Seriously.

The whole thing has been personally, professionally, existentially shattering.

I don’t actually know if I’ve had Covid-19 or not. I may have, back in March 2020, when Ireland was still sorting out its testing infrastructure. My elder child and I had the classic respiratory symptoms, but we didn’t get tested until (respectively) day 18 and day 11 after onset, and neither test detected the virus.

I spent the rest of 2020 enduring a series of irksome health crises, some of which landed me in hospital, some of which were consistent with long Covid, but since they were only one or two notches more serious than my usual tatty string of health issues, it’s impossible to say for certain what was going on.

Regardless, whether it was due to the Big Bad Virus or not, my already frail abilities to structure my time, plan and carry out tasks, act usefully in relation to non-urgent matters — in short, my executive function — just…

…c o m p l e t e l y . . .

. . . d  i  s  s  o  l  v  e  d  .  .  .

I mean.

Completely.

(Since you ask, yes, I still managed to do my one word and my one stitch every day. I’ve been doing that for a decade now, and apparently it’ll take more than the mere upending of life as we know it to stop me. But for many, many, many of those days, the word was more likely to be in a WhatsApp message than my novel draft, and the stitch was a few seconds’ work on a years-long crochet project I keep in my bedroom for times when no other textile work is possible. These still count, mind you. That’s part of the deal.)

But sure, look. Hardly surprising to be having difficulties, says you, in the foggy, floaty, out-of-time context of a hard lockdown.

You’re not wrong.

But even after the initial restrictions eased up, and we could once again venture more than a few kilometres away from our homes — and meet each other, carefully — and then maybe slightly less carefully — and people began to travel longer distances — and a timid, etiolated version of a summer holiday became a realistic possibility — and the autumn surge raised the stakes again — and a “meaningful Christmas” put us all back in the slammer for the beginning of 2021 — and then that, too, passed — and we began to get our jabs (ALLELUIA) — and all the rest of it … even after all that, I still felt significantly impaired. In myself. In my daily life, and in my broader being.

So around the middle of 2021 I went and got myself assessed for ADHD, and guess what? I have that.

Cue identity crisis.

It turns out I have a lot of internalised ableism. I wish it weren’t so, but there it is.

You see, the ADHD thing wasn’t my first time splashing around in this particular pond. It’s nearly four years now since a specialist confirmed my informed conclusion that I’m autistic. Turns out, in fact, that I’m a very typical case of a parent who watched their kids being assessed and diagnosed and went “…wait, if they are, what am I?” I sought an official diagnosis, not because I needed it for any immediate practical reason, but in large part as a gesture of solidarity with my children.

Being told I was indeed autistic was like being granted membership of an exclusive club to which I’d applied. It was a joyful and positive thing for me. Only later did the insidious effects of unchallenged ableism, and the realisation that I was unwittingly carrying decades of microtrauma, begin to make themselves felt. Let’s just say there’s a lot to unpack.

Adding ADHD to the picture really brings it into focus. I think it’s fair to say that the pandemic has made all disabilities more intense, and neurodiversity is no exception. 2021 has left me feeling like a Deficient and Disordered person — clue’s in the name, after all. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Thanks, eugenics!

(No, seriously. Get me to give you my rant about the history and politics of neurodiversity some time. It’s spicy.)

So that’s me: Deficient and Disordered.

Rationally, I know that’s bullshit.

Or at least, questionable.

Or at the very least, not the whole story … right?

But it’s a powerful discourse, very hard to push against when you’re already somewhat pulverised by *GESTURES AT EVERYTHING*.

For the avoidance of doubt: I am addressing the situation, with appropriate professional help, and I’m not currently in need of any health advice.

But what, you rightly ask, has ANY of this got to do with the price of lemons?

To put it another way, why am I telling you this — why here, and why now?

Fair question. Very fair.

I find the answer rather sad, actually. The fact is, part of what has happened to me is that I no longer feel able to speak with authority. I used to think I had a fairly good understanding of creativity and art-making — at least enough to start writing about them, and maybe to help a few people reach their own understanding.

Then again, I used to think I was a vaguely functional human being, and look how wrong THAT turned out to be!

Joke. That’s a joke.

(Mostly.)

Look, it’s not that I don’t believe I’m functional. Clearly, I am. Vaguely, at least. In parallel with all the evidence of my falling apart these past two years, I can also point to tonnes of things I did manage, and did achieve, despite everything.

It’s more that discovering I’m definitely extremely neurodivergent has turned my whole sense of self inside-out. Or moved it six metres to the left without warning me. Or revealed that I’ve actually been looking at the back of the tapestry all these years, not the front. And having been so oblivious to something so huge for so long, how can I trust myself to say anything useful?

For this and other reasons, I fell silent.

I stopped posting to the blog some time in 2020, and the mental topography of 2021 ensured that until now I haven’t been able to start again.

And you know what? That’s painful. It’s not what I want. My creative work is above all an act of communication, and Strange Forms was supposed to be my home, my haven, where I could express all the seething, sparking, swirling ideas I have about life and art and creativity and oh, everything.

That’s not actually how I set it up, though.

The truth is, Strange Forms, as I originally created it, turns out to be heavily masked.

Neurodivergent people mask some to most of the time. We learn it so young, and we do it so thoroughly, that we often don’t even see we’re doing it until some crisis forces us to look. It’s part of how we try to stay safe, and in the long term it’s quite bad for us.

Without intending it — or even realising what I was doing — I invented a mask persona for this site. I endowed her with traits and signals that I believed would make her plausible, likeable, acceptable. Essentially, I wanted her to pass as neurotypical — specifically, so that she’d have a chance at building a sustainable online business.

And that’s the crux of the whole thing. Because what I know deep in my bones — a strict rule of the world, which I’ve followed all my life — is that I will never be a Popular and Successful Human if I show the people what I’m really like. (Yeah, I know. Don’t argue. We’re talking emotions here.)

It follows from this that any attempt to present myself as conforming to the expectations of any group of people, no matter the context, necessarily involves masking. Because according to the rule as stated, not masking guarantees failure.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear that masking guarantees perdition.

A pretty conundrum.

We turn now, with a distinct sense of relief, to the price of lemons.

The basic deal is, things are going to be different around here.

1. Strange Forms is not going to behave much like an online business, at least for the next while. No try-my-delicious-creativity-coaching, no join-my-list, no buy-my-product. I want to see what I build when I’m an authentic version of myself, rather than a pallid, flimsy version of someone I’m imagining you want to see.
2. Strange Forms is very much part of how I need to express myself creatively. I have so many ideas and plans, and I really hope I can bring some of them into the world. I want to do lots of writing and visual art and making and performance. I want to make a podcast. I want to make a YouTube channel. Most importantly, I want to connect. And I have to be extremely careful about how I show up here, to avoid falling into the masking trap.
3. I still think that Reboot Your Creative Drive is potentially pretty useful. It was written before I reached my current understanding of myself, so I do cringe a bit at some parts of it. It was also written in the Before Times, and that shows. However, there’s a lot in there that might help someone. I’d like to keep it available. I’ll change the language around it, though.

All of this will happen gradually. I have a bit of rewriting and tweaking to do. I’ll be leaving the old blog posts up, because that’s how I roll, and I’m aiming to establish a regular posting practice here in 2022.

So yeah, the pandemic broke me.

What I’m kind of hoping is that it broke me open.

Wish me luck.