Identity

   Or is it something else that truly scares me? Like I said, it's not my past self, but the idea of my past self, that I could have my strings pulled and not notice it. I'm better than I was, but how much of it is yet uninternalized?

   I broke very easily as a child. They must have instilled in me some coping mechanism or defense mechanism to counteract it, because I must have learned to outgrow it somehow (most of it anyway.) Maybe it's still there. My childhood is this force that's pressing against my back, nuzzling me and then swallowing me up. I've had positive and negative manifestations, suppressing the negative and refining the positive ones. Hopefully. The autism itself is the cause of both of these, but not the actions themselves- I choose how I manifest it.

   Sublimation is considered a psychologically mature form of defense mechanism, because it involves rejecting negative behavior. It involves the nourishing and nurturing of the underlying negative ideals you are trying to repress, though, only directing them to a different outlet. The demon grows alongside the angel.

   And that is why I am a serial killer.

   Haha, just kidding. (the dehydrated samples of human skin in the scrapbook under the bed are JUST RESEARCH, mother.)

   But the strengths and the weaknesses do come from the same source. It's not like my life is being defined by this, since I forget about it half the time as it is. I see myself as myself, to a degree of identity that I can only guess others can't even imagine. And it is this degree of identity which causes my own lack of identity. Like I said, the reason I return to the same things over and over is because they're awesome.

   (And I realize the problem behind that, but that is how most of us operate, so I'm gonna fly with it.)