I wish I could have explained what I meant to my Dad before he passed.

2020 broke my brain enough even my PCP could see I was autistic and needed help.

2021 broke my heart. I had to face my internal biases, my fears, my shame, my behavior, and figure myself out so I could change.

But I can’t change the way my brain developed.

I also couldn’t tell that my antidepressants were making me manic. I’d never rapid cycled so much without help before.

It felt like panic attacks, constant terror. Isolation. I couldn’t stop melting down at my kids, so I started screaming, I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault, mommy needs a break, I love you, and into my cool calm quiet cave to recover. All day, every day.

And if I had understood how to track my manic symptoms…

Well, I just learned how. I had to learn it the way my brain learns. Know one could show or tell me what I couldn’t see when I was rapid cycling.

I didn’t even know that term until this year, so of course most people don’t.

How do you explain to your adult siblings, or to your Dad, that you aren’t screaming on purpose, you aren’t angry you are hurting, and you can’t calm down without help because the stress that they don’t feel is overwhelming me to the point of losing my shit to escape, like a panicked cornered animal desperate to survive and get away?

How can they believe your science when all they have is their beliefs developed by their very different lives?

How can I stop hurting when I think about how they failed me as badly as I failed them, and that apologizing for my disability makes me hate them for reminding me one more time just how little they care to learn and understand, stonewalling me, shutting me down and calling me abusive…when the only person I hurt was myself…that’s why I hit myself in the face.

I was trying to stop talking so I’d stop making things worse.

But they just shamed me and said I hope you learn to love yourself and I forgot you get like this.

I don’t get like that.

Except when people treat me like I’m bad when I look to them for understanding and help.

Four plus decades of people shaming me for looking to them for help l, because I can’t afford therapy…and I need care.

My husband has to work, and it’s hard on him. He looks much older than me, but he’s only 9 months and a week older.

My kids have special needs too. We need our community to not be aware of autism, but to embrace and accept our weirdness as normal, as human, as good.

I can’t make myself more tolerant to emotional triggers. My nervous system doesn’t work like that.

I was struggling with something my Dad had done that I wasn’t supposed to know about, but did. The secret was not mine to tell, but it hurt me so badly, I had to talk it out, so I could even sleep.

I didn’t mean to tell it the first time.

I was pregnant with Galen, the son we lost to stillbirth. I trusted my midwife. She didn’t know what to say.

It’s sadly funny that I needed therapy my whole life but never had insurance, so I couldn’t have it.

And the year I did have insurance, I didn’t think I needed therapy. 2008. That’s making me lol with shaking my head and face palming type nostalgia.

I was not understanding what mania and hypomania looked like.

I figured it out finally THIS year, and for the first time I’m being treated for bipolar depression. And it’s actually working.

I sleep 7-8 hours every night, unless I get upset.

My emotions cause my insomnia.

I wish I could have calmed down on command.

I wish I could have figured out what they meant before they lost patience with me.

But that’s not how my brain and body work.