brain

Day 164: Undeep Road Thoughts

| Aspergers Girls

What I thought about while I drove eleven hours (700 miles) to California.

  1. “God gives us dope! God gives us dope! God gives us dope!” (Remembering back to when my young boys screamed this through the house, after they misheard the song lyrics: “God gives us hope.” I never had the heart to correct them.)
  2. Oh, I can pinch much less fat around my waist now.
  3. I wonder if I should use the all-wheel drive option for hills. Oh, what the heck. Let’s see what happens.
  4. Blue sky! I see blue sky! I wonder how tan I’ll get?
  5. “You know what?  Bird shit could easily be considered abstract art. Just look at it. (points to sidewalk) Even a good artist would have a hard time duplicating that.” ~ My middle son’s comment a few weeks ago
  6. The time when I was twelve, the seventh grade fieldtrip was to Ashland, Oregon, a seven hour school bus ride. On arrival I stepped on a nail and had to go the emergency room for a tetanus shot. On departure I threw up all over the backseat.
  7. The time I was a teacher and went to science camp with my fifth grade class and ended up in the emergency room for severe breakout of poison oak.
  8.  I’ve been in an ambulance at least six times.
  9. The time when I was a student at middle school, and in science class a boa constrictor snake wrapped itself around my waist, went through my belt hoops, and got stuck. I had to give the boa constrictor’s owner my pants to take home. Why does weird stuff always happen to me?
  10. There are a whole lot of songs about love and heartbreak on the radio, that pretty much cover every possible scenario, and that I’ve just about experienced every single scenario.
  11. My muse. My darling muse. The enigma who makes me read, write, and digest erotica.
  12. My youngest son is much like a wild hamster in the way he nests and clutters up the backseat of the van. Is there such a thing as wild hamsters?
  13.  I never ever see tailgaters in Washington, but see them all over California.
  14. Who thought it was a good idea to close California state parks? Who thought it was a good idea to elect the Terminator as a governor?
  15. Country singers can make anything sound sad and sexy.
  16. It was so kind of the restaurant waitress to subtract the price of the vegetarian omelet from my bill after I politely explained that they might want to be careful not to accidentally have chunks of ground beef in the veggie omelet.
  17. How wonderful that you have to let someone pump your gas in Oregon. It’s the law.
  18. How fortunate that out of all the gas stations in the upper portion of California that I happened to pick the only free full-service gas station. And that the man with the one arm and missing teeth who pumped my gas had the most beautiful energy and spirit. And that I could feasibly marry a man with one arm and missing teeth. And that looks do not matter to me nearly as much as the energy I share with a person. And that I need to stop worrying about my looks, because I radiate love and positive energy. And I am beautiful just like the man with one arm and missing teeth.
  19. How great that so many people have the capacity to travel the manmade road, through manmade passage ways, passages that were exploded with dynamite.
  20. Trucks are sexy. I would make a lousy truck driver.
  21.  I think way too much about way too much, and could probably survive with my sanity intact in solitary confinement because of my vivid imagination and inquisitive thought processes.
  22. For some reason the phrases “pump my gas” and “big rig” sound erotic.
  23. I’m so happy. I wonder if I drank too much iced-tea.
  24. I’m having a really good hair day.

Day 163: Super Freak

| Aspergers Girls

I’m a SUPER FREAK this morning. I am pretty sure my youngest has restless leg syndrome. And he definitely talks, moans, and moves a whole lot in his sleep. Oh, yes…..traveling once again, and so very much reminded of my human condition. This time an eleven hour drive to California with my three boys, ages ten, thirteen, and fourteen…..oh boy! Literally!

Just pulled this writing up from early May 2012. Today, again, having slept in a hotel (sigh) I am dealing with much overload, lack of sleep, exhaustion, and grumpiness. Hope to have a happier disposition tomorrow after a decent night’s sleep. If you see a woman having a meltdown on the side of Highway 5 in California…that would be super freak me!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the first day of our trip to the Island of Maui, I was reminded of my over sensitive system. I hadn’t imagined the plane fight would be such an unpleasant experience. I’d forgotten, or more likely, I’d hoped for change.

Many people with Aspergers, if not all, are extremely sensitive. They feel emotions and feelings in great depth. Likewise, their senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are very acute. Often, a person experiences sensory overload when he or she is outside his everyday environment. In some cases, home or perhaps nature, are the only places that are tolerable to the senses. Outside of the comfort zone, a person with Aspergers can likely feel an overwhelming degree of agitation, pain, and misery. This is one of the reasons I prefer to spend more time at home than in public places. Sensory overload can lead to meltdowns—which are akin to adult tantrums—a screaming out for help, when one does not know how to help one’s self.

In considering sound, where many people can block out background noise and focus without distraction, people with sensory sensitivities hear everything at once. There is no mute button. And there is no making the noise stop, beyond earplugs and escape.

The other senses work the same. Textures irritate. Smells overwhelm and overtake. Sights hurt. And even the taste of air is unpleasant.

It appears there is something about the Asperger’s sensory and processing system that cause people to sense things in the environment in segmented over-exaggerated parts, instead of whole. Instead of looking upon a crowd and seeing a crowd, one looks upon a multitude of bombarding shapes and sizes, each movement as uncomfortable to view as the next.

People with sensory sensitivities are acutely aware of everything happening in their environment and everything seems to be occurring all at once. There isn’t release. What would be a soft unnoticeable hum to one becomes a piercing roar to the other. It is as if someone has turned up the volume of every single sensory organ.

There is no relaxation, only the constant stream of shards—parts of chatter, parts of the ticking clock, parts of the rattling and  hum. There are parts of smells, all sorted out and classified, not mingled, not forgotten. There are parts of tastes—the breath, the air, the fragrances, the poisons chemicals. Sights are in parts. Fragmented pieces that attempt to make a whole, but fail. A face not remembered except as shape of wrinkled wide nose and color of dark narrow eyes. Even the mind is in parts, continually breaking down wholes to subsections. Whole to parts is easy. Parts to whole is hard. Nothing is as it appears. Everything is in parts. It is the parts that bring agony, the endless parts that bring with them the impossibility of finding retreat in the whole.

With my sensory sensitivities, the six-hour ride in the airplane to Maui was torturous. No mind control, mantras, visualization, or distractions could stop the parts. And lacking the ability to help myself, sank me into self-blame. I sat in misery wishing to time travel into sweet oblivion. I became depleted, agitated, and depressed. Meltdown was avoided, but angry eyes prevailed.

The worst was the piercing babies’ cries. There were at least ten babies on the plane. There wasn’t a time when one wasn’t screaming.

I did find refuge. I had my words. I could write. I could escape through the process of creating images, feelings, and thoughts into story. Words were my parachute and freedom, a passport away from the screaming shards.

Cry from the Sky

Imploded

Without retreat

Saturated misery

Roots into ear

Vine out

Crumpling, tearing, crackling paper

The rhythmic off beat dance murdering peace

Stop!

Bring silence

Opening cans, clanging carts, annoying repetitive footsteps

Bumping in front, bumping in back

An uninvited rollercoaster

No escape

The babies scream and scream again

Piercing thorns

Constant chatter, whispers, sighs

Conversations bleed into a monster of noise

Roaring engine rattles fury

Even the yawns scream

Squishing and swishing misshapen bodies

Stench

Stale garbage

One hundred meals at once

Beyond window, the fresh and silence beckons

A tease of the unattainable

Aches, irritations, stiffness, icy cold

Suffocating soreness

More bumping, more banging

Nothing is calm

Nothing is motionless

Everything moving

Everything in parts

One broken into a thousand

Question after question

Comment after comment

Trapped in stinging air

Recycled germs everywhere

Breathing in danger

Stop. Shut up. Cease

Release me

Put a cork in the child’s mouth

Put a muzzle on the man

Put a mute light on

STOP MOVING!

Energy spikes, energy flows, energy feeds

Energy spirals, burrows, pangs

Into self

Close eyes

Close noise

Close people

Close the outside

Focus on inside

Focus on calm

And still the babe screams

“Help me!”

Day 160: Decreasing Photons

| Aspergers Girls

I have the hardest time writing when I am trying not to confront what is troubling my mind.

At those times, when angst is knocking on spirit’s door, I tend to write romantic and lust-filled poetry, or distract myself with stories from the past. I tend to grasp onto my muse, my anchor, a jolt that compels me into another state of reality.

Today I am insecure. I am insecure about my appearance, my personhood, my ability to shine, and my very spirit. I am looping in thought. And the taters are hitting the fan. I am worried that I am not enough, even though innately I know I am. I am worried that I am a facade, even though at my core I know I am authentic. I am worried about my health and a host of other items.

Insecurity is an emotion I’ve dealt with pretty much my entire life on earth, at least ever since my mother and father divorced. My insecurity quadrupled in size when my mother divorced my stepfather, and I was never able to see my step brothers and sisters again. My insecurity grew when my best friend was kidnapped, my pets died as I predicted, my homes constantly changed, and my mother became lost in her own world. The emotion mutated and divided when I mistook a teenager for the man I would marry someday and teenage girls for trusted confidants. And grownups as safety. The emotion enveloped the whole of me when I reached adulthood and realized I was very much still an infant.

I remember being so brave, so strong, and trying and trying to do the right thing. If I could only do the right thing, then life would be manageable. I remember with clarity the day my friends collected starfish on the ocean shore; I remember running up the sandy hill to the the truck, and hovering in the camper shell weeping, because no one would listen as I cried and shouted on the beach that the starfish were living creatures, and my friends were killing them. I remember lots of times crying in enclosed spaces…in tents, in closets, under covers, in bushes….anywhere I could escape the sadness surrounding me.

I figured if I tried hard enough, I could make a difference in my world and within myself. Take away the horrible pain. I thought if I tried enough, I too would get the promises, the opportunity, the good stuff.

I tried so hard that I succeeded in many ways, I gather. Only I don’t know what I succeeded in or for whom.

I like to pretend sometimes I have the answers.

I like to pretend I am carrying this grand light of wisdom and trust, of faith and hope, of all things precious and divine.

I like to pretend ego is in the backseat, Source at the wheel, and my present moment is the only one that matters.

I like to pretend.

I can’t tell imaginings from reality. I can’t find the line. I doubt the line even exists.

Sometimes I think I shine too much. Sometimes I think I lost the earthly cloak that stops the inner glow, that stops me from becoming depleted. I wonder what I’ve given up in order to shine. I wonder if the dark is perhaps a better place to go.

I thought writing would be my avenue, my escape, a way I could finally be me. But the pressure is building and the patterns are starting, and everything seems a repeat. Again I am soother,  lifter, giver, sweet Sam, adored,  gentle, kind…so kind. I’m still flawed. I get that. I’m not perfect. But I lean to the side of trying to be perfect, trying to be what I think others want to see. I make others my gods, my suitor, my love. I make people my exact reflection; their opinions my barometer. I see in my own mirror what I imagine others see. And then I tell myself not to. To stop. To trust. And then I wonder what and whom to trust, when my very existence seems a dream.

No matter how many times I tell myself I am enough, I still search. I think that if a certain person loves me then everything else will be erased. I dream of being rescued. I dream of escaping this life. A life that by most standards is wonderful. I have no idea where I would escape to. I have absolutely no idea. I just know I long to escape.

My mind is constant. Everything and everyone is questioned. Each comment I answer is weighted and analyzed. Each word I write a drop of blood, a hope that I spoke correctly, I answered honestly, I did my best. Each letter of the alphabet carries the weight of an elephant.

Typing is not typing. Typing is risking. Each word leads to thoughts. Each thought to more evaluation. Why do I care? Why can’t I let go? Why can I not accept me? Why does one person hold my world and my worth? Why can I not care only about the other and not about me? Why is my ego still here? Why do I have any motive at all except love? What is the right amount of drive? Am I too driven? Am I not driven enough? Am I too honest? Am I not honest enough? What is telling the whole truth, if not laying out my emotions? What is truth?

And yes, what of this light? This grand light? Is it anything beyond descending and decreasing photons………….

________

Day 151: The Quiet Room

| Aspergers Girls

After yesterday’s post I feel like my panties are dangling down around my ankles. Feeling fully exposed here. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of what I shared. Long past those emotions. I am human and have had hard times, like us all. But I feel a bit naked in my exposure of self, having had shared such a vital part of my life without much explanation.

I think it is important to understand that at the time of my nervous breakdown I had been on a low dose anti-depressant to control my chronic muscle pain. The medication entirely numbed me emotionally for years. I lived very much like a robot. I couldn’t cry even when I was sad. And I couldn’t feel the depths of my experience. I was in less pain, but had no emotions. I was numb in all aspects.

Being numb to myself had major drawbacks. I didn’t have an off button, or anything to balance my actions. Feeling nothing, I had no way of checking in with myself. I no longer knew exhaustion. I gradually became an over-achieving, control freak. Eventually, I started to despise more and more of who I was, and recognized the real me was covered and masked underneath. I decided, without consulting anyone and without being aware of the dangers, to stop my anti-depressant. In my eyes the drug was serving as a painkiller and little more. I didn’t understand that in stopping the prescription that my brain chemistry would go all haywire.

Within days of stopping, my appetite came back so strongly that I couldn’t stop eating. I gained five pounds in two days. And much worse, my serotonin levels plummeted making everything look bleak. And my emotions, they returned in a mad rush. I felt like I was opening a  storm door of emotions that had all been hidden in an expansive closet for half a decade.

After several weeks, I couldn’t stand the intensity of emotions and my huge appetite—I could actually taste life and food again but was out of control—so I started back on the medication. Reintroducing the anti-depressant into my system led to suicidal thoughts. This is when I ended up in the admissions to the psychiatry ward. I’m not saying the medication caused my breakdown but it definitely altered my brain chemistry enough to push me over the edge.

The Quiet Room

After two colored pills, I entered the last room at the end of the hall. Muffled snores, bleach, staleness—each welcomed me.

I found my bed.  I pulled off my sweatshirt and spread it across the pillow.

Darkness.

I stared up at the shadowed ceiling.

There was no sleeping.

As midnight approached, I stepped through the vacant corridor, light and clumsy, like a puppet pulled by a master puppeteer.  “I can’t sleep in there,” I mumbled, looking at the nurse’s wide forehead.  “I can’t sleep with a stranger in my room.”  I lowered my eyes to her white shoes, long laces, scuffed toes.

The nurse looked me over with a cynical smile.  “What are you afraid of?”

I felt a punch to my stomach.  “I just can’t sleep in there,” I answered.

Huffing, the nurse pulled down her glasses. “Fine, come with me, then.”

I padded down the hall, thinking I might fall down, hoping I would wake up, knowing this was surely hell.  The tall nurse stopped.  She edged her eyes around me, trying to see inside.  “You can stay in the Quiet Room for the night.  But it’s not where you are supposed to be.”

Chastised, I didn’t move.  I knew this wasn’t where I was supposed to be.  None of this place was where I was supposed to be.  She didn’t know me…

The rest of this story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers.

 

Day 139: Tsunami Sam

| Aspergers Girls

I’ve been perusing the Internet looking for an appropriate word for how I feel about myself at the moment. I tried to find the root origin of “suck eggs” and concluded I am not a canine who has trouble with stopping myself from sucking chicken eggs nor am I in an uncomfortable situation that makes me look odd. I searched for the word “suck,” to grasp a greater understanding of the word, and ended up with synonyms like “drink from straw.” I was about to ask Google God about “bitch,” but decided I’d had enough reading about dogs. So here I am, debating in my mind what I am feeling, who I am, and where I belong on this damn earth.

Some things I’ve decided are very hard for me today:

1)      Being married

2)      Eating food

3)      Moving my body

Hmmmmm. No wonder I’m a mess.

I try to be very positive and uplifting—other people tend to be appreciative and accept me when I wipe on my smiling face. The problem occurs when I wipe off the smile; not everyone tends to stick around so readily when disgruntled Sam appears. Silly, really, how folks like the fair-weather Sam, and run from the storm in me—natural instinct I suppose. Maybe that’s why my good friends are the types that aren’t too much afraid of natural disasters: living in earthquake zones, flash flood areas, and potential tsunami states.

I am in a potential tsunami state right now. I’ve been triggered, and am thusly harboring a wave as the ground shifts beneath me. Some of the ground shifting is a result of my short list above. I can sum up number two and three on my list fairly easily. Eating is hard because I am sensitive to everything I put in my system. Moving is hard because of chronic pain. Every food affects me at a physical and mental level. When I consume wheat and most grains, I become fatigued, depressed, and sometimes border on thoughts of paranoia about my health. Sugar often causes instant pain. And any type of food, except perhaps a piece of cooked fish with no seasoning, causes my stamina to decrease by half. Precise to say, sometimes I avoid eating all together.

Doctors and other health professionals have diagnosed me with about ten or so different health conditions; and each condition can harbor a strong potential to cause chronic pain. But I like to pretend they are all wrong. And can do fairly well at faking it till I make it, until the wave sets in, and I feel like I’m about to crash, and take out an entire village with me.

When the physical pain hits hard, my immediate reaction is always the same: denial. How can I be doing so well for a month and then, out of the blue, feel like I got run over by a truck?

Then blame sets in. What did I do wrong? Did I eat something wrong? How did I allow this to happen? Am I stressed? Why am I stressed?

Then resentment comes with her evil head. Why me? This isn’t fair. I hate this.

And then I collapse. A curled up not-so-friendly kitten on the couch, unable to move, unable to do anything really, but complain and act like a person whom has had her favorite treasures stolen: energy and serenity. The trick for me is letting go, and letting the cycle pass. If I could learn to shut off my mind, stop the fight, and just surrender to a day of not moving and not getting “anything” done, then I would be all the better for it. But I have this thing about control…especially control of my own body.

This leads me to marriage. The original title of this post was going to be: Why It Sucks Being Married to Me. But I thought that was just a wee bit too self-demeaning and seriously similar to putting a firing-squad to my ego. Not that ego doesn’t deserve to be taken down every once in a while. I’m just not ready to annihilate him all together.

But I do know I’m not an easy person to live with. I sometimes wonder if life would be easier if I was single. Mostly so I could retreat in isolation and wallow in self-pity. I lived alone in my early twenties. I remember. I was in a constant state of panic and fret. Anxiety lurched around every corner. I was even afraid to leave the house and walk across the parking lot to do laundry. I’ve grown and matured some in the last twenty years. I think I could manage a laundry facility okay on my own. I wonder about all the other elements of life, though. Too many to mention, or even list.

Don’t get me wrong. I like me. I have plenty wonderful qualities to offer a spouse. It’s just, living with me, is like living with a lion let loose from a cage at a circus. I’m trained and all. I’ve learned how I’m expected to act. I try my best. I even love the people around me: they feed me, they provide shelter, they even give me a stage in which to receive praise. And I love them for their unique spirits, too. It’s just I long to be in the wild and free, without restriction, without having to follow a role, having to be something I am not.

And I tend to lash out unexpectedly; from an onlooker’s point of view, I probably appear to lash out from nothing. But there are always triggers. Whether the food intolerance, the surmounting physical pain, or my non-stop brain, something is always about that causes my reaction. Sometimes my reaction is to other people’s words and/or actions, a direct result of my rigid thinking. I carry high ideals. I cannot help this. I find it difficult to tolerate lies, betrayal, aggression, passivity, gluttony, rudeness, and avoidance behavior. And I have a hard time understanding why people do the things they do. I try. I try to be flexible and tolerant. Trouble is this brain of mine is hyper-sensitive much like my gut. And all this rubbish going on inside of me, turns me into a prickly prune—all wrinkled up in poutiness and spiked out with defense weapons. Picture a shriveled plum with sharpened toothpick spears stuck about.

That’s why a cave near the sea sounds nice about now. A warm cave that smells like real wild flowers, with soft organic bedding, no insects or other lurching animals, temperature of 76 degrees, no wind factor, no dampness, absolutely no mold, low humidity, only the sound of ocean water nearby and birds chirping, and absolutely a non-tsunami zone. That’s all I need. I semi-dark luxury-cave on an island inhabited by smiling, quiet, private people. Until the wave passes—just until the wave passes.