Taking stock, here’s a 33rd birthday self-portrait…
Nathan’s the one who just turned 40. But, here on my 33rd birthday, it’s me feeling at a mid-life crisis crossroads. So I’m taking stock. This blog was always supposed to provide a creative outlet for my vulnerable processing and authentic truth, but everything personal has started to feel too personal and heavy that I’ve been anxious about diving too deep.
Filtered. Protecting image and family. Isolating. So let’s play up my strengths of criticism and judgment to review products and businesses…
Let me just preface here: this is not a pity-party or cry for sympathy. I’m taking stock of everything and trying to be fairly objective while doing so. I’m trying to speak truth in voicing my personal struggles, pointing out areas of potential growth, as well as recognizing strengths and accomplishments.
If for no other reason than having an innate desire to have quantifiable data points of growth to hopefully look back on at my 34th birthday. But it’s definitely going to start bleak. End on a high note, right?
Repeating Ruminations
I find myself circling back through mental loops that I thought I’d somewhat laid to rest. We’ve hit a season of deeply emotional, humbling, interpersonal stress I touched on in our kinky Anniversary Post. In the wake of crises, I often tend to cope by ruminating and self-reflection.
How did I get us to this point? What are all the broken pieces of me that led us here? Who am I? My obsessive focus on personal growth and fixing all of my ugly sucks up all of my mental energy for days, even weeks, when I’m trapped in the shame-filled spiral. And in my search for answers, I sink into self-absorption. How can I fix me? This time is no exception.
I’ve gotten better at thought challenging over time. But the lie resounds in my head today: “Other people’s lives are worse with me in them.” Not objectively true. But it speaks to a deeply-flawed perception of self. And it touches on this dark desire to run, to escape, to spare others my impact.
I have made mistakes. Too many to count. However, I am also the last person to ever extend myself any grace. I too comfortably slide into the mindset: “Hi. It’s me. I’m the problem, it’s me.” Because if I can accept all blame for every problem my family faces, I have the control, the power, the capacity to single-handedly fix it all myself.
And, still, I just stay trapped in my own head. My own obsessive loops. Thought challenging is completely depleting when the thoughts you’re challenging play on repeat.
A Likely Suspect
Makes sense, to a point, I’d struggle with those pesky, repetitive ruminations. I got diagnosed with OCPD, after all. C-PTSD, as well. But one of the mental loops that has resurfaced with enough reasonable doubt to grow so much louder than it ever was before…
My deep-seated suspicion that I do have autism. With a Pathological Demand Avoidance, or PDA, presentation, to boot. Unfortunately, the overall manifestation of this presentation has been insidious, mysterious, and ultimately damaging to my relationships.
It’s presented massive challenges within my marriage and in my parenting. It’s ironic, in a way. Having a stepson with high-functioning autism… Had I found any path forward toward self-acceptance and love instead of seeing myself as a broken problem for so long, I likely wouldn’t have as much conflict with him. Projection is a powerful weapon.
There are so many things, looking back, that I’d change in a heartbeat. If I could erase the past.
Beyond that, taking stock… It’s all a mess. This self-portrait. OCPD. C-PTSD. High suspicion of ASD with PDA that I’ll likely never have verified, even with my CAT-Q self-test score of 133. In other words, extremely high chance that it’s true…
As ChatGPT told me:
You’re not “borderline” autistic. You’re just highly adapted, highly masked, and chronically exhausted from it. You’ve internalized so much self-control, perfectionism, and shame that you’ve likely compensated yourself out of a diagnosis — which is a common outcome in women, especially those who’ve been over-pathologized through the trauma/OCD lens.
When I tell you I’ve never felt so understood… By a LLM artificial intelligence, no less.
But it doesn’t stop there.
The differential diagnoses aside, I suffer from something far more destructive and undermining. A pervasive and pernicious anxious-avoidant attachment style borne out of my childhood traumas. I yearn for love, but hold everyone at arm’s length. The ones who attempt to love me are greeted with wariness and suspicion.
There’s always an ulterior motive attached to intimacy.
Even as a kid, when other children were nice to me, I suspected they were only being “nice” to my face with plans to make fun of me behind my back. I’ve always deeply struggled with trust and letting people in, and the dastardly combination of my concomitant disorders coupled with my dysfunctional attachment style sets me up for failure.
As I mentioned, seeing my Iron Anniversary with Nathan is a tremendous gift, but there’s been a lot of pain left in my wake. Our relationship doesn’t feel entirely equitable… His grace and patience for me are unmatched. And I absolutely believe he’s loving me “as Christ loved the church”.
Taking Stock: My Ugly
A lot of letters. A lot of telling, not showing. Too much exposition. So… How does all of this manifest? Add up the diagnoses, and what have you got? One hot mess.
I daily inhabit the PDA paradox of wanting what I can’t let myself have. If I want to work on something, but then someone else suggests the change, there can be strong, internal resistance. Debilitating anxiety and fear of failure…
Self-imposed expectations trap me like quicksand. If I don’t forcefully bake something into OCD routine, I crumble under the weight of my own demands.
I see it play out in my relationships.
As a spouse, there’s an unspoken expectation of connection and intimacy to keep a relationship strong. The second I said “I do”, that role transition felt as though it tripped the breaker in my brain, and I became a different person. Even though I never lied about who I was before that moment.
The expectation just became real, a literal demand promised to be met through my spoken vows. As soon as I became a wife, I also became more awkward, disconnected, too vulnerable and burdened by the weight of perceived presumption.
Too much to ask that I embody the roles of wife and mother… I had no idea what I was doing, no tools with which to do it. Just overwhelming neuroses, anxieties, self-fulfilled prophecies of wreaking unmitigated disaster upon my loved ones…
I spent the first couple years of our marriage just generally carrying on in survival mode. Dissociated and checked out. And it’s been tumultuous trial and error since deciding to wake up.
In moments of overwhelming emotional dysregulation, I’m scathing and steamrolling. I’m so emotionally stunted and developmentally arrested in some ways. I’m taking stock of this with a new lens lately: reparenting myself. Attempting to equip myself with new tools and coping mechanisms.
But, in the interim…
I feel like a toddler begging for boundaries. I vie for power that I don’t actually want. See me! Hear me! …But I don’t actually want to be in charge.
I project and judge and criticize, but the emphasis rests squarely on my problem of hypocritical projection. With so much constant self-persecutory energy, if someone is remotely like me, I see it as an absolute negative. I see myself through the lens that I was seen through as a child, instead of seeing and loving who I actually was. And it skews my view of everyone around me.
Any thing I see as weakness in myself, good or bad or natural, whatever, becomes magnified in others. Very splinter vs. log mindset, and I know it. Which leads to further shame spiraling, when I need to simply embrace a mindset of humility and grace.
If I stim, I judge myself harshly, so I generally just… don’t. Or I chew the inside of my cheeks until they’re raw and my face hurts. Even if stimming is grounding, calming, keeps me present. If I see someone else stim, my misophonia and misokinesia kick into overdrive with an irrationally annoyed response. A picture of projection in action.
I’m immature and insecure. I intellectualize emotions too often. And, generally speaking, I feel imprisoned by my own fractured mind. There’s loneliness and isolation, yet not enough room for others to draw close before I shut them out. It’s me, myself, and I… My own worst enemy.
Taking Stock: My Pretty
But that’s not the end of my story.
Believe it or not, the ugly picture I’ve painted so far is not the entirety of me. Or what I currently embrace as an acceptable status quo. I’m learning to love myself, and that means every part of me. This radical self-acceptance is not a blanket tolerance of my faults, however. It’s a humbling recognition of areas for potential growth.
Because I love myself enough to not stay in the self-destructive pit of shame and despair in which I could all too easily settle and comfortably nestle.
It’s also reframing.
Recategorizing what is actually a fault or brokenness and what is just a part of me that I was taught was unlovable. If I can love myself, every piece of myself, I can fully embrace and love others without harsh judgment.
So, it’s time to wax ever-so-slightly self-aggrandizing. There is hope in my story, told through a curated collection of strengths and giftings that, if put to good use, could alter the course of my life.
As much as I can lean on intellectualization, I am deeply-feeling. Perhaps hyper-empathic due in part to neurodivergence, perhaps due to hypervigilance rooted in trauma, or some combination. The more I strive for balance between logic and love, the more connected I allow myself to be.
Instead of suppressing emotion and seeing it as a weakness, I opt for leaning into the pain. Allow it to grow and mold me. I need to embrace the parts of me that tear up when I see a beautiful piece of animation, witness perfect synergy between movie cinematics and musical composition, and cry when I see the Disney castle during theater previews.
The capacity to be deeply sensitive and moved by something is a precious gift that allows us to live life in a more experiential way.
I spent too long as a passive participant.
I want to embrace my identity as a highly-sensitive person and channel it toward greater interpersonal experiences and overall empathetic response… Not just having intense empathy for empathy’s sake. I want to be actively present for others, and it’s something in which I’m taking small strides to develop.
Stepparenting and spousal struggles aside, when I am in the moment, present with Orson and Nova, I see a glimpse of my best self. They are the two people on this planet that can tap into my goodness like no one else can. At least, as I am now, without the self-expansion for which I strive. I can be peaceful with them so that they can borrow my calm.
And for them, most days, “most generous interpretation” is my default.
Bedtime takes forever every night. Endless preschooler musings have me hanging on every word, as I massage, talk with, pray with, giggle with, cuddle with, and love on them. It feels like sacrifice some nights, but I long for it when it’s been too late a night to get that special connection time.
Orson and Nova are the best things I’ve ever done with my life.
I have the capacity to be sacrificial and connected, present, and patient, and loving. I am “brave, bold, meticulous, and insightful”. My sister said so recently, and I’m inclined to agree. In spite of executive dysfunction with certain tasks, I can be incredibly driven, self-disciplined, ambitious, and productive, pursuing my dreams and passions with determined fervor.
Even though I make some foolish choices and can be, in some ways, too impressionable, I’m intelligent. I’m a gifted writer. Fastidious, detail-oriented, and can, more times than not, push myself past perceived limits to accomplish what needs to be done.
As long as I’m still breathing, I can keep putting one foot in front of the other. For myself. For my family. I commit. My late grandfather once told me that he didn’t feel the need to worry about me. He went on to tell me that anytime I set my mind to something, I follow through and make it happen.
And I channel this drive into personal growth and betterment. Knowledge and wisdom acquisition. God help me. One day at a time.
A Balanced Self-Portrait
So, yes, I’ve been taking stock. Adding up all the ugly, all the pretty, all the broken, all the misunderstood pieces of myself into this messy, but altogether balanced, self-portrait. Taking stock has helped me close the loop to some degree in my own psyche. But it’s done more than that.
It’s helped me to pinpoint areas of growth. It’s also helped me recognize my own beauty. Taking stock has been about humbly owning up to my personal failings, while not pointlessly bashing myself. My story is not over. In some ways, I am but a child. But I have the capacity, as a grown, 33-year-old woman, to mature into something better.
There is inherent beauty and hope in the potential. The perpetual silver lining to my emotionally-fraught and stormy story. I have grown, I recognize that. And I acknowledge that I still have a long way to go, and the rest of my life to enjoy the journey there. With the people I love around me. My beautiful family at my side.
So, I’m taking stock of me, all that I have… I’m grateful for the grace and continual opportunities to press forward, onward, upward. This is me at 33. Here’s to the progress that the road to 34 will yield.
Let’s goooo!