8:44am October 8, 2010

"Bad manners"

Last night, the world started flashing on and off. Not just visually, but in every sense. My hearing oscillated between far too acute, and these pulsations of total silence. Like really crappy headphones. And there was this sense that I was at the bottom of a well and everything going on around me was actually at the top.

The well got deeper and deeper as time went on. I became only able to see glittery stuff and spots, and only able to hear these strange muffled noises.

I somehow got to my bed, and bits of the world started coming back. My mind was completely invisible. And I spent all of my time – however long it was – that way until I fell asleep and (very unusually) didn’t wake up even once before morning.

Sometimes words like overload or shutdown don’t convey what’s happening because everyone inserts their own experiences in there. Another person’s shutdown is often, when described, still a state where they’re capable of things I could never do. And even my shutdowns vary in intensity, and in what in particular shuts down, because what abilities I have in the first place are always in flux.

I remember reading a review of a Donna Williams book where the reviewer seemed happy that she was no longer describing the content of her shutdowns. Seems he thought they were the sort of thing best left private, like they were unseemly, rude. Screw that. I may sometimes be unable to describe a shutdown but I will never withhold the information because it’s bad manners. Sometimes I think my whole existence is bad manners to some people. Which is one reason I’m going to the trouble of writing about it.