An Unknown New an essay

An Unknown New

By Amy Maureen Murphy

I have become increasingly aware

that two major events of the past few years

have allowed us an unprecedented opportunity

to openly demarcate and define our selves

in previously unimaginable ways:

the Countrywide elections and

the Worldwide pandemic.

Suddenly, dramatically and with great fanfare,

we became aware of

who stood with us

and who was on the other side.

The invisible made visible, loud and clear,

with one of two questions:

Who did you vote for? and

Are you vaccinated?

The answers often caused shock and 

anxious reverberations, around the world,

within communities, and amidst

family and friends.

It was a tumultuous reveal, an invitation to proclaim:

Here I am!

and

This is what I believe and stand for!

It caused rifts small and great;

Created chasms shallow, deep, and wide.

Yet, to the credit of both upheavals,

these two events gave shape, form, and impetus

to soft, concealed whispers;

it gave voice to the inner murmurings and musings

that we had thus far been afraid to state aloud.

Unity was formed on opposing sides

of a burning fence;

each side taking turns

fueling and dousing shared flames.

You felt it, didn’t you?

The Passion

The Incitement

The Heat from:

burning, ancient rhetoric; long-held and coveted hatred;

the painful dissolution of the Old Guard and outdated paradigms,

and the rising birth

of An Unknown New

People forced to learn

when it was safe to follow the herd,

and when it was best to isolate and

stand alone.

Heroes and Villians

willing to go to jail,

or die for their beliefs,

en masse.

One was now free

To Master their own Destiny

(Their fate wrested, astonishingly, within

their own hands.)

Empowerment be a newfound god

to experience, worship and extol.

I don’t see winners.

I don’t see losers.

I see individuals who found

their edge, their boundary; 

the place where they begin and others end;

what they found to be tolerable and what was beyond their ken.

I applaud you 

for finding and staking claim

to yourself

and your virtue.

God Bless You

each and every one,

or not.

The Choice is always Yours.

today

Searching for peace and purpose via prayer and poetry. Read both today. Love the light brigade and Barnabe Googe especially the little fish, bait and hook.

Enjoyed watching the first season of Asimov's Foundation. Would like to read the books.

Grocstore. Baked a chicken and made chicken rice soup, chicken individuated and froze for samiches, and the remainder froze for puppy food to be cooked in the morrow.

Broken vac. Must go to home depot for our once every four year, 60 dollar vacuum cleaner.

Need mailing paper and bub wrap from walm soon.

Started reading The Last of the Mohicans but had to stop cause I was reading in bed and had no map with which to reference and keep track of the characters.

Walked at the Wetlands which are barely wet. Wonder, hope, we get more rain before the dry hot.

In the morrow, to the post office, maybe to the osu thrift as haven't been there in three months or more as it's sparingly open.

Funds are back up, okay, spend little or wise.

Can afford a coffee.

Yester bought a larger coffee and saved half for today.

Spending with more awareness. Positive. 

A good day.

Why am I here

Barking dogs are lonely, scared, afraid, insecure, in need of... MicroPoetry Murphy

MicroPoetry Abrasions Murphy Poems er Erratic Thoughts

Inspiration and Overcoming

 There are only two people in this world, kin separated by birth and miles, but sharing the same vein, the same ability to write about the truth, the ugliness, the confusion of living life as a Multiple Autistic, having both Dissociative Identity Disorder and Autism combined in one unstable, surly, righteous, and somewhat functional package. Whenever I had the privilege to read their words, as indeed, both wrote from the heart and fluidly, it touched me like a pleasant live wire zapping me back to my inner, oft hidden writer. Such distance between me and thine. One lives across a continent and ocean, the other only resides in my memory as he passed away just a couple of years ago. He lives closer to me as his words and memory live in my heart and mind. Today, I was fortunate to find a post from my oceans away compadre. Her words moved me, found me underneath the debris of the day and in the back, past the relics being used in the daily therapeutic processes. I can't write fast enough. I want to explode onto paper all that I have thought and felt these many moons before I disappear, again, back deep inside.

I've been within and have seen and heard many things. One memory of physical torture, a near death experience, has captivated the audience of me these past many weeks. One incident in which I fell apart, in the most literal and psychological of senses. My father held the five year old me off the floor, in midair as he ranted and raved over a childish infraction. His laser focus, directing all his anger and frustration and shortcomings in life, were projected into his hand, attached to his arm which ensnarled my neck, and whooshed me up off the floor suspended in front of him. The spittle flew. His lips curled and snarled, nostrils flared, and his hand around me continued to tighten. I was caught in a human vice. Instinctively, my little hands grabbed and clawed at his wrist and forearm. No dice. No change. The vice continued. 

It felt as if my life was ending. In only my mind's eye, my sides split open, right and left, and all the other parts of me that looked like miniature replicas of myself but at different ages, spilled out in an effort to save themselves from this mortal coil that was being squeezed into nonexistence. They splashed outwards hitting the cold basement floor. From that safe distance they watched my body turn lifeless from flail to frail to limp. 

Dissociation is the formal word for when part of the psyche, a part of the mind, splits off, moves away, or leaves the body. Most of me, the parts of me that could, dissociated leaving the body in my father's hand. 

To be fair, those five year old and younger parts of me were probably in more shock than awe. Having never experienced the wrath of my father in this specific, physically violent way or seen another choked so, I'm sure these expelled, dissociative parts were like the average person slowing the car to watch a train wreck, wondering what was taking place.

My life did forever change in that moment when my brain, starved of oxygen, blacked out and went limp. I learned fear. I take that back, I learned deadly fear. I became aware that my father could effectively and with little effort, end me, kill me, at any moment and on any given day. I learned to fear for my safety every single day that I was living with or in the same room with my father. The meaning of life suddenly shifted. Instead of an infinite life, a childhood filled with wondering when can I go out and play, or looking forward to school and recess, or impatiently waiting for my birthday and presents, or planning for the next Christmas, I was worried that I might suddenly die and not get to heaven because my prayers were not all said or I hadn't been following the ten commandments and been to confession lately. A Catholic child isn't given dispensation for not following the rules. Thy shall honor thy father and thy mother weighed upon me heavier than the absent thoughts of reporting or telling anyone about such incident. The abused Catholic child is a special, accursed being; you can't ever tell on your parents under penalty of Hell. 

The relationship with my father took a sharp turn off a short cliff. Everything about it changed. Sure, he continued to sexually molest me every day or two but that had become as normal as pancakes every Monday; no big deal; just the regular routine, but I stopped trusting and loving him as I realized he had this newfound power to take away my life. One cannot love enmeshed with constant fear. In my heart, he wasn't my loving father anymore. He had become this hideous, hurtful monster that could appear at any second. I wanted no part of it anymore, that father-daughter relationship. I distanced myself from him as much as I was able. Emotionally, I turned away, shut him out. Physically, I worked diligently to try to never be alone with him as the ability to egregiously harm me like that again, would probably only take place alone, away from others. 

I've been dealing with this one heinous memory these recent weeks. Each therapy session, a different aspect of the event was spoken about until all the pieces had had their say.

I know this once repressed memory has been completely dealt with as I can sit here and recount it without trembling, fear, or tears. I had to speak about it, over and over and over again, until the memory lost its "Hold" on me. I've learned that if something makes you shake, tremble, or cry, that it is something that needs to be spoken of to be released. I was a prisoner to this memory. I feared hands, men, sudden movements, being alone in a room with another, and lived with the fear that I could die at any moment, any day. It was constant fear of impending death. It sucked to live like that. It sucks harder that a parent would intentionally harm a child in such a way and create such a fear.

I'm done living with all that fear. I have released the toxic baggage that I have been carrying for 50 plus years. I took back my power the only effective way that I could; I Broke the Silence and reclaimed me.

Deny it. Pretend it didn't happen. Whatever. You choose your own prison. You hold the key. You are holding the key to your present and your future and your physical and mental health. All you have to do is Break the Silence, and scream your truth.

I will no longer remain silent about my abuse. I will no longer protect the people that intentionally harmed me. I will speak of the physical and sexual abuse whenever I choose. They no longer have power over me. It's my Life. I'll decide how I live it.

Prosopagnosia, Face Blindness, All People Look Alike

 

Face Blindness- if you met a new person today, would you recognize that person if you ran into them again in a different location after a week or two? I probably would not. In my mind, all faces look alike. I have Prosopagnosia which is a neurological disorder whereby I have difficult remembering faces and the names that go along with them. People I meet are easily forgotten unless they have a specific hairstyle of unusual facial feature such as a mole or odd beard.

Family members and those who I have known for years are exempt. Once I know a person for a sustained period of time, I can remember their face. New people, or someone I meet once or twice are readily forgotten. I have had former coworkers and once fellow classmates approach me calling me by name and I had no idea of who they were. Studies have shown that prosopagnosia is common with Autistics. One study stated that approximately 40% of people with Autism have prosopagnosia.

I can sometimes utilize hairstyles like a signatures. If someone has a distinctive hairstyle, it will make it easier for me to recall the person. Likewise, if an individual has a unique birthmark, they are more likely to make a lasting impression in my Aspie brain. I easily remember the woman with yellow eyes, the friend with a mole on her chin, and the favorite friend with the small space between two teeth. The difference, the physical anomaly can be quite small, as in the case of my friend’s mole, but it draws my attention which helps me to create and store the memory of who that person is.

I have embarrassed myself on many occasions by approaching someone and talking to them as if they were someone I knew. They all gave me the standard confused look before I realized that they were not who I thought they were. I have learned to stop approaching people and thinking that I know them. It was a degrading lesson to learn that I had prosopagnosia.

Even now, living 2,000 miles away from my home state, an individual will walk by that reminds me of a someone I knew in Michigan and, for a brief moment, I think it might be them. I have to consciously tell myself that I’m not in Michigan anymore and the stranger that just walked by was not who I thought. This subject seems more complex than when I first started writing about it.

Suffice it to say, I have difficulty recognizing people that I have had little interaction with, as well as misidentifying strangers as people I know. People’s faces are neither attractive nor unattractive, but rather bland canvases wherein only a few have interesting and memorable features.

I think this concept of all faces looking alike dawned on me when I was watching Lord of the Rings. Throughout the movie series, I was unable to tell Merry from Pippin. Thus, even though I loved the movies, I always felt some degree of confusion while watching them. Television shows with an ensemble cast proved to be completely unenjoyable. Unable to distinguish facial characteristics led me to identify people based on hair color or facial hair. I did fine if the show had only one female with long blonde hair, but if there were two, I was unable to tell them apart. Likewise, for a dark-haired male with beard. If there was more than one such male, I was lost. It isn’t fun to watch a show or movie in which you are never sure who is who. Maybe this is one reason that my favorite movies seem to be one central character based or with a small cast, think Castaway or Passengers. Those films are free of confusion.
And heaven forbid if a friend or relative or coworker got a haircut or changed hair color. One of the most dramatic memories that I have stems from the time my therapist, whom I had been seeing weekly for over two years, changed her hair color and style overnight. I remember walking into her office and part of me kept thinking I was in the wrong place. Surely, this was not my therapist even though the office was the same and she was wearing clothing I had seen my therapist wear. In my heart, I felt that my therapist had been replaced and was forever gone. I walked out of that session. It took me some time before I could convince myself that it really was the same therapist just with different hair. [To be fair, my therapist did not just do a haircut and new style. She completely changed the hair color, the style, and she ditched her trademark eyeglasses for contact lens. Basically, everything about her from the neck up, was completely new and unfamiliar.] No, I can’t even laugh or chuckle about that one, and it has been over five years. The confusion that I deal with on a daily basis is sad and astounding.

Multiple studies agree that prosopagnosia is common on the Spectrum. One of the weird aspects is that those of us who have face blindness are often unaware that we have it. It wasn’t until I’d spent four decades with facial confusion before I realized that it wasn’t normal, that it had a name and that it was a common feature in Autism. I just thought everyone struggled to tell people apart.
If you think about it, face blindness really puts a damper on forming and maintaining social and interpersonal relationships. It’s hard to be caring and considerate if your friend frequently looks like a stranger. Absence may make the heart grow fonder but if you cannot easily recall a friend’s face, it is hard to send warm, fuzzy thoughts to them when away.

If making eye contact and looking into someone’s face elicits feelings of confusion, why do it? This is another hardship in trying to build relationships and friendships. If I’m at the store, and my friend waves at me but I don’t recognize her and fail to wave back, the friendship suffers as my pal feels slighted and ignored. (Probably shouldn’t have used waving as an example as I rarely ever use such a dramatic, public, uncomfortable gesture but I think it does illustrate the point well.)

I remember in high school, looking at my classmates in the yearbook. I found no one to be “attractive”. They all looked the same. My schoolmate would swoon over this guy or that and I would just internally be stymied, shaking my head in disbelief and wonder. I could not distinguish what an “attractive physical quality” was.

The inability to remember and distinguish one face from another puts a serious damper on forming and maintaining relationships, for sure.