognise how much he has sacrificed for so many years to try to meet mine. With help from more emotionally intelligent arbiters, we start to remove the distortion of our own lenses and reinterpret each other. He lays himself out to fight for what matters most to him: his family.

All this chaos, all this pain could have been avoided had I been identified as an Aspie earlier in life. There are so many episodes like this (although none quite so awful) throughout my life, all of which I contend would have been ameliorated, if not altogether skipped, had I known, had my family known, had my friends known. I know our struggles make us who we are, but I'm so scarred from this lifetime of brutal internal battles, I feel I hardly have the strength left to enjoy the life I have left.

The Delphic maxim resonates for every human today as it did in the ancient world, but sometimes we don't have an opportunity to truly know ourselves until we are on the brink of loosing everything we love. I have met so many late-diagnosed Spectrumites who were never able to fully grasp their true self through decades of mental health issues, relationship breakdowns, personal crises, and suicide attempts because their Self was buried and maligned from a lifetime of trying to be the square peg in a world of round holes. So I add my voice to the crescendoing chorus of adult Autistics calling for better diagnosis, especially of girls on the spectrum, and acceptance of our differences to improve life-long mental health outcomes for everyone on the spectrum and those who love them.

In walks a stranger…

A glance and I'm cold to my core. Spine blazing with the intuition that something simply isn't right. The face, the name, all the same, but the eyes are burning with something unknown; a daemon within them, a psychosis resurfaced? These are not the true colours I thought once shone through.

Pulse quickening, I double check all doors are locked. Not that doors can keep this out, but just the same there's the false sense of security provided by the 'thunking' deadbolts. Wondering why I looked back into those eyes, I dim the lights and retreat to a shadowy corner, questioning my sanity, intuition, gut, heart, head, logic all over again for the eight thousandth time.

"Little Pig, Little Pig, let me in!" "Not by the skin of my brainy brain brain!!" "Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll weave you the most beautiful, beguiling and fantastical farce you've ever heard that will have you begging me to come in over and over and over again!" "Why, yes, please Mr. Wolf, you are ever so dashing and charming, do come in and would you like a cup of tea?"

I know I'm not stupid, but am I really so gullible? How can I think I knew someone so intimately, so deeply, so far beyond the realm of heretofore known reality and not have seen that steely glint in their eyes? Cold-bloodedness has usurped joyous warmth. Was it there all along, or did I put it there? Did I blow those dark and evil clouds away with my presence only for them to return redoubled when I vanished?

I don't know. I have no right to know. But I'm haunted.

All I ever wanted was to know the whole truth, the unadulterated, bald-faced, staggering, make you weep with agony, and nothing but the truth. Instead I staggered into the most twisted web of lies ever conceived. Why is 'honesty' such a lonely word?

False Narratives

The flip side of my unflinching, innate bent for absolute honesty (discussed in an earlier post) is that my bullshit detector is completely busted. Hence, with the exception of children's obviously tall tales and the espousing of patent falsehoods, which I know unreservedly to be untrue, I cannot see through the murky waters of half truths, misconceptions, manipulations, false fronts, and general smoke and mirrors that pervades most adult interactions. Therefore, my default position (learned from being burned oh, so many times) with new people is to presume that most of what they say is complete and utter horse shit, until they manage to earn my trust.

When I am in the initial frame of mind with someone, their exaggerations, omissions and false statements don't really bother me. I expect it. I find it mildly amusing to marvel at how anyone can spin so many stories and why they might choose to do so. I don't take it personally and I don't place any import or credence on much of anything they say.

But the tide turns completely once I allow them through my carapace of disbelief. Once they are on the inside I am wholly splayed out and vulnerable to whatever false narratives they may weave. As I cannot discern the untrue subtleties of a carefully crafted story based on real events, no matter how implausible the embellishments I will swallow them whole. My trust in another becomes so complete and resolute, regardless of almost any evidence to the contrary, I continue to believe their every word until something definite shatters the illusion.

The effect of this treachery is akin to the unreservedly loved and trusted master of a faithful puppy kicking the shit out the poor animal when it bounds up for an outstretched treat. Gutted. Utter disbelief and disorientation. Terror. Horror. Confusion.

What to do with that kind of befuddlement? What to do with the love that disintegrates in such a perplexing moment? Where to turn in the disarray of swirling thoughts and pain when the trusted master is the one inflicting the pain?

Someone more skilled at decoding the typical spectrum of "truth" and "lies" in normal everyday adult human interactions would be less likely to suffer such a blow, I presume. A fully functioning B.S. detector would register the half-truths, the exaggerations, the subtle manipulations, and omissions and place them correctly in their designated boxes, allowing the relationship to progress at an appropriate level of trust. But without that critical tool at my disposal, everything gets lumped in its entirety either in the TRUTH or LIE pile. The entire relationship or friendship and everything that was ever said gets thrown in the same heap.

There's a small part of my brain that is capable of reasoning that every human interaction sits somewhere on a sliding scale between true and false. But the overwhelming majority of my brain screams its rejection of this possibility. The allowance of a spectrum of truth is a completely learned construct for me, not my default mode. Hence, when I feel someone I trust has been at all insincere with me, I sever the tie immediately and completely. I cannot bear the heart ache of having my deeply trusting nature taken advantage of. I hate that I am an easy mark for the unscrupulous deceiver who manages to make it through my front line. I am saddened that another round of broken trust undoubtedly means I close myself off even more to the possibility of new friendships around the corner because I cannot trust my judgement of character.