doubleblind

2020 (diagnostic paperwork, mixed media on wood)

doubleblind is a Venetian blind book that explores how text interacts with physical positioning in space. The front of each page is collaged with paperwork from clinical observations when I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD in 2004. The back of each page contains a stream-of-consciousness written record of my experiences growing up under the clinical gaze and searching for the self from both the outside and the inside. The book can be folded up similarly to a Venetian blind by pulling the strings on either end that thread through the slats.

doubleblind was included in Messiah University’s student juried exhibition in 2021.

transcription

I’ve always been haunted by a sense of self. She stays in the shadows, only ever glimpsed from the corner of my eye, peripheral, tangential, significant. I’m always surprised to find her flitting in the words I’ve written, or the things people say about me. She’s a collection of moments and words and colors seen sideways, on the fringe of awareness yet somehow behind it.

People have always been obsessed with pinning her down. All my earliest memories are of people in suits: a woman in a grey room watching me move a Sorry gamepiece, then a man jotting notes on a pad as I did a blue-and-yellow puzzle. It was clinical and ghostly, words and charts and pointless rituals that were supposed to catch her like a firefly in a jar. I always wondered who these people were, and what made them able to see a story in the meaningless jumble of tests.

Sometimes they tried to tell me their stories. I’d put together the booklets they wrote, cutting and binding the blue-and-pink plastic pages that told me what I should be: “When a friend says ‘hi,’ you look at their eyes and say, ‘hello.’” They wanted that self to show up on their terms, and she didn’t like being told what to do. But the words and the pictures lured her in, and by their standards, the rules worked better than anything. At least the rules made sense.

I’ve never liked that feeling of being watched. They pinned me down under their microscope, but I could never tell what they were looking for or what I’d done wrong. I could look back at their eyes like they wanted, but the room would pitch and my head would buzz so violently, I was scared I’d evaporate. I could say the words they gave, that self as a window, but I never knew if it was so they could see her, or so she would be forced to see them. I don’t think she wanted either.

It’s hard to know what to make of all this. She keeps her home in the memories and shuts the blinds on anyone that tries to see in. Sometimes I want to climb out of myself just to know what they saw, if somehow they saw her more clearly from the outside. I suspect it doesn’t make a difference. They had their words and stories for her, and I have mine. Neither have been able to exorcise her. I’m still haunted by that sense of self.