So nearly there, so nearly to the day of thinnest veil. So nearly the time of costume and mask, of guising and letting in all that’s been pressing on the membrane between this world and the next.
So nearly to the haunted hours, the bone-tired collapse into midnight sheets after the fading of the light. So nearly to the shadow seconds.
I’ll not waste your time, not these few days before my favorite holiday, I’ll not say a truth and pretend it’s revelatory, for it is one we already know. I will not speak to you and declare as though I’m discovering this fact we already know is one:
We all have a darker side.
We know this, covered it’s been time and again, and then probably again after that. We are beings of shadow and light, two opposites that spin as one thing, moons that catch both reflected shine and harvest some indefinable dark. We have always been this. This Halloween is not for acknowledging this, not for once again highlighting it.
This season of thin veils and weariness that causes hands to tremble is for something else. This time, it’s for calling out another truth, another reality we forget to speak aloud. Today, it’s the spotlight on the exhaustion, the invisible toil that is managing some second self as a full-time job. This is the labor of caging what we call monster, that bit of us who is jealous, who is petty, who is furious, ashamed, longing, or less.
This is for the Jekyll we swear doesn’t exist, though we hear the scratches on the back of that secret door.
Autism, for me, means that door really doesn’t exist, and I almost never have that secret to keep, and so bizarrely, it almost creates something unique — a vantage point.
I say this not in any way decorated with ego or pretentiousness, but instead from a place of rarity. I’ve read a dozen dozen articles about our “shadowed selves” from inside the cage, as it were. I’ve read listicles and how-to pieces on how to embrace those parts we think are uglier or not quite as socially acceptable, but more, I’ve read how we should tame them, banish them, or worse, destroy them altogether.
Nonsense.
It’s the shadow bits of people I love the most. It’s every single thing they call broken or gross. It’s the moments of pure honest emotion, the times they are so deliciously human and betray that imperfection. It’s when they have a little burst of jealousy that proves how much they care, when they get hilariously petty in response to the undeniable ridiculousness of someone else’s behavior — please see Oreo-Gate for a beautiful example of this — and I find nothing more attractive than seeing the real when all everyone wants to present is perfect.
Everything these days has a polish. A shine. Everything is rehearsed and re-recorded and any thing inside any of us that anyone anywhere could ever call cringey is swiftly ironed flat. All the wrinkles of our individuality steamed to the point of silky and taut.
We hide it when we’re upset with someone else, pretending all is well when all is very much not fucking well. We say fine when we do not feel anything remotely resembling it.
I’m quiet in public situations a lot, not what you’d expect if you know me privately. I’m goofy almost always, but when I get into situations that cause the ‘Tism part of my being to screech back in irritation with all the lights, all the noise, I tend to watch.
I know what lives in the dark, I’ve seen it.
Hell, I’ve fallen in love with it.
Almost all of the reason for this entire wholesale rebrand on this site that was once Signal Fire, was this. This shadow, this darkness, this quirkiness, this oddity. I got so tired trying to fit this place into the box that Signal Fire and everything around it created, but more, I got tired of thinking everyone else might feel pressure to do exactly that when they come here.
This place, this beautiful place, is for exactly who it says it is for on the mandatory “one sentence description” that Substack makes you give:
“Poetry, essays, photography, and beautiful weirdness for the seekers, dreamers, riff raff, and quiet rebels — from Tyler Knott Gregson”
Turns out, that’s all of us. Every single imperfect one of us.
I rebranded because I’m really, unavoidably, and to quote Bella Swan, irrevocably, weird. I’ve always been this, I’m a rabbit hole disguised as a person, I’m Autistic special interests that pour out like I’ve been stabbed. I’m passion, I’m a little bit of light and a lottle bit of shadow.
You are too, and I love this about you.
It’s nearly Halloween and so where I’d usually be telling you all to wear your best costumes, throw on your coolest disgusting silicone masks, this time I’m gonna ask you to do something different:
This year, go as yourself. YOUR WHOLE self. The shadow and the sunshine, the dark, the light, the good, the bad, the ugly, the parts you usually hide and pretend don’t even live in your house, let alone that you’ve got them chained up in the basement with the dryer tumbling as loud as it will go.
It’s in you, it’s always been in you, and I watch it from across the room at parties or when wandering some random gathering downtown. I see it in the spaces between what you do say in the comments, I feel it like a second voice from somewhere more honest in you. Right now, it’s a whisper.
Let me hear it’s scream.
I love you all.
Be good.
We don’t fear the dark,
the shadows deep inside us.
It is shame instead.
