After

Welcome (back) to the pink room! Grab a seat, get comfortable… we might be here for a little while.

So the truth is I have been having a really hard time with the transition back to the States. But I thought for my own sanity, today I would give you an update. On all the beautiful things that have happened. In what I am dramatically calling (as of this writing) the “after” period. The period after I fell in love with a place and too many or just the right number of people. and then left.

So if beauty is all those crazy and sometimes hard but radically human parts of living. Then, I guess. I ought to tell you in these last 6 months, I have cried consistently. Like good-pillow-is-soaking-wet-and-you-are-in-a-different-dimension crying. And also those tears-seem-somehow-to-be-embarrassed-of-even-my-shamelessly-pink-bedroom-walls kind.

Being an adult is such a strange experience most days. It’s this realization that at the end of the day, it’s you. And only you. You alone are responsible for your living. Not because you are a god and can control the weather or something but because at night in that strange silence before sleep, it’s you. Your mind. and that strange pressure or annoying pain in your right pinky toe.

Coming back to live in my childhood bedroom, this time with a developed prefrontal cortex, I have become profoundly aware of this. No one is going to save me nor is interested in saving me. Because first of all save from what.

Okay, I am not actually sure if that makes any sense. Maybe it’s not as profound to you as it has been to me. Maybe you never actually had that feeling as a child. You know the one that someone actually knows something. That your life is almost like a controlled game. Where things can never get that bad. And also simultaneously can never get that good. Like there will always be a healthy level of dissatisfaction that you just can’t overcome. That no one can. Except the gamekeeper. I guess. And then at some arbitrary age, your brain out of nowhere says let me even things out a little bit. And you suddenly realize with an almost mystical clarity that life if it is a game only has two rules. You live and then die. And everything else. Like literally everything fucking else. is on the table. which is both terrifying and the most exhilarating news you have ever heard.

Okay, that still doesn’t make sense?

Fine.

I guess it’s best then. I let you in on the well-kept secret. That wasn’t really a secret to anyone but also somehow very much was. The next thing on my beautifully and undeniably human updates list.

I have discovered I am like positively, definitely, unquestionably well maybe not that. But like with a kind of stupid obviousness. Neurodivergent. And more specifically have/am that specific kind of neuro spicy known as AuDHD. This too has been exhilarating and terrifying. Things about my whole life make sense in a way that I truly did not know was even a possibility. And also I have been visited by an exhausting yet quite consistent spiral at noon every weekday and sometimes if I am lucky weekends too that I will forever be profoundly misunderstood.

I mean how crazy is it to discover that not only do you think differently than that one friend but actually the whole goddamn “general” population. It wasn’t miscommunication it was different brain chemistry. It was a lack of object permanence and cognitive empathy. It was that need for sensory stability and schedule consistency. It was your sheer lack of ability to read facial expressions. And yeah that wasn’t a neurotypical thing. No, they don’t understand what you mean. And yeah your love of monologues… not typical either. People. I mean normal people. Ask questions in conversation and have an appropriate time limit of 5 minutes for each talking block. And yes, if you try and communicate your atypical needs you will almost always be the unicorn. And yes. Most people will look at you like you are insane. Except for perhaps this small group, if you’re lucky, of neurodivergent friends whose brains also seem to work in one-hour talking blocks.

And that of course doesn’t even cover that friend who’s really not a friend known as focus. She actually loves to ignore you. which definitely isn’t typical. but you are also just a little desperate. and she is such a coy one. And who isn’t thrilled by a little emotional inconsistency? Okay, actually don’t even get me started on her. If only you knew. She is in fact entirely responsible for our little chat today since I of course have an impending deadline that I must do right now. So here we are. And yes, this is only cute on paper and terrible in all other aspects of supposed typical life.

And yes, is it also the most beautiful experience to discover that you are not crazy on an instagram reel recycled onto the facebook internet version. To be seen for the first time. To laugh at how exactly they explained that thing no one anywhere could understand about you. After so many “I-have-never-met-anyone-who-thinks-like-you” to finally meet someone who thinks exactly like you to the point your ego is now acting up because of course you are still an individual so this is all a little creepy.

And before we get too carried away. I meant to tell you I saw my friend the other day. And l think I am in love with her. I mean of course I am. I mean who isn’t in love with their friends. And also friendship is a strange experience and I think it gets stranger as you get older. Because she is also her own whole person. And there are ways that we perhaps never can truly understand each other. And there are ways in which our desires are misaligned and very much aligned. And what does it mean to know someone for long enough to not know them at all? And then do it all over again.

And I also fell in love with these beautiful brown kids. Only because this 8-year-old girl told me all she wants to do with a million dollars is make a million statues of me. And so I really don’t mind that each statue is then only worth a dollar. And that 5-year-old who in 30 seconds managed to validate my entire wardrobe choices because as all people know art teachers of course have to wear too many colors for the average eye to process. And that when the adults wanted to call me Miss but gender scares me most days… an impromptu choir of kids who don’t really know me all that well said with a confidence I have still not managed to even feign in the acting out of my name. “No, it’s Teacher. It’s Teacher Jamie.

Oh and maybe I should also tell you. before we go. I am definitely queer. Not sure if that was in question but with prefronty cortex all good to go. It’s clear. If there were said questions, I am here to tell you. I am like queer queer. Like fuck gender and also scared of men, queer. You know the kind. The kind of queer that makes you prone to revolution and the particular pleasure of a warm meal that tastes like a home you don’t yet know on a winter afternoon. The good sapphic kind of queer. And the I kind of want to be a gay man at midnight kinda queer. And really. I think I mean. I want to write love letters to all my friends and also that one stranger I just met who understood exactly what I meant when I spoke of the euphoria of a song that hits just right.

There is probably more to say. But we said we would stick with the beautiful things today. And I really must do that said thing due today at midnight.

And yes. if you were wondering whether this entire post was me giving you permission to write and send me love letters in the mail. Yes. I won’t put my address here and I will not be surprised by your text.

Okay. till next time then. So, see you again then. Back in the pink room (which by the way has now become metaphor again) !