What Would You Call The Chapters Of Your Life?

 

As Matt Smith's Doctor said "'We are all stories in the end, just make it a good one eh?'" 

Saturday I attended a retreat and one of the activities was:

• Life Chapters Journaling Prompt: If you were to think about your life in the past, present, and future, how would you break it up into three chapters? What would the chapter titles be and what is the book title?

Those who know me know fandoms, characters, and real-life people who have become characters inside my mind, and so on and so on are deeply intertwined with my life. 

Fandoms are my blood, fandoms are my bones, fandoms are who I am and who I hope to be, fandoms are my community and my connection, fandoms are how I understand other people, fandoms are how I understand the world around me, and fandoms are me and I am fandoms. 

Here is a poem I created as a result of the prompt at the retreat. Note over all my life story/titles represent just some of the fandoms I am interwoven with: Legends of Tomorrow, Wentworth Miller Speeches, Doctor Who etc.

Life Chapters

By Dreaming Ace

Asked for a title for my life’s past chapter

My past chapter I call “There Are No Strings On Me”*

Like Wentworth Miller “I’ve had a complicated

Relationship with that word, ‘community.”**

Like James Baldwin “I feel remote from (community).”***

Even from communities that intersect my identities

I never quite belonged so people and community

Was one fandom But not always my special interest

Asked for a title for my life’s present chapter

My present chapter I call "Marching To The Beat Of A

Different Kettle Of Fish Into “Autistic burnout”"

Self-Diagnosed a year and a half ago but has taken longer

To realize that many of my life struggles, my people struggles

My vocational struggles, my connection struggles

Was and still is a result of the echoing effects of “Autistic burnout”

Who am I? Will I ever have a job again? Why is life hard

Asked for a title for my life’s future chapter

My future chapter hopefully is yet to be name

“Getting Started”**** On Learning How To “Human”?

Or being as passionate as Ncuti Gatwa’s version of The Doctor

Where the future is exciting and energizing and spoon giving

Instead of the same old same old, spoon draining “okish”

Where I am surrounded by my own team of “Legends of Tomorrow”

Instead of always being in my own multiverse alone, if not lonely

* Captain Cold Reference

** Wentworth Millers HRC Speech from 2013 which included the lines:

"I’ve had a complicated relationship with that word, ‘community.’ I’ve been slow to embrace it. I’ve been hesitant. I’ve been doubtful. For many years I could not or would not accept that there was anything in that word for someone like me. … It has been natural to see myself as an individual. It’s been a challenge to see that self as part of something larger. … When you’re in survival mode, your focus is on getting through the day in one piece, there isn’t a lot of space for words like ‘community,’ for words like ‘us’ and ‘we.’" (See Note)

 

*** James Baldwin Village Voice Interview (See Note)

****Jason Mraz Song

Note: 

Now before anyone gets worried I do have community but honestly my main community is the community I have "world built" in my imagination and so I can connect to others who have said they struggle with the word and the idea of community. 

When it comes to people I actually interact with outside of my head in most cases it is like enjoying art in an art museum. I enjoy art, I sometimes am an artists, but I would not say I am art (This is being used as a metaphor just go with it please)

Or more simply put I like my Wentworth Miller can say "“I’ve had a complicated relationship with that word, ‘community.” LOL