On becoming unpalatable

my latest mission in life

Unpalatable - adjective

1. Not pleasing to the taste.

   an unpalatable meal.

2. Not pleasant or agreeable.

   unpalatable truths.

_{from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.}

I think I spent twenty-five odd years of my life becoming palatable and I don’t think I am alone in this experience. For late diagnosed neurodivergent people I would guess that it is an extremely common experience.

I took all the aspects of myself that could be seen as weird, unusual, unlikeable, disagreeable, shocking, confronting, unique or in any way different and tried (and succeeded somewhat) to eradicate them for the benefit and comfort of the people around me. Not consciously, but by a subconscious process of adapting and trying to survive the experience of growing up in my family and the world around me.

Unfortunately, in the process I lost so much. I lost everything that made me uniquely me and I lost all chance of genuine connection to other people based on who I really am. I’m a fake friend, surrounded by polite acquaintances, having faked experiences, performing a pleasant and agreeable non-persona.

The things we have to offer the world are our point of difference. Our favourite voice actors are famous not for having the most beautiful, agreeable voices but for having the most unique ones.

Credit: Flickr/GageSkidmore

The artistic eccentric geniuses, the arrogant super sleuths, the crotchety cops, the freaks, the geeks, the chaos gremlins. We love these characters and these people not because they are endlessly pleasing, kind, accomodating and agreeable. In fact they are often the opposite. We love them because they are MOST THEMSELF and because they are unique. They know what they are; their strengths, their point of differentiation as well as their boundaries and they don’t care who knows it.

After erasing all that was different, unique and interesting about me. After suppressing all my natural interests and inclinations I reached young adulthood as the most palatable version of myself. I was then encouraged to think about what I wanted to do with my life. No wonder I felt completely lost for so many years. My biggest problem and my biggest conundrum for the last 12 or so years has been this lack, this feeling that there are things I am meant to be doing but I don’t know what they are. This complete disconnect from self.

How can you know what to do with your life when you don’t even know who you are?

Sometimes I genuinely don’t even feel alive. I don’t feel like I experienced the party, the event, the conversation. Instead my experience was of working the party, performing the role of someone at the event, servicing the conversation. I often don’t feel alive or connected to myself in the presence of other people.

Nine years ago I was so broken down. Every new situation I found myself in, I was contorting myself to be exactly what those around me needed or wanted me to be.

I was studying computer science at university and as I was one of only a few girls in the course, one of the lecturers, who somewhat reminded me of my late grandad, had taken a special interest in me. This was never a good thing for me, flying under the radar was more my thing. Going unnoticed was, as I was about to learn, pretty much a survival strategy and being noticed was a recipe for disaster.

I scored 100% on the first few tests, and soon that was the unspoken assumption for my performance and despite how insane this feels to me to say now, I felt immense pressure to keep up this level of performance. I knew that whatever my result was it would be sought out, seen and discussed by the tutors, peers and lecturers and that if I got anything less than 100% I would be questioned or asked about it. My desire to avoid notice and scrutiny as well as my desire to be valued, respected and liked paired together to create crushing pressure.

Despite the fact that unlike most of the 18 year old boys on the course I did not have a mum at home to cook my dinner, clean my laundry and pay my bills. I was 22 and living in my own apartment, working part-time to support myself through study and responsible for all my own housekeeping and keeping myself and my dog alive and well. And that is not even to mention the mess that was my mental health at that time. None of that factored in to how I treated myself or the expectations I felt were upon me.

Computer science lent itself well to my perfectionist, all or nothing mentality. In my mind the code either worked or it didn’t. Yes you could get part marks for a program that didn’t work and end up passing but that wasn’t good enough to me. It showed I didn’t understand it and hadn’t yet figured out the problem. I would figure it out and once I did the code would be perfect and I’d get my 100%. Leaving it at any less finished than that was not an option.

The one time I tried to do that I got 98% on an assignment and the lecturer told me this in the middle of my exam for another unit. Cue internal panic attack while I was taking another exam!!!

The lecturer frequently did things like this, I think he thought it was casual, funny or cute. I genuinely think he had no clue how extremely harmful and detrimental this kind of behaviour was to my mental state. I was already chugging Imodium before exams for the nervous shits. He did things like singling me out in a test and asking if everyone should get more time.

It was like making me the standard.

And I felt the pressure to be that.

In short the result of all this was that I broke my brain. I felt it break during a computer science exam no less. I went from being clear, capable and lucid to disorientated, foggy and forgetful in the space of a single moment. I felt like my mind was a rubber band, stretched so far until pop! oops you snapped it! An experience I had never experienced before this point. This was to be the beginning of my BIG BURNOUT TM. I wrote about that here. & the onset of my POTS symptoms which I interpreted as increased anxiety as I was extremely anxious about the changing state of my brain and abilities.

The autism diagnosis wouldn’t come for another few years but this was the start of me identifying my perfectionism, my inability to rest, my people pleasing and other little trauma quirks I had picked up along the way.

That was the start of my journey back to myself, but I would still continue to make myself smaller and available to anyone who needed me for anything for the next dare I say nine years. I am still doing it.

But the reason I wanted to talk about the start of this journey was because it gifted me something I had never had before. Failure.

Failure and Solitude.

I failed at uni, I dropped out. I failed at living independently, I moved home. I failed at dating (again), I broke up with my uni boyfriend. All these failures led me to living in a tin shed on my dad’s rural property and that was the greatest gift of all. It gave me myself back.

I finally had solitude. And it was in this solitude that I was able to begin to meet myself and figure out who I even was without anyone else around to perform for. I still wasn’t able to bring that version of me out to interact with others. But I was able to let it breathe and let it exist for the first time in a very long time and that was essential.

In the funny gift that hindsight gives us, I can tell you that I STILL did not see this then. I still ran around trying to figure out what to do with my life despite not knowing who I was. I filled my time with more courses, more failed jobs and more failed avenues. Determined to find some way to support myself financially, determined to find the “one thing” that would be my one thing. I thought I would find it via trial and error. I thought that we learn through action and feedback and I still think this. But I think I was missing the crucial piece of feedback I needed and that was knowing myself. How can you pick a job for someone you don’t even know? I was truly throwing darts at a dart board with a blindfold on hoping something would stick and acting surprised when they all landed on the floor. I was still running FROM something, instead of TO something.

I was still trying to fit in to a system that said you must work independently and earn enough money to fund your own existence and independent living. I was still trying to fit in to a system that said my worth was in what I offered other people and that dreams, and finding yourself were reserved for rich white ladies doing eat, pray, love overseas trips or were something you crammed into the weekend with your monthly “women’s circle” group or therapy appointment and hoped that was enough.

But even through all of that, solitude was working its magic. Solitude gave me a place I could relax. It gave me time where I was not subject to others expectations or beliefs about me. It gave me some time to try to figure out my own.

During this time I was in therapy and I was trying to work through difficulty in my relationship with a family member. Which will have to be another post because my god is that a long story. But one important part of that work that has stuck with me is that I had to decide if I believed the narratives others were speaking about me. This family member was a fan of using labels like rude, mean or selfish as tools of control. Like “oh you won’t come over when I want you to, how rude, how mean, how selfish of you.” I didn’t want to be a mean person, a rude person or a selfish person so often I would do as they asked.

I had to really stop and think, am I mean? Am I selfish? Am I rude? Where is the evidence (or lack thereof) for this? I even spoke to friends about it, gathering their insights and opinions, did they see me this way? And the conclusion I came to was that I was not any of these things. I was being controlled by my desire to not be these things. And to break free of that I had to give up caring if this family member thought these things. I could rest easy in the knowledge that I was not these things (I had investigated and gathered the evidence after all) and let them think whatever they were determined to think. This was not an easy thing to do but it was an essential shift in my journey that stays with me today. I am no longer so easily controlled by the labels others assign to me.

But recently I realised I am still controlled by my own desire to not be seen this way. I have crafted such a likeable and agreeable non-persona in my local community that not only can nobody hate me, but nobody can really love me either. I never say anything controversial, I hide all the interesting things about me, I keep things very surface level, positive and bright. I am by all accounts generally well-liked and appreciated when I appear at gatherings and events.

But I am not invited to things outside the usual group settings, nobody gets close to me. Nobody avoids me like the plague but nobody purposefully seeks me out either. I’m basically an olive presenting as white rice. The most acquired taste masquerading as the most universally palatable.

I thought perhaps this was because of my autism, that I am somehow not picking up on social cues or that other people are picking up on a disinterested cue I am unintentionally sending. This is still partially true, because one way to send a disinterested cue is to never reveal anything real about you. Another is to never be fully present with other people and I seem to struggle with both. But after reading this excellent article by Spencer I think the bigger problem is that I am so deeply uncomfortable with being disliked, alienated or rejected that I have crafted a persona that suits everyone but interests no one.

This year, I decided not to return to work. I was (am?) exhausted and in burnout 2.0, and experiencing even more physical symptoms of disability. I have struggled with others views on this. I resent being asked what I am doing, what I am doing for work, being given advice on jobs or job offers. I don’t want to have to explain my whole medical and mental health history and neurology to every single person in my wider social spheres. I hate having to reckon with other peoples opinions of me, or the idea that they might somehow be seeing me in a negative light (lazy, entitled, etc..).

But for the first time in my life I think I am done with fitting into systems that were never designed with me in mind. I’m more interested in bending the systems to fit around me. And this means I am going to have to face how that makes other people feel and their responses to it. Or lie to them (that is still a very valid option for some people).

I hope that I am also done with being white rice. I don’t want to be chewed up by billions of people daily. I want to be enjoyed and savoured by a select, amazing few like the olive I am. And I want to be deeply hated and despised by the people who are not for me. It will make them a lot easier to identify.

Since the start of the year the universe has gifted me with a lot of practice saying no, a deeply uncomfortable and difficult thing for me, that is slowly becoming easier through practice and acceptance.

My goal in life now is to become unpalatable and unswallowable.

I want to make enemies. I want people to dislike me intensely. I want them to see me coming and run the other way to avoid me. I want to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for people to use me in ways that harm me.

Because making enemies of some means making friends of others. It means some people will like me intensely. They will see me coming and run to embrace me. They will seek me out for what I uniquely have to offer.

I’m ready to not care if the world at large thinks I’m difficult, rude, mean, selfish or a bitch. Damn it maybe I am those things and who the fuck cares.

But mostly I’ve spent thirty years proving I’m not those things and still nobody cares. I didn’t get a medal. All I got was this lousy trauma and a disconnected sense of self. I’m over abandoning myself in the process. I’m ready to be difficult if it means being true to myself. I’m ready to be rude if it means noticing and honouring my discomfort. I’m ready to be mean if it means not breaking trust with myself. I’m ready to be selfish if it means finally knowing myself. I’m ready to be a bitch if it means being me.

I’m finally ready to be unpalatable.