Shine Bright Like Dana Scully

Thanks to the internet, I now have a picture, created by an anonymous artistic visionary, of Dana Scully sparkling and not caring.

I've needed this picture in my life. Now that it has arrived I have been made whole in such a way that nothing but a picture of Dana Scully sparkling and not caring could have ever accomplished.

Vielen Dank, anonymous artistic visionary. Wherever you are, you remarkable photoshop wizard, I wish you many days and many nights of sparkling and not caring.

When I was little, very little, I would roll around on the floor. That rolling evolved to jumping from one side of my playroom to the other, and then one side of the kitchen to the other, and then one side of the laundry room to the other. I kept moving from room to room as I grew older and more aware of how puzzled and annoyed I was making the rest of my family. By now I've smoothed the rolling and jumping into spinning.

Spinning is deeply soothing. It's self-stimulating behavior that lets me focus inwards and ease how intense it feels for me to live in this world of smells and sounds and lights and things. It helps me get exercise when I can't leave my room or be around other people. It helps me situate my thoughts and build them into a more cohesive architecture. Basically, it erases everything else except my thoughts, letting me just focus on what's inside my head.

My parents have made themselves very clear throughout the years on how weird and loud they find all of this. They open up the door when I'm trying to spin and walk on in. I've asked everyone time and time again to knock. People have gotten better about this recently, especially now that I have a husband to serve as a blue-eyed and beautiful human version of a bridge-guarding folklore troll to forestall unwanted interruptions. But it still leaves me with the nagging feeling that This Is Not What Normal People Do, and I'm very private about it as a result. College was actually stressful for me because I had to room with other people, people who did not feel a pressing and daily need to spin about the room, and things got weird predictably quickly from there on.

I know how other people don't feel this compulsion. I get antsy, irritated, when I can't spin. I try to do it every day, or at least every other day. I couldn't stop when I went to college, which is how my roommates started walking in on me while spinning (because no one, literally no one, ever knocks). Even when Wellesley stuck me in carpeted residence halls I still had to spin. It tore up my socks and made my feet super sore, but being unable to spin was far worse for me.

I've done a number on my body. Spinning is how I've broken bones, given myself a concussion, broken lamps, given myself a truly impressive range of bruises and scrapes, and once, memorably, sent myself right over an older bed and onto my back on the other side.

There are substitutes I can use. I can swing: in fact I swung as much as possible when I was little, and the day Wellesley put in a swing by the Multifaith Center was the day the swing became my new favorite place on campus (not to mention absolute salvation for my poor, sore feet). I can look out of the passenger seat while someone drives: that's not ideal, obviously, but the way the world blurrs outside of the window lets me suspend myself in much the same way.

Getting older and getting less leeway for being "strange" and "sensitive" has been a challenge to adjust to, but I'm getting somewhere. Somehow. Hopefully.

My future house is having all hardwood floors, though. Or a room without carpet, without furniture, with just a wide blank space of wonderful floor. I have no idea how I'm going to explain this to my kids (explaining it to my husband seemed awkward enough), but I'll figure it out. I just need to take this picture of Scully everywhere, as a reminder to sparkle and to not care about what other people think of my weird spinning. Maybe tattoo it on me. Shine bright like Dana Scully. That's a good life motto for you.

#selfstimulation