The "let me be the one to take this away from you" pattern.

Sponsored to you by Hopelessness Spirals, Work Cycles and a playlist named "Screaming".

I’ve been feeling more autistic since my diagnosis. I saw a video on tiktok where a person explained that that feeling is the same thing as when you buy a mattress and it comes so small and packaged you wonder if there’s really a mattress in there - then you open it and there you go! Big as a mattress should be! So big it’s impossible to put it back in the box again. I found that to be so true I only let myself thought about it now, now that I’m questioning everything (as I always did) with the addition of the knowledge that I am, in fact, autistic.

I wish I could say that’s making me understand myself better and, therefore, break patterns, bad habits and such - don’t get me wrong, kinda is, at the same time though I’m navigating the world more aware of my feelings and limits and that would be a good thing if I wasn’t freaking out.

You see, all my past jobs, each one of them, I was so interested and invested and giving my everything only to be disinterested or burned out after a few months, which led me to quit or simply stop going. Now, now, I'm so in love with my job. I absolutely adore what I do, that’s why I gave even more than my everything, I’m betting all I am in it.

So when I had a nervous breakdown in a thursday, I didn’t understand. I knew I was taking too much and doing too much but I was seeing most of the results, which kept me eagerly going on. People noticed it though, they asked me if I was okay, they left me alone for a week to take care of my mess and started to ask less of me - to be honest, I feel like I’m being seen differently. Let’s not go into that.

What’s on my mind is: I’m nothing without this job. Logically, I know that’s not true, but also logically, I have no bachalor’s degree, no interest in going back to the corporate or customer service world and, honeslty, do I have any other chance? I work with experienced people, researchers, academics, people who built up important institutions from the ground and what am I interested in, besides what I’m currently doing?

I’m too self aware. I see spirals of shame and fear and dissatisfaction when they’re still making their way to me, you’d think that I’d know better how to deal with them face to face after a lifetime of it, I’d think too.

People tell me to have faith, the blind faith, to be positive, overly positive, to say what I think, to not say what I think, to never give up, to know when to give up, to be mindful, to not be too mindful, to care, to not care, to wait and to say when the wait is done.

I’ve been listening to them for so long that, even now that I don’t, I can perfectly hear all of them in my head.