June 24, 2024

Today is Monday and it was a week ago today that I took the autism tests and self-assessments. Since then, it has been an absolute roller coaster of emotions that I have endured. Moving between total gratitude and the Hope that comes from the chance to know oneself on a deeper level. But then punctuated by a real sadness, a kind I have not known, slipping into depression. By the end of the night, I feel like all I can do it cry and I do most nights.

Deep Reflections

Yet when I take a moment and I walk with Penny under the setting sun, it comes to me: that the spiritual journey is so profound. The idea that I have earned the capacity to hold this knowledge about myself, after years of work. The daily routines that become second-nature that were required to stay clean & sober. It is now that I am ready, and into fertile ground this new knowledge planted. I am apparently, as the Universe saw fit, ready to know that I am autistic. I have a way of processing and responding to the world, that I was born with 45 1/2 years ago and I am only just now finding out. Here I am on day seven of what seems like a new reality.

The fact that right now is the time this gift of self-knowledge was given to me, is really beautiful. I struggled with what adjective to put there. Because beautiful doesn’t quite get at the complexity. To look back from this vantage point and see my life, walking this journey. To be the observer and to be where I am right now, today in this body at this moment, with all that I’ve been through in all that I’ve grown through. Everything that I’ve worked for. I grasp at words, but beautiful comes to mind.

The Work

When I reference ‘all I’ve worked for’, these are not the achievements of life. I’m not talking about the academics or the career or making money, saving money, raising money, buying the restaurant or starting a business. Losing the business and then starting a new business. I’m not talking about those things that I worked for. I did those things. Instead, I am talking about what I have worked for recently, which is my being alive. The fight for my life. Through years of survival in addiction, I have come to surrender just under four years ago. Through years of being in a warzone with myself, I found that surrender was the answer.

I learned about surrender in recovery. In rooms and circles of people who were unwell but got better together with a spiritual solution. It was there that I rewrote my whole entire life. I mercifully took the spiritual awakenings. I have nurtured and cultivated spiritual experiences every day because I stay connected to Spirit, to the Divine. I live a life of devotion. Every single day. I live a life of discipline. Every single day.

The spiritual life that I have been placed in, and the path I choose to stay on, has afforded me the opportunity to have real truths cracked right open and shown to me. The true understanding of what I have been surviving from this whole fucking time was just revealed to me. Just seven days ago. I wasn’t just surviving alcoholic parents. I wasn’t surviving abandonment only. I wasn’t surviving emotional abandonment of my family. I wasn’t surviving catastrophically horrible relationships. I wasn’t surviving my alcoholism. I wasn’t surviving drug addiction. I wasn’t surviving war zones. I was a child born different trying to survive in a harsh world of contradictions. All the other illnesses were a product of not knowing who I was and what I actually needed.

Adaptations Created this Version of Me

I started surviving my own brain when I was born. It is known that I required constant motion the first nine months on this Earth. I have been in a constant state of adaptation, in a flurry of trying to make things right. In an absolute storm at times of trying to survive my experience with the world. I am finding that I am reconnecting to things that I got rid of, layers that were shed, uncomfortabilities that were overcome. This is painful. What does one do without her armor?

I became the person that I was not a long time ago. I became the comfortable person uncomfortable in her own skin. The deep agitation and aggravation, that was numbed away. Dissociation became my friend. I became adept at ignoring what my innermost me had to say. Until I became the thing that I hoped to be. Pleasant and educated, polite and charming, funny when called upon, flirtatious where necessary, and never ever afraid.

Somewhere along the way, after all these years of masking and dissociating, not listening to what was happening in my somatic body-mind connection, I created this Frankenstein of a human being that sits in front of you today. This much is clear now. The truth cracked right open again. An amalgamation of all the things that I was supposed to be. A conglomerate of the desirable personality traits, body movements, habitations, inflections and laughter. To create that woman, however, a perfect blend of alcohol, benzos and cocaine was necessary. After 2 1/2 decades of going against everything that I felt inside of me which was only made possible by the endorsement of drugs and alcohol, I have become the thing that I needed to be. I created that through education. I created that through my former career. I created that through financial stability. I created every single thing that I am. To include the way that I moved through this world. What is the difference between creating a person and just being one? Everything.

My inception was a chiseling out, it was a carving, it was a whittling, it was a violent and aggressive, an unnatural creation. Eventually all things unnatural become unsustainable. It came time to take away the masks, to remove the fallacies, to take away the labels and the superhuman persona so many knew me to be. It came time to shed all of the shit that wasn’t real and to start this work stone-cold-fucking-sober with no buffers, no armor, no protection. I was stripped down to my most vulnerable, most terrified, and most cracked wide open, little self. And the only thing that would help me in the rawest, softest embryonic state would have to be the spiritual solution. This was phase one. This was me getting sober.

Completely broken down and stripped away of everything that I ever knew that helped me survive and live. Those numbing agents that made this world bearable. It is fucking shocking that I didn’t die out of pure terror and shock to the system. I’m amazed that I didn’t shut down in such an incredible way that I just disappeared into thin air or exploded into light. Coming from the deep pain of addiction, I became open and willing, and in the caring love of God and the created universe, I have been able to stay on this path. Phase one, putting down the false solution was to prepare me for what is happening right now. The next level of healing. Only made possible by getting clean & sober first.

The Spiritual Warrior

So, this current revelation is just like, yeah man here we go. It’s no joke anymore, it’s known, that I am going to keep receiving the spiritual warrior lessons and blessings. I have found when you keep showing up for a lifetime of healing, the gifts of that healing keep coming. Unlovely at times, but always necessary.

This last week there is no doubt in my mind that every ounce of my true purpose is to live on the spiritual journey. In the flow with Creation. All of it. It is my charge. Anything I experience on this planet will be because I was born this way, different. This started the second that I came into this existence. Not necessarily when I was born, but my existence will always be with no more doubt in my mind about the enduring and the learning, in a beautiful way, growth from each stage of this development. I have not questioned it since I got sober. And I’m not going to start now. I am in absolute submission once again to the unfolding that is being presented, time and time again. If only I stay receptive.

I have never in all of my reflections been able to look at my life from the moment I was born until right now and see the synchronicity of my own self. To experience true humility for oneself. Not humility towards God, to understand how little I know about Creation and Divine Love. That humility is there always. That humility is so important to me. But, I’m now talking about the humility that I have no idea how much I don’t know about myself. But when I keep doing what I’m doing, and I try to be with God and I try to be in alignment with Sacred Geometry of the universe, the answers to the inquiries becomes clear: we are not given any answers. We are given a solution. I have been given more than one solution. With them come deeper inquiry, and therefore the path is always inward. It never was, and never will be about the external. And it will never be over.

These are the moments of strength and Hope. These ponderings. 

Then Grief Takes Its Turn

Other musings come in the moments when I feel so sad for the little one that was just always different. So sad and so sorry that a whole entire life was built off not being right or good enough or correct enough or perfect enough. That I have interwoven my self-worth and the idea of how unlovable I am due to my imperfections. But damn it, didn’t I give it all I had. I tried so hard.

Healing all of that is the next work. So, ironically unlearning and shedding the fucking perfect shell of a person I created. I now must chisel again the parts that are not me. How to unlearn the dissociations, unlearn the tapping out? The same way I unlearned the numbing. I unlearned the running away and emotional escape. I now have to learn who I actually am. No booze, no pills, no masks. I grieve them all, these layers of me.

The foundation for this work has been laid in recovery. When you put down the substance and get into solution you are left with nowhere to hide. The interesting thing about all of it is, the solution remains the same! The actions I take for my addiction recovery are the framework for how I can begin to recover from a veiled life.

But the work is to become authentic and true. In new ways, that I never knew were possible. I knew so little, I now see. To the extent that I knew myself I was authentic, but now there’s more to know and my authenticity has to evolve, grow and change. And that means no more fucking being “too much’ or ‘too little’. No more being perfect or imperfect. No longer do I need to hide who I am.

All of those things are frighteningly painful to conceptualize. Maybe the curated Vanessa has her merits here. I can call on the fierce bravery and graciously look forward. Maybe nothing really changes in the way of the way that I present myself to the outward world. The epic inner shift might be imperceptible on the outside. So, my voice will tell the inner storms tale and I will keep writing.

Affirmations to the Child that Once Was

I am absolutely over and done with masking any part of myself anymore. I will remain humble, but I’m taking every single second that I’ve spent on this planet being hidden and I’m counting that as having paid my fucking dues for being anything for anybody. The debt to assimilate has been settled. I will lean into what authenticity means. I will lean into what pain arises as I know I am safe and protected in Divine Love. I will lean into the sorrow that I feel for the child and the pain that she was put through. I will grieve for the moments that I spent without knowing myself. I will grieve for the identification of normal. I will grieve the indication that I have a typical and regular brain. And I will just see what unfurls. With open arms and an open heart, cracked open again, surrendered to this beautiful evolution.