blue rabbit

click to take a beautiful tour through a stained glass art gallery

There are days I think my stories really aren't that big a deal, maybe I'm just making a big deal out of nothing, and I kind of walk away and go do something else for awhile. And then another day comes along, like last night watching Blindspot, Roman asking Jane if she remembered the rabbits they were given as children to take care of and then told to kill, and how he wimped out and couldn't do it but she could, how she always had it in her to get the job done. And I'm thinking Ok, not only does that validate my own childhood story, but mine trumps it 100% because of other stuff, so if that doesn't make me a badass coming off childhood trauma, I don't know what does, and that was just one little incident in story after story after story that leaves every professional I've talked to cringing.

I have such a disconnect that I don't realize the impact I have on people. When I first shared my rabbit story with a beta reader, I didn't even think to caution first. This whole project I'm wanting to launch first before anything else will necessarily have to be labeled with trigger warnings galore.

I was talking privately to a friend about something this week and suddenly realized I was way out of my emotional depth again and quickly tossed out how severe my disconnect is and I'm not sure how to relate, even though I obviously have no problem engaging and understanding. Despite having to continually shut down this weird hyperawareness I have of people around me, I cannot feel some of it. It's like having a sort of numb empathy. I'm still struggling with how to express this because it's crucial as part of the journey I'm sharing about what it's like in the mind of an aspie child on to adulthood.

I've attempted to communicate this description in a couple of my Lexx posts regarding the undead character Kai. I've studied in depth what research I can find (actually extremely detailed) about programming people via break and rebuild and how that creates the disconnects needed for people to be able to handle doing some really horrific things without falling apart. I've super briefly mentioned in passing a few times over the last couple of years that I believe this is what happened to me as a child via 'natural' societal brain training and culture clashing held firmly together with rigid belief systems, and how this is ideal for mass enculturing future citizens.

Aspienado is the East Wind, as Mycroft fondly taunts poor Sherlock with.

The interesting thing, to me anyway, is that I'm no longer angry. I'm done with the anger part. I'm in the more practical, even heuristic part of all this discovery now. Having actually experienced this life has lent so much more depth to learning concepts that any amount of mere research could never aspire to. It's one thing to make statements based on opinions based on what others report, it's another to make statements based on experience.

I know I bring up Sherlock a LOT, but I can't escape that the rabbit they're looking for is named Bluebell.

click for an incredible hint

That's actually beside the point, but the entire Sherlock thing was perfectly timed with my pinata cracking open and all the jeweled candy flying out, and the blue rabbit is just one of the jewels I'm sorting through.

One of the most interesting conundrums I've run into, and it happens quite often, is talking to people who don't realize they've been traumatized. Children are very easily traumatized, especially if there is already an emotional and/or neurodiversity schism in the family (including mental illness in either or both parents), and so many of us have been taught to suck it up and be tough that it takes years of gentle excavation into a person's psyche to finally help them see they've so plastered over a traumatic event that undid them that even they can't see how traumatizing it was until they finally break through and then have nervous breakdowns. Or sometimes the breakdowns come first, and then it's all about sorting out the stuff that flew apart. All those sparkly memories...

The human brain is very good at systems recovery, for the most part. There are so many ways a human being can continue to seemingly function, and even function well, despite having gone through trauma that would easily break someone else who grew up sheltered and never learned all the little tricks for self protection. This is so common that the people who have developed these tricks actually take pride in them, and sneer down on the weaker ones who fall apart over more trivial nonsense. After all, what is dropping an ice cream cone on a sunny day compared to being horrifically abused in a very dark place with no rescue?

My blue rabbit wasn't exactly abuse. In fact, I'll vouch for it being the most absolutely brilliantly 'innocent' abuse ever invented. I will make a case that this perpetual breaking down and rebuilding machine that is society goes so far back that we think it's part of our group psychological health, and that the very people who shun 'bad' things themselves perpetuate the ability for bad things to keep existing.

I completely broke one sunny day somewhere in the first grade. I didn't cry. I didn't understand enough to cry. But I can go back now over all the moments floating through my tiny head and see that I went into a sort of permanent shock. I grew up without a single emotional connection to a single adult around me, including my parents, and it wasn't because they were mean. It was because they'd already been broken themselves.

The beta reader wasn't able to talk about it very much except to relate that it was extremely upsetting, just a few words telling a childhood story. The odd thing was that even writing it, I barely felt anything, but I somehow knew it was important. That was the first time I shared it with anyone, and now, just from that one reaction and talking to my psychologist and a couple of other people and loads of thought afterward, I can see that what I'll be sharing goes far beyond simply growing up autism spectrum in a rigid world.

I'm so glad I never got that published yet. I'm at this *wow* place where I can see a whole bunch of crucial plastering I still hadn't peeled down yet.

Ok, back to my day. I just did a retweet spam of last night's Benny C Pink Floyd crash (yeah, right in the middle of this, thanx @bonenado).

Yeah, that #bencongruity was exciting, ok, moving on. Back to my own little world.