greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2024-04-21 06:52 pm
greenstorm) wrote2024-04-21 06:52 pm
Entry tags:
Whose voice?
The medication's voice in my head is gone. I haven't taken it for nearly a week and it's nice and quiet in here again without the absolutely incessant repetitive thought pressure to end things.
However.
I am very, very nervous about letting work know I need to take leave tomorrow. I'm dead sure I'll be told I've gone about it wrong. I'm sure that at some time during the leave I'll be told, not only that I look normal, but that if I'm still attending pottery a couple times a week I'm obviously well enough to work.
I'm not sure how to respond to this sort of thing. It's tempting to say something about a symptom or two that I had recently and how that maybe wouldn't fly at work, but I want to keep a lot of this information close to my chest. My supervisor has a habit of disclosing personal information to the rest of the office, including personal medical information, and management has a habit of setting up a straw man based on what they think an accommodation request implies and then never being able to refocus on the actual issue.
So I need to keep it short and simple. I spoke to my doctor Thursday and we've agreed I need to take a couple months off work to focus on my health as per the form she filled out. I know this is something of a surprise but it's necessary. Please fill out this portion of the paperwork.
Not sure what to say about tidying up loose ends, probably best to set a day or a half-day to do that if possible.
But a little yesterday, and more today, my mom's voice in my head is SO LOUD. I'm just lazy. I don't even stand up right. I just need to get out and exercise more. I could at least help out a little bit more. I'm asking other people to do too much for me. I'm picking and choosing to do things I like instead of things I'm supposed to be doing and it shows bad character.
Mom is supposed to love me, and she does. But that voice is her legacy right now, and it's why I haven't told her about any of it-- PDA, autism, any of my health issues it's ever been possible to hide from her. She doesn't know that there were times on the bus in my early twenties when I couldn't move, could barely breathe, and thought I would die because I couldn't force my diaphragm to work and couldn't move to call out for help. She doesn't know-- I mean, she must know something about PDA because she was there for so much of it, and she saw meltdowns at least some before I turned them into shutdowns like an obliging kid.
What does it mean, knowing that you could die with your kid never having trusted you with that knowledge? What does it mean for me, knowing that I want someone to love me unconditionally and care for me right now and I can't ask her? What does it mean for her, from whom that voice came, to live with it inside her, and what will it mean as she gets older?
What would it be like to be able to talk to her about this, not to have the conversation, which would be terrible, but so I could understand its origins? It's her voice, and that probably means it lives inside her, for her, too. Was it her mom's voice? What would it have meant for our lives if we could have overcome it, if neither of us could hear it internally again?
I'm so scared. But when I'm scared my PDA can hold me like no person can, it stands up for me where no human would be willing to, and it clothes me in the armour that's let me live as myself no matter what happens.
I don't have to do this right. If the office decides the optics are bad because I'm actively doing fun stuff in the community a couple hours twice a week and they don't believe I should be on medical leave, well, that's absolutely no different than most of the world has thought of me most of my life: manipulative, gaming the system, irresponsible, and somehow both incomprehensible and stereotypically wrong at the same time. I've lived through that from mom, I've lived through that from most humans I haven't thought of as friends, and I'll doubtless live through it many times again.
It was nice thinking I might be able to work reliably, eventually get a pension and retire, keep my house, maybe buy things I wanted to eat from the grocery store regardless of price sometimes, not worry about feeding my animals. This is catastrophizing some, but I've seen how this system works and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the end of this. I'm not able to fight within the system on its own terms quoting legislation, fitting the union stuff, playing the game. Who knows?
But none of that stuff is me. I'm me, and I'll never do this stuff the way anyone wants. Neither body nor mind has ever played by the rules of optics and proper society and the same-shaped slice of cake for everyone. Gosh, even in daycare no one could deal with how I ate. It's kind of impressive that I could spend five years at this place.
Funny, I started with mom's voice, passed through society's, but end here on my own. I'll walk in tomorrow with a skill honed by what I now know is a survival reflex that triggers nearly every time I've been supposed to do something all my life: with the skill of walking into the feeling of the certain death of everything I know and everything about myself and everything I've ever hoped, walking with my head up and with my face blank of the secrets that they haven't earned the right to know.
However.
I am very, very nervous about letting work know I need to take leave tomorrow. I'm dead sure I'll be told I've gone about it wrong. I'm sure that at some time during the leave I'll be told, not only that I look normal, but that if I'm still attending pottery a couple times a week I'm obviously well enough to work.
I'm not sure how to respond to this sort of thing. It's tempting to say something about a symptom or two that I had recently and how that maybe wouldn't fly at work, but I want to keep a lot of this information close to my chest. My supervisor has a habit of disclosing personal information to the rest of the office, including personal medical information, and management has a habit of setting up a straw man based on what they think an accommodation request implies and then never being able to refocus on the actual issue.
So I need to keep it short and simple. I spoke to my doctor Thursday and we've agreed I need to take a couple months off work to focus on my health as per the form she filled out. I know this is something of a surprise but it's necessary. Please fill out this portion of the paperwork.
Not sure what to say about tidying up loose ends, probably best to set a day or a half-day to do that if possible.
But a little yesterday, and more today, my mom's voice in my head is SO LOUD. I'm just lazy. I don't even stand up right. I just need to get out and exercise more. I could at least help out a little bit more. I'm asking other people to do too much for me. I'm picking and choosing to do things I like instead of things I'm supposed to be doing and it shows bad character.
Mom is supposed to love me, and she does. But that voice is her legacy right now, and it's why I haven't told her about any of it-- PDA, autism, any of my health issues it's ever been possible to hide from her. She doesn't know that there were times on the bus in my early twenties when I couldn't move, could barely breathe, and thought I would die because I couldn't force my diaphragm to work and couldn't move to call out for help. She doesn't know-- I mean, she must know something about PDA because she was there for so much of it, and she saw meltdowns at least some before I turned them into shutdowns like an obliging kid.
What does it mean, knowing that you could die with your kid never having trusted you with that knowledge? What does it mean for me, knowing that I want someone to love me unconditionally and care for me right now and I can't ask her? What does it mean for her, from whom that voice came, to live with it inside her, and what will it mean as she gets older?
What would it be like to be able to talk to her about this, not to have the conversation, which would be terrible, but so I could understand its origins? It's her voice, and that probably means it lives inside her, for her, too. Was it her mom's voice? What would it have meant for our lives if we could have overcome it, if neither of us could hear it internally again?
I'm so scared. But when I'm scared my PDA can hold me like no person can, it stands up for me where no human would be willing to, and it clothes me in the armour that's let me live as myself no matter what happens.
I don't have to do this right. If the office decides the optics are bad because I'm actively doing fun stuff in the community a couple hours twice a week and they don't believe I should be on medical leave, well, that's absolutely no different than most of the world has thought of me most of my life: manipulative, gaming the system, irresponsible, and somehow both incomprehensible and stereotypically wrong at the same time. I've lived through that from mom, I've lived through that from most humans I haven't thought of as friends, and I'll doubtless live through it many times again.
It was nice thinking I might be able to work reliably, eventually get a pension and retire, keep my house, maybe buy things I wanted to eat from the grocery store regardless of price sometimes, not worry about feeding my animals. This is catastrophizing some, but I've seen how this system works and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the end of this. I'm not able to fight within the system on its own terms quoting legislation, fitting the union stuff, playing the game. Who knows?
But none of that stuff is me. I'm me, and I'll never do this stuff the way anyone wants. Neither body nor mind has ever played by the rules of optics and proper society and the same-shaped slice of cake for everyone. Gosh, even in daycare no one could deal with how I ate. It's kind of impressive that I could spend five years at this place.
Funny, I started with mom's voice, passed through society's, but end here on my own. I'll walk in tomorrow with a skill honed by what I now know is a survival reflex that triggers nearly every time I've been supposed to do something all my life: with the skill of walking into the feeling of the certain death of everything I know and everything about myself and everything I've ever hoped, walking with my head up and with my face blank of the secrets that they haven't earned the right to know.