Skip to main content

Hiding myself...




No straight promises 
No straight love
No straight path
No straight art
There’s no path in life
When walls block the way  
You break through these walls
Scramble through the woods
When you find your path 
You can understand
Only your passion leads you
In this cold rabbit hole

In these Covid-19 days when everyone must stay at home, I am staying in Leamington. Early in lockdown, I felt hot and cold all over because I caught the coronavirus. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to overcome it without developing heavy symptoms or requiring hospitalisation. Although weeks have passed, I still feel tired and sluggish.


It was a great shock for me to return to the real, hard-hearted world after peaceful Elan Valley, where I lived for two months in a happy dream with mindful self-compassion, and this shock later turned into a nightmare. It was very hard for me to understand how some people have a soul darker than a starless night. It makes me shudder to think of it. I feel my life is a graveyard of buried hopes.
I felt suicidal and I tried to cope with my emotional pain, frustration, and intense anger in a way that was harmful to me. Life became an agony, an utter agony.

I remember a sentence from Jane Eyre: “If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” I understood that I needed to be friends with myself before others. I read it again and again in English to stay in my mind and my heart.

Fortunately, during this process, I have been learning a lot about myself and how I have masked myself as an aspie woman... For me, masking myself is more harmful even than not knowing I’m autistic. Masking means that I create a different Meltem to handle every situation. I have never felt a strong connection with my core which I never realised. When I am confronted with emotional upset, my brain immediately goes into “fix it” mode, searching for a way to make the other person feel better so I can also relieve my own distress.

In that period, I was very lucky to have Andy who loves, cares, and believes in me, and I also feel thankful to my clinical psychologist, Dr. Rona Aldridge, from the Integrated Autism Service who met me every two weeks, and to Psychosexual therapist, Sally Duncan. I talked to her every week on WhatsApp. It’s so painful but I think it’s good to bring everything into the daylight and realise that nightmares aren’t so scary separated out from the dark. Here in this process, I will share what I have been learning about myself with you.

First of all, there was a question that has been in my head: how could I be more autistic every day,
after every unexpected big emotional crisis? How was it that I was discovering new symptoms and that it was increasingly hard for me to control them at all? I know I can’t be more autistic, so what is this drama? Am I pitying myself? Am I afraid of facing reality? Am I afraid of taking on my responsibilities? All the issues and self-doubt that affected me for years, I believed I had dealt with them, suddenly reappeared to haunt me, like ghosts. They overcame me.

I had been disguising my autistic self, the part of me I always hide. I’m struck with astonishment. When I stay with my autistic self, my identity disappears in a dark rabbit hole… I can’t reach it because I can’t find it. I lost my identity with my masks… Which mask… Which identity… Myself… Autistic self...  Aspie self…  My self?... My?... I...  Down.. down...

Although I am 52 years old, I feel I have fallen down into a dark, cold rabbit hole. Age is no protector.  I could easily hurt myself at any moment, I could easily be lost and cease to exist in this world. Meltem was gone. I couldn’t reach her and her mind. Was it temporary? How and why was this happening? Why can't I control this anymore? How was it that I was so easily lost in a dark rabbit hole. I couldn’t understand clearly and it was not easy to believe and cope with what I had been through, was going through now, whilst I was living in such a bewildered mindset.

Studies with women who can mask their autism very well, who are successful in their careers and diagnosed at an older age, like me, have shown that our masks can be destroyed in some cases in spite of ourselves.

In my experience, the cracking of the mask prevents me from controlling the situations that agitate my emotions and my senses as easily as I had done before and I have to face functional problems that I wasn’t previously aware of… In a sense, I’m more fragile, more vulnerable, and sometimes even unfamiliar with the process of adaptation which was very new and destabilising for me.

The situations that cause the cracking of masks could be the menopause, negative emotions, big disappointments, unbearable stress, sleeping problems, life changes, relationship problems, traumatic experiences, communication problems, false accusations, intense sensory perceptions, etc...

Looking back at the last several years of my life, I have been thrown into navigating most of the challenging aspects and life experiences mentioned above, and there has been a complete cracking of all masks. Perhaps this mask cracking process is still ongoing… This process is not easy at all, sometimes my soul, sometimes my heart, sometimes all my cells hurt, but it also causes me to recognise a liberation I have never known before.


The biggest benefit of this process is that I am learning again like a child to be open to re--evaluating everything with curiosity and enthusiasm. It also gives me the chance to reconstruct the rest of my life without hiding myself, without being subjugated to anyone and to live without fear.

Little by little 
I came into this dark tunnel
Remembering disappointments
Remembering lies
Remembering past years
Like a song I forgot
I don’t believe
How the story is set
A world full of hate
If you stumble no one will heed


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I thought it was Menopause but it was Autism...

My feelings are knotted... Lost, eluding me always chasing them to understand,  not able to catch up. The darkness I can’t tell... sometimes I drowned,   I tire of running away. Living in turmoil... sometimes you enjoy, sometimes you fade away to sound... with sound... to words… with words... In all of this emotional turmoil, I noticed that I had put on weight, despite intermittent fasting and not eating more than usual and walking everyday. I started to swell constantly and had hot flashes. Suddenly, I was burning hot and sweating as if I had a shower. And my periods were starting to get delayed. It was the beginning of menopause. The menopause knocked on my door in the most complicated period of my life. It coincided with the news that in Turkey, farcical indictments had been brought demanding life sentences for 16 civil society leaders, including myself, in connection with the 2013 Gezi Park protests. This is an ongoing process. I was handling

I was enchanted...

This is time on my own.  This is an adventure.  I’m living in another world, In the world of nature… Success or failure means nothing  I’m living without any demands on me, I’ve got all my skills, I’ve got all my energy, I’m relaxed, It doesn’t matter whether I win or lose... Able to live without critical voices...  I’m alone… My new home… In nature… Everybody left but I didn’t feel sad. I’m alone... I don’t have to do anything… Without “have to” or “should do” I don’t know how I'll live… After everybody had gone, I cleaned and tidied up the house. I’m alone…  I listened to the radio but after one hour even the radio was too much for me. I turned it off.… I made a cup of tea… It was very unusual for me because I don’t like coffee or tea but I really wanted to drink a cup of tea while listening to the voice of the wood burner. I felt fantastic. I was free to be confused and be no one... I was enchanted. I’m alone… I adore my new cottage, of course

After Wales...

Between trees hundreds of years old I was searching for my past  at the top of the mountain.  Within the shades of greens asking the rivers  watering the meadows. Speaking with lotus flowers lying on the river bed I  touched the rocks trying to understand what I missed.  I’m  hurt inside by the wind carrying my past Torrents fell from my eyes I thrust my head into the clouds confused, unable to breathe… not knowing what I missed. I’m hurt inside by the wind carrying my past Over the years I got used to living with illnesses and eccentricities. I had created a small world with very few people and I was struggling in that rarefied world. Until one day I came to Wales. Wales was the first place I felt I belonged. Wales became an obsession for me after I came to Brecon fifteen years ago for my English course. My biggest dream was to live in Wales one day... I dreamed the day would come... One day… However, in the space of one night, I ha

Dance with catastrophe

  I should do more  Nothing is enough.  More more more I never understand  What is enough When will I be enough Family,  Society,  Culture  Friends  More, more, more  I should give more… I should buy more I should do more I should feel more I never understand  What is enough When will I be enough More more more I lost everything I have nothing left  No more… No more… No more I get it I’m already enough… Enough is enough We are often told we should put ourselves in the shoes of others but walking in someone’s footsteps is not the same as getting inside their mind. I always thought I understood people but after all, I have faced, I don’t understand them at all…  I was in the depths of despair.  It’s a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. I was in the dark night, profoundly unsettled, seeing no way out. It pushed me to the edge of what is familiar and reliable, stretching my understanding of how life works and what controls it. The dark night forced me way beyond my capacity for pain but it

I could hear the Elan Valley calling for me...

Once you become alienated from your surroundings, slowly you’d become more introverted. You’d start searching for your desire to belong in Nature; starting on the mountains, spreading to the meadows, branching out the trees, and becoming a bridge between the melody of the culture you were not born to and yourself.  Nature determines the belonging on behalf of you and you take sanctuary in your new culture: not upsetting you; not betraying your trust; not making any surprises.  From then on, to belong would mean rhythm, and finds oneself in nature. When you can't find words, you learn the language of Nature. The wind, mountains,   rain, land… Everything started on Facebook. One night I was checking my Facebook page and one of my friends had shared information about the Elan Valley fellowship. Normally if it is some application there I always ignore it. It doesn’t matter what it is. But when I read about the fellowship and saw Elan Valley picture in spite of myself my heart

With Zehra...

I’m not a little girl who used to love walking, I'm not a little girl who beats the wind in the mountain. I'm not a little girl who easily cries I'm not a little girl whose colourful dreams were shattered... I try not to remember The weight of all your words I carry in my mind Zehra was my second guest. She is a kurdish painter who spent more than 2 years in jail in Turkey. I was a bit anxious because I didn’t know her personally before she came here. One week together, one to one… I haven’t got a car so we picked her up on Saturday night from Llanidloes with Filiz. Filiz went back to Swansea on Sunday and Sunday could have been my alone day… I have to clean the whole cottage and cook for my guest and enjoy it a bit by myself.  But this Sunday I was with Zehra. I woke up a bit early and I didn’t want to wake her up. I made the fire first, then started cleaning. Zehra had woken up now and on seeing me busy said “Why didn't you wake me

With Filiz...

Full of seedlings... Yearning for blue roses This path Opens our weaknesses  Like a song That remains Full of roses And dead silence Being reborn With every century  That inks into A new chapter (Filiz Çelik)