From Panic to Poetry: Finding My Voice Beyond the Mean

Nocturnal panic attacks are strange companions. They arrive unbidden, pulling me from the depths of sleep into the sharp clarity of anxiety. Yet, in these moments, when my mind is ablaze with thoughts that refuse to rest, something incredible has emerged: words. Poetry. A voice I never knew I had—or at least, one I could never fully access.

For decades, I struggled to express myself. Not just the surface things, like describing a moment or an emotion, but the deeper, truer things—those raw fragments of self that demand articulation. As an autistic gestalt processor and trans woman, my inner world often felt so vast and intricate, yet so completely out of reach. Words seemed insufficient, fleeting, like trying to catch light with a sieve.

But something changed when I began hormone replacement therapy. It wasn’t immediate, nor was it subtle. Slowly, then all at once, the fog lifted. The chaos inside me, whilst still present, began to organise itself—not into rigid lines or binaries, but into flowing patterns I could finally translate into language. The ability to articulate feelings, to weave experiences into poetry and prose, has been overwhelming and joyous. It feels like discovering a hidden room in my own mind, filled with the tools I’d needed all along but never knew were there.

The two poems I’m sharing today—Unseen Steps and Beyond Two Sigma—both emerged this week in this space of newfound clarity and expression. They reflect on themes of invisibility, identity, and living far outside the “mean” of societal expectations. The second poem draws on my experience teaching statistics alongside my co-teacher, “Professor Armando,” where my height and clothing struggles became a vivid illustration of standard deviation. But more deeply, it explores how being far from the mean—statistically, socially, and existentially—isn’t a limitation. It’s where new ideas, new equations, and new selves are born.

Writing these poems has been cathartic, almost miraculous. To move from decades of silence and suppression to this flood of expression has been life-changing. There is joy in this overwhelming wave of creativity, even when it springs from moments of fear or pain. Each word, each line, is a reclamation of the voice I was told I didn’t have, of the self I was told couldn’t exist.

I hope these poems resonate with you, whether you find yourself within the bounds of the bell curve or far beyond its edges. For those of us out here on the fringes, there’s beauty in the space where systems break down, where new possibilities emerge. And for me, there’s joy in finally being able to write it down.

Unseen Steps

Step into my shoes,
and vanish.
Fade into a silence so deep
that even your breath
becomes imperceptible.

Feel the absence of mirrors,
no glass to reflect you,
no frame to hold your shape.
You are an outline,
sketched in faint lines
on the edges of someone else’s story.

There are no windows here.
No light spills through to illuminate
your colours, your form,
your truth.
Instead, you dissolve
into the spaces between others,
invisible, unknowable, unseen.

In my profession,
my study materials,
my media,
I am the ghost—
a presence you sense
but cannot name.
My language is absent,
my body unacknowledged,
my mind misread,
until it doesn’t exist at all.

To step into my shoes
is to step into the void—
to walk the corridors of erased stories
and feel your own edges blur.
To realise how easily
a person becomes a shadow
when no one sees them.

And when you emerge,
if you can,
will you remember the weight
of invisibility?
Will you carry its ache
into a world that demands sight
only for those it deems worthy?

Step into my shoes,
and know this:
to exist unseen
is an act of defiance,
a refusal to disappear
even when the world
pretends you were never there.

- created 11-19-2024, in the early morning after a nocturnal panic attack.

Beyond Two Sigma

In the realm of averages,
I am the outlier,
a point plotted far from the centre of the bell curve.
Two standard deviations,
maybe three—
a distance too great for
Walmart shoes,
ready-to-wear dresses,
or the small talk stitched into seams
too tight to hold me.

I am the anomaly,
the statistic no one expects.
Professor Armando laughs,
a warm chuckle as he gestures to me,
his co-teacher,
the walking, talking lesson on deviation.
"See them? Two sigma from the mean.
Now, tell me—what does that mean for the data?"
The students nod,
their pens scratching the language of understanding
into the page.

But this is more than height,
more than the impossible quest
for shoes that fit.
This is about living on the edges,
where the rules break down,
where the calculus of identity
dissolves into quantum uncertainty.

Here, on the periphery,
normal maths and science fail.
Euclid’s lines blur, Newton’s laws falter.
It’s not disorder—
it’s the birth of new orders,
imaginary numbers dancing through
a world where logic
is too fragile to hold us.

Quantum theorists whisper truths
the bell curve cannot contain:
that the infinitesimally small
and the unimaginably vast
require new equations,
new lenses,
a willingness to see what is unseen
and to name the unnameable.

As an autistic gestalt processor,
I live here,
in the liminal space
between rigid systems and fluid realities.
I see patterns not in parts,
but in the whole,
shimmering connections that defy
the binaries of normality.

As a trans woman,
I am Schrödinger’s question—
both here and not here,
both seen and unseen,
my truth collapsing into form
only when observed.

And so I walk,
tall and unshrinkable,
a deviation from the script,
a point plotted too far
for the line of best fit to reach.
But this distance is not emptiness.
It is possibility.
It is where imaginary numbers sing
and quantum leaps are born.

Students ask:
"How can we measure something
so far from the mean?"
And I smile,
gesturing to the chalkboard,
to the infinite curve stretched before them.
"You don’t measure it," I say.
"You marvel at it."

Final thoughts…

This school year, I’m not teaching alongside “Professor Armando,” and I deeply miss the quick banter we shared. In our geometry classes, I loved pushing the boundaries of the lesson, ‘threatening’ the students with a crash course in non-Euclidean geometry to really blow their minds. “We’re sticking to the syllabus,” he’d remind me, reigning me back in with a knowing smile. But I couldn’t help myself—there I was, always on the margins, catching both him and the students off guard with examples that seemed plucked from outer space. Yet, like my Walmart shoes explanation in statistics - my “why I can’t buy shoes at Walmart” lecture, they always landed, detailed and fitting. I thrived in that space, where creativity and logic collided, and it was a joy to see the spark of understanding light up their faces.

Those edges—the places where conventional wisdom falters—have always fascinated me. My lifelong interest in quantum theory stems from that same fascination. I find strange comfort in knowing that even the smartest people in the world, with their intricate theories and rigid equations, hit walls when faced with the extremes of the universe. Newton’s laws and Euclid’s geometry may hold firm in the middle, but when stretched to the tiniest particles or the grandest scales, they break down. It’s here, in the collapse of certainty, that quantum theory emerges—a realm of probabilities, entanglements, and paradoxes.

It mirrors my own experience of being far from the mean, beyond the bell curve. Life on the edges feels uncertain, unpredictable, but it’s also where new ideas are born. It’s where people like me—autistic, trans, a gestalt processor—thrive by seeing connections and possibilities others might overlook. There’s a beauty in being out of place, in being the anomaly that forces the world to rethink its assumptions.

This comfort in the edges and the unconventional extends back to my early days as a video gamer. In the Virtual Geographic League’s Martian Football, I was the “runner,” piloting my tiny “Lepton” vectored thrust vehicle to victory. Lurikeen’s Lepton—such a fitting name for someone like me, always small in the grand scheme, racing forward at impossible speeds.

The name Lurikeen comes from ancient Gaelic mythology, long predating its use in modern games like Dark Age of Camelot. I was drawn to the name as a child, inspired by the fae folk who seemed to live in the spaces between worlds, unbound by human expectations. Lurikeen is the original name for what we now call leprechauns, derived from the Gaelic word meaning “cobbler,” a nod to their role as skilled artisans. These figures were resourceful, elusive, and industrious—qualities that resonated deeply with me.

As someone whose family traces back to the old Dal Riata empire’s region—Gaelic people before there was an Éire or an Alba—the name felt even more fitting. My connection to Gaelic mythology, with its rich layers of complexity and fluidity, has always been a touchstone. I saw myself in the Lurikeens, existing on the periphery, unassuming yet full of potential, always finding ways to outmanoeuvre the challenges before me.

Even then, I was out of place, navigating a world designed for others but carving my own path through it. As Lurikeen, I embraced the role of the outsider—small in stature but agile and resourceful, weaving through challenges with ingenuity. The thrill of that game, of racing my “Lepton” VTV to victory, wasn’t just about winning. It was about finding my place in improbable spaces, where the rules bent, the edges blurred, and I could thrive by being exactly who I was. That feeling still resonates with me today, a reminder that even on the margins, there is power and possibility.

As I reflect on these poems and the ideas that inspired them, I see how much my life has been shaped by existing outside the bounds of what’s considered normal. From the banter with “Professor Armando” to my fascination with quantum theory, and the vivid memories of my Lepton, these moments have all been about embracing the edges. It’s there, beyond two sigma, where the unexpected and unexplored take shape—and sometimes, the truest versions of ourselves emerge.

Even in the 1990s, before I had literacy, I found symbols for what I was beginning to understand about myself. The name Lepton wasn’t just a vehicle in a game—it was a metaphor waiting to blossom. Leptons, as particles, are fundamental, impossibly small, and yet essential to the structure of the universe. They interact with forces that shape reality itself but are often overlooked, their significance invisible to the untrained eye. Even then, I intuitively gravitated to this idea: being small in the grand scheme but vital, moving swiftly in spaces others couldn’t access.

Accessible inspirations like Eoin Colfer’s Lower Elements gave me a cultural bridge, connecting the fantastical to my lived experience. Stories of fae worlds and hidden societies resonated deeply, rooted in the Gaelic mythology of my ancestors whilst offering a path forward to imagine something new for myself. These seeds, planted in a world of metaphors and stories I clung to as a child, are finally bearing fruit today. They have led me to this moment—writing poetry, celebrating the margins, and exploring the spaces where the ordinary breaks down and something extraordinary begins.