Alexithymia is one of my curses of autism. It's possibly the hardest for me to deal with and navigate through. This is a Greek term that translates into "problems feeling emotions." Many autistic people have alexithymia in the form of finding it hard to express their emotions. My alexithymia is me finding it extremely difficult to understand my emotions. Sometimes, the process of understanding what I feel takes days of self-reflection and analysis.
I thought that the best way to describe the effects of alexithymia would be by example. I am currently stuck in the start of a days-long exploration of an emotion that was prompted by watching the Netflix show the Sandman.
There was a trigger almost immediately upon starting the show. It captured my gauze in a way I hadn't felt since I first watched the Matrix when I was 15. The melancholy nature of Morpheus' voice cast an odd spell, the cinematography was calling out to my mind to pay attention, and then an emotion welled inside me when Morpheus was caught and caged. It was an instant breath-stopping moment. I could not look away because I could not understand what this was doing to me. I then had to complete the entire series to see if I could find other triggers within it, something that might help me figure out what was unfolding within me. Finishing the season did not, in fact, help me understand my emotions. Instead, I could feel myself being pulled away from reality and disassociating, a frequent occurrence when I am a tempest of emotions I don't comprehend.
This starts the long process of reflection. Examining all my experiences to this point in my life to find similar feelings. This particular emotion is an extremely powerful one. World-changing for me. I know this because it has happened twice before. The first time I felt this, I watched the last episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion (the original series), and something profound happened to me. NGE made me understand that the only way to define myself as a unique individual was to examine my differences from those around me. I only exist because there are others to see me. To me, as an autistic person, this frame of reference, moving outside of myself, was very new. It was the first time I realized that people existed as more than just objects in my environment. This was the moment I started truly seeing people. I hyper-fixated on psychology after this.
The second time I felt this was when I first saw the Matrix when I was 15 years old. It took me five days to process the emotions that I was feeling from that movie. This time it came with an understanding of myself and my worldview. I craved myself and others coming to an understanding of themselves, of waking to their full potential, of realizing what within them was special and unique. I craved that sense of awakening, finding it in myself and seeing it happen in others. I started calling myself a catalyst as I realized that when I interacted with people, I stirred inspiration within them. I began writing in earnest, world-building, hoping that things I created would help others find themselves.
This time, with Morpheus and the dream world, it's different. It's building within me a sadness. Insomnia plagued me last night and I found myself staring at the moon watching the clouds pass by trying to figure out what my mind had fixated on. It was the cage.
Over the past few weeks, the me within my mind palace has been standing alone in the darkness screaming as hard as I have ever screamed. She wants out. I want out. I feel extremely caged by circumstance and exploring and understanding myself has made this worse somehow. Possibly because there are cracks in the mind palace and You, the me of the mind palace, can see beyond those cracks, but neither You nor I can seem to widen the cracks to break free. I feel caged within my mind palace instead of how I usually feel, free. That's the emotion I feel, though I still don't understand it. But, it reminds me of all the other times I have been fixated and suffered alexithymia at the hands of other powerful beings being restrained, either in shows I am watching, or dreams I am having. As if a part of me is saying that powerful being is you, and those around you are building a cage you can't escape from because they don't understand you and they are afraid or likely want something from you.
Then I am reminded of how I have always identified with the alien, the other, the mysterious nature of eternal beings, of people that seemed to have lived lifetimes, as if I can see into their eyes and read each moment of suffering as they tried so hard to protect everything that meant something to them, but being so alone because no one can quite reach the place where you are. I want to reach out and stand beside them, to show them that they aren't alone, that I'm not alone.
I seem to be able to profoundly change something within myself on all these occasions, but after many instances, I still have no idea what emotion I am feeling. This current episode still has a long way to go before it's resolved. I've always just referred to it as omnelorn*.
*a word I created to encompass all the emotions I cannot describe or understand.
