This essay is the third in an unintended trilogy that explores mode-shifts.
If you’ve read Passing from words to matter or The return of the Why mode of thinking, you’ll see echoes.
There was a moment, after writing this third essay, when I realized I was back in the same terrain as the first two. Is that boring? I wondered. Am I the essayist equivalent of a doddering fool, repeating myself? I’m publishing it anyway. I keep returning to the well—because each time I return, the water yields a new taste.
And for those craving a change: I’m working on something as far from these themes as I could imagine. Gender philosophy. (Groan, I know.) Stay tuned...
I heard a song recently. The melody is beautiful; the words seized me. It’s called “Disappearing.”
I’m disappearing again …
The clouds are collecting and moving back in
And I’m disappearing again
I began an essay last year that I never finished. Titled “A House with Many Rooms,” it was about my sense that I contain different personas. Not just different parts of my personality; but fully separate identities.
After diagnosis, I assumed that this long-held sense of containing different identities was connected to the concept of autistic masking. Masking is the idea that autistic people override their natural way of being to fit societal expectations and reduce the friction of interaction. But I found the concept didn’t map perfectly to my disparate identities. The notion of a mask implies falseness, while my various selves have felt both false and real at once. Neither fully one nor the other.
Depending on when and where you encountered me, you might have thought me charismatic, or cold and flat. Silly and loose; a performer of imitations and sayer of nonsense words. Or uncomfortable with spontaneous expression. I’ve been known to dance at a club until 5:30 a.m. and to feign sickness to avoid a close friend’s party. I’ve worn clothes designed to attract notice, and clothes designed to camouflage. These are not daily changes; they come in seasons. I’m a certain person for months, even years, and then I’m not.
Unsurprisingly, I’ve had a hard time maintaining relationships. I’ll meet someone and feel pulled to them. The way they are brings out a version of me that feels natural or enticing. But then the grid snaps and what felt natural suddenly feels foreign. The terms of the friendship no longer work for me, and I breach them. For a while, the loss of the friendship feels restorative, like being freed. At some point, though, I change again into a person who craves togetherness — and find I’m alone.
I’ve written before about cycling through special interests, but I see now there’s more to it. Just as I shift from one hobby to another, I also rotate through ways of being, shifting in how I relate to people. If I kept digging, I’d probably find other shifts too.
This past fall, when I lost the urge to write in favor of making things with my hands, I lost a lot of adjacent urges too. I stopped reading nonfiction, essays, and even text-based social media. No more browsing Substack Notes; I rarely opened the app, whereas before I opened it multiple times a day. Instead I scrolled makers’ accounts on Instagram.
One afternoon I spent hours laying a miniature brick floor: cutting rectangles from cork sheets, dabbing them with acrylic paint, gluing them down in offset rows, and grouting the seams with modeling paste. The hours passed like minutes. I felt a deep, wordless pleasure.
During this period I’d get comment pings on things I’d written here, and I’d ignore them. And I don’t know how to explain the sensation I felt other than to say: those pings were not for me.
Like a note from an old violin
Tapering off and reaching the end
They weren’t for me because I wasn’t the person who wrote the essays. This conviction took firm hold after a new reader discovered my Substack and left many generous comments. She said she’d just found my writing and was devouring it. The author of those essays would have been tripping over herself to engage. But she was off somewhere, unreachable.
Until suddenly, she reappeared. I can pinpoint the day. Over coffee, I opened The New Yorker app for the first time in ages, looking for an essay to read.
That’s how I know: seeing what I do during free moments tells which me I am. The shift happens without intention, and I only noticed it because I was surprised. I even tested myself — looked through some textile projects I’d been planning. Not even a spark of attraction. My mind turned away.
Drifting away like a leaf in the wind
And I’m disappearing again
All of the things that had unwound in the fall — the loss of the writing itch, the cessation of reading, the abandonment of Substack Notes and subscriptions — rewound themselves. I’m reading biography and philosophy and ideas for essays are appearing once more.
And there was old business to attend to. I responded to that generous commenter, because I was the author of the essays once more.
Logically, of course, there’s only been one person here all along. I can narrate the changes from summer to fall to winter; a throughline of experience persists.
It seems my mind orients around one center of gravity at a time, and when that center shifts, my self — the I who speaks – reorganizes with it.
And yet. I have the sense, still, that the I who’s talking to you now is not the one from December.
The “house with many rooms” metaphor can go further: a House with Many Wings. One day I’m in one part of the house, and then I look around and the setting has changed. A familiar place, but disconnected. There’s no hallway that connects the wings, no path I can take to get back. It’s like a video game and I’m a sim who’s been picked up and dropped somewhere. In the new space I feel both at home, and yet cornered.
For now I’m back in the Wing of Words. The furnishings feel stiff but they’ll soften with use. The Wing of Making is shut up for the season. The Wing of the Social Butterfly has been closed so long, I’m not sure if it’ll ever reopen.
Maybe I’ll come back around …
Maybe I’ll be here tomorrow
…
In this House of Many Wings there’s one thing I haven’t figured out. When I’m moved to a new wing, who issued the order?
This essay rounds out a loose trilogy, alongside Passing from words to matter and The return of the Why mode of thinking. If it resonated, I’d love to hear what shape your own “house” takes — or how you’ve experienced your creative shifts.
Stay curious,
Laura
I relate a lot to what you're saying, I used to say I had different "modes." Masking is what made me ignore my need to change modes. Whenever I'm in one mode, I set up expectations for myself that I refuse to abandon. A lot of that has to do with social expectations. I admire your ability and freedom to just switch and not worry about it.
Hi! I’m so glad you’re back in the writing wing but also so happy you got to spend time in the making wing. It sounded like a fun place.
This made me think of another essay in the Spiral Lab Magazine where Marta writes about not wanting to write anymore but crochet and make clothing:
https://thespirallab.substack.com/p/chaos?utm_source=post-banner&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true