I’ve been thinking a lot about truth of late. I suspect many of us have. But it looms even larger for me as I only learned that I was autistic at age 58, and it has caused me to re-evaluate the belief systems upon which I have built the entire structure of my life. All the things that I assumed were true about myself, and definitely all the roles that others have expected me to play, have been false. That’s a tsunami of harsh reality that one doesn’t expect to have wash over them just as they’re about to enter their 6th decade on earth. It makes you wonder if it’s ever possible to be sure of anything.
I used to be sure of pretty much everything, even, unfortunately, the horrible things. My late sister used to love to say to me “You have very strong opinions,” and it used to drive me absolutely nuts. (That’s probably why she said it every chance she got.)
When I finally got old enough to come up with the response, “Everyone’s opinions are strong. That’s what opinions are. Now, do I have a tendency to express mine more loudly? Probably. But I don’t assume or demand that everyone must agree with me, so kindly shut up.” And just like that, she stopped bugging me. Really. The change was that abrupt. It was as if she realized that that button was no longer available to push. It only took about 15 years for me to achieve that victory.
Maybe if she had instead said that opinions can change over time, based on experience, or that they can be adjusted after getting new information, I might have been more predisposed to listen. Because yes, I can be very rigid. But in my defense, I come by it honestly. When you are autistic and don’t know you’re autistic, you feel as though the ground is constantly shifting beneath your feet, so you tend to hold on tightly to whatever you can. You’re completely alone, and everyone around you is telling you that you have to change in ways that you find impossible. So you close your eyes and hold on tight to whatever is available, and just hope that you don’t get emotionally battered to death.
Before you even ask, yes, I’m in therapy. Finding a therapist who understands neurodivergence and can act as your neurotypical translator, all while providing you with coping skills, is key. And one of the things we talk about is that people can have different truths, and that one person can hold two conflicting truths at the same time.
This was really hard for me to believe at first, because I always held to a rigid definition of truth, that it was synonymous with fact, and therefore the exact opposite of falsehood. No two autistic people are alike, but on my particular spot on the spectrum, black and white thinking is my happy place. And that’s still true. Once I have formed an opinion, I rejoice in its solidity. The difference is, now that I have a better understanding of what makes me tick, I am willing to adjust my opinion if I receive information that conflicts with it. Before, once I had planted my flag, nothing short of a nuclear bomb would make it budge. So that’s progress.
I still struggle with the concept of living in a world where my opinions are so flexible that I feel no solidity whatsoever. I don’t know how neurotypicals do that. I’d feel as though my integrity were slipping away. And integrity is my core value. That’s why I get so triggered when I’m not believed or when I’m accused of being manipulative. I mean what I say. If I have any regard for you at all, I don’t say something I don’t believe, so you may not want to ask me if those shorts make you look fat.
I just tried reading the Wikipedia page about truth, and I got so deep into the philosophical weeds that I had to give up and seek high ground. It goes into various theories of truth, ranging anywhere from truth equals fact, to truth is what everyone agrees is true, to truth is always relative to one’s perspective. Truth, it seems, is a slippery concept.
Facts, on the other hand, are easy to define. Water is wet. Fact. Also truth. Sometimes truth does equal fact. All facts are true (this whole “alternative facts” thing is pure bullsh*t), but not all truths are fact. Some truths are based on experience. One person can say “Water is deadly,” and that is their truth, because they have seen people drown. Another person can say, “Water gives life,” because they live in a desert and know the necessity of it for survival. That is truth for them. They disagree, and that’s okay. Sometimes truth equals fact, sometimes truth, in a more philosophical sense, equals opinion based on experience.
Did it ever occur to you that when the founding fathers said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” in America’s declaration of independence, they were implying that not all truths are obvious? I agree. Truth can be amorphous, and yet so many of us think of it as solid and something that everyone should agree upon. I would argue that that, right there, is the birthplace of most conflict and turmoil. Recently, it dawned on me that even someone who is a black and white thinker like me can hold two conflicting truths at the same time.
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I have expressed an almost visceral aversion to all things Florida up to this point. I’ve certainly earned that right. I lived there for 40 years, and it served me up a heaping helping of negative outcomes that I might not have experienced had I lived elsewhere.
Without getting into all the gory details, there’s the substandard healthcare, human rights, social services, environmental protections, and public transportation. The deplorable education and censorship and misinformation and voter suppression leads to people making political choices that are not in their best interests, and that political backwardness is so firmly entrenched that I fear it will ever be repaired. Then you have a whole host of other issues that spring from the racism, and the anti-union/right-to work mentality which makes it all but impossible to rise up from poverty. And if that doesn’t wear you down enough, there’s the constant battle with hurricanes, cockroaches, tourists, and all manner of other creepy-crawlies, the lack of seasons, and the relentless bloody heat.
But if I’m honest, while all the above certainly makes the quality of life less than attractive to me, and was incentive enough to spend 40 years desperately trying to get out of that state, the real reason I’ve expressed a total hate for Florida is the trauma I experienced while there. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to spell it all out. Just know that it was pretty darned horrific.)
Of course, not all of my trauma was Florida’s fault, but I know that some of it would not have occurred if I were somewhere else and my living situation had been different. If I hadn’t been in Florida in the first place, I wouldn’t have met many of the people who were catalysts (although, in fairness, I may have met others, elsewhere.) If it hadn’t been such a struggle to climb out of the deep pit poverty, I know that many of my problems wouldn’t have occurred, and in fact it took me leaving that state for good to give me the chance to claw my way into the middle class for the first time.
When someone or something traumatizes me, my instinct is to thrust them or it as far away from me as humanly possible, in an attempt to mitigate some of the pain that is being inflicted. It’s just that I’ve had so much of it throughout my life. If people could really see my emotional state, until very recently I’d have looked like a recent burn victim. I was figuratively a mass of exposed, raw, weeping flesh and suppurating wounds. So cruelties were like a hot poker to the eyeball. You hurt me, I’m not letting that happen again. I can’t take one bit more. It might kill me. Florida hurt me something awful.
But the work I’ve been doing on myself lately seems to actually be making a difference. I feel myself healing. I haven’t felt this healed in my life, as a matter of fact. I have a long way to go, still, but I’m starting to open up, little by little. It feels like there’s this song just around the corner.
This feeling gives me hope for the future, but it also makes me feel less harsh about the past. I don’t have to thrust things so far away. They can’t hurt me as much anymore. And I woke up this morning thinking that, yes, there are things I miss about Florida. Clutch your pearls if you like. It’s true. Maybe it’s because I’m about to be plunged into the never-ending wet, grey, darkness of a Pacific Northwest winter, and I always find that to be an incredible struggle.
I miss Riverside, the historic neighborhood in Jacksonville where my house was. I miss hearing the ping of softballs on metal bats in the park across the street. I miss the granite curbstones made from the ballast of ships. I miss the Gardens of the Cummer Art Museum. I miss the annual Christmas luminaria, when our neighborhood was aglow with candles and there was a live nativity down the street. I miss the little library that was half a block from my house. I miss working on the Ortega River Bridge. I miss looking out the door and being confident that the weather was pretty much identical within a 50-mile radius. I miss usually feeling like one of the smartest people in the room. I miss being able to swim in the oceans, lakes and waterways (after first checking for gators) without freezing to death. I miss the sunrises and the sunsets.
I miss floating on innertubes at Ichetucknee Springs. I miss going to Rock Springs in Apopka every Wednesday after school with my best friend. I miss really good Chinese food. I miss the torrential rain at 3 pm that the sky seemed to get out of its system quickly so that you could get on with your life. I miss the lower cost of living. I miss people being more open and talkative and having less of a filter. (I may not have agreed with many of them, but at least I always knew where they stood.) I miss having sufficient parking spaces that are actually wide enough for one’s car. I miss swimming with manatees. I miss traffic signs that you can see at night because they get cleaned regularly. I miss certain things at the grocery store that people out here have never heard of. I miss decent fried chicken. And of course, there are a few people, here and there, that I will forever miss, who I fear I will never see again if I don’t go to them.
So, there you have it. I miss Florida. I also hate it so much that I have a panic attack at the mere prospect of ever having to cross the state line again. Both things are true. I suppose I’ll just have to learn to accept that.
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