Hi there, readers! It’s Megan again. I know it’s been awhile. So sorry, but I got sidetracked by life stuff–namely my health. So, last time I went over a bit about me as a writer. Today I thought I’d go over who I am as a person. Who is Megan Danvers? Well first off, my last name ain’t actually Danvers. That’s my pen name and I’m not telling any of you my real, legal name ever if I can help it. Nothing personal, just my family talked me into using a pen name because of complicated reasons related to other relatives of ours and I can’t say I disagree with their points of view on the subject. I doubt my family would be too thrilled for me to go into that whole mess so let’s just move on, shall we?
As you will find in my “About” page, I am aroace, autistic, and bipolar. So, let’s start with the thing that I realized first about myself. The bipolar disorder. I don’t remember when exactly I was diagnosed but I was fairly young around 8-12 years old. Now, I’m not going to lie. I was a mess as a kid. Between moving to a new town at 8 and my bipolar being unmedicated at the time my mood was not stable in the least and oftentimes I would go into depressive or agitated states where I didn’t want to go to school or where I felt the whole world was against me and that I needed to fight. Sometimes I even said that I wished I were dead. Looking back, I don’t think I meant it though and even then I never would’ve actually done anything to hurt myself. But luckily, my mom didn’t know that and got me the help I needed in the sixth grade.
Oh man, sixth grade. The worst year of my childhood. Kids at school bullied me all throughout the year and would make me cry in class. Science class was my least favorite, when at the beginning of the year I was thinking it would be my favorite because of all the fuzzy and adorable animals the teacher kept in the classroom that she would allow us to pet. Sadly, my love of petting the animals every chance I got made me a target of name-calling when one of the animals died and despite it dying of natural causes and not mishandling or anything, the students decided to blame me, calling me “animal killer”. Needless to say, that was not a good time for me and I wound up having to be institutionalized three times that year for the sake of my mental health.
Yes. Three times. Twice at a two week facility and the third time was an immediate transfer from that two week facility the second time to a more long-term care facility where I would eventually get put on medication that worked for me and my bipolar. My mental health much improved after that stay and, fun fact: I found two four-leaf clovers while I was there. I know. I was shocked by that too.
The next discovery of my life was that I was on the autism spectrum, technically diagnosed with Aspergers. Though, I have come to prefer the simple autism identifier after learning about the Nazi associations related to the term Aspergers so please refer to me as being autistic and not having Aspergers or being an Aspie. This one I’m not entirely certain when I was diagnosed either, not because of poor memory but simply because I didn’t realize I had been diagnosed until sometime after the diagnosis was given to my mom because she had mentioned it to one of her siblings one day offhandedly while I was in earshot. Apparently I cried “there’s something else wrong with me?” because I was young, ignorant, and going through the wringer with my mental health and learning about a second diagnosis when the first one made me feel crummy enough as it was, didn’t sit right with me.
I have a much better view of my autism now than I did as I’ve come to understand what that means for me. It means I’m blunt and direct in my honesty. It means I don’t get sarcasm all the time, if ever. It means I have preferences in textures of food and clothing (I can’t stomach mashed potatoes or whipped cream but love cottage cheese which others say is a weird texture; I don’t get it). It means I thrive on structure and schedules. It means I have trouble sleeping. It means I have trouble empathizing with people and understanding their points of view. It means I’m very particular and possessive with my things. And it means so much more than that.
Now you’re probably reading this and thinking that this means I probably write autistic or bipolar characters. In truth, I actually feel too close to my diagnoses to write about them. Because I live with dual diagnoses and medication it’s hard for me to tell where one diagnosis ends and the other begins, or more importantly where my diagnoses end, and I begin. I feel intimidated by the prospect of writing a character with the same diagnosis as me because while I can do research for other conditions like anxiety and feel confident that I know what traits to give a character to layer on top of their general personality, not knowing where the lines are drawn for me leaves me confused as to what traits of myself I can give a character without just making a self-insert by accident. Everyone always decries the self-insert character and writing one is one of the last things I want to do with my writing because I view myself as poor character material. Though that’s my view of real people in general. Real people don’t make for good characters because characters no matter how complex they are tend to be a touch simpler and easier to breakdown than human beings.
That all said, if any of my characters do come across as autistic or bipolar I fully approve of headcanoning them as such. Just because I didn’t set out to write the character as autistic or bipolar doesn’t mean I didn’t accidentally put a little of myself in there. Heck, my sister once said one of my characters reminded her of me because she felt the character was autistic even though I didn’t intend her to be.
Now for the last discovery of my life and my identity as a person. I had known for basically my whole life that I never found people attractive in a sexual or romantic sense. Sure, I could tell someone was conventionally attractive and had opinions on who was good-looking or not, but I never felt an actual attraction to anyone. I just figured that was normal. I thought that was how heterosexual people were. Then I got a tumblr account while I was in college and I discovered a wider array of sexual and gender identities than I ever knew existed. When I found the terms asexual and aromantic I was shocked that I had gone my whole life without hearing about these. Heck, I had even seen a Law & Order: SVU episode where they mention the A in the LGBTQIA acronym but where they had said it stood for “ally”. It never occurred to me there was something else out there. It never occurred to me that not having an attraction was an actual orientation one could have. Finally, I had the words to describe myself and how I felt. I might never have agonized over romance as some other aroace people might have, as I was always very career-oriented, but it did feel like a revelation to know that this was normal. Knowing there were other people like me and that it wasn’t weird to not seek out relationships felt amazing.
As great as it felt to finally know myself fully, I was kinda miffed for it to have taken so long. Why had nobody told me? Why were asexual and aromantic people not talked about in media like gay and bisexual people were? Why did it take me so long to learn the words for my own orientation? It felt like I had been cheated out of truly knowing myself for years. This is why I intend to never let a single one of my books lack asexual or aromantic representation. Nobody should have to go their whole lives not knowing if or where they belong in the LGBT+ community.
Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t write an autistic or bipolar character because I felt too close to the subject. But this is different. I had heard about autism and bipolar in the media growing up. I had seen those parts of myself reflected onscreen (albeit poorly at times). I had never seen this part of myself in the media I consumed as I’m sure many others like me never did. There’s already word out there about the existence of autism or bipolar. There’s virtually none for asexuality or aromaticism and it feels like such a shame that there’s not that I feel obligated to put that representation out there just so nobody has to go through life feeling like an outsider or worse, like they’re broken or a freak. I may not have ever felt that way regarding my orientation, but others out there have and I don’t want people like me to ever feel that way for lack of awareness, a lack of knowing.
Wow, this has run long. Uh… maybe I’ll do this in two parts. This one regarding my identities and the second part discussing my views on the world, my thoughts and feelings on certain things, etc. Yeah. That sounds good. Part two coming up next. Peace out, readers!
