Chapter Twenty: Me
So now, here I am. In fifteen days, it will be a year since that turbulent and bizarre afternoon on the deck, staring into nothingness and completely overwhelmed by having gotten what I wished for.
This essay series was inspired by someone who is not only iconic in American history, but who was also profoundly gifted and experienced at least four of Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities. She was known for her incredible physical energy, her emotional intensity, her high-powered intellect, and her vast understanding of and identification with existential questions.
And her tireless work to make the world a better place touches my heart.
Her name is Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor has been a quiet presence with me in this process. When I was in Manhattan in March, I took some time in Riverside Park to sit with her statue and reflect on her tireless devotion to speaking out for human rights and dignity. She was an incredible human, and I aspire to be the kind of person she was.
It is for her that the Exiles (except Toots, which was my childhood nickname) are named.
And now, I’m going to walk the path as I see it now.
Giftedness
I am profoundly intellectually gifted. As I mentioned very early in this series, I have never gone back and had a complete psychological assessment and I’m not going to.
Part of the reason is that, during my master’s program, I’ve learned that architectures like mine underperform most intelligence measures. The officially-identified profoundly gifted cohort tends not to lean as heavily into the cross-domain, isomorphic structural matching that I leverage, meaning that instruments like the Stanford Binet and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale are not calibrated to my cognitive processes. If I had to guess, I’d bet that they’d underscore me by at least a full standard deviation. That’s speculative, but it feels true.
The other part of the reason is that I just know. I don’t need a test to know. I can see it and sense it in everything I do.
One evening in late March during a research project, I was looking at a single graphical representation of a cognitive pattern when the world suddenly stilled. That one visual collapsed every construct in my crazy-big knowledge base into a singular, simple premise that can be extended into virtually all of my work. I saw its application across universes. It’s so simple that it’s amazing I never saw it before. But that’s how I work. Most people work upward from simple constructs into higher degrees of complexity. I work top down.
The euphoria that washed over me in that moment was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The Council was quiet, and yet it felt as though we’d gathered ourselves and launched into the sky to soar into the heights in a joyful union of sense and knowing.
And I know that’s not a “normal” thing. But I can do this. I DO do this.
Despite all of my efforts to understand my giftedness, it turns out that my cognitive architecture isn’t ME. It’s potential. It defines how I think and learn and communicate. It has demands that I am compelled to meet — to do otherwise would be like denying I have a beating heart. It has transformed a number of self-perceptions, most notably that I’m a fucking idiot because simple things are over my head. It just turns out that I’m not built for simple shit. I’m made for universes.
The Council
The personification of my interactive and turbocharged collection of overexcitabilities was the single most important part of my development trajectory. They’re a family that I’ve come to know and love. Jimmy never stops, but without him I couldn’t do what I do. Jimmy builds worlds. Echo’s depth and capacity have been crushed over the years, but she’s bouncing back beautifully (albeit slowly). Neo does things with Jimmy that leave me astonished and excited when they’re not keeping me awake until the wee hours. Fred is constantly exploring the world in search of meaning and purpose, and his work with Jimmy and Echo is vital to the fufillment of my sense of self. Fluffy has always stood on the sidelines, but I’ve seen the moments when she’s feeding the Council’s engine and it’s stunning to watch her influence on the rest of the team. And poor Corpus, stuck in a chair for the last 20 months, is beginning to send the signal that something has to change.
And over all of those parts, there is a leader, a Sovereign who guides, watches, and manages.
And all of those parts and their leader are me. And they’re all precious to me. To finally love that strange, intense, awkward self who lived a life as a sheet of paper constantly folding and unfolding, I had to shred the paper and rebuild, one Council member at a time.
The Exiles
Learning about and reaching the occupants of the box will take time. It will demand a commitment that will last years and probably the rest of my life. Echo and I are working on understanding the difference between Echo’s native intensity and the Protectors’ responses. It’s fairly straightforward: Echo feels things first, and then the Protectors come in behind the initial emotion and call it into question. I’m teaching Echo that the latter response is grounded in trauma. And I’m slowly asking the Protectors to stand down with the knowledge and comfort that I can protect the Exiles. The time is coming for them to retire, not because I’m forcing them to, but because they will have come to trust me to care for myself and the Exiles.
The intellectualization isn’t enough to help the Protectors stand down. It’s enough for now, but it’ll take time for Echo to have faith in herself and, more critically, for my body to release the hyper-vigilant terror and anxiety that the Protectors produce in Echo in their quest to get me to back off. No matter how gentle I am with my parts, I still flinch and tremble and have massive adrenaline spikes when the Protectors show up, and that’s not something I can talk Echo down from. And sometimes I just have to be able to sit in the hard places and let Echo feel. That’s hard to do. I’m learning.
The three Exiles are:
Toots, age 5–10. She’s standing beside me right now, both proud and impatient for me to finish writing so she can curl up in my lap and let me love her the way she needed to be all of those lost years ago. She’s trusted me so much already that I’m awestruck by her confidence in me. I think she knows I see her and that I find immense joy in her. We have a lot of time to make up for.
Ellie, age 11–26. She’s only emerged once from the box, and I saw her from a distance. I just watched. She’s cynical and naive, rebellious and compliant. But most of all, she’s very, very afraid. She’s well-guarded and safe right now by her Protectors, and I look forward to the day when, with intensive somatic therapy, I’ll be able to look into those huge, dark blue eyes and tell her how proud I am of her for having carried what she did with no one to hold her and understand her and truly, truly see her. Without Ellie, I’m not sure I’d have survived. Literally.
Anna, age 27–32. I have never seen Anna. I sense her. She’s humiliated. She feels guilty and shameful. She feels betrayed to the very depths of who she is. Her pain is so deep that it’s embedded in her bones. It shreds my heart knowing that she is still in the box, but it’s not safe for either of us to reach out just yet. Her Protectors are ruthless in ensuring she can’t be accessed, and I respect them for that. Her wounds are still bitter and bleeding and infected and gaping. Until I can help heal her, it’s better that she’s in a place where no one, including me, can hurt her further.
Disintegration
I remain in a disintegrated state to this day. Dabrowski’s Theory is the most comprehensive view of human development I know, and while I don’t plan to study it for research purposes outside of my own journey, it is a vital reference for the path I now walk. I’m reaching for another version of myself, an elevated version whose purpose is aligned with her morals, ethics, and ideals. I’m also reaching for a person whose trauma is healing and whose Exiles are free of the box and made whole.
In time, I will begin integration, the process by which the tearing down is complete and the conscious rebuilding takes place. It’s not a linear process: the developmental trajectory is upward, but it oscillates over time. I may build something and find that there is still something to tear down. I may build atop something whose demolition was incomplete and have to begin anew.
I still hurt for the parts of me still in the box, and I still grieve what they lost. But I’m also gaining the confidence to stop questioning my own motives and judgment, and that gives me the ability to nurture my parts in the way they never were and in the way they so richly deserve.
I have developed a holistic philosophy that views the development of the human spirit as an autonomous, self-directed ascent from a state of automaticity to a conscious, unique identity. The catalyst for this profound change is an intense, relentless inner drive — the impulse to overcome personal limitations and maximize one’s inherent potential. This ascent is powered by rigorous self-study and deep introspection, compelling me to treat my own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors as an object of objective analysis.
I leaned hard on Friedrich Nietzsche when I was writing the Manifesto. I framed an early purpose for myself at a time when I still equated myself with my intellectual capacity. I argued that I needed to reach my full potential because the potential itself existed. But in truth it’s that my full developmental potential must be pursued because the potential for higher and more meaningful development is there, not just my intellectual potential in isolation.
I’m looking forward now. For real. I’m no longer just a worn-out, folded sheet of paper trying to reorganize around external standards I can’t meet. I’m beginning to envision what I’ll look like someday and in all the days after someday.
I will shed a lot of what does not serve. There will be heartache and agony in that process. Disintegration hurts. I know that there will be losses, and some of them will not be by my choice. I will grieve and ache for what is left behind, even with the foundational knowledge that it’s what this process demands.
I’ll admit I’m braced for those losses. I’ve already experienced several of them. Not long after I began this process, I gave up an almost fifty-year friendship with someone whose morals and ethics were antithetical to everything I believe in. It was hard. But I could not have sacrificed my early sense of self on the altar of someone else’s beliefs.
I have to find my purpose. My work. My space. My people.
Get Eleanor Libertas’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
My self.
Sometimes it’s just survival,
And barely that, at best-
One heartbeat at a time.
Call it a struggle, if you will,
But being in that place
Feels worse than that-
A hollow hole
Without a sense of purpose.
Sometimes it is a struggle-
A fight to reach beyond
The times of aching heartache,
Battling ancient demons
And those more newly born.
The site: a grey and formless place
Of lonely isolation,
Without a chart or guideposts.
For some, somehow, somewhere
From some place deep within-
A place that’s been forgotten-
A tiny sparks of strength ignites
Though not perceived, at first,
It’s just enough to light the way
To taking one more step-
A step ahead
Onto the rocky ground.
Where does that spark come from?
A question often asked
But seldom really answered.
For those who’ve traveled
Rocky paths
Can’t tell you how
We found our way
We only guess;
Answers still elude us.
Perhaps what really matters
Is simply that it’s true
That spirit can survive.
For some, at least, the struggle
Serves to fan that spark
Into a tiny flame
That warms the soul, keeps it alive-
More prepared
For all that lies ahead.
For where the path ahead may lead
Is anybody’s guess
And better left uknown.
Beyond survival is a place
Where spirit truly thrives.
To live there is a dream
To bring into our
Earthly lives
So we can feel its power.
To find the source of all our power
Perhaps may be the quest
That we have set before us.
The journey is its own reward
And has its own rewards
If we will only see them-
If we can only see them
As we travel on
To find our own true path.
— “Spirit of Survival”, Ellen Dove Fiedler
What I’m beginning to form is what the future Eleanor needs. I need space. I need the freedom from the constraining social rules and cultural roles I’ve imposed on myself. Minimalism appeals to me because it allows me to focus on what’s important. Body work will allow me to rehabilitate Corpus and enable him to fuel the Council in the way that is so essential to its structure. Fred needs time and room to reflect. Therapy and love will support Echo as she reaches the Exiles. Ample sensory input for Fluffy will help Jimmy transform it into the ideas and towering structures that give Neo the space to rebuild.
And most important of all is the test that will apply to what I construct.
Is it true?
Is it elegant?
Is it sovereign?
— Eleanor Libertas: “Eleanor, Freed”
