New Beginnings, Old Moments

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This is unfocused, trying to answer the Big QuestionsTM. A rather futile attempt at finding coherence in chaos and properly assimilating tough experiences with respect to neurodivergence, self, purpose, and loss — a hope that facing my cynicism will yield light, for hiding in every negative statement is a dual solution of similar concreteness.

Should I go back to school and finish off the last year of my degree?

Easy to ask, hard to answer. I feel like people look at me weird for not being able to say anything coherent about this on-the-spot. Why did I enter school? What do I hope to get out of it? What will it take, possibly informed by what it has already taken? To say anything useful here takes leveraging a tacit and momentous understanding of where I sit in relation to myself and all the *stuff* that floats around me. It requires knowing *me*.

- - - - - - -

One of my last journals, posted years ago on Deviantart, ended with a warning to me:
"know thyself"

I used to have a lot of long rambles on Deviantart.
They're gone now.
(at least, as far as everyone is concerned. I think it's ironically fitting that I put them all on an encrypted file, and despite having opened it multiple times in the past, I find myself now unable to remember the correct password now. sadly.)

Looking through them was a strange experience. They didn't read like me anymore. It's as if I was reading someone else's autobiography. My outlook, my hopes, my very cognition have been warped since then. I miss how I used to think and feel. I miss how I used to move through my surroundings, how I perceived and processed my experiences. Who was that kid who got admitted to Caltech? Why do the past couple years feel like I blinked and am here now, having forgotten the things and people who matter to me?

I entered Caltech because science meant something to me. At the time, it was one of the few things that gave me any sense of satisfaction, a thing which filled me with purpose. When I was spending six to eight hours a day self-studying for Biology Olympiad, irrespective of the easy and frustrating periods, every moment felt right. I was learning, taking stuff in and building something in my head 24/7. I constantly exercised the perseverence to stick it through until I was rewarded. To be a marionette and put my desires on pause for my dreams, acing 7 AP/dual enrollment classes my senior year alone. I entered Caltech because I was willing to fight for the reward of knowing something satisfying, for understanding.

It has been five years, and I have not found what I wanted.

"Haven't you tried seeking help?" "Here's advice to try out!" "Do this and it will fix your problems." I wish I could. I wish there were a list of simple, concrete things to change which would turn things around. I wish so so badly that my problems were those that can be fixed by grit, by perseverence, or by sacrifice.

Yet, the first roadblock comes with even stating what the problem even is.

- - - - - - -

You know, part of my autism diagnosis is that I am said to have a lot of communication issues, esp being unable to state things succintly. Maybe one part of the reason is because the standard set of relevant sentences often don't suit my internal experiences. So when I do try to say something with berevity, there's the extra strain of having to say what (relative, ofc) hasn't been said before (which often ends up coming out wrong anyway). And even when that's successful, nobody understands because the words don't match the existing ideological and experiental lexicon I'm trying to connect to, so — just like a book with a far-reaching and profound thesis — I must deeply and iteratively caveat, dissect, expand, and expound on what I mean. Because without that, I am unable to communicate, to successfully interface with another person, at the same depth as someone who had just been in the position to say something more common, more relatabe. And then of course this pattern of using language gets locked into my head until it's just the only way I know how to say anything, leading to (from outward appearances) directionless incoherent rambling when I attempt to explain without having the whole conceptualized in my head already. This alone can be expanded into its own ramble, but I should make some attempt to stay on topic... Fucking autism smh. Can be kind of exhausting.

At the end of the day, the details do in fact matter. They give a thesis its shape and flesh, it's movements and inclinations, even if they are hidden by its skin and easily forgotten. It's just that more "normal" statements are like a zebra or a cat. Their mention doesn't require any explication because they're words we collectively associated with a common form. All the details exist, but their existence is just implicit, with explicit mention and investigation being unecessary (there is no need to vivisect your cat, please). But if I tell you about a weird, flying flesh-spider, you can't envision that. Spiders don't fly. Only until I have broken it down to functional pieces can you come to understand the flying flesh-spider that I describe. And then you may make a judgement about whether I'm seeing something quite interesting, or pedantically calling a fruit fly "Drosophila" to everyone out on the street because the semiotic connection of fruit fly to "fruit fly" is something I failed to properly absorb somewhere along the way.

- - - - - - - -

So... the problem, I think. I try to answer. "I am not learning in class. I don't understand what's going on. I'm not satisfied with what I'm getting out of my efforts." Solution: go to office hours, ask more questions, be more patient and dedicated with studying, right? But no, this fundamentally misunderstands the problem. I can't formulate the questions I want. I go to office hours and it turns into a clusterfuck of me being unable to get across my needs and energy wasted on pointless help. Dialogue with people trying to explain things to me either goes wild until we're both exasperated, or is cut short because I fall into scripts that don't reflect what I'm actually trying to get at. I can sit with the assigned reading, fighting against my lack of focus to "get through it" but still leave feeling empty. Make pages of notes and review them diligently, but still be unable to integrate the material (and shortly forgetting it). The words I have chosen here to answer with do not encapsulate the root of the problem, though they are derived from "acceptably on-topic" responses to inquiries about what the problem is. Clearly, I don't really have an issue using words. I can organize them decently well when not overwhelmed with the struggle of trying to get across the barely comprehensible. So what gives? What am I *seeking*? There's the unstatable problem. I know what I seek. I know it exists because I had it — my ability to obtain it is what drove my success in Science Olympiad during high school, free of mentorship or guidance the whole time. But the thing I seek is hard for me to describe, so it's hard to get actually useful advice.

Circling back, why get through school?

What can I find inherent value in? When I don't and never have found satisfaction in getting a good grade, in turning in an assignment on time, in getting things done for the sake of completion (seemingly immutable in spite of trying to pretend that I do while drinking up the encouragement of others)... what's stopping me from receeding away into a scrabbling depressive machine sucking at the empty air for fuel? When I have no faith in my long-term goals because I feel disillusioned at the prospect of grad school? When my grit and ability to sacrifice, the ability to stick it out with blind hope and perseverence that I just need to put forth more of myself into what I'm doing until all is gone... That's what got me so far into the deep end where I was, drowning. Unable to function. So I'm not sure I've found the answer to that question yet, other than some vague conception that "it'd be good for me" and that it's just something I should do. Although, my return is inevitable, even if it may only be fueled by spite.

- - - - - - - -

What have I lost?

I've lost the essence of friends who matter to me, that essence which I'm tearfully trying to scrape back together based on bits and pieces, to reexperience and remember. I find myself having trouble remembering *who my friends are*, in the literal sense. Their sense of familiarity, the shared experiences, the sense of who they are as individuals — all slowly and irretrivably falling into an event horizon. That phenomenon terrifies me.

I've lost my indestructibility, my spontaneity, my robustness to adversity. You can only slowly die without reprieve for so long before you are brainwashed into becoming a different person than the one you'd like to be. I've lost my physical and mental health. I used to compete in Taekwondo at a national level and run collegiate track. Now, my body doesn't even move right anymore — my forms lack grace, my balance is off-kilter and shaky, my former fluidity and controlled unpredictableness now culminating in stumbles (maybe this is due to my artificially high standards. do I really deserve to use the "uncoordinated" label when I can still backflip and break boards midair while doing so? but loss is loss, and I still feel like my body has been hollowed.) In spite of not drinking or smoking, not using illicit drugs, eating a balanced diet and doing daily exercise, and with no family history of heart problems, I'm chronically injured and facing stage 2 hypertension in my early twenties. My body betrays me with panic attacks which occurred daily at their height and decended into derealization. Waking from what litle sleep I used to get hyperventilating. I've policed my own thoughts and functions in an effort to conform to productivity until all that remains is a caged, dying, recalcitrant brain muttering disjointed words and foreign media fragements to itself.

I've lost myself. I never wanted to be a researcher, a scientist, just for the sake of being one. My energy in the past was fueled by the incessant and inextinguishable drive to seek that which I was seeking. To taste and consume, to digest something that blossoms inside me and gain life thorugh this synergistic experience. I just looked to the career as a best fit to my mode of growth. But in losing touch with who I am, I have lost the drive for this societally acceptable goal, something which was merely an expression of that true intrinsic desire. No amount of discipline and willingness to sacrifice can overcome the sheer self-sabatoging apathy I am left with from years of snuffing my instincts in an effort to do what needs to get done. Nobody but me alone can force myself to move, so I must let myself free.

And then... I still carry the guilt of the one who I let slip away to be consumed. It still lingers. How she waited until I reached out to her to ask if she was okay, as if I was a last loose end to tie up before making herself disappear... in my head I can't help but view it as if I had one chance to hold her back. One conversation to make all the difference. But no, I was too fucking busy with finishing my set and not fumbling my last chance to avoid flunking out of school. I couldn't muster the emotional energy to offer anything but sympathetic platitudes in the face of her life-threateaning vulnerability. And I know this is the standard some people go by, that I did well enough. But it's not enough! It doesn't feel enough to me because, although I know my reaction to this is weird, canned responses hardly make me feel any better about anything! (I don't want to just be seen, as I have been all my life and can expect of anyone — I want to be understood...) So of course I can't help but feel like I potentially had a chance which I missed. I may have been the last one for her to contact, and I was too goddamn numb and busy to say something useful, too cowardly to feel something.

You were too good for this world. You can't have deserved what threw you over the edge. I know you have enough strength in you to go on. I wish I could have said at least something like this to you in that moment.

(if "you" happen to be reading this, none of how I feel about this is your fault. This is mostly just a projection of myself onto what happened. I just really hope, despite all appearances, you're safe and dreaming once again...)

I only have a year left. I can't lose that much more in a year. But I don't think the people in my life fully recognize how much I have sacrificed already. And as for informing what it will take, the volume of loss also means that I don't have much left to give. Everything takes so much more energy when you're more fragile.

- - - - - - -

I think it's a truth that I can't take back my past, to rebuild the idealized parts of the old me forged out of now inaccesible concrete items.

But I have one advantage to leverage.

I have been given the time and space to extract myself from this wreck, to channel an energy once again. Like a forest set ablaze, I trust in my quiescent roots and rhizomes to utilize this chance and reclaim the landscape anew. I have long since secretly knew what the problem was; I was just afraid of the realization because of how radical and forbidden the solution seemed. But now I'm here, given the exquisite gift of freedom.

This gift comes from people who truly believe in me, who are willing and able to support my little life even if they don't really understand what I'm doing.

The least I can do in return is believe in myself too.