Failure To Launch

Another title would be Arrested Development. Also, this is the second attempt to write this and I just lost 600 words *glares at Blogger*.

If you live with any long term condition, you expend a disproportionate amount of additional energy trying to keep up. Whether it's planning and management of normal, daily activities (like commuting and work), reflecting on how other people react to you or whatever, the average person like me (or other different people) probably spends around four hours plus using up additional mental energy managing situations or even reminding themselves of normal social behaviour that "normal" people just don't use. It is exhausting. I'll shout out here too to my friends who are exhausted living and trying to manage their conditions and are lucky if they can manage normal activities, like dressing. I have periods like this from time to time and it is a shitty, shitty state of being, let me tell you.

Do you have to consider access situations, availability of toilets when considering going out to the pub, cinema or theatre? The train? Whether or not it will be loud and bright or the numbers of people there? Do you spend hours trying to calm yourself down because someone has discriminated against you, made some unfeeling comments or you know you did something off and are beating yourself up about it? No? Then you're not using up additional energy. 

What is probably worse about this whole thing, is that many of us are frustrated. For people on the autistic spectrum, only about 15% of us are in full time employment. If you are lucky, you're somewhere with an understanding employer and robust HR. I know from friends' stories that this sometimes isn't the case. Most people in employment with a long term condition will speak to you about the constant extended effort to keep up - or to go above and beyond - to "prove" you, the disabled person, belong somewhere. I live with a constant worry over my sick leave. Using additional energy means that you experience more stress (and I suffer extreme stress already). This has a knock on effect on emotional health and your immune system. As I have a couple of conditions that I can wake up with having something go click in a bad way, I perpetually worry about if I will be OK tomorrow. Occupational Health and I discussed a year ago if I should drop down to 30 hours a week on these grounds, but most employers aren't really keen on that. Plus one is dealing with misconceptions and discrimination all the time. It is.... frustrating.

I do also feel a sense of frustrated potential. I am not a stupid person, however I have had to recognise that I have limits. I am trying to put my foot down and stop myself from over-extending myself. That is very frustrating. During my twenties and thirties, at the time I was studying for my two degrees, I had my mental health take a nose-dive. On top of this, I had some long term physical complaints kick off as well. Throw in some particularly stressful family events for good measure. I passed both my degrees. Possibly, I could have done better. Frankly, I'm amazed I managed to pass at all sometimes. The rest of the time, I feel like I was psychologically, emotionally and continually treading water, in perpetual motion, all the time. All of which, you guessed it, uses up energy. Life, for me, feels like an uphill battle all the time. Work and all that goes with it, is exhausting. Trying to deal with my ongoing health issues takes up a lot of energy. I have rediscovered my fire with politics, which is good. But I am also constantly angry about the uphill battles we different people face every single day from the second we open our eyes. Bear in mind a lot of us are also challenging misconceptions every day too. Guess what? Tiring.

I saw a video recently, that likens the autistic daily experience to putting in everything you got into the performance of a lifetime. Every day. I think that's probably a good analogy for us, as well as other with difference. 

Careerwise, there's lots I would have liked to do. I would like to have become a journalist and I still hold out hope of being a writer, dyslexia and everything else be damned. There are other things I would like to have considered too. However a lot of this requires a CV that has exceptional volunteer and community experience, as well as a top-notch degree. I just didn't have the energy beyond keeping my head above water. And that is how it was and how it is. I have come to terms with that. I probably would have done some things differently and I do try not to dwell on a lot of this too much. Academically, a late diagnosis of dyslexia also didn't help (with an English degree).

That is what I mean by Failure to Launch: the missed opportunities, the chances missed, the having to turn things down because otherwise I'll spread myself too thin and have to deal with the consequences.  Learning to accept that has been a challenge in itself. 

However, I also remind myself that I am capable of picking myself up in difficult times and starting over. That, despite everything, every day, I am still here and that, in itself, is an achievement. I own my own home, I have a career of sorts. I say I'm winning. 

On Faith and Paranoia

Yes, two posts in one day!

Those of you who know me in real life know that my approach to converting to a particular religion is turning into more of a forty-years-roaming-the-wilderness as opposed to something that is recognisably structured and to the point.

Some of this has to do with my moving to a different city for six years and not getting on with the teacher and the rest is a complicated mix of health issues, rota clashes and an unhealthy dose of self-doubt and whether or not I'm a fake, desperate for persecution in some way, or undeserving. I'm trying to be kind to myself on this.

I have been trying to convert to Liberal Judaism for some years. Alongside this, I have been trying to learn Hebrew. The additional studies also include an understanding of Judaism, history of the people and some of the additional complexity, for example the Israel context.

Let me set something straight for people: I am a Zionist, in the sense that I believe in the ethos and context behind the need for the Jewish people to have a country in which they can determine their own future. I also believe in the right of Israel to exist.

What I will now elucidate for you are a few other points:

I do not believe that Israel should be only for Jews.
I take all religious writings from a socio-anthropomorphic viewpoint (I.e I see the stories as explanations of how the world came to be, rather than G-d-given)
I also take the view that religions can and should evolve with the times.
I believe that everyone living between the river and the sea are entitled to full citizenship, recognition, human and civil rights. The end.
I believe in calling out everyone who commits atrocities or imposes restrictions on civilians, regardless of which side they are on
I believe that you need to read widely on various viewpoints, because in the middle is the actual truth. I also know that everyone sees things differently. And believe we should listen to each other

Anyway, that's that. I'm now off the subject of Israel for the rest of this post.

Nothing brings home to you the fact that you have lost white privilege more than the first time you experience prfoiling, aka loss of your privilege. I experienced this when I was told, via a friend, that I was "Worse than [the] Jews, because I wanted to be one". This came from someone who had just converted to Islam. Do I take this as representative of Islam and Muslims in general? No I don't. I have good friends of all faiths and no faith. Then there was the time that when standing withy community and waiting to go on a march, we were approached by the SWP and handed leaflets relating to Israel (sorry), which we politely declined. The diatribe we were treated to was appalling. Why had we been approached? The sign we had clearly indicated we were a liberal jewish community.

Then there was the time I had death threats on Twitter, which I treated with the derision they deserved. I saw it as a right of passage.

But things piss me off. People who call me a genocidal, baby-killer. People who say Jews should have to swear allegiance to their country of citizenship. People, like on a Vice video, calling for the genocide of Jews. Or the charmers who stood across from a synagogue in Charlottesville on Saturday and intimidated the congregation to the point they evacuated, taking their Torah scrolls with them. The people who think Jews overplay the Holocaust and shouldn't be included, because we make it all about us. People who think we shouldn't commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day and have the nerve to insist there is onlya focus on Jewish dead of WW2. People who shut you out or shout you down because you don't agree, 100%, with them.

When you see police on the door of your High Holy Day services, or armed police outside synagogues aboard, or advised not to put up a mezuzah it is hard not to be cross. And sometimes, scared too. Hard not to be when someone rides their bike hard at you on the pavement and yells "Jew" at you when they see you wearing a Magen Dovid. I do feel a sense of paranoia every time I hear of another anti-Semitic incident, especially in the U.K.

 Yet people persist in insisting that anti-Zionism doesn't equate anti-Semitism. To those people I would suggest that they need to learn more about Zionism. Which, as a political movement, has more than one interpretation. Also that if you equate most of a country's population of Jews as "Zionist" without asking them if they think just that, then you're profiling, which is, ipso facto, anti-Semitism. SORRY.

My faith is my faith. I'm still learning about it. But I don't understand the hate. I'll call out assholes for being just that too.

By the way, I learned this year that members of my extended family (not blood relations) died in the Holocaust. And, but by grace of G-d, some of my beloved family members would not be here now if they hadn't made a different decision. That is a tough thing to take on board. And upsetting.

As in all things, learn more. Ask questions, but please avoid assumptions. Please.

The View From

There are frequent moments in my life where I realise I have missed the meaning or instruction somewhere. I need people to be explicit about what it is they want me to do. Otherwise, I miss the hidden meaning. I realised that this morning after a conversation relating to ongoing employment-related shenanigans. This particular person, by the way, gets me more than others, but less than some. Clearly, I missed the instruction on how to do something - because it wasn't there. Despite my self-awareness, I also missed something else in the words. Thanks, dyslexia.

However, in reading a letter I got the other day and after this conversation and in reviewing people's reactions, I am also left with a realisation that people often see what they want to see, not an actual reality. It is this that allows them to make certain assumptions about reactions (like my melt-downs and tantrums when I hit "that" point), or when, for the millionth time, I'm pulled up over my tics. Because I don't look like Rain Man, or rock continually, etc, I'm expected to be "normal" and when I'm not, a lack of understanding means that no matter how many times I explain it, they default to their own assessment of something. So my meltdowns become my being unable to cope. Et cetera, et cetera.

I know, by the way, that a lot of people who also have hidden disabilities struggle with the same attitude of people who have this fixed view in mind: we get it when we sit in those seats on the bus, or dare to have a blue badge and no wheelchair.

God forbid you DO explain something as being something slightly outwith my control: Then you get the "try harder", "leave it at the door" and, mostly, no apology. For the most part, I donunderstand that I can be frustrating at times and when I am a bit stressed, that's when my "normal" face (I've spent a long time watching other people and learning to mimic behaviour I don't actually understand. I play a lot of "roles" in life, otherwise I wouldn't leave the house) falls away. Oh, I also get the whole thing about "shouting" about my "label": In my defence, I wouldn't have to spend continual time explaining that I do this because I'm Neuro-Diverse and on the spectrum if people would accept, listen and maybe try to understand where I am coming from. I wouldn't have to keep bloody repeating myself. I suspect it is an area of lack of knowledge and education and that some people *do* understand if they try a bit, although others sometimes lack the capacity to "get it". Then there are others who cling to their view and misconceptions. Repeatedly. Like the one who kept telling me that "dyslexics can't count", despite my testimony and that of fellow dyslexic professionals that we can.

Today's reflection has been brought to you by my not getting the hidden meaning that I was supposed to do something in a specific form (possibly because it wasn't hinted at). If I'm not clear a further action is required from me, I'm probably not going to do anything.

I'm still wondering what I should do regarding my career: half of me wonders if I should go ahead and apply for another job in a field, despite not getting interview for two others. Tricky.

Have a good day, folks.