Gullible
– easily deceived or tricked, credulous.
Credulous
– apt to believe without sufficient evidence; unsuspecting.
Absorbent
– something that absorbs; retentive.
Absorb
– to suck in; to swallow up; to imbibe; to take in; to assimilate; to take up
and transform instead of transmitting or reflecting (this last definition is
actually related to physics, but it describes perfectly what I’m talking
about).
Naive
– overtrusting and unworldly.
This is
me. At least, this is a part of me. And, if you ask me, it’s a most annoying part
which I could well do without, since it appears to be nothing more than one
ginormous liability, and to achieve little other than to frequently drop me in
a deep pile of poo. But no-one asked my
permission when they were dishing out personality traits, so I’m basically
lumbered with them.
So
here’s an example to illustrate.
I had a
brainwave recently. At least, I thought
that’s what it was at the time. And when
I got it out in the open and shared it with my friend, she agreed that it
seemed like a good idea. Except it
transpired that it wasn’t. A lot of
which was to do with the fact that we were, once again, talking at
cross-purposes. And that the third party
involved in this comedy of errors turned out to be wholly inappropriate for an
autistic with a history of eating disorders, the absorbency of a toilet roll, and
the passivity of a new-born lamb. Lead
me on to the slaughter, baaaa ...
This
great idea? I finally decided to go and
see an ayurvedic practitioner to check whether my diet really is as healthy as
my friend insists it is. And ‘cos I love
yoga, to which ayurveda is generally attached – so I just have to go the whole
hog, trotters and all. Plus, it’s ancient,
eastern, and holistic, so it’s got to be good: well, that’s the message I’ve
absorbed anyway, and who am I to argue with a bunch of three thousand year old
wise men and their collected words of wisdom, not to mention the force of
nature that is today’s media hype? I
even had my friend phone the aforementioned practitioner beforehand (sounds
like something akin to Magic and the Dark Arts), to pave the way. So, on that note, what could possibly go
wrong?
Well,
let’s see what happens when we approach this from a more realistic perspective,
starting with the not-so-insignificant detail of my autism – you know, the
thing that sets me apart from my fellow man, and impairs my ability to
communicate with, and understand, the world at large? Ooops!
It seems I’d forgotten about that.
Or I’d decided that this was not going to be a problem because she’s
ayurvedic, so we must speak the same language – yogi. It transcends all communication barriers. Yeah, right.
I really must stop snorting turmeric.
Then
there’s the equally-inconsequential item which is my ADHD. Ah yes, that’s that thing which affects my
ability to sit still for nigh on a nanosecond, and influences the length of
time I can focus on anything before my brain disengages and my mind drifts off
into inner space (of which there appears to be an infinite amount, given the
number of times I get lost in there).
But of course that’s not going to be a problem when I’m going to be
expected to sit still and concentrate for an hour and a half, in the company of
a complete stranger, a feat I can only manage for thirty minutes at a time at home,
where I’m by myself. No, not going to be
a problem at all – not when she’s got ayurveda on her side. Makes perfect sense – to a deranged lunatic,
high on the combined effects of numerous eastern mystical philosophies.
And
furthermore, we have the negligible factor that is my anxiety. That’s my Social anxiety. You know, where a person suffers anxiety when
out in society – that thing that involves people. And where I get extremely anxious about going
anywhere unfamiliar, in case I get lost and end up having to ask one of those
people-things for directions. But again
this is not going to be a problem because this person is an Ayurvedic Practitioner
– she doesn’t count as part of that societal thing. She was going to have a magical effect on me. Sheeesh!
I really should give up mainlining coriander as well.
Ergo,
the question should really be, “What could possibly go right?”
As it
turned out, not a lot, really. First
off, she sent me a booklet to read before my visit. Bad sign.
I was supposed to be avoiding any more reading because my mind is
already addled from attempting to understand what is, basically, another
foreign language. That’s why I was
paying to see her, so that she could demystify and simplify it all. Obviously we were already having difficulty communicating,
and we hadn’t even spoken yet.
Then,
two days before, I had a blinding flash of insight – what the hell was I doing,
going to see someone I didn’t know, with everything I’ve got going on with me? Really augured well.
The
experience itself was underwhelming, to say the least. The person who recommended her to me (whose
dietary advice I have frequently followed like an over-enthusiastic lemming
leaping repeatedly from a cliff-top) had said that she had an aura about
her. Well, all I can say is that her
aura must have taken a sabbatical that day to get recharged.
The only
aura visible to me was that of wealth, and a carefully controlled and contrived
environment of calm and spirituality.
You know, where everything is in its place, she’s got all the right
accoutrements (yoga magazines carefully arranged on the dining room table,
incense burning, the occasional Hindu statue dotted discreetly around the place),
the decor consists of thirty different shades of beige (my idea of decorating
hell), and her first words are: “Just be yourself”, followed by, “Could you
please take your shoes off as we don’t allow outdoor footwear inside.” Yep, two phrases guaranteed to make me feel
welcome and at ease. There is something
not quite right about a person who has to tell you to be yourself in their
company. “House of correction” is what
sprang to mind.
So, what
did I gain from my visit? A headache and
a feeling that my mind had reached way beyond saturation-point in its
absorbency quota for the day. Were it
actually a toilet roll, then it would have had the composition of one that had
been dropped down the loo.
Apparently
they don’t do labels in ayurveda – which confused me somewhat when she labelled me a
pitta person (it’s my dosha type. Don’t
ask.) It also made it rather difficult
for me to fulfil her earlier wish for me to just be myself. By the very nature of being autistic I find
it difficult to know who my self is (hence the copying), and labels help me in
piecing together a picture of who I am, and how I want to develop. I don’t use them to restrict my growth but to
enable it: after all, if you don’t know where you are then you can’t know where
you’re going, or whether you even need to go.
Unfortunately this is not how she saw it, so she completely disregarded all
my ‘labels’, which I had diligently listed, when diagnosing me and formulating
her idea of my food plan. I felt so
valued.
What I
did get was the knowledge that the quality of my diet is excellent – BUT...
I also came
away with a great sense of disappointment, and my illusions about ayurveda
rather dismantled somewhat. I’d gone
with the expectation of it being something great, mystical, magical,
fail-proof, totally non-generic, and tailored completely to the needs of the
individual: and come out of there feeling like I’d been put in a box marked
‘Pitta Person’.
This, as
it turns out, is not a bad thing (seeing the truth, I mean, not the part about
being put in a box), because I finally have a realistic view of what I have
been so gullibly enamoured with.
Of
course, how long this view of reality lasts is anyone’s guess, given my propensity
for forgetting the truth at the speed with which it takes someone to mention
that Manuka honey is the new wonder food, and is highly valued in ayurvedic
medicine ... The wonder of it all is
that anyone bothers to eat any of the bog-standard foods any more, when you can
apparently gain everything you need from a few specially selected ‘superfoods’. It’s also a bloody wonder that I haven’t gone
bankrupt or killed myself from my dabblings.
Yep, it definitely starts to sound like I’ve been dallying in the Dark
Arts: and me the ultimate sacrificial lamb.
God knows the results are just as terrifying ...
Unfortunately,
though, there’s been a high price to pay for the knowledge (and I’m not just
talking about the expensive consultation fee).
She has planted seeds in my mind - seeds of doubt, which will now take
root and grow, no matter how much I take a spade to them to dig them up and
discard them. And I’ll have to keep
doing that for a very long time, to make sure I don’t end up with a bloody
forest in there, blocking out the light of truth (not to mention sanity!),
otherwise I’ll suddenly find myself surreptitiously changing the bits of my
diet she said were not ayurvedic, and altering my daily plan. My mind, it seems, is nothing more than a
manure pile just waiting for any random person to come along and cast
indiscriminate information my way, to take root in my fertile noggin. I should have a sign painted on my forehead:
“Plant your seed here, free!”
