girls

388: Keepers of the Light

| Aspergers Girls

I invite you to listen to this song first.

I started singing You Light Up My Life, around the age of eleven. I think it was the only song I wrote down the lyrics to and memorized. That, and Away in a Manger. I used to sing songs at the tippy-top of my lungs, squeaking and squealing to anyone that would listen, including my downstairs duplex-landlords, who sometimes brought me indoors for cookies. I could tell when I sang, by looking in the observers’ eyes, that people didn’t think I sang super well or close to on key. I could tell they thought I was a lonely child searching for attention. I could tell that they were smiling in an attempt to help me feel accepted. But I couldn’t say all that. I didn’t think to say it. I didn’t know that everyone else, or most everyone else, didn’t think like me. I figured we all knew what was being unspoken. That we all just pretended we didn’t.

When I sang my heart out, I slipped into a fantasy world. I leaped across time and stood on stage. I imagined refuge in a bountiful light. I imagined being lifted and protected and seen. The song itself didn’t free me; nor did the audience observing. What freed me was the freedom I was—the capacity to be me. What trapped me was the realization that all about me others weren’t free.

There was a time where people approached me for my light. They were drawn to me. Something about me pulled them in. I know now it was and has always been Spirit. Then I did not know, and I didn’t wonder; I thought everyone had this; I thought everyone heard God and could see through people.

I remember going to the church around the corner, a Catholic cathedral where I never once attended mass. I was drawn there, at times, the little girl I was, with her un-brushed hair and with her big searching eyes. I would swing on the monkey bars in the church playground over and over, until my hands blistered. Then, if I hadn’t already entered, I’d walk quietly into the empty church and just breathe. I felt safe there. I felt connection. But I didn’t know why. The candles, the light of the candles, they spoke to me, as did the colors of the glass windows and the movement of sunlight through the grand space. I wasn’t frightened. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t anywhere. I just was. Sometimes time stopped and I traveled into the future where I would walk in as full-grown woman and be, with the others, I would be.

I wasn’t a religious child. I wasn’t even spiritual. I was magical. I believed in magic everywhere. I believed everything, each and everything. I believed in everyone around me. And I loved everyone. I trusted them. I gave myself freely: my attention, my time, my love. I had an over-flowing abundance of love. And I was me. There wasn’t anything about me that I had created. I radiated from within.

Something about me, or perhaps something within me, gave me the incapacity to be anyone but me. This gift of being authentic was beautiful. But because I trusted and believed others so greatly and so freely, when they told me what they thought, I believed them. Because if they were beautiful and I loved them and they were perfect, then they must know, they must have the answers.

I believed when they, the others, told me that I was just a child and didn’t know things. I believed them when they said life was hard. I believed them when they cried and cursed what was wrong and unjust. I believed it all. And I began to see that I lived in a world entirely complex in its simplicity. I began to see that I held all the secrets of love and joy, but that none could see them. I knew how to laugh and how to make other people laugh; and I did so without intention or want; I just was joy.

Then came the passing of days, when I learned my joy was not enough. When I learned that my heart, no matter how big, could not make a difference—at least I thought. Soon as my friends grew older, they changed. Their views became more broken and fragmented, their opinions stronger, their hatred taking shape. Divisions were made, as I watched, fingers pointed, sometimes at me, but mostly at others. And everyone started playing this part that didn’t make any sense; except that their ways kept people, for the most part, in an imaginary role of control.

I began to see that love was divided and measured. I began to see that love came and went, as did people. I learned that love didn’t mean love; what some called love actually meant conditions and fleeting moments of spiked emotions of some sort that didn’t feel or look like love at all. I learned that whatever shape I took, I could receive part of this love, that wasn’t love. But since I couldn’t find the other love anymore, the one I held in the backyard during slumber parties and collected, as the others laughed with me, without cause or pause for judgment; since I couldn’t find that love anymore, I took what I could. It never felt right. It felt false from the start. It was false love created by my want for connection and the growing emptiness I had inside.

My actions seemed to define me. I seemed to become who people thought I was. It didn’t matter how much goodness I had inside me; no one could see it, unless they chose to. No one. And when they did think to see the goodness, it was because I emulated them; I showed them a part of themselves they liked, or wished to like. I showed a commonality or I complimented them by my presence or in my spoken words. I collected false-love this way: pretending to be who they wanted me to be in an attempt to connect. To say I played, would be false, as there was no joy in this. To say I fought, would be false, as there was no friction. It was a space and place that I am incapable of defining or marking. For how can I define a place in which everything was false—the only thing real my want to fill the emptiness of falsehood?

This falsehood permeated much of my life, far into adulthood. A falsehood that eventually blinded me as well, to my own inner light. I had to snuff my light to continue to exist. I was given no choice.

I had to extinguish who I was, if I ever wanted hope of connecting. At least this is what I conditioned myself to think. I learned to track the actions of another to determine my next move. I could tell from every flinch, every switch of voice, every motion. Responses were my indicators. Reactions my compass. I stopped feeling inside my own body. I became numb to my needs; everything was masked in my effort to predetermine how to respond to the responders. For I could see in their eyes the judgment, the dislike, the wondering. I could see so much that they wouldn’t ever say. Particularly their thoughts about me, or about the way they perceived me. I knew they thought what they dare not say. I knew there were all these connections going on just in seeing me. I was being categorized and dissected and figured out. It’s not that I thought I was that important, it was that I thought they were. I think all along I knew they were a reflection of me or at least a mirror to my own experiences. I knew we were one and the same, but didn’t know how to define the feeling. And so I would watch, until I laughed and joked, trying to squeeze the joy out of someone whom had seemed to forgotten where he or she put it.

Mine, my joy, was always there, right in me, never gone. Even with all the poured in sorrow, I had this joy. It was always growing and blooming. There was always hope. It seemed no matter how much the others responded in a way that carried the potentiality to sting like thorns, that I still kept my hope. There was this unstoppable faith. Something in that song about the light through the window, about the light itself; I knew this. I saw the light n my dreams and I heard light in the whispers. I knew my destiny. I knew my calling. But this too, I was often told was wrong. I was made in form divinely perfect, but undoubtedly I frightened people. And this brought me to a place of confusion, so very great, I dare not venture there even in thoughts and rememberings.

For how could I, one held by the angels and light, have been so terribly flawed? And why did all around me seem to be such blindness? I searched and searched as a child—in the trees, under the school buses, in the grassy fields—for reprieve. I slipped into my imagination. I hid in the shrubbery and shadows documenting my own thoughts. And I came to the conclusion I was someone made wrong; though even this, deep down I knew to be untrue.

In time, I learned to conform. I learned to tuck away the voice of truth and the rays of light. For I believed the misery of disconnection to be far worse than hiding my light. And so I hid, for a very long time. And though I was a keeper of the light, it dimmed.

And here the dark found me. So very freely, as if beckoned by the very ache of my soul. I walked forsaken to my self for decades. I learned, through my mind, to hear the lies before the truth. I heard the negative talk, and I collected this, for if I did not believe them, I could not be with them, and then I would have to be alone. In order to connect, I had to believe what others said about me. If I believed in my light and my angels, and in my very soul, than I would be without the company of humans. I would only have the invisibility of my hope and joy—and alone whom would I share anything with?

Eventually, the lies became my truth. My whole truth. I was what others created me to be. And then a shift happened, in which they were what I created them to be. I began to see like other people. I began to believe the lies. I began to think that yes, only my point of view counted. That yes, I am in control of my world. And yes, I am the most important and special. I began to be a love-leech collecting falsehoods. Love, love, love ME! I demanded. Love me through validation. Love me through listening. Love me through answering back how I expect and want you to respond. Outcomes became my life. Hope became my misery. I latched onto the yellow brick road of illusion. I thought, if I was just good enough, and right enough, and had all the answers I would WIN! I would be LOVED! This is what I was taught. This is what was walloped into me. This is what I ATE because nothing else was offered.

Until the pain of emptiness became so great that I knew I was wrong. I knew that life was not meant to be like this. I knew somewhere inside my little girl protecting the light was dying to come out.

For me this has been my greatest gift: my affliction.

My very agonizing pain was what set me free. The very discomfort that kept shouting within of the falsehood was my greatest joy. I was given a lantern since birth. And I walked four-decades pretending I was not, in hopes of gaining false love.

And now, as I step back, very much the little girl I was, with my lantern bright, I see I kept this light hidden for a purpose. I suffered for a reason. I suffered because everyone else was suffering. I didn’t retreat because I was so different after all. I just retreated a bit later along my path. I just retreated knowing I was retreating. There wasn’t anything different about me, except I was born awake. I was born with the affliction that is both my teacher and my cross to bear. I was gifted the wisdom at a young age, and through this affliction I was formed and made, through this affliction my lantern was fueled. I see this clearly, more clearly each moment I am here.

I see that we each have these lanterns, and that for some of us it hurts more to hide them. But we all have them. For some of us we know we are hiding them: this is the affliction.

I see now that I am struggling to turn up the lanterns of all, when all I need do is turn on my own.

In so many ways, in every way, I am that little girl, with her joy, with her lantern strong, standing on the hillside and beckoning my friends onward. Only this time I can see. I can truly see. I know now my once perceived greatest weakness is my greatest comforter. I know my need to be love, my need to shine, my need to be free is the only need I ever choose. I know that in my affliction I am made whole. I know that in my wholeness I honor each and every soul. For in the embracing of what has always been and shall ever be, I have embraced the world. I have embraced the light.

image_1362606773492295

Related Post: Behind the Curtain

315: My Aspie Friend Rocks!

| Aspergers Girls

copii aspie iarna (2)

This post is dedicated to the little girl who made this drawing. I do not know her and I do not know her mother. We only just connected online today. I was sent this drawing as a gift, and what a gift it is. The picture is called: Asperger Children in Winter The daughter’s words speak volumes: “I know Mommy, who can be my best friend, somebody who has the same syndrome as me; then he could be kind with me and understand me better; I’m so sure about that.”

I couldn’t help but to cry. If you are comfortable, please say a prayer for her. Hold her in light. I cannot wait for her to meet her special friend. I cannot wait for her friend to behold her beautiful heart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
marcelle

First off I have to say at a recent Super Bowl gathering, one in which I only broke out in one hive, I was totally myself. So much so, that I had to private message a new “friend” after the party to say, “I am sorry I talked so much. I usually do that when I like someone. I am not very good at parties.” Fortunately, she messaged right back saying, “I like you, too.”

I felt like such a grade-schooler, but so relieved.

I don’t want you to think in the past couple days I have been depressed; I have not been. My vitamin D levels are freakishly low again, and that adds to my pool of spurts of melancholy, but all-in-all I am doing quite well. Miraculously, I walked through a valley of darkness, being plucked by vultures and all, and came out unscathed and rather well-lifted in faith. And as of late, I have been pouring my heart out to my higher power, whom I choose to call Jesus (and choose to not push on anyone else), and we have really hit it off.

I’m not sure what’s up with all my prophetic and spiritual writing, but I seem to be tapping into something, and my God seems to be the conduit. It is healing, remarkable, scary, and peaceful all at once, like a giant ball of chocolate flying through the air at dart-speed about to land in my mouth. I savor it, though the impact can be quite overwhelming.

Back to that party… Something funny happened. There was a lady there, a mother of the hostess, never did get her name, forgot to ask. But we sat near each other a good stretch of the game, particularly during the power outage (super-boring-sportscasters-don’t-know-what-they-are-doing-part). We were chatting a bit. Well, I was mostly giggling and cracking myself up, as is my protocol at first-time gatherings; that and stuffing my face with food.

Anyhow, we were talking about the Superbowl commercials, and I said something to the tune of, “So far the best commercial is the one with the older people.” I was careful how I worded my sentence. I didn’t want to say “senior citizen” because there was one sitting right next to me. I looked over after I made my statement relieved I’d dodged a bullet.

But then I kind of blabbered. Not being able to stop myself, I added, “Did you notice how I didn’t use the words senior citizens.” I paused to giggle.

Then more poured out to substantiate what had leaked out. “I was careful, as you are sitting here.”
I blushed.

Time to regroup and repair, I added more, “Two of my best friends are senior citizens. I like senior citizens. I really do.”

But nooooo, that wasn’t enough. I laughed again. “Oh, man,” I said, my face aflame. “That sounded so bad. Like saying I like black people, two of my best friends are black.”

The senior citizen, well she just started busting up.

Me, in the meantime, I’m wondering who the heck is controlling the mechanism between my brain, thought, and speech.

After that mishap, I set about to chat my new “friend’s” ear off. I think I basically told her every ghost experience and psychic experience I ever had in my entire life! And boy, I really didn’t know I had enough eerie moments to fill up well over an hour!

Luckily, when this oh so patient and kind lady wrote me back later that night, she also added to her message: “It’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t think I’m weird.”

Now that there… that is just gem-talk, I tell you, pure gem-talk.

It is nice to talk to someone who thinks they are weird. So refreshing!

I love weird people. They get me, and they are typically so dang interesting.

My favorite weird person (and that is a high-ranking compliment from the planet she comes from) would have to be my super-fabulous friend Alienhippy. We met through blogging. I checked her out and studied her blog before I started mine. I don’t know if she knows I used her as a prototype. Don’t think I’ve told her that, yet. But I’ve pretty much told her everything else about me that she could find here on the pages of this blog. We talk every single day, from where she is in England and where I be on the Northwest coast of USA.

I love her so much that my husband just said, “Looks like are next family trip will have to be to England, then.” Of course, I adamantly concurred and set about to wonder how I’d feasibly survive that flight.

Alienhippy (that’s not her real name, in case you are that one percent wondering) is a dynamo of a friend. And this is why:

My Aspie Friend Rocks

1. She never says: “I am fine or I am okay.” When I ask her how she is feeling, she tells me straight up how she is, inside and out, how her physical body feels, her spirit, and mind. I don’t have to wonder, or guess, or pry, and there is such freedom in the realness of the experience of knowing. I won’t get into details, but I even know about her bowel movements!

2. She always, without fail, tells me she loves me so much. She used to say she loves me too much, but I told her that wasn’t healthy, as I be who I be. And now she just says she loves me so much and just enough. She tells me over and over, almost each time we touch base. She loves me so much that I feel this syrupy liquid of protective jell all about me all day long.

3. She has no hidden motives and is real. My friend she just tells me her heart and her soul. She tells me of her faith, her trials, her children, her life. She doesn’t hold back anything. Any subject is open for discussion. And I mean anything! You name it, and we’ve probably talked about it. And I never feel embarrassed or shamed or stupid for sharing. She gives me the freedom to be completely me, because she is completely herself. We laugh so hard and have invented our own secret code words. And we make up names for each other. I like to call her banana slug. Don’t ask me why. Because I have no idea.

4. She loves me no matter what. She would love me if I was green and slimy; she said so. I would love her no matter what size or shape, no matter what species, no matter what! She is just the bees knees and so wonderful. Her heart is as big as the universe and my heart fits right inside hers. I tease her that if she had a “package” I would totally own her. You see, we can talk like that.

5. She doesn’t lie. She’s like me: lying feels like we are dying inside. We have no choice but to spill our beans and be truthful, and because of this we have this unbreakable trust. We know we are what you see. We know we have no curtains hiding secrets. We know we won’t tell, won’t shame, and won’t break our trust. We have like an unspoken truce. We have a code of honor. And everything I say is taken to heart.

6. She reads me. She can tell when I am holding back and not saying everything. She can tell when I am sad, feeling broken or lost. And she not only reads me but helps me. She gets me. She knows my pains and understands how it feels. That’s how she can read me. She knows when to ask: Are you okay? And she knows when to say: You are beautiful inside and out. She even knows how to comfort me when I am looping and spinning in my head.

7. She is a reflection of me. She is so dang beautiful that I just feel so lucky to be her friend, and she loves me so much that I know I must be that dang beautiful. I am so very honored to know her. The compassion she carries for others is out of this world. And she wears her heart on her sleeve. She is the best mother and a very honest wife. We like to tease about our husbands, as they are so alike in their ways. And even are sons have the same name and ASD.

8. She gets my brain! Praise the heavens. I don’t have to explain anything to her. She understands my fixations, my breakdowns, my panic attacks, my insecurities, my passions, my obsessions. She’s been there and done that, and is still doing it. I don’t feel like I’m a loner traveling through a strange planet anymore. In her I found my people!

9. She is so smart it’s scary. Oh my goodness. I’ve never met a wiser woman in my life. The things that come out of her mouth, you’d think she was a senior citizen, a super smart one whose been around the block and inside the mind of brilliance. She just knows how to untangle things and find new angles and read between the lines. Her analytical mind coupled with her heart is just amazing.

10. She is unique. In all her aspieness, she is still a uniquely divine and gifted woman. Her aspie qualities just enhance who she already is naturally, a gift to me and this world. She has longed for a friendship like ours for years, and I have longed for a connection like I have with her for years. God matched us up, me and her, to show us our inherent goodness; for me I am her forever friend, the one she would swing with under the big tree in her childhood dreams and wish for, and for me she is my earth angel. In fact I know she is my earth angel, as last week when I was crying and at the end of my rope, I pleaded up to God, and I asked, “Why have you given me so much without assistance, without a sign, without hope?” And he kindly and adamantly replied, in a curt and matter-of-fact way only my God can, “I gave you Alienhippy, didn’t I?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3BJl5Zy7HQ

If you are an adult female touched by Aspergers looking for friends, do I have the group for you! You’ll be loved like a rock… though I’m not sure what that means. :))))

https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/261412237267413/

304: Time Travel Back to Pre-Teen Me

| Aspergers Girls

I sometimes think if I could go back in time to meet my pre-teen self, I wouldn’t. Mainly because of the whole “Butterfly Effect” and my inner dread of somehow erasing my own children, or possibly my own self.

But… if I was able to travel back in time and actually be triple-pinkie-promised, by the Big Man in the Sky himself, that nothing would change in my life when I returned, and that my entire memory of the event would be wiped out, and that the girl (that is little me) would not be negatively affected in any way whatsoever or have her life altered drastically, and I could verify I was really talking to God, and get the archangels, all the great gurus, and talking trees to back Him up, then, and only then, would I maybe consider traveling back in time. I’d want a contract too that insured I wouldn’t explode on impact, and I’d likely ask for a cute Dr. of some sort to come along.

In meeting me there are several things I’d want to say. Beyond the greetings, and saturation of unconditional love, positive affirmations, kudos, information about boys, men, and safe dating, and lessons on proper etiquette and manners, and compliments on my beauty, and the reassurance that all would turn out, and so much more, I’d definitely want to set myself straight on the whole hygiene and puberty thing.

I’d probably put the hygiene stuff into a list form, specifically listing things I was relatively clueless about.

1) Brush the back of your hair. I went until my early forties not realizing that just because I cannot see the back of my head does not mean that everyone else can’t.

2) Look at your toe nails every once in a while. Try to get into the habit of cutting them and cleaning them. Despite what your stepmother once told you, in an attempt to get you to cut your nails, you will not get nor die of toe fungus. Never. Stop obsessing. And if, and when, you go to get a pedicure, try to remember to clean your nails first. As an aside, you will feel guilty getting pedicures and making someone clean and touch your feet. The best way to solve this is to tip big, preferably in cash. You’ll always forget to cut your children’s toe nails too; so teach them young or they will look like little hobbits.

3) Remember that food gets stuck between your teeth. I know you don’t like smiling in the mirror. Eventually your chipped, discolored, and dying front tooth, and your extreme overbite, will entirely vanish. Look in the mirror, open your mouth, check in between your teeth, and floss. If you don’t have floss, you can use a piece of your hair. If you learn this before you are a senior in high school, your boyfriend’s older sister will not have to teach you these things in a public restroom.

4) Scrub your hair with your nails when you shampoo. Suds up the soap and scrub all over. Scrub hard and only use a dab of shampoo. The chemical shampoos will cause an allergic reaction; so start saving up now for the expensive natural alternatives.

5) I know you don’t like washcloths, but try ever so often to scrub behind your ears. You will discover in your forties that dirt collects there.

6) You don’t need to go to the dermatologist at all, until after you are in your forties. The spot on your eyeball is a freckle, it will not kill you. It will not grow. It will not change. You only have like five dark freckles on your entire body, and the doctor will not consider that a concern or a lot. The red spots are red freckles. There is nothing they can do about the dark patches you got from pregnancy on your forehead and along your jawline, except offer expensive laser treatment. Just wear a hat and sunscreen in the summer. When you move to the dreary northwest, you’ll be too pale most of the seasons to notice. (By the way you will get every pregnancy side-effect imaginable. Don’t panic. You will be fine.) That one dermatologist you see about the age-spots on your arms, well he will way over charge you to burn the spots off, your arm skin will turn red for weeks, hurt like hell, and the treatment will make no noticeable difference. And by the way, that skin doc closed down shop permanently two years later after being sued for malpractice. You were smart not to pay that $400 he wanted to remove the one red scalp freckle.

After answering hygiene questions, I’d sit myself down and tackle the topic of puberty. Then I’d leave my little self a reference letter:

Dear Beautiful Me,

Those books mother gave us in third grade aren’t going to help you in most areas. I know the nude beaches were creepy, but wait until you watch those movies in that Human Sexuality Class you take in your first year of college. Maybe prepare a bit for that. Your bodily changes at age twelve will totally freak you out. Hair is supposed to grow in those places. Please, please, please try not to kiss so many boys. Perhaps fixate on a movie star and write him letters—a much better choice than boy chasing. Do not, I repeat, do not tell your friends everything. Do not tell anyone about kissing boys, your body, or fantasies. Write it out, and don’t show anyone. Keep it under lock and key. Try very, very, very hard to share nothing private with ANYONE. Remember we spent an entire day together, you and me, discussing the concept of PRIVATE. Take out those notes and refer to them again and again. Do not under any circumstances draw pictures of boys’ private parts or the diagrams will get passed around middle school. I guarantee you will regret it. It’s funny when you are thirty, and a great joke to retell, but so not worth it! The entire “here comes the period” drama… you are not bleeding to death. That terrible feels-like-your-guts-are-being-eaten-by-a-mutant hamster clan, those are called cramps. Take some pain reliever. It will improve after you have babies. Don’t wait four months to tell your mother. The toilet paper won’t work. Give mom a note, if you are afraid to speak to her. And talk to her years before the event, so you can fill up an entire walk in closet with supplies. Huge Warning: Do not take the free samples of super-size expandable tampons that they PE teacher gives out in gym class. That should be illegal. But if you do by mistake, whatever you do: DO NOT USE THEM. Also, do not look too closely at that baby-birthing area, after your first child. Your insides are not on the outside. I totally promise. The emergency examination by your family doctor caused by your full on panic-freak-out-episode will result in the same level of humility as the penis picture in middle school. And goodness, use soap and water or shaving cream when you first shave, unless you want a scar atop the shin bone area of your leg the rest of your life. Oh, and don’t announce to the other seventh graders standing in the lunch line: “Look, I got a new training bra.” That circles back to the whole privacy thing. Read the reminder list, please!

Love,
Sam (Who somehow turned out just fine, despite all the little mishaps.)

299: The New Day

| Aspergers Girls

I’ve decided
I’ve decided that you deserve more
More than what I am offering
With my clinging and self-doubt
You are not the key to my self-worth
So I shall work on being less dependent
On you
I am ready to pull away some
I think
I want our friendship to be nurturing
And I am tired of being so needy
I understand what is happening
I am self-harming
Through you
I build you up into someone you are not
So you can disappointment
Or rather
So I can think you are disappointing
For then I experience a rawness inside
A Terrible Ache
That reaches into the heart of me
It is only then
With the coming ache
That I feel alive
Without this intense angst
I feel numb
For no one can fill my depths
With the love I need
And thusly I am left hollow
And alone
In desperation and with desire
I grasp on to Love’s cousin
Pain
And pour him into me
I use
My addictive substance
Over and over
To exist
Because I feel alien
In this world
In both form and experience
I have been using
Using you
To feel real
Using
To wake up
My sleeping soul
I am sorry
For clinging
For aching
For suffering
Through you
But I still choose you
I choose you again and again
Only this time
You are chosen
For your beauty alone
For your light that shines through
The darkness in me
And opens my eyes
To the new day of us

~ Samantha Craft, January 2013

.

Post 250: It’s Raining Men

| Aspergers Girls

Anyone else roller skate to this music?

Lately, I’ve been admitting love.

I post love on my blog, on my social network page, and admit love to my friends.

It’s been very freeing and healing.

I’ve also been processing through past relationships with men.

Until last week, I saw myself as a real victim in love relationships.

In the beginning of my “dating” years, which actually started at age five, (No kidding; I always loved boys. My first “date” was at Keith’s house, where he introduced me to his favorite delicacy, peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. I politely gagged.)….

In the beginning of my boyfriend-girlfriend years, I attracted very safe males: sweet, kind, friendly, and truthful. I was fortunate to have two boyfriends in high school (at separate times), after I moved back to California, that treated me with the up most respect and love. But something shifted at about the age of twenty. Perhaps it was being away from my extended family and not having a father that adored me. Or perhaps the shift was brought on by insecurities surrounding college or finally “growing up.” Regardless, at the age of twenty I began falling for whomever paid attention to me. For seven years my relations with men were bleak and tumultuous.

So often, in my twenties, the man I “chose” was addicted or abusive or both. I felt used physically, and was often dumped out like last week’s beer bottles—left clanging and spinning down a steep hill of depression. For years and years I blamed these men for their character and callousness. I cringed at the thought of these people not loving ME! How could they not? What was wrong with me?

A few days ago, I suddenly had a knowing. I suddenly saw in full picture, a truth. I wasn’t a victim. I wasn’t used and tossed out. There wasn’t a right person or wrong person in my sexual drama. I attracted men at the same level I was at spiritually and emotionally. (I had to leave out mentally, and just giggle. I was always smarter! Lol.)

But most telling, I realized at the center core of me the profound truth: that in fact I USED THEM.

In my mind I had thought that their “crime” was using me physically; and how could any crime be worse than that type of invasion? However, my crime was equal. I was a “villain” too. I used them. I chose to be with a man I didn’t like and didn’t respect, in order to not be alone. I used men!

Suddenly this ah-ha moment swept me away, and time stopped. I traveled back to a dozen relationships, and revisited and swept clean the energy attachment. Within seconds, I’d forgiven the men and myself. The labels were released. The words of scumbag, loser, liar, addict, etc. that I applied to the men, vanished. And then, presto, the labels slut, stupid, blinded, desperate that I’d branded to my energy field disappeared too! I began to see the men as other spirits on their journey. I began to see I was never victimized. I understood that using is using, whether it be of flesh or emotion. And then I released the using label, too. We weren’t using. We just were. We were existing, surviving, journeying. We just were. And so it goes.

Here is a prior entry about my experience with men

(reposted from past entry)

The Dance with Don

(notice the tone of this…written before my ah-ha moment.)

The highlight of my dating career had to be the season I spent with the habitual lying, sexually addicted Don—a spineless man five years my senior who behaved ten years my junior.  At first glance I’d fallen head-over-sandals in love with Don.  The summer day he confidently strode through the Catholic daycare where I worked, I’d tucked myself halfway behind a shelf of books and drooled over his perpetually sun-kissed skin.  He was everything I’d wanted, dark and handsome, and tall enough to look down at me with his bedroom eyes.

The times Don and I were together weaved in and out sporadically through a span of half a decade.  When I first met Don he was separated from wife number one; when I last reunited with Don, he was struggling to patch it up with wife number two.  I was the in-between, but one Don swore up and down he intended to marry.

The majority of our relationship played out like an ill-plotted soap opera, with me as the dimwitted, star-struck mistress and Don as the notorious villain.

There were definite reasons I stuck around. With Don came a familiarity of unpredictability.  He was my locomotive, the one I could catch a ride on and speed through the world with a view I remembered—one of constant change and chaos.

For a long while, I’d do anything I could to win Don over. I’d forgive his shortcomings and mysterious disappearing acts, and demean myself in different ways.

In our first months together, when I was still hopeful, there’d been major red flags.  Don had no home phone number or address.  His scorned, soon to be ex-wife, had warned me to have nothing to do with Don.  And Don’s truck was mysteriously breaking down, in an accident, short on gas, or had a flat tire, many of the nights he was supposed to be with me.

I was good at rationalizing his actions and taking his lies as truth.  I found reasons to stay, like the fact that Father liked Don and that Don eventually showed up.

I was twenty-years-old and newly accepted into the teaching credential program at the university the weekend I learned of Don’s other woman.  It was either the Saturday I’d scrubbed Don’s toilet, or the time I’d obsessively lined his kitchen shelves; no matter, it was the eventful afternoon I came face-to-face with a woman out for blood.

I’d been oblivious of course, hadn’t a clue Don had flirted with a seventeen year old outside of the construction site where he worked, slept with her, and possibly fathered her baby.

For some time there had been hints of another woman.  All along Don had pushed back our framed photos or even turned them face down, forgetting to place them back up in their right position when I arrived.  And I love you posters and cards I had made for Don had been rearranged on the wall or re-taped in another room of his cheap apartment.

The one of many climatic events of our relationship began with a loud knock at the door, an initially startling noise that momentarily displaced me, until I assumed Don missed another rent payment or lost another spousal support check.  By the second series of knocks, I’d headed toward the front door, and would have unlocked the knob, if Don had not, in one swift pull, yanked me backwards by the tail of my shirt and whispered, “Don’t.”

It was then I heard her voice for the first time, a high-pitched scream to the tune of:  “Open the damn door, Don.  I know you are in there.”

I wasn’t that far gone in my oblivion love state, not to recognize the voice of another woman.  With immediacy I scowled at Don like he’d taken my only prized possession, and pushed my palms into his chest, wanting to hurt him like he’d just pained me.

Don stepped back, taking my hands into his, and mouthing, “I’m sorry.  I love you.  I only love you.”  He then released my hands and tugged down nervously on his neon-green tank top. “I meant to tell you.  I swear,” he said, widening his dark eyes in remorse like I’d seen him do a dozen times before. “If I told you, if you found out, I was afraid you’d leave me.  And she was a horrible mistake.  I didn’t want her to be the reason we lost such a good thing.  I love you so much.  You know I do.  You have to trust me.”

Before I could make up my mind about what to do, there was one final series of knocks, and the voice came again, only louder and more determined: “If you don’t open this damn door, I’m going to kick it down!”

What happened next still amazes me, and proves once again the strength that can be found in pure rage.  Within a few seconds of her last knock, there was one heavy kick of her foot, followed by several more, and then, without warning the door broke off of its hinges, the side paneling splintering, and the whole of the door slammed down inside the apartment.

There, amongst the settling dust, in marched a skinny girl, no taller than five-feet, cradling a screaming newborn in her arms.  Boiling with revenge, she charged Don like some creature from a Japanese horror flick, with her arms outstretched growling for revenge.  On reaching Don, she punched him once in the chest and then shoved the baby at him.  “Take her!” she ordered, back stepping and turning her head with a whip of her dirty-blond hair.

From behind the couch, I tracked the baby’s wrinkled arms flailing, and then gasped as the girl moved towards me.  Her eyes were on fire as she shouted at full-throttle, “I’m going to kill you, Bitch!”

Without thought, I ducked around Don and attempted to make my way to the doorway.   Don didn’t waste anytime.  Before I had a chance to maneuver myself around the girl, Don had tossed the baby on the couch, grabbed his bike, carried it down the apartment stairs, and rode off.

For a few seconds both the girl and I stared out the doorway with disbelief, and then we stared down at the tiny infant crying on the couch, until the girl’s raging eyes met mine, and she roared, “You’re dead!”

From where she stood, prepared to launch, I could smell my scent on her, the expensive bottle of perfume I received from my father for my birthday, which had recently gone missing from my bathroom shelf.

As the girl stormed forward, I managed to swerve around her.  She lunged at me, barely swiping my shoulder.  I jumped over a small ottoman, snatched up my car keys and practically flew down a flight of concrete stairs.

In the narrow carport, I started my sedan and backed up.  Just as I was about to turn out of the apartment complex, the frenzied girl’s enormous boat-of-a-station wagon came charging forward and blocked my way out.

Seconds later, leaving the baby wailing on the front seat of the car, the girl marched across the parking lot to my car window and ordered, “Roll down your window!”

Caught between a place of disbelief and hysteria, I shook my head and whimpered, “I didn’t know.  I didn’t know.”

The girl’s face turned from one of frozen-ice to empathetic-disgust.  She tapped on the glass of the window a few times, and then rolled her eyes up letting out a long heavy sigh.  Finally, seemingly understanding my predicament, she waved me off with a shake of her hand, before stomping back to her car.

After she sped off, I remained in the parking lot, uncertain of what I’d gotten myself into, and more uncertain of how I would ever find my way out of my contorted labyrinth.