Dear Uncle Iroh,

I need tea.

“Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.” —Uncle Iroh; Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I think I can speak for a host of bizarrely depressed kids during the mid to late 00’s, when I say:

We all needed an Uncle Iroh.

This show lit my little brain up in ways that are indescribable to someone with actual dopamine reserves. To say that I loved the show would do it a disservice. I needed that show, identified and connected with the characters deeply. And like any bi woman, I have my personal character zodiac on hand:

Sun: Zuko; Moon: Toph; Rising: Aang

This is actually handy this time, so don’t close the window just yet.

I have felt a bit…unhinged, lately. Having spent so much time grounded as a kid, I now feel like I need to be. Thinking back, I was grounded for well-intentioned reasonings. But what my many punishments taught me wasn’t, as likely, intended. I learned a skill my father perfected years ago, according to Gramma.

Disassociation.

She never called it by name. She didn’t have the language. But she would always say, “You couldn’t punish him. He would just lay on the bed and stare at the ceiling.”

I felt differently. I wanted to be out and about, I wanted to hang out with my friends. It was pure misery being trapped inside. So, I had to find a new distraction. I couldn’t play video games, that was off the table—obviously no TV. So, I read. A lot. So much, in fact, that I found a flow-state that melted the time into the abyss. If I focused REALLY hard, I could escape.

And that’s where it started.

I was in the midst of full-throttle undiagnosed ADHD, unseen autistic traits, hormones, and a trademark family stubbornness/temper. Middle school was rough for the whole family. I want to point out here, I came by ALL of these aforementioned traits honestly. Add in a Bitcoin level host server of unmitigated, generational trauma and you have yourselves a deeply melancholy teen. No one in the house was equipped with the necessary emotional intelligence, least of all me.

Over the years, the disassociation became more complex, sophisticated even.

Not just books, but video games, riding my bike for hours, or hiding at my friends house, pretending the backyard was a swamp made of lava with “fire trees” and scorched Earth adorned in crispy lichens. Somehow, the lava still worked as an ocean?

I digress.

My point is, when I find myself at a point where I can’t find myself anymore. Where I want to escape so desperately. I lightly, but swiftly, crawl back into that melancholy blanket, leaving my responsibilities behind.

But now, as a fully diagnosed autistic human with ADHD, chronic anxiety/depression, and a penchant for obsessive and addictive behaviors.

I need some fucking tea.

Zuko is headstrong and passionate, dutiful, but deeply insecure and struggles to be understood and to understand.

Toph is immensely powerful, bonkers stubborn, and grounded. Dedicated and ambitious, but intensely mistrustful and selfish.

Aang is curious, vivacious and animated. Inspiring, but often fails at a pragmatic follow-through and loathes his responsibilities. He loves people as much as he can equally despise them.

Hilariously, my grandmother would have definitely put me in the camp with Katara’s more negative traits: selfish, overly-sensitive, and borderline emotionally unstable.

I said negative traits, don’t come for me. Katara is cool as shit.

Regardless, I would hear this often. And it was true. I think I may have been a lot more like Katara. My emotions were everywhere. I was erratic and angry. Sad. Hysterically unregulated and numb.

In short, I sorta freaked people out. I was intense and constantly dumping my shit on other people in an attempt to intellectualize them. To garner sympathy from the other party, to continue to other myself so I could feel special and that the suffering meant something after all.

I failed the 8th grade because I couldn’t bring myself above the shame I felt for not fulfilling what I knew I could do. The piles of undone work, the inability to voice a need, no understanding of how my emotions worked.

But, now I do.

And, I’m not sure I feel better.

In fact, I feel fucking worse.

With all of the clarity of my 30th and 31st years of life, I can say that I no longer know how to disassociate my way out of an emotion. I can’t bury it anymore. Either there’s no room, or I’m locked in the room. I can’t tell. I can no longer do the trick, really.

So, what then?

Alcohol.

Weed.

A helped separation from the reality of this dystopia. One of others creation and the one we create for ourselves—on the inside.

Now the shame is my voice, reminding me of all the things I haven’t done. Things that align with my soul in beautiful ways, but things that I cannot start. I cannot get out of bed, I cannot go to sleep. I am stuck in this muck of emotional garbage. And it feels: Fucking. Bad.

I have gained clarity and I now feel as if I am doomed to feel all the emotions I hid from before. Staring at this screen, thinking about the words I’m typing, but also thinking about the job I need to leave, the article I haven’t started, the one I did start, the one that needs reworking, and HOLY SHIT my novella that I was beyond excited to start. Started it, then haven’t picked it up in 8 months.

Beyond irritated at myself, wondering when in the world am I going to get it together in a logical, repeatable pattern? Am I that afraid to fail, truly?

What the fuck is this? Why do I get to hear myself think now? Sure, I’m calm. I can intellectualize and rationalize all my feelings, I know why they’re there but that’s not enough. No, I have to sit in it.

I can’t drink it away. If I have to look at my husband, after I’m coming home late because I got caught up and I’m now toasted, while he’s been waiting to watch a movie with me for a number of hours I can’t bring myself to admit—I would rather pitch myself out of a 3rd floor window, specifically. I am distracting myself for long enough to dull the shame, only for it to come back again in a new and improved ways like: disappointing the one person who has unconditionally loved you.

Now in bile color. Yay, grab me a DUNCE cap.

I can’t smoke it away. I can pretend like it helps, but it mostly just toggles “dark mode” on the world so it’s less overstimulating and unbearable.

I am described, now, as a pretty evenly keeled person. I’m good in a crisis and I’m a much better listener than I was before. I tend to be in leadership positions and can juggle a lot of personalities. Yet, less so now.

Is that a boundary? Or am I not giving myself the same grace I give others?

Both?

Ugh.

I have learned an inordinate amount about this new version of me, that I almost resent the knowledge. There is a real depression in the denouement of these diagnoses. The prognoses entirely evading my seemingly healthier mind. There is a large difference between feeling the toll of an emotion and internalizing them.

Internalization is the deepest level of conformity.

I can see the pattern now.

I know what I should be doing.

And yet, here I am. Tired. Stuck a sameness of static and shame.

If pride is the root, I’ve been on my knees scream crying long enough to know that I barely have the recognition of the woman in the mirror after the years of spiraling. Suddenly, the world has stopped spinning and I still have my sea legs.

It feels wobbly and weird, like a newborn giraffe. Like their knees could break at any second.

So, where is this pride coming from?

I feel shame upon each mistake I make, before I make it, after I’ve made it, every day. I am paralyzed by the responsibilities I have assigned to myself, those placed on me, and ones that I’ve truly wanted.

So, what am I saying without saying it?

I constantly miss the point with my over-analysis, moving so far away from the goal post that I am on the wrong field. I don’t know this person yet, honestly. I can’t control this person.

What tea fixes that?

What am I not seeing?

How can you be prideful and feel unworthy at the same time?

I feel like I’m at war with my younger self and the current. And right now, the younger one is angry, almost disdainful.

Uncle Iroh:“You should know this is not a natural sickness. But that shouldn't stop you from enjoying tea.”

Prince Zuko: “Wh- what's happening?”

Uncle Iroh: “Your critical decision - what you did beneath that lake. It was such a conflict with your image of yourself that you are now at war within your own mind and body.”

Prince Zuko: “What's that mean?”

Uncle Iroh: “You are going through a metamorphosis, my nephew. It will not be a pleasant experience but when you come out of it. You will be the beautiful prince you were always meant to be.”

I can only hope he is right, as always.

Till next time, on the other side.

I hope this helps someone as much as it did me to write it out at 3am. I’m gonna go watch some TV, maybe cry a little with “Leaves From The Vine.”