Oh my, Kat whom I know from Tumblr and twitter is amazing. In a single hashtag that so needs to be a thing has summed up so much of what we live with, and led me down the garden path to lifethreatening/lifeending burnout and the regression that followed. Like Kat, I forced myself for decades to meet and exceed expectations and demands of those around me, moving ever faster and doing more while all the did was take and expect more.
Right before the very end of my life, two thing happened in short order that really triggered the crash. One was that for a couple of years I had warned my husband that things needed to change, that I needed to slow down dramatically while I still could because I had met and exceeded my design specifications by orders of magnitude and was operating so far past redline that one day soon there would be a critical system failure that I, that we, would not survive and my never recover from.
The other horrific thing that happened shortly after that was I had to ask, beg him for a hug.Touch, hugging for me had always been a big thing, and it was, like eye contact and so many other things I was forced to "overcome" a big thing for me. To reach the point where I wanted and needed a hug, from someone I'd convinced myself I loved who loved me, that was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. To have him hold me like a stranger being put on the spot, being asked to do something he couldn't/wouldn't/didn't want to have to do has left me scared to this day.
I used to have a policy of regularly scheduled crys. I'd lock myself away in a dark, quiet place, and completely lose it as Earl used to say. He SHAMED me constantly, for so many things, and my need to be alone in the dark crying until I could cry no more was something I couldn't explain to myself, him, or anyone else. I know now what that was, and why it was so important to me that when he threatened divorce for that I said "fine." For those reading who may not know, it's commonly understood amoung womankind that "fine" is shorthand for many things, and we're not always clear what we mean. For one woman's explantion read Ashley's post: http://elitedaily.com/woman/girl-really-means-says-shes-fine/
My old life was literlly death by thousands of cuts. Surviving the impossible and having to cry in the dark and quit until I could cry no more without really being able to explain why, but knowing if I didn't bad, bad, bad things would happen. My husband was abusive, that should be clear, I'll not bore you with the horrors of that hear. Be it enough said he was abusive, and I didn't really know better at the time. Like most battered women, I'd grown up a battered child. Earl was me not knowing any better and still trying to gain my father's love, approval, and an end to the abuse I suffered at his hands.
So when Earl threatened divorce because of me need to hide away, sob and cry uncontrollably and rock until I would either feel spent enough to leave my one safe place and try to get on with my act, or passout for a while and then try to get on with it, I was already stressed and upset enough that fine was a culturally acceptable and understood way of tell hit to bugger off. What I didn't know then, and didn't learn until after we'd both died, was that my regularly scheduled cries were barely controlled autistic meltdowns and I had to do them often to avoid being laid up for a week aferward. Yes, a week. In my new life of recovery a meltdow I cannot catch, stop, or control means four days of recovering to the point where I can do more than wander to the loo, have cuppa, and perhaps have a bit of food. For those of you who don't know what meltdowns are, it's not unlike ... nothing ou probably even have a way to understnad. It's almost like a flu that nearly kills you, or getting hit by a truck, or anything that would leave you bed ridden and incapactitated for days healing. Trust me, if you've never had a meltdown, consider yourself lucky, but also try to generate some compassion/sympathy/understanding.
Anyway it's ore than a decade since the end cme, the person I was, long dead and gone. My husband, long dead, gone, and buried, in the ground. No, I did not kill him. He took care of that himself as he was trying to kill me. Mine wa the divorce from hell and then some. Escalating violence, abuse, stalking, full burn meltdown and hospitalizations, a horror so bad that "I" had to die in order to have a hope at survival and recovery. The divorce never actually was resolved, and he was not required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life because he's dead and burried. Before his death, I had to go through a kind of witness protection to escape his and his parent's wrath.
So today I became aware of the hastag #LetterToShameZombies and like a lotus, my mind opened up and I so knew it really needto to be a thing. For all of us. A gift of insight and brilliance from Kat to the rest of us. Ableism is pervasive, insideous, and even deadly. I tweeted back to Kat "Oh my yes! THIS! They push, take, expect more, and give nothing, theyuse you up and throw you away. #LetterToShamezombies" and then came here to write this.
When I lived through and escaped my fathers abuse, violence, hate and escaped with my life I knew nothing about autism. When I fought my way through school and corespondence courses that resulted in a bunch of otherwise useless letters after my name, I knew nothing about autism. When I moved here to escape my brother's widow and the abuse at her hands, I knew nothing about autism. I though all the times I'd landed in the hospital for seril nervous breakdowns, I knew nothing about the far worse concepts of meltdowns, shutdowns. and burnouts, let alone autistic regression.
What I have always known, and felt to sting of, is the liberal doses of shame heaped on me for never being "enough." Good enough, fast enough, stong enough, queer enough, and so forth. That stopped when I outlived to two worst of the abusers in my life, and let me start to work on healthy boundaies, and loving, and finding out who I am. So for all the Zombies out there that would eat my brain, you will never have my heart or my soul. Because I am enough and this is my letter to all of you who would seek to shame me. You are hear by served notice that if "my blade finds it's mark you will cease to exit, yet should ou happen to cut me down, I will only grow stronger." I'm living proof of that.
So I'm thrilled and so loving what Kat had to say that I had to share it here. This so needs to be a thing. Seriously.
