Like the road signs which I always snort at because, to me, they tell me nothing more than that the road will lower slightly ahead–and what driver can’t handle that, right? *snort*– I’ve come to appreciate that I must subconsciously view my own internal warnings of ‘hidden dips’ with much the same disdain.
In short: I don’t need to be warned; I can handle them. Whatever they are.
And yet, if 2022 has shown me anything, it is that I clearly can’t handle them. Also that I don’t see the warnings until it’s too late and I’m arse-up in a ditch on t’other side.
Not a pretty sight.
I’ve been mulling over the signs I overlooked during the past 12 months in the hope that in future I might notice them better and prepare to act before they derail me, but I also know that to expect my neurodivergent mind to do anything it’s not used to is to hold an uncooked meringue in a gale force wind and expect it to keep its shape.
The first sign came early.
At the beginning of 2022 I’d started sending out agent enquiries for the novel I’d written on the MA I’d completed in November 2021. To me, this was the most complete, the most edited, the most reviewed, re-drafted-pored-over book I’d ever written. It had been discussed, dissected, peer-reviewed during classes, and I’d had the benefit of having a bestselling author as my manuscript tutor who’d convinced me this would be my breakout novel and any editor I worked with would consider me their dream author because of my diligence, attention to detail and keenness to compromise.
In my head this was it.
It also helped that I’d been awarded a distinction and so, in my silly little hopeful heart I was dancing a continuous jig of joy without ever announcing to the world, in case … y’know *Hidden Dips*.
Then the rejections started dribbling in.
My top three agents (the ones I’ve always–over the course of 25 years–sent my manuscript to first of all) responded with standard form rejections.
Rejections never get any easier. My ‘thick skin’ never developed although I pretended it did. The only way I can move through a rejection is by repeating over and over in my head that it doesn’t matter; it’s subjective; there are other agents; this wasn’t my ‘time’ and carry on. So, carry on, I did. I enquired of the next ten agents on my list…
Then these rejections began dribbling back.
My submissions list, which I’d handwritten and given cheerful colours to, along with dates of sending, a ‘helpful comments’ box (which remained empty because I received none) and a date of return, became one side of A4, then two, then two and a half. Finally I stopped filling it in.
I also stopped announcing on social media that I was submitting or, in fact, doing anything remotely connected to writing, because I felt wounded. And when I feel wounded, like a wild animal, I retreat. I don’t want anyone to see me or ask me if they can help, because of course they can’t; if they tried I’d end up infecting anyone who came near me with sadness. So I withdrew.
I didn’t go to either graduation ceremony. Partly because of social anxiety, partly because of chronic pain, but mostly because I could hear how conversations would go and I had nothing to bolster my fragile confidence: “Yes, I finished my novel. No, nobody liked it“. My brain yelled at me that my manuscript tutor had lied when they’d said this was The One and I couldn’t imagine bumping into them because I knew I’d either sob or scream. I couldn’t do it. I’d already exhausted myself in my head. I’d failed.
However, and even though I hadn’t met any of them IRL, I hated the idea of losing contact with the students I’d worked close with for the past year. I also knew that the further back I retreated, the more likelihood there’d be of my disappearing altogether. So I volunteered to join the team assigned to produce the Bath Spa Anthology of 20-21 writing. A good move. I love a project; love putting things together and seeing an outcome.
But, three team meetings later–all online– frustration began to build inside me like a grumbling volcano. I had done a ton of research (hello ADHD hyperfocus) on past anthologies, on other uni anthologies, on cover design, layout, website format, word count, biographies, etc, produced my findings to the rest of the team via e-mail ready to discuss at the meetings… where I was met with a wall of (what I saw as) apathy.
Simple decisions like wording an email to our fellow students to inform them of the anthology, took weeks and weeks of back-and-forth commenting on one Google document.
Decision-making in general seemed to be something none of the team felt able to do without checking first with our course leader (who’d already given us carte blanche to go ahead and get on with it) and after three months of nothing happening, where I’d been e-mailing suggestions and ideas, asking everyone for their input and receiving nothing back, I felt demoralised and invisible. More rejection. And rejection for a neurodivergent person is something that is automatically triplicated. it’s a heartbreak. Every one.
Again, I withdrew.
I also obsessed over how the team might now be doing without me. I had a small hope they might contact me to persuade me to stay, considering my skills, but as this didn’t happen I perceived this non-communication as my never having had any skill to begin with, which was perhaps why they’d never reciprocated when I’d made suggestions or offered the ideas I’d had… the spiral became endless and dark. I lost sleep, I couldn’t eat. I started wondering if they’d always been this ambivalent towards me–even during classes–and I’d hyperfocus on things I’d said, firmly believing I’d been the object of everyone’s annoyance and everyone had laughed at me behind my back. Even at the graduation/s.
I withdrew further. This time, with added obsession.
I tried to concentrate on other things as a distraction. I’d picked up artwork and design and although I’d been following thousands of accounts on Instagram, and YouTube, diligently practising skills I hadn’t used since 6th form, I could feel something building again from inside my feet. I tried watercolours, inks, pens, pen-and-ink, pattern, still life, abstract, surreal, impressionist, animals, figures, objects, you name it, I was convinced that once I found my ‘groove’ everything would fall into place.
Everything fell, that’s for sure.
The last thing I attempted to paint was a pear hanging from a tree. So simple. From a photograph I found online. I’d done it on a day I knew I’d be alone in the house because I couldn’t bear the shame of anyone seeing how badly I might be doing and pretending it was anything other than terrible. In my head I’d made this my ‘last ditch attempt’ so the failing wouldn’t be such a shock. But it still hurt like hell. Washing my brushes and pots afterwards, I wanted to rip my skin off, I felt such an abject failure; and at something which was meant to be such a pleasurable past time.
I was beginning to feel hopeless.
I needed another distraction. Maybe hands-on creativity wasn’t my ‘thing’. Maybe I needed to return to online design; I’d enjoyed designing posters and building websites and blogs in my working life; what if I tried something along those lines? What if I tried something like… I don’t know, designing book covers.
I put a call out on social media offering to help any writer struggling with designing their book cover, free of charge. One brave person took me up and, with the help of my long-suffering daughter, a crash course in Photoshop and much backing-and-forthing of copy, a cover was produced with delight from the author. After that – nothing. I couldn’t advertise my design because the book hadn’t released. So I continued making fictitious book cover designs and posting them on my IG and FB feeds which garnered minimal interest. I was treading water again. Doing nothing productive and feeling invisible.
Personally, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in the summer, which made sense of the chronic pain I’d always had and always assumed was my fault (I’ve written about this before so won’t bore you again) and in the autumn I was diagnosed autistic, which helped me understand why I’ve never felt I fit into anywhere, doing anything, with anyone. It doesn’t make the isolation go away, it simply means I know where to find information and acceptance now.
Since the beginning of 2022, I’d kept in touch with someone I’d once shared lodgings with (she went on to marry one of my ex-boyfriends). She checked in with me every day and we chatted about our shared history; about what we were up to and once she’d mentioned one of her three grown-up children had suffered with mental health issues, saying that she’d learned things about MH she’d never known before, which I’d found refreshing, since she’d always dismissed the idea before, in much the same way that my parents had always dismissed mine. I’d begun to see her presence in my life as more supportive after she’d revealed this, and our conversations flourished.
Until one evening shortly after the Queen’s death, when my daughter and her partner had gone to stay with her father for the weekend and I was sitting alone in the house watching an overspill of emotions on TV. My friend had asked me what I was up to, and instead of lying, I told her I was alone and had been crying since lunchtime over something (ostensibly trivial to anyone else) which had happened and had upset me. Only to be be told that I needed to stop wallowing, get up, go outside and meet people who were worse off than me.
I actually felt my heart hit the floor.
I saw this reprimand as a kind of bell tolling; it rang out LOUDLY that I was nothing but a snivelling, weasley wretch who read far too much into simple things that nobody else thought twice about; that I was a waste of space and this was why none of my so-called friends ever contacted me out of the blue to ask me how I was, much less have a conversation with me, and the fact I was sitting there on my own sobbing proved this and nobody actually cared. Literally nobody. As if on a film-reel, the earlier parts of the year rewound then re-viewed all the other occasions I’d been equally invisible, unwanted, discarded and irrelevant. Of course, it all made perfect sense now.
I wasn’t meant to be alive. I should never have been born. In fact if I’d been born a century earlier, both my mother and I would’ve died at (my) birth.
I ran through a list of ‘friends’ who hadn’t kept in touch since I’d moved away 5 years previously. Or who did, but only after I’d contacted them first or if we ‘liked’ a post on social media. I bet they’d come to my bloody funeral, though, wouldn’t they? Out of some warped sense of guilt and remorse if nothing else. Well I didn’t want them to use the energy if that was their attitude; I’d let them off the hook now. By sending a quick text telling them I loved them, and farewell. There. Done and dusted.
In hindsight this would turn out to be my second biggest pratfall of the year.
Because of course all these people started contacting me. And (unbeknown to me) contacting my daughter. Ruining her weekend if not her life.
Needless to say, police were involved, the crisis team were involved and I felt stupid, humiliated and shamed. All my own doing, of course, which is how it always happens, and leading me to feel nothing but worse about myself.
I stayed in bed for the ensuing two days, only surfacing for wees, water, and to refill the cat’s food bowls. Someone from the crisis team called to make sure I was still alive, didn’t have plans to ‘harm myself’, and signed off with “enjoy the rest of the weekend” which I will take to my grave as the most ironic, perverse thing to say to a suicidal person.
When my daughter and her partner returned, I’d bolstered myself to deliver apologies and ask for her forgiveness, but didn’t get that far. Because during the course of the year, I hadn’t taken into account, or even seen, the many signs pointing out how I was affecting those closest to me. I’d been so preoccupied with white-knuckling my own steering wheel and trying to stay on course that I’d forgotten to check other important road users. And now it was too late. They’d discussed it, they were sorry it had come to this, but we couldn’t all go on living together; it was too much for them to cope with. I needed to move out.
To be continued…
Debs J Cooper 