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.
These last four days have been life changing. The combination of the new medicine and diet for my health condition, the sunshine, and the companionship of a dear friend have pulled me out of a two month-long period of deep depression. I know now the depression was more than situational. Besides an uncomfortable experience at the university I’d been attending and the death of our beloved family dog, I discovered earlier this week that my vitamin D levels are extremely low, my iron levels still below normal, and my protein levels very low too! Throwing in my new hypothyroid diagnosis, and considering any one of the before mentioned conditions can cause exhaustion, I’m surprised I could even get off of the couch.
As I am emerging from the dark tunnel of fatigue and depression, I am celebrating internally—my spirit soaring and applauding. I am applauding a renewed energy. I am applauding my strength, endurance, and patience. And I am applauding my experience.
No matter the degree of challenge, I understand the past weeks have made me stronger in spirit.
I continue to be hopeful my health will improve. Yet, I am releasing control to my higher power.
Today, through the help of my friend, I created the mantra: I am tree.
I am a tree. And in being a tree I need not worry what will land on me, break me, climb me, peck me, burrow into me, or even cut me down. I only need to be a tree and nothing more. And I am perfect in my treeness—perfect in my being. Like a tree I will not fret and will not fight against the unknown. I will be. I will live. And I will grow.
I recognize I have slipped back into old patterns, or what I call my old mold. Just as the physical body sometimes retreats back to an old set weight, the spiritual body can retreat back to a set way of living. For me this old way of living includes a fear-based mentality and many moments of over-thinking. I am visualizing a new mold that benefits my spirit.
I recognize I have been attracting to my life much of what I have been fretting about. I recognize that by focusing on beneficial thoughts, I in turn will benefit, as will those around me. I knew this before, but today I see my journey from a new vantage point.
In the coming days my hope is to continue practices of self-care and self-love, as I release control and let the seasons of my spirit unfold without struggle. I am tree. I will be. I will live. I will grow.
Ben stood up straight, his ears crimson, his voice hoarse. “Damn it! How dare you say that in front of a child! What are you thinking? Are you an idiot? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Now, although I was completely mortified and feeling the strong urge, despite my stomach cramping, to crawl under the hospital bed and never come out, I have to say, Ben impressed me. Not in the way a parent impresses you by throwing you a birthday party and inviting all of your friends over to stay the night, nor in the way a child feels proud when a parent attends the school’s career day and knocks the socks or your classmates. No, it wasn’t the type of impressive behavior that summons thoughts of coolness and grandiosity. Ben’s behavior more so brought images of a fearsome bear standing on her hind legs with claws erected to protect her cub. It was a scary image, quite terrifying actually—though none could deny that somewhere deep inside the man who was set upon a blind-rampage, huffing and puffing away at every hospital staff member within his path, that there was at least somewhere hidden a jewel of compassion.
It didn’t take long for Ben to pack up my things, usher Mother and me out of the building, and drive thirty miles across the state to another hospital. Sadly for Ben, by then hospital visiting hours had past and the nurses insisted Ben and Mother leave. And thus I was made to stay in a strange place, miles from home, without a soul I knew, replaying in my head all the horrific ways my death might play out…
This story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers
On a Monday just past four in the afternoon, Mother, dressed in her secondhand dress and faux-leather heels, drove a little faster than normal—which was still relatively slow. I was seated in the front seat of Ben’s battered sedan. Every few minutes a piercing pain drove up my left side causing me to let out a muffled moan, which gave Mother a reason to pat her hand on my shoulder and offer out a sympathetic smile.
This was an unusual ride, given the fact I was headed for the hospital, and Mother’s live in lover, Ben, who was habitually attached to the front seat, was dutifully sulking in the back. I was so accustomed to seeing Ben’s broad back hunched over in the front that upon spotting him there, behind me, sprawled out in excess of half the seat with his socked feet propped up on Mother’s weather-beaten briefcase, I swore to myself I was dreaming. But if I was dreaming I thought, then surely when I had shut my eyes and then peered out again, Ben would have vanished…
This story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers
Everyday Asperger's 