Healing, Hallucinogens, and Hairdos
As you may’ve noticed if you’ve seen me in person over the last month or so, my personal hair stylist has had the absolute nerve to go on medical leave and just abandon me to the elements. And the universe has been cruel.
Today I’m proud (and relieved) to announce that they did hair for the first time since their surgery. While certainly not fully back to working yet, this badass chick’s progress is undeniable. 💖 (and fear not; after photos are coming)
My hair has been the centerpiece of my visual self-expression for decades. Since my teen years, I’ve been shaving my sides as low as I was allowed and coloring the top the most interesting hues I could without getting fired or expelled.
Nearly 30 years later I’m beginning a journey toward more subtlety, and I’m not doing it to please anyone else. After a totally normal amount of overthinking, I realize this urge comes from feeling a new kind of safety.
Safety
My abrupt layoff last year and my 14 month struggle to find any work I could sustain broke me. I spiraled into despair for months. I counted down the months I could pay bills with savings and donations before I would lose my home.
I lamented the apparent fact that my job, in the sense I’d signed up for and invested in it for nearly twenty years, doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s largely been absorbed into another job I can do if hired, but never enjoyed or wanted. The most personally fulfilling parts of it have been deprioritized by most employers even within that consolidation.
Beyond all the rejections, my days were filled with fighting and re-fighting the same battles over and over again to receive healthcare, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and other relief that I was supposed to have every right to. Every routine in my daily life triggered the looming threat of losing the happy life I’d finally found after a lifetime searching.
Suicidal Ideation crept back into my fantasies after over a decade of freedom from it.
I returned to proactive weekly therapy for the first time since my divorce.
Therapy
I chose E from 10 (thankfully free) consultations with therapists who either specialized or had significant experience with autism, depression, PTSD, trans identity, and/or non-monogamy.
The first 2 or 3 sessions with any new therapist tend toward an introductory chapter with an unreliable narrator. E picked up where I was and where I wanted to be pretty quickly. They had creative ideas for methods we could try to deal with both my present anxiety and my oldest internal foes.
Kalbi died around then, so I worked through dread and mourning from that as well.
Our early sessions were focused on a recent return of panic attacks I hadn’t suffered in 6-7 years and managing the ideation. We focused on talk therapy while laying the groundwork to try EMDR, an unintuitive therapy used to help safely access traumatic memories.
EMDR
I was very skeptical. E was optimistic about how EMDR could help me, but didn’t oversell it. Considering the old knots I was trying to untangle were so near my developmental roots, I wedged my mind open a smidge to try it.
EMDR helped. Kind of remarkably, too.
It took a few practice runs for me to be able to move my eyes the right way without focusing my full attention on it. Like patting my head while rubbing my belly, it started difficult but quickly became second nature with practice. Soon we were able to time travel to several events in my past.
I realized a few interesting correlations with terrible things happening to me in cars that may inform why I hate them so much. (Turns out it’s not just the permanent chronic pain from an auto accident!)
After our first full session with it, I remembered (or reconstructed) the scene inside a red Toyota Corolla parked in the garage of a shopping mall where I caught my first love cheating and was informed of the frequency it’d been happening for months.
It’s wild to write this huge-to-me thing that I’ve only been able to speak about in detail to a select few people for 25 years in a single sentence. Often using up whole hours describing what I wouldn’t allow myself to actually go back to in my own mind and remember.
PTSD
EMDR helped me remember the details. Despite my hopes, I didn’t discover that I misremembered what I saw and what was said. All the painful things I had tangled inside were still present and in focus, but I didn’t recoil and pivot my mind to a less dangerous place like I usually do.
I sat in the Toyota again and gazed out the window over my ex’s shoulder at the orange tinted lighting of the garage and how unnervingly empty it was at 11pm on a Friday night. Her words landed clearly but I couldn’t hold eye contact while hearing them. The still-lit display window of department store mannequins wearing the trends of 2002’s rich 30-something white ladies. The shattered plastic and liberated watch battery of the clicker for my ’97 Honda Civic that scattered after my keys hit a concrete pillar.
All the while panning my eyes left and right in crisp rhythm. E used their movements to monitor how close I veered toward dissociation and how well the movement kept me aware of where my physical body actually was.
The details grounded me. After a few more sessions I came to remember dozens of other things in that place and time that weren’t hurting me. Those things were minor triggers I wasn’t even fully conscious of until after those sessions. With repeated exposure to everything, I remembered their powerlessness. The scene became just another Jersey mall. Just another young couple arguing in a public place. Two kids making all the mistakes kids do.
I’d talked the talk of forgiveness for a long time. That narrative was the person I wanted to be after that experience. In that process I think I depersonalized her actions to try and get there. I made blanket judgments about love, women, and trust between two people who can never truly know each other.
I jumped the gun. I skipped the step where I acknowledged that this “stupid thing that happens to everyone (so why do I keep being so melodramatic about it?)” really fucked me up. And the step where I allow myself to mourn and self-soothe fully.
I went through this with a few other pivotal traumatic events I’ve already written about. I don’t think I’m “cured” of any of it, but it feels like my scar tissue is less sensitive to things rubbing against it. I’m less afraid to use those muscles again.
For a while this really helped my depression. I felt myself writing better cover letters and giving better interviews as my life felt less stuck. Even if I still didn’t have a job yet, at least I was showing progress somewhere in life. Rejection stung less.
Money
Dread of financial ruin still dragged me down. My COBRA benefits ran out and I was left paying out of pocket for this life-saving mental healthcare. I was able to qualify for a sliding scale discount — thank goodness — once the insurance changed and we had to spend months trying to regain coverage. That was a lot to put on my credit card and it still isn’t clear how much Kaiser is going to recoup because they’ve been inconsistent, opaque, and obstructive the entire time.
Several people stepped up to help me out with one-off donations or favors, which I’m forever grateful for, but it wasn’t consistent enough to rely on for monthly bills. And of course not, because barely anyone has disposable income right now. My partner and I started making worst case scenario plans that we feared would put a strain on our amazing relationship. Risking that felt scarier than almost anything else.
I quit Magic and began selling my priciest cards. Craigslist saw rapid fire posts from me selling off books, shoes, and anything else I thought I could get a return from. I started asking around about how willing people would be to let me live with them for a while if it came to that.
Miraculously, my family came to the rescue. My mom saw how hopeless I was becoming and arranged a monthly allowance that allowed me to stop worrying about losing my home. I can’t imagine how much she has to sacrifice to do this, and I tear up whenever I think about it.
My housing anxiety started to fade, but guilt began to enter the picture in its stead. It was around that time when E suggested another method I hadn’t tried before.
Ketamine Therapy
I won’t pretend I never had ketamine before. The playful pillow fights, fully clothed pool plunges, and cuddle puddles the party version inspired were pretty fun. The pure medical grade lozenges with professional guidance were quite different.
Like my heroic dose of psilocybin, these dosages are intense. I still feel the “forcefield” of illusory safety and confidence that I experienced before, but the visuals become far more pronounced. We had a streak going for a while where I mentioned visualizing swirling curry like in a recently stirred pot.
It’s like a guided meditation, except the guide is your modified brain chemistry. Like EMDR, it made me feel safe to take some risky mental pathways. I came to find a closer bond with my core beliefs. I faced my fears about being a burden to my loved ones. The internalized stigma I hold for accepting help made itself clear enough to fairly easily destroy with logic. It also brought me to some truths about how little the things I was doing for money actually reflect those core values. How unemployment isn’t truly standing on my throat so much as those ideas about letting my community support me when I need it.
All of these things eventually brought me out of the spiral. I started feeling noticeably lighter and more optimistic after 2 or 3 sessions. They’ve continued to improve in the several sessions since, and I expect to do at least 5 more before I stop asking for refills.
I can’t know for sure, but I theorize that feeling calmer and less desperate contributed to me finally nailing some interviews.
Work
I started my new job in the end of July. At first I didn’t celebrate much, out of fear of it evaporating instantly before my eyes without notice like so many other opportunities over the last year.
Pushing through a fleeting hesitation about how it could negatively impact my career to say so, I think this might be the first job I’ve had since college where I believe in the company mission. I work for a law firm who handles class action lawsuits against big companies on behalf of regular folks. So far, this seems to be mostly huge tech, banking, and insurance companies. Some of the supervillains of my moral views. This gig is as close to a kickass Robin Hood mission our capitalist world can do legally as I can recall ever having an opportunity to contribute to.
This job helps me so much, but it doesn’t pay enough to stop relying on my mom entirely. I’m hoping I can fix that by growing within the company and eventually not need her financial help anymore. If I can make enough to self-sustain again without having to compromise the wonderful feeling of actually bettering the world with my work, that could potentially make this whole struggle feel well worth the pain of the last year.
Pride & Purpose
When I tell people about my new job, I smile the way I never did about making exploitative blogs for wannabe influencers to sell supplements, developing porn sites, doing 3D animation for The Church of Scientology, helping a predatory lender look legitimate, building websites for a SaaS company, or selling the most boring clothing on the planet.
[Aside] I’m still pretty happy with the work I did designing casino games and sports book interfaces in Las Vegas, even if that company did fuck me over in the end. That may be the last time I felt proud to tell people about my work.
Each of those other jobs was a compromise to be able to live a sustainable life. Funding mostly rent, food, and whatever coping mechanisms I could afford. Eventually healthcare, then therapy. Some travel I only dreamed of being able to do before.
I was contributing to a 401k I secretly considered my fund for an eventual suicidal blaze of glory, rather than expecting to actually retire. I’m pleased to report that my ideas for those accounts — well, the one that survived the last year — have begun shifting to a more mundane and tapered finale. I’m in less of a rush to check things off my bucket list lately.
Hormones
I’m already working on an entire post about my first year on HRT, but suffice to say it’s been a huge factor in fighting off a lifetime existential depression I never expected to chip away at enough to see light breaking through.
It’s much easier to imagine myself happy in the future.
Which brings me back to my hair.
Visual Expression
Perhaps this change is motivated by yet another attempt to buck expectations. After 25 years of magentas, teals, oranges, and everything between, perhaps my natural color is the subversion. It certainly felt strange to see myself in the mirror once we did it.
Part of my loud style choices over the years has been comfort. Literal comfort because feeling medium-short hair bristling against my ears squicks me out in similar hard-to-explain-without-autism ways as my tactile hatred for closed shoes.
In less literal ways, it was based on pursuing social comfort. I realize in hindsight how much of my style was signaling others about who I am.
Queer Signaling
My earliest memory of this is when I got my ear pierced at the mall. I remember being semi-aware that one of the ears meant I was gay but having no idea which one it was. Even now, I looked it up and saw different articles claiming each side was the queer one, so the internet wouldn’t even have helped me if I had it then. 🤣
I also didn’t know what it meant to be gay. I assumed based on how other kids talked like it was an accusation, that it was totally a bad thing. Either I was and I should hide that somehow, or I wasn’t and I shouldn’t accidentally get any of it on me by mistake. I honestly can’t remember which ear I pierced first, but it must’ve been the queer one because kids never stopped calling me gay — even through college.
Feedback Suppression
Another thing kids teased me about was my “elf ears”. I was born with pointed ears and I’ve always liked them, despite people constantly pointing them out to me as if they were a spot of ketchup I could wipe away with a napkin.
Once I was old enough to get as many things pierced as I wanted without parental consent, I got those points pierced. Mostly because I like the aesthetic, but also to show people that “Yes, I’m aware that my ears are pointed” and it worked instantaneously. Comments about them went from 2-3 weekly to maybe one annually. This was one of the first ways I discovered I could use my visual presentation to deflect unwanted attention just as much as I could use it to attract attention I did want.
It turns out, shitty salespeople at the mall don’t try to spray you with overpriced cologne if you have an orange mohawk, wear half of Hot Topic, and house seven piercings in your face. The same turned out to be true for the predatory credit card companies and military recruiters at my campus not asking the tattooed kid to apply. Nor the preppy bible-thumping cultish youth group recruiters. We’re accomplishing some big voluntary alienation missions here. 👍
Finding Home
From age 18 through 38, I moved 19 times. 5 of those were to entirely new regions of the country. I’ve had to start over and meet new friends each time, often in places where I didn’t know even one other person yet.
I carried around dice or other gaming paraphernalia to invite conversations about Magic, D&D, and video games. Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, A Perfect Circle, and [redacted artists who’re a little embarrassing in hindsight] tee shirts helped me find friends to go to concerts with. Stickers on the backs of my laptops showed off my political stances toward liberty, privacy, equality, and peace so I’d find the right kinds of activists.
Sometimes I wore makeup or clothing suggestive of my curiosity or experimentation with different sexual orientations or kinks if I was going to a particular kind of club or party. (I didn’t know at the time, but I was likely playing with gender expectations more than anything explicitly sexual.)
I essentially wanted to set the expectations of the world that I’m not typical, and I wanted my atypical kindred to invite me to their secret hideouts.
Solidarity
Recent experiences reaching out to my community for help (for myself and my partner) and having them unhesitatingly respond has solidified my feeling that California is my home. HRT has bestowed upon me a peace of mind that I’ve found an internal chemical harmony I’d previously only assumed exists because others seemed to have it naturally. The apartment I bought in a walkable sanctuary city has continued to feel like fertile soil for me to continue to grow from.
I believe I’ve found my place in the world.
So while I still want to signal my other-ness to the world, I have the benefit of not needing a response. And all this self discovery has led me to some answers about what specifically is other about me, I can be more precise. Baiting a few hooks rather than casting wide nets.
More Subtle, but Still Obnoxious
I’m not toning down where it counts, mind you. I’ll still be screaming at protests and elbowing my way into conversations where marginalized folks aren’t openly welcomed and accommodated. I will continue to be a transparently messy human who’s always in some awkward middle state of metamorphosis.
And I think that’s what’s changing right now. The motivations for how I present myself — whether that was cutting my hair short and donning a suit for an interview or accessorizing with my Fuck Putin pin to find others on the right side of history — had been at least partially about external validation or means to an end. I feel greater ownership of the choices I’ve been making recently. And my consideration of how others react is one of after-the-fact curiosity rather than factors in those choices.
This feels like the beginning of a fun new fashion journey, stemming from healthier roots than I’ve had before. 😊