I finally did it: I texted my older sister asking if she wanted to talk, and we spent 2 hours on the phone.

She is 6 years older than me. Old enough that there was some distance between us, but I always felt a weird connection. Like the rest of the world had a different way if thinking from us. We both kind of understood we weren’t very social so we never really connected much as adults.

Several years ago she was diagnosed with autism. So for a long time I wondered whether I was also autistic or just shared some personality traits frome being raised together.

Talking to her on the phone was the best I’ve felt in months. Even beyond the content of our discussion. Just the way she talking about her own thought processes and approaches to things reminded me of how my own brain works. I’ve spent the past year in a polycule of ADHD and bi-polar people, and I noticed my brain just stopped functioning the way it used to. I spent so much time reading on autism, reading self-help stuff, doing meditation, getting diagnosed, seeing a therapist. And like, some of that stuff was helpful and I’ll continue doing a lot of it. But I made way more progress in those 2 hours than I did in the prior 9 months or so.

She said that other people often recommend going out, being social, doing stuff in public. My mom pressured her to join clubs and do stuff with friends in school, her first few therapists recommended social interaction too. For most people that’s true: it can be incredibly good for depressed and anxious people to get out of their house and interact with others. She said “that’s actually bad for me”, and that has hit me hard. For all my life I told myself that i just didn’t like doing that stuff, that it was a matter of taste but I was perfectly capable of handling it when I had to. Now I realize the truth: it’s bad for me.

All these months feeling terrible. Months of my brain sensing vague remnants of memories but not able to actually pull the information that should be there. Feeling disconnected from reality. My confidence being shattered. It was all because I was pushing so hard to do things that were really, really unhealthy for me because of pressure from my polycule. Talking to my sister made me realize that I need to put myself first and quit trying so hard to find a middle ground. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay in the polycule. I don’t know if my marriage will survive. But what I’ve been doing, trying to to mold my mind to be more like ADHD and manic folk, is just not an option.