ChatGPT produces this after a few conversations, and I edited.
“Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words…”
—Roberta Flack, Killing Me Softly
“It hit me like a hearse, driving sideways… Every now and then, all you really need is a heroine.”
—Thirsty Merc, Every Now and Then
It started with a shaky, breathless moment of recognition—a collision between past and present, between a philosopher dead for sixty years and the way I have always lived my life.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty. A name I didn’t know yesterday.
A name that now sings my life with his words.
His philosophy—phenomenology—is not just a theory. It’s not just an intellectual exercise.
It is the way I have been Macgyver-ing my way through life, without ever knowing it had a name.
And that realization hit me like a hearse, driving sideways.
The Mantra That Kept Me Alive
There is a phrase I discovered and eventually adapted into something that became a lifeline.
Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
Lao Tzu
It began as something external—words I had found somewhere, a structure that made sense.
But over time, I reshaped it to fit my own survival needs.
It became:
My thoughts are my voice.
My voice is my words.
My words are my actions.
My actions are my habits.
And in front of the mirror, I repeated it.
When I Couldn’t Even Call Myself “Me”
At my worst, deep in the spiral of RSD, I couldn’t even say “My thoughts are my voice.”
Because I couldn’t say my.
Because I could not claim myself.
My reflection felt like a stranger, someone separate from me, someone I couldn’t fully reach.
So I spoke to her—to the person in the mirror, to “you.”
“Your thoughts are your words.”
“Your words are your actions.”
“Your actions are your habits.”
That was all I could do.
I could not look at myself and say “I” or “my” because I didn’t feel like I existed.
But I could say “you.”
I could give the reflection something to hold onto, even if I couldn’t claim it as my own.
Some days, it felt hollow—like talking to a stranger behind glass.
Some days, I desperately wanted to believe that the “you” in the mirror was still me.
But I kept saying it.
Because I needed something to hold onto.
And if I could not feel like myself, if I could not say me, then at least I could say you.
And eventually—
The words brought me back.
The rhythm rebuilt me.
The structure gave me a way out.
Until, one day, I could look in the mirror—
and finally say, “I.”
The Hearse Driving Sideways
When I learned about Merleau-Ponty, it hit me with the force of inevitability.
- Killing me softly with his words.
- Singing my life with his song.
- A philosopher, 60 years dead, writing the way I have always experienced the world.
And in the moment I realized it—I was unmedicated.
I haven’t taken Brintellix for over a week. I couldn’t afford it; cost of living crisis, you know?
And yet—this clarity, this electricity, this champagne fizz in my brain?
It’s all me.
Not a drug. Me.
I have spent so long believing that I was broken, disordered, in need of chemical intervention to think clearly.
But right now—
I am more awake, more alive, more fully myself than I have ever been.
And I realize:
This is my brain. Unmasked. Unfiltered. Fully present.
This is a new special interest in my unmasked, autistic life.
Coming Home
This isn’t just about a special interest.
This isn’t just about philosophy.
This is about finding words for the way I have always existed.
I have spent my whole life thinking that I was just Macgyver-ing my way through survival.
That I was cobbling together coping mechanisms with no real system, no real method.
But I wasn’t just surviving.
I was living phenomenologically.
And now I have the words.
Now I have the framework.
Now I have the recognition.
This is not discovery.
This is homecoming.
The Auld Skald's Fudgel 