identity

434: In This Way I Be

| Aspergers Girls

sam in glasses

It’s hard to find the center of me. I tend to swing from one extreme to the next. Sometimes becoming my own captain and other times my own martyr. I can be undeniably strong and passionate in one moment, and the next, fallen, some lost child too ashamed to face the world.

I am hard on myself. I push myself. I know no other way of being. On the days I seem to blend in, another ghost in the world, not making my mark, or mistakes, or anything beyond normalcy, are the days I have drawn out of my reserves. I have taken out from somewhere the stockpile of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love, bottled from the days of reprieve, and, in attempt to function, drenched myself in the overflow of me. I can walk in the world that way: as a form of former self, reclaimed and reopened.

If I do not, if I cannot find the reserves, I simply cannot be, and I must sink away into another world of creation, imagination, and slumber. I can sit aimlessly this way, repeating the same tasks, haunted by the same thoughts, and wondering where I am. In these moments, I am frightened into stillness, because the part of me I thought I was is no longer.

In some ways, every few hours, I seem to awaken to a new self, the other discarded and bottled, filed in the stream of somewhere else. And in many ways, I have to find the pieces I was to make sense of what I have become. I sit as a fisherman, hooked by my own hook, flaying about in search of something gone, something broken. It is me, I find, again and again, but no one I recognize. And I fail myself in this way, turning about trying to bring back myself from where I went and what I’ve done.

There are so many of me at times, it seems the universe is alive within, and I am but the essence of what has already happened. I am my past and barely my present. My future unattainable. I cannot explain the dynamics more than to say I am awake and aware of the process, but rendered entirely helpless. For some reason I have escaped again from something I know not what of, to become someone I do not recognize, and to sit in wonderment of where I am.

To exist in a state outside my own isolation requires the assembly of a massive team of onlookers. Not the people or the public, by the interior eyes on the walls inside of me. There is a team there of limitless resource; each expert a supporter of thought, and each thought an assembly line to the experts. I move and breathe in awareness of the inside of my own self. I question and conquer my surroundings and my very existence.

I am in a heightened state of being and, thusly so, in a physically exhausted state from the bombardment of awareness. I take in everything and everyone, beyond the surface, dividing and multiplying conclusions and theories. I take in even the process of the taking, analyzing the way in which my mind works, as it’s churning. Slipping beyond just being to being within the within.

The energy required to merely exist, outside the elements of rest and retreat, is the same energy required to fuel a giant battleship. I can float well enough, at the mercy of the elements, and definitely sink without assistance, but to move and continue to move, I must tap into the reservoir of self. I must find a section, a team, a group meandering about me, and rein them in, to teach them to teach me the ways. To remind me of how to move and what to contribute. To remind me of what not to say, and how to save myself, when what is spoken has gone too far.

I watch me, and I want to tell the others, outside of me, that this is not me. That on another day I will be entirely different. That each day I live I am renewed and born again. That what is seen is not me and what I see is not them.

Yet, I am made to believe all is real and all is as is, and that what I am, in my limited projection filtered through a limited perception, is me in totality. Nothing is further from the truth. I am not as the world makes me to be. And neither is the stranger before me.

And so I walk awake and exhausted, pretending to move through a game in which there is no end, with a limited fuel burning its way to empty. In this way I am made to bleed. Drip by drip, losing all I have collected in hopes of survival. Until the next day, when I find myself unable to move, unable to begin to navigate the ways, to begin to have the strength to even look for the start. It is then I retreat and fold into myself, wanting to stop all the signs that point in various directions to various phantom truths.

It is then I feel the loneliness, in my awaking, in the knowing of only belonging for a short while, without even being there fully, without even knowing how to be there. It is then I feel the loneliness of knowing the pendulum has moved again. The part of me once filled with eagerness and anticipation, with the desire to try and triumph, left at the sidelines forgotten. I can’t explain where I go or why I go. I only know I go. And in this way I am made. In this way I be.

429: The Pool of Oughts

| Aspergers Girls

I have been living through a familiar dread—one that I have carried with me my entire life.

A major part of my predicament is in the stringing of my thoughts—in the way my mind instinctually expands off one concept onto another. At times I seem to be thinking, or at minimum existing, at multiple levels. Not in a psychedelic way; yet, in a very definite effectual state in which I am neither here nor there, but everywhere. There aren’t any lights or awakenings, but there exists this extremeness of a structure or building, as if I were a skyscraper itself expanding out in exponential infeasible directions beyond the view of the naked eye. And here, I slip simultaneously beyond what I am able to see and into the place of invisibility.

I recognize I am absent, with my faraway stare. I recognize I have lost my leash to the rest of self. I see from beyond that I am standing outside of where I am, holding a string to the other place of where the rest of me exists; my body in most ways remaining a shell.

In life as in fiction, I can be watching a scene play out, and at the same instant be analyzing the characters’ personalities, the actors’ personalities, the screen writer’s purpose, the landscape, the environment and feasible psychological ramifications of the spoken words and actions of the people. My mind seems spider-like in its ways, capable of reaching out in a potentially infinite array of directions, with its spindly legs sprouting and spurning in fanatical rupture. The rhythmic zeal moves from abstract to concrete, and I am swept up in the weaving of a thousand stitching legs—the legs themselves as streams pouring out of a waterfall, each spawning another waterfall. Picture after picture. Image after image dripping down in a thousand ways. All of this birthed into a whirlpool of thought that is neither disorganize or organized, but collected in the same manner in which one would forge food for the winter or build a nest for safety. Here is where everything is.

In sitting to do or think of anything, I am sitting as the aching spider, as the legs, as the fountains, as the streams, as the nest. Some large living machine pulsating with connections. I can sense this happening, as I am thinking about thinking about thinking. I take an elevator in thought or jump through the illusion of self that is in actuality the mirrors set upon mirrors—each image further, smaller, deeper, but just as real and just as exact.

I don’t actually see a spider and legs, and the rest, but I feel this movement as such; where if I had to describe the pulsating chains of me, this is as close as I could come. But in truth there isn’t anything I can follow or find, just this sense of substantial never ending depth akin to the collective pool of unconsciousness or perhaps liken to a life-size mold where self enters to be reinvented again and again.

Here in this space of no space, I meander through the chambers that hold the record of all experience, shifting through the files and bringing up into the light that which has yet to be discovered: a scaffolding mechanism reviewing what has been, what will be, and where I ought be.

The trouble begins, need I say trouble, when I open the files of ‘ought.’ There is where the stinging nettle comes, with the burning so distracting that all else falls down. The ‘ought’ files take over. For some reason or another, my essence absorbs the rules, regulations, how-tos, structure, system of being, and so on. I don’t know why, and it hurts to try to figure out the why of why I need to know the whys. I just do.

And in so being immersed in the ‘ought’ files, I get lost. I become over-expanded, swelled, and pressurized. A sponge in a pool expansive and foreboding, each movement of thought yet another burden onto self. Here in the pool of ‘oughts’ I become confused, primarily because there exists contradiction beyond contradiction. One school of thought against the other. One way of being beyond the other. Each standing in line shouting to be heard. Here is a room that has too many choices and too many directions. Too much depth. For a child as I be, I become mesmerized and trapped in the gooey notions of ‘ought.’ I begin deciphering each segment, each crumb, reaching the same conclusion continually: That all is an illusion and all is not.

I stand there ashamed of my own being for not being who I ‘ought’ to be. As I stand there, too, erect in self proclaiming who I am. I stand there crying in the confusion. And I sink there too, the strokes of my arms useless, as I wade through the muck of nonsense.

I become useless onto myself with so many options that lead to either dead ends or the opposite or the contradictory voice of a mass of many; the ‘oughts’ tie up the whole of the machine into a ball of inability. Motionless enters. I remain trapped, focusing and refocusing on what is evidentially lies or mistruths. I hear the echoes of the all. The ways in which the ‘wrongness’ hurts the masses. The ways in which we are each silently tormented in our minds by the rules established by the ones who are equally predispositioned to torment. It becomes a jumble of confusion and mayhem; something far beyond the enchantment of mystery and far closer to the bowels of a bleak twisted jail yard.

I am myself here, still. Uncorrupted, unmoved, but nonetheless made into something I don’t want to be. I am crying on the inside while strong on the outside. And then I am strong more so in the depths of self and made weak on the outer layers. I am bathed in this place of non-discrepancy, baptized in a sense by the very alive confusion. Drowned too, unable to breathe, and then spat out, left as naked and brought back to this place I am now. Here. Present. Aware. Alive.

I go through this in a way so swift and abstract, yet so expansive in distance and very real, that I cannot help but to be altered, existing as this being reborn and reborn again, through the loud shattering chaos that the world whispers as truth.

428: Impermanence

| Aspergers Girls

Impermanence.

I understand the word. I feel the word. I live the word. I am hyper aware of impermanence. It is all around me. The constant changing elements of water, the river that is never the same once visited again. I understand all is in continuum. Nothing ever stops and nothing ever stays. I think I have understood this since I was a small child. I think that understanding such complex concepts at a young age added to my anxiety.

Perhaps this is when I began to cling to my imagination deeper and deeper, and began to learn how to survive. I was a fledgling set out to fly far too early. Someone unadjusted to the world at large made to be a part of something she did not understand and did not want to understand. I hid in my very own nightmares, determined to fight off demons in an arena I created, untouched by the outside.

I jumped fence after fence, leaping from robbers and ‘bad guys.’ I protected my mother from the giant waves coming at us as I clung to the ocean cliffs for life. I ward off monsters pulling me down the bed.

It was impossible to live in the present. Entirely impossible. To feel everything at once would have been liken to an internal combustion. I would have exploded, in one way or another. Instead I locked everything inside and I made promises. I promised to grow up to be a good person, to be a good mommy, and to make a difference in the world. I turned my terrible angst into hope. I set goals. I set conditions. And I made order out of the chaos.

Eventually my goals were reached. I’d done everything I’d ever wanted. My life was set. Every single one. And there I sat, not too long ago, lost. For what was I to do when everything I’d set to do had been reached?

I understood myself and the dynamics of my life. I understood the deepest of religious thoughts and philosophies. I understood my journey and all that had transpired. At least to the greatest degree possible for the person I was.

Had I been a different person years ago…oh so it seemed. Had I been made new week after week, waking up to a person I did not know or recognize? Indeed. I was transformed from the inside out. The dreams, prophetic and enriched with symbolism, came. The painting, the drawing, the poetry, the intense unbearable passion. I was wrapped up in this whirlwind I could not control. I was swept away by the beauty. I was floating. I was where I thought I would remain.

Only I was drowning. I was suffering in a rigidness and extremeness. I was stuck again. I lost myself in a way I didn’t know way possible. I flew up to the ceiling of my own life in a bubble of my own. Everything and everyone seemed a burden but my God. I was able to love, yes, unconditionally, but I wasn’t able to be. I wasn’t there. I was lost in yet another formed self.

I was reformed into something I was not. At least it seems that way through the eyes of retrospection. But what if that was who I am? What if at that moment that was me in completion: this lost heroine found to her own self. I do not know. I only know I was drifting. I was floating. I was no longer grounded. Nothing was that had been before, and all seemed lost and found at once.

It was my new escape. I know this in looking back. But I never would know it then. I’d transported into another place and into another state of being to survive. What was I surviving? This place.

I’d set new rules upon myself: to not fixate, to stay in the present, to be of service, to love unconditionally, to forgive everyone, to release anger. All beneficial rules. All effective measures. Except I wrapped myself in barbwire. I literally took the fencing that had always caged me in—the fence of rules, regulations, and must-do’s—and then made the fencing my very skin. I took my self and made myself the rigidness. I bleed for the world. Or so I thought.

But I was really bleeding for me. I was finally coming to the cuffing of self—to the last prison—the last restrictions of soul. I was making myself believe that through effort, sacrifice, and obeying I would at last be free. That through service, I would at last have found the answer.

I didn’t realize that I no longer need to suffer to be the light.
I didn’t realize that I no longer have to search to find who I already am.
I didn’t realize that the very impermanence that haunted me as a youth, was the same impermanence that would pull me through.

I went on my knees. I curled on the floor and I wept. For through everything, I believed I still hadn’t sacrificed enough. I believed I had to be tortured to heal the world. I believed if I wasn’t bled out I couldn’t survive. I thought, without reason, that to live was to die a thousand deaths.

I begged for reprieve, for change, for retreat. And it came.

The waves of trials. The turmoil of emotions. The constant moving of my foundation. Everything bubbled up and exploded as hot molten. Everything splattered and spilled and spat—hot liquid pain. And the landscape reformed burying me in the process. Momentarily, unable to breathe or float or be, I dug through the debris. I suffered then, but in a different way.

I suffered through finding where I’d last left myself. And I found me. Somewhat buried, too. But not as deep. Just set out as a shell beside the shadows where I moved; hidden beneath the very darkness I carried. An invisibleness that formed into shape with each of my worries and woes. I found me there then, or what remained of me, all withered and severed. And I remembered that I had this funny way of finding places to go while leaving the rest of me behind. I had to have been there, I supposed, in this place of no place, while the other slipped on my suit of being. I had to be there and rest, beyond the structure of the illusion of our world, so I could awaken to me again and behold the lands ruptured and renewed

425: What if I don’t have Aspergers?

| Aspergers Girls

What if I DON’T have Aspergers

But what if I don’t have Aspergers? What if this is just me clinging onto a thread in hopes of not being alone in this world?
What if we are just aliens, light-workers, empaths, sensitives or advanced spiritual beings?
What if I am a reincarnated sage?
What if I am a Buddhist paying for previous karmic waves?
What if I am truly crazy, self-inventing my own condition to feel more normal in claiming I am unique?
What if Aspergers doesn’t exist and this is just a human condition?
What if this whole Aspergers is a trend and being over diagnosed?
What if I am making this up in my head to fit in with a collective?
What if I find out from an expert I have something else and not Aspergers?
Am I smart enough to have Aspergers?
Am I odd enough?
Am I enough of anything?
Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee stop!
Who cares?
Really?
Get rid of the name. Call it a chicken-foot fungus dance. Call it the mushroom’s puke master. Call it genius. Call it gifted. Call it looney. I don’t really care!
WE found each other. And WE have more in common than not after years of feeling isolated and alone.

I don’t care what man-invented name, based on a collective documented list of traits based on the observation of some male behavior years ago, was the reason we met. WE met. And that’s what Aspergers means to me: Union.

We are together. We are no longer alone.
Perhaps we ARE from another planet.
Perhaps we are the only humans really here and the rest are reptilians.
Perhaps we are light-workers.
Perhaps we are entirely lost and confused.
Perhaps we are crazy nuts.
Perhaps we are the change the world needs.
Perhaps we are a trend, a wake, or a breaking.
Perhaps we are the new normal.
Perhaps we are just like everyone else.
I don’t care.
Stop trying to analyze what we are and who we are and why we are, and accept WE ARE.
There is no you verses them. There is no us verses them. There is no separation.
It is all just manmade games.
We just managed to survive.
To keep our heads above water.
To see through the madness.
To understand there are things, definite things that need changing in this world.
And if we want to start focusing on self-awareness, self-love, and self-acceptance, then YAY US.
I don’t care how you get there….to that point where life starts to make sense and you start to realize you aren’t alone and aren’t imperfect and have so much to give the world.
I just want you to know YOU matter and YOU make a difference and YOU are never alone.
Stop tromping over our parade, all of you doubters, critics, and people who feel the need to give your two cents about something that isn’t your journey.
I don’t care.
I really don’t.
Beyond the need I feel to tell the rest, who have struggled in pain so very long, that you are right where you need to be. Whatever you need to hold onto to build yourself up after this world has attempted to break you down, is what you need and is YOUR choice.
Shine, shine, shine.
It doesn’t matter if you have Aspergers or don’t, or if this word never exists again.
Let go of the word and reasons.
Just let go.
Breathe.
And be.
I love you.
Whatever you choose to call yourself.

413: The Silly Bear in No Underwear: Thoughts from the Penguin Matrix

| Aspergers Girls

For Aspie Chicks and other Cool People
(This is PG-rated because mention of penises….followed by outbursts of giggles.)

For those of you who don’t believe me when I tell you I am twelve inside, this ought to do the trick.

I saw a polar bear post a poster on a social network wall; he was all in my face about this and that. About how to talk, and how to think, and what to think. I mean he was acting like he was all that. As if polar bears know how to live!

And all these other polar bears are like: Yes! Oh right on, brother! Yep, you be all on top of that truth!

And me, as penguin, I am thinking none of that seems efficient, accurate, or correct in my bowl of wisdom. But hey, to each his own. But I’d prefer you not shove it in my face you fluffy butt.

I say, as penguin of the matrix: Make your own poster about how to be. Chuck out everything you’ve been told, you’ve learned and registered, and all that you shall be told. Forget the postings that tell you junk about being. You are already in a state of ‘being.’

All those rules and ways and silly fingers (paws) pointing direction don’t show the path to the inner you. And that’s where the true joy is. Right inside of you. Release all that nonsense. The how-to-be’s, the where-to-be’s, the who-to-be-withs. You know who made those rules up to begin with? People. That’s right. Aren’t you a people, ‘cause you certainly ain’t a penguin? Why borrow some other person’s thoughts and ideas, when you are uniquely you? Make your own poster! Then can I borrow it and paste it on polar bear’s face?

And please, please, please: Listen to YOUR inner voice.

I had a friend in high school. Yes, penguins go to school, and she taped up nude men in her clothes closet. Not real men, but cut out men from those ‘dirty’ magazines from the liquor store. She hung them all fancy and organized like, in the way back, where she thought no one with grown up eyes could see. A lot of times most of the body was missing and it was just pin-up-penises. (That was almost the title of this post. But I totally knew those polar bear types would be all over me with their truth-hoods. The wieners.)

We used to be all secret and sneaky and stare at those pinups and giggle. But the truth is naked penises in full color on magazine glossy got kind of boring after a while. Even with the whole mystery of the wardrobe genre thing going on. I mean they did nothing. Not a thing. And I would go home and find much more pleasure in staring at the unicorn posters in my room. At least I could picture those galloping through the magical forest. Penises…not so much.

I know what you’re thinking: I didn’t know penguins liked unicorns! I know. It’s strange but true!

So here’s what I am suggesting, as penguin of the matrix, is to think about these posters in my friend’s closet. A bunch of cut out penises; and think about hanging those inside of you, like as your inner poster child. Does that make sense to you? Well maybe it does… but let’s pretend for a second you aren’t a middle-aged woman laughing at me and embracing the penis poster like last year’s hidden stash of chocolate rediscovered; let’s pretend that your poster ought not be a penis poster. Your poster ought to represent you and no one else’s poster.

Might I suggest to you that when you paste other people’s views of you, news of you, and truth of you inside your mind and heart, it’s like plastering penis posters all over. You are just taking in what someone else chooses to hang up and see. And people generally see what they are! Think about that for a second. That makes them Richard’s nickname, I suppose. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be like a princess or a warrior or a cool ninja-elven dynamo penguin than a penis head.

My point is: BE YOU!

If you want to use penises as an analogy because it’s the first time in your adult life you can type the word without shame, then do it. If writing penis still makes you feel like a blushing teenager secretly staring into your friend’s closet and busting up in pure guilty pleasure, but you do it anyway, then more power to you! If you know that feasibly by writing the word penis over and over that people will judge you, but you know where your heart is and that you are pure and good and kind, then yay you!

I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be like that time I drew penis pictures in sixth grade with the names of one boy I had a crush on and one boy I didn’t have a crush on below the detailed sketchings. Because that note was found and passed around school. And the boy that I didn’t have a crush on, he didn’t much care for the length of my drawing.

I say as penguin of the matrix: Embrace the ‘me’ you call by name. Not me, but the me in you. Not me in you, but you in you…you know what I mean.

Do you have penis envy? Do you want to write penis over and over on a blog post and feel good about yourself, so much that other people’s opinions truly do not affect your inner truth. Then do it!

Embrace that inner you and hug her like she’s the bestest thing ever. Because you know what? She is.

I was on the quest of a middle-aged penguin sworn to metamorphoses into the great beyond of being. I tried it all. Well most of it. Now that I think about it, perhaps I should have done cut out glossies. I have a very long closet.

Meditation, grace, release, prayer, relaxation, connection, nirvana…whatever one wants to label the space of peace…you will find it when you are ready to find it. That’s it. No joke. No mystery.

Truth is, the more you hunt, the more your self hides. Really. It’s when you just stop and rest that the true doe (as in female deer) of you comes out. Before that, sticking with the doe analogy, your self is just kind of frozen with a dumb look on her face thinking: If I am still long enough and don’t move, no one will ever see me!

So here’s your choice. Keep very still to avoid certain death. Or just get the death thing over with. Let yourself be shot, and reshot, and reshot, and reshot. And you know what? Soon you realize that the hunter wasn’t out there to begin with. It was only YOU! And you realize you are far too spectacular to remain frozen in oblivion for all eternity.

Tonight I have an inner penguin. Maybe I am in a letter P mood. And perhaps you have something other than a doe, like a banana slug or sloth. But no matter, when you finally let go of trying to find the inner you; and you stop trying to stop people from hurting you, shaming you, and hanging penis posters inside of you; when you give up all you are and all you have and just be; when you realize this, the IT everyone is talking about is yours! And you shine so dang lovely with all your loveliness that you about melt the ice caps by just being.

Peace is easier than it sounds, and no book, or person, or penguin, self-righteous polar bear, or penis is going to open up the truth for you. (giggles at where your mind is.)

The truth is inside of your heart. You’ve got to dive there. I can’t reach your truth. Only you can. And any penguin or polar bear or weirdo person who thinks he has the key to your inner light and truth, well he ain’t playing with a full deck of sardines.

Just release the quest and trust yourself. You have all you need. Right there. Right inside.

Some people are preaching backwards, and saying just change your thoughts. With your huge gifted brain, telling you to stop your thoughts cold penguin is just plain nutz-o! The thoughts will change when you ARE your inner you. When you reclaim your true beauty. It doesn’t work the other way around. The thoughts stem from you, not the reverse. You are not your thoughts.

So here’s what you do: Ignore polar bear’s preaching, and all the other nutters that have gone and jumped pantless out of the butter and who seem to be streaking their truth across your path, and just giggle at them.

Just laugh and think: There’s another nutter thinks he knows the way, so he’s showing me his way.

And PLEASE laugh at the penguin in me, too. And at the new glossies in my closet.

That silly bear in no underwear! That silly penguin with the penis posters. That’s what you say.

You just shake your head, your mind, and your heart, and you tell yourself, with cute sweet finger pointing to cute sweet you: The truth’s in here sugar bear. The truth’s in here.

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