Once Again for the Janes in the Back (We Have a Dream?)

This afternoon, while trying to rather-aggressively decompress after an overstimulating day, this song (“We Have a Dream” by Norwegian R&B songwriter and supremely listenable polymath Jarle Bernhoft) came around on the meltdown prevention playlist…

… and a lyric snagged me out of my angry-chair-rocking stim trance.

I am who I choose to become.

Jarle Bernhoft in “We Have a Dream”

It was one of those lyrics I’d never really heard even though i’ve listened to (and sung) the song a million times, because the music and harmonies are layered and the song is dense with meaning and metaphor. Who has time to unpack all of that when the auDHD special interest deep dive to-do list is already too long?

One of those.

“I am who I choose to become.”

It stopped my meltdown so fast there were screeching noises, and I cocked my head like one of those gramophone terriers.

This terrier.

(Jesus, WordPress. It took me DAYS to find the slightly-stoned-aging-autistic-to-neurotypical UX translation dictionary I needed, to figure out how to make a hyperlink in the Jetpack phone app.)

Anyway.

“I am who I choose to become.”

It felt like a weight clanked into place in my brain.

Of course. Because it isn’t just a reminder that justice is a choice.

It is that, but it is also…a thing a lot of ND people have come to understand in a different, more personal way. Often painfully.

Speaking for myself, choosing who I am going to become hunkers near the white hot core of my high-masking auDHD experience, for better or worse.

Choosing who I am going to become, masking my differences , is how I made my bones as a somewhat successful autistic in a neurotypical world. And I did it for sincere, earnest reasons, because I wanted to do well and do good. But I did it without full awareness of how exhausting and damaging it was for me.

And so, inevitably, choosing who I am going to become is what catastrophically burned me out and left me low-key traumatized over and over and over.

But, see, also, on top of all of that, I’m starting to think that…

Choosing who I’m going to become is what will, dog willing and the creek don’t rise, save me*.

*assuming a wide range of definitions for “save”

Let me take a minute and say this again, for the Janes in the back row, because this is new.

This thing is what nearly killed me, several times.

And this thing is what may save me.

“I am who I choose to become.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’m not capable of doing that with any grace right now, even if I were clear and fully focused – which I very much am not tonight.

Choosing who I am going to become left me low-key traumatized.

But…

The basic thought I’m having is that knowing “who I am” has never been easy for me. But choosing? I can do that.

The thought of choosing who I’m to become now, now that I know so much new stuff* about my brain, just isn’t that strange to me.

*Late diagnosed auDHD. Nice to meet you.

I can see in my mind how it works, how the cogs and wheels relate within a complex system of decisions. That’s satisfying.

Then I hear the little ping that tells me to pay attention, to listen closely now to the part of me that’s slow to share.

This is important. I think.

I’ve been choosing who I’m going to become all my life, since long before I had words for the feeling. I do this more often and more explicitly than most people do. I’m really good at it.

And it seems like making those choices intentionally and authentically* might be a part of creating a sustainable Jane… or at least one that has another 20 or more years of battery life.

*whatever “authentic” means

Choosing who I’m going to become is what will, dog willing and the creek don’t rise, save me.

As a reassurance for those of you who have a dog in the Masking-is-Heathy/Masking-is-Destructive fight, let me please say this clearly: I am and will likely remain strongly Team Fuck-Masking-It-Can-Die-in-a-Fire.

But I also recognize that in my practical reality, masking is a thing I sometimes need to choose, at least until I have better solutions.

I am and will likely remain strongly Team Fuck-Masking-It-Can-Die-in-a-Fire.

Meanwhile, in the gritty friction around one thing being both an existential threat and a path forward…

…I think there is something worth exploring.

So… Imma do that.

Goodnight.