isolation

517: Is-ness

| Aspergers Girls

There’s an is-ness inside me, some rumbling engine that feeds and creates, that both demolishes and builds simultaneously, the gnosis itself living and breathing within. The trouble is the is-ness wants to come out. As much as I push or shove it down, it swells evermore. There is no dousing out the flame. I have tried days, and once a decade, to remain silent in my ways, and the longer I wait the longer the bubbling-wanting festers, liken to a boil that won’t shrink unless exposed to the elements.

How often I have longed to be that one, that quiet one perched beneath the tree, without a word to offer, just her silence as a reckoning of sorts, her example of fragility and strength established in her stillness. Just once, I have wanted, without effort, to not desire to burst out of the semblance of self into something naught—to not wish to plunder, as I do, as pirate gone sporadic spilling her gold and jewels about.

I have established this is the way I am: harbored into myself.

I am the dock. I am the boat. I am the sails. I am every inch of vessel, and what holds this vessel. And I rock, as I am the rocker, moving myself in isolation. Here is where the trouble comes again, in the want to move beyond aloneness, for nothing seems real or substantial until shared.

And yet there is the catch, the net, so to speak, the daggered questions and the pounding answers. The fingernails to my chalkboard—nailed and pierced at once.

We are told of the worthy ones. The ones who hold their tongues. The ones who are stoically silent. The ones who don’t whimper and complain. The ones that don’t monopolize conversations. The ones who know how and when to stop. The ones that don’t overthink, overrationalize, over-process. The ones that know when to let go and be.

So what does that make me, if not some rigid anomaly?

I can’t surrender to this world because I don’t have the means. I don’t know how to be quiet. I don’t know how to shut out what I see, what I feel, what in a way I seem to somehow ‘know.’ And yet I can’t really blend into this place, either. No matter how much I try, through practice or restraint, or a combination, or by some means of much-studied technique, or even in the gathering of all the circumvented readings, observations, conclusions, and discoveries, I can’t understand where I am, and how to be in a place I do not comprehend.

And that is the trouble as well—for am I built to control how I am to be? Am I supposed to stop who I am? And if I am to stop who I am and be this other form and representation of self, then whose rules and recommendations do I follow? Whom do I uphold? Who is my savior in this world? If I am to follow this someone or even this saint, if he lives, or has died, then still what is the exactness of how I should be? If not me, if not this natural, born-to-be me, then who is it that they at once forbade me and make me be?

Is it not within reason to wonder how I am to move in a strange world, if indeed the way I move is not accepted or understood? And even as I pass often as this extremeness of normalcy, even as I mix and mingle, and bleed into the mass, am I not some ghost on display set out to appease the gathering? Are my ways mere means to escape shielded eyes?

I do not understand the judges. I do not understand the manner in which I am told the right and wrong of things. I cannot. I am incapable. I am not wired inaccurately. I am not misfiring. The truth is that I am not wired at all. I wasn’t programmed to begin with. I don’t have the data institutionalized within my infrastructure that instructs this someone of where and when to jump. I don’t even have the means in which to understand the jumping itself.

I watch, some legless tadpole, in awe of the springing frog, unlimited in its depth and breadth, capable of leaps and bounds that seem a lifespan away from me, an imposter of impossibility without preprogrammed metamorphosis.

And that’s the trouble, the endless trouble:

I am who I am, endowed with an is-ness I neither understand nor recognize. An is-ness I long to share, a knowing I cannot tether to myself alone, in a world I do not recognize, in a place that makes no sense. I am birthed without the wiring or predisposition to comprehend the makings of others’ ways; and ever wondering if I was to jump without legs, if I was to be in this pool of mankind, and swim with my invisibility cloaked, to survive as familiar instead of strange, would I not then forget whom I was to begin with?

516: A Gallant Longing

| Aspergers Girls

I process everything. I am a processing machine. I even process the process of writing. Today I feel ‘guilty’ for yesterday’s writing, as it didn’t represent the ‘true’ me. Even as I search for the ‘truth’ of who I am, stumbling again into myself and not knowing where I fall, I somehow still manage to pinpoint who I am not. It’s strange, even to write. But seems to be the way of it. All so complex and bothersome. Like most days, I wish I was rather emptied of myself.

Yesterday my post ended with freedom, with the removal of ‘self’ and judgment, with the capacity to move into this world unseen and to be okay with that. Yesterday that was a true statement. Today it’s not.

I didn’t lie. I meant what I said. I was in a brief over-confident mood. I was in an I-will-will-myself-all-better-state. I get that way from time-to-time. I wouldn’t call me hopeful or resilient or ‘positive’ during these moments of zealous confidence. More so, underneath my skin somewhere, when I approach my writing with such voice, I am a bit perturbed at life in general. I guess you could say I was sporting an under coating of frustration and trying to paint over myself with some form of strength.

I tend to only feel good about the words I have scribed that provoke a soft appeal and gentleness. I tend to be attracted to my sharings which display an intense vulnerability and a vast uncloaking of self. Yesterday’s post wasn’t one of those posts.

I am not ashamed of the writing, and not regretting it, just, I guess, wondering how I can so easily shift and transform. It’s unsettling to say the least, when the person I was a moment ago isn’t the person I am now. Perhaps, I say in jest, I have some advanced multiple personality disorder in which I am both congealed and disjointed all at once with legions of aspects of self bursting into bits and pieces of everything.

Yesterday, I was PMSing. I ‘suffer’ from PMDD, endometriosis, and an autonomic blood pressure condition (closely related to POTS), as well as hyperjoint mobility syndrome, each of which are triggered by fluctuations in hormones. PMDD is enough in and of itself to drive me batty, but the physical pain sometimes leads to a week of being couch bound. This has been an on going event for most of my adult life. It’s not new, and it’s not strange or unknown. But somehow the debilitation is still rather scary and depressing, particularly, as I was hospitalized about a year ago from an extreme episode. Anyhow, I really don’t want sympathy or to rant or complain, just to explain.

I suppose in moments of couch-bound, sloth-mode, semi-hibernation, I get particularly prolific in my writing. One reason being that there is really nothing else I can physically do, beyond playing computer games, watching movies, and reading, oh, and the occasional romp to the kitchen to binge eat. Having the capacity to write during these hormonal nightmares most certainly brings me a sense of purpose. Also, I think the hormones, or what-have-yous, affect my thinking, in that I have more thoughts and that I am more vulnerable to outpourings. And too, to be totally truthful, sometimes I write during my PMDD only because if someone reads my words I will feel less isolated.

I force myself to write during these times, not because I have to, but because I want to. And that is the primary difference in the particular self-focused writings (like today’s and yesterday’s) versus the majority of my writing.

Most of the time, believe it or not, I don’t want to write, but feel driven to write. Usually, I don’t hear my own singular voice, but more of a collective gathering of thoughts. I have surmised, after continual coincidences, that I somehow tap into the collective Aspie condition. As silly as that sounds, this has been my truth for the span of over a year. It appears Aspies jump into my brain and stir me up. As much as they’d like to believe I am reading their minds, I tend to think they are invading my thoughts—little hitchhikers whispering. Or, rather, we are all just splashing is some giant heated pool of knowledge, and I, by some odd twist of faith, have been granted the capacity to spurt out what we are swimming in.

When I write, I see images and sense words. I don’t actually hear anything. There isn’t a voice I can describe or even an intonation. There is more of a feeling of what I believe is a type of communication I don’t readily recognize as familiar. There is no emotion beyond love. And an easiness and comfort exits without effort. There isn’t a questioning of what I wrote or a judging. There often isn’t much editing involved. It just kind of IS. And I like that.

The process of writing in most cases takes away some of my Aspie thoughts—those perpetual queries that ransack my brain.

I believe the intention behind ‘my’ words creates the overall feel of the work. Much like a painting, my heart is reflected in the renderings. If my intention is to share and nothing more than the words are light and airy, filled with a sense of hope. In this manner there is a radiating wellbeing resonating from the writings. A knowing everything will be okay. A connection, a reaching out, a holding and a holding ground, in which travelers come and visit, and find a place of respite.

I miss that peaceful flow, that rescuing-retreat. I missed it yesterday. I miss it today. I guess I’d rather be part of a collective than this ME. I’d rather sit with a gathering of us than alone—a gallant and worthy longing, indeed.

504: Had I but a voice…whisperings of Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

“This is your Aspergers. It is your brain searching for something to fixate on. It is our hyper-intelligence. Our brains are puzzle solvers. We are here to help the planet. When we focus on light we make dynamic shifts. But the yang of the yin is when we focus on the dark; it is hell. The trap, we Aspies fall into, is trying to solve our emotions, instead of sitting with them.” ~ Sam

***************

We believe we are never going to be good enough, right enough, or enough. No matter how much we read, decipher and figure out. No matter the conclusions pondered and information transmitted, the puzzles seemingly solved, or ideas seemingly mastered. We remain somewhat in awe of ourselves and the world. Our bodies and brains, and everything, unwinded and dissected, and nonetheless remaining singularly tangled and unmanageable. Our brains were made to conquer and conquest, and yet, we are the ones conquered in the endless ways in which to surmise our reality and exponential experience in life. Through our ability to mesh objectivity with subjectivity, we are made into a conundrum of possibilities; ourselves delivered to the world through a large scope of outward introspection, as if the audience is the All of everyone, and we the victim of circumstantial evidence. We are hunted, say hounded, by our innate ability to view ourselves from a distance, whilst climbing inside of others, many others, and imagining a collected viewpoint and conclusion of us. And this transaction isn’t something purposeful or invented for cause or reason. The exact act of becoming this observer of the observers is ingrained into our essential state of being. We are in essence and in truth, a mini-version of everything we take in. In this sense, we can never be that which is good, right, or enough, as everything is projected and taken back, endless mirrors upon mirrors of becoming the every changing of that which is around us.

We are made to be puzzle solvers, and the dynamic labyrinth of us, and that of the singular ‘me,’ eludes the perceived self. We become so twisted in thought that the truth hides between and beneath complex layers of potentiality, a state of existence at battle with forethought of failure. A concept considered is quickly sliced and diced and made into the sectioned out pieces of avenues of demise. We can see with hindsight, foresight, and insight into the depths of each solution we consider. Thinking therefor becomes exhaustive itself, and at times, many times, uncontrollable. As if we were made to conquer the exact thought perceived, only our tools of conquest are both our weapon and our curse. Had we the opportunity to rest our minds, the remainder flows naturally; however, the resting itself is continually challenged and masked by further thought of the concept of ‘rest’ itself. Making relaxation still another puzzle to be solved and pieced back together. For everywhere is this appearance of a ‘challenge.’ Everywhere our brains want to pick and perch, peck and devour, until the end point is found. Even as we know there is no end in sight. This is the deviation sector of our searching, a place in space in which we can step back and observe ourselves hunting for something we know does not exist, while simultaneous lacking the ability to halt said action. Had we known how to stop ourselves, our minds would be different, lacking the cohesiveness to piece back together that which is before us. We are made this way for reason unknown to us, even as we feel there must be a reason: for how could such a ‘thing’ as I exist, if not for some purpose other than the regions of hell in which our thinking leads.

We long for order in a world that dictates discord, even as nature professes the circularity of wholeness. We see behind the curtains of societal games and rules. The prophecies of past make sense to us, wherein the theories, the solutions, the ways in which modern leaders point, do not. Everything we create is created at multiple levels. Sometimes our own thinking manifests further outcomes. Sometimes the coincidences are incomprehensible and impossible to explain. We are descriptive creatures. Everywhere and all about is description. We take in information like manmade thesauruses and dictionaries. Had we known we’d be mistaken as ancient ones marked as ‘know-it-alls’ and beseeched with unceasing ways of interpretation, perhaps we would have failed to live without taking first breath. But regardless, we remain. Our quest is unreachable to those that think not as we. We are, in many ways, separate in how we perceive the world. Our sensory input on high-speed, our ability to reach a temporary finishing point, beyond measure. We endure a silent suffering all day and all night, the intensity of the world bearing down on us as a tangible concrete weight. A heaviness indescribable and ever moving into each crevice that is ‘self.’ To wake is to take in another day of battle, as to sleep is to meander through that which was taken in the whole of the day. The subconscious combined with another powerful force abstracting the decayed ravaged thoughts and replacing them with an unspeakable knowledge beyond us. Our scope of intelligence so vastly far-reaching that our own minds become lost in an ocean, torrential.

……………….

Had I but a moment to replace my being with another, less common than I, and make this person enter me, then he would know the hell I speak of, the way in which the mind made mad taunts and slithers as snake to fowl captured.

In every way I am me and I am not me; and so it goes I am divided into multiple selves not knowing who to expect. Calm on the exterior or upset. Weeping or cursing. Lying to self or submerged in the illusion of truth. I know not what will happen next. I am subjected to the layering of others: a natural empath taking on both the hurts and wants of those around me. I soak in greed. I breath out anger. I force myself to stand, even as I know not where, as vultures around me circle, taking in what they think is me, and spitting out their awful truths. I am invisible. I know this. I see this. I write this on the edge of my soul. The outline of me marked in words “I am,” and yet sucked out into that voice which is the masses.

I am slipping as I speak. Lost in the places of public where people proclaim this sense of righteous being. I drift in a world where I long to be seen and where everywhere I am branded with harsh judgment. It does not matter how many people love me, need me, or attempt to protect me. Even as my guardian circle expands, the vultures come closer. It is not the ability to build my force field of love that guides me; more so it is my built-in longing to move beyond the vultures of society, which propels me forward in action. Had I not the torrential rain spurted down by the falsehoods of this world, I would be not urged to continue onward. Even in the darkest moments, I know the voice that tricks me is merely a reminder of the voice that tricks all.

Had I but a voice that could penetrate the walls of me, I would pierce me a thousand times through and be within and without, transmitted into a time without time, and cast out as minion to the masses of humble-seekers. Had I but a heart a thousand times pierced, I would ask another blade to enter, if only to free that which is imprisoned: myself upon self.

***********************

“We think we are ungrateful, but that’s not it. Our brains are just always solving, so we conclude we are never satisfied. Thinking we are not thankful, we then self-punish, believing ourselves less than and not enough—incapable of finding this so-called “satisfaction,” a mythical word that is a leeched byproduct spawned from societal whimsy.” ~ Sam

501: The Isolation of Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

Sometimes having Aspergers is the scariest thing in the world—not the name, or label, or stigmatism the word brings, not even the essence of Aspergers itself, but what it represents in my soul.

No matter how many friends I have, or people I confide in or reach out to, no matter how far I go in my search of self or how many ways I accomplish goals for relief, I end up back at the starting line. Facing forward with the force of the world against me.

Only someone with Aspergers will know what I mean; people not on the spectrum will think they can understand; they will look at their own depth, take in what they know, decipher their inventory, but with all of me I know it is impossible to understand the pain of Aspergers unless you have directly experienced it.

There is nothing more isolating than knowing myself completely, understanding fully the mind and the way in which I act and respond, and still being helpless to alter how I am. It’s not that I want to change me, but I do long for relief and a mild form of adaptation, minor assimilation, something that makes me feel I have made progress, even as I know I have nothing to progress from.

I am entirely an anomaly, in all ways, and in all forms. In fact, I am beginning to think I am the essence, the exact symbolism for yin/yang. For I cannot go out to one extreme of the pendulum without going full swing to the other side, in regards to emotions, experience, outlook, opinion, even circumstances.

To know so much is disheartening. To see so much, to be able to pick apart my mind piece by piece, and understand my inner-workings, and still remain what seems to be helpless is maddening. I can’t cease to think nor stop my methods of multi-faceted interpretation. My mind, some giant mechanism that grinds and grates to piece things together—every thing—including complex analysis of my own thoughts, emotions, and renderings.

Everything I am and everything I do, is adamantly dissected, without choice, including everything I watch, like some giant intertwined web spinning past my mind’s eye. It appears at times I am thinking three times over; that my mind is somehow capable of deciphering the immediate now, the effects of the immediate now, and the thought processes of the two previous aforementioned, and even the predictable outcome and by-product of the thinking process itself. I cannot help but become overtaken and mind-boggled, drowning in a perplexity of images and thoughts, some speaking over the other, some repeating, some making complete sense, and some the markings of a crazed woman.

Add this to the noise inside my head of all the rules I have been taught, (or more so taken in as truth), and I become cluttered with an endless echo of noise: my thoughts, my thoughts about thoughts, and their thoughts, as well as my analysis of all of these thoughts. I become so lost in myself, and this is only the first layer of a multi-dimensional sponge cake of mayhem.

Next comes the bombardment of guilt. The ways I should be, should act, the tools I ought use, the ways in which I ‘should’ think. The world is full of norms for the neurotypical, even full of remedies and concoctions for recovery and sanity, all of which do not work on me. I can’t go to therapy, as I know more than any therapist I have met, and can psychoanalyze them within the first moments of the first meeting—seeing straight into their insecurities, power-struggles and attachments.
I have proved doctors wrong, too, time and time again, based on my gift of keen research and self-awareness. I know myself inside and out; I know my body inside and out. And as a result of my intellectual and instinctual capacity, all the places ‘typical’ people seek out for comfort do me no good. In this there is no relief. There is no refuge. There is ultimately nowhere to go.

The only way is through it. Through the bleakness and drudgery. Through the hellish thoughts. Over and over through, until I come out returned.

No friends can help, definitely no foe. I don’t need foes. I punish myself enough. I shall never be good enough, kind enough, or loving enough. It’s not a matter of perfectionism. As I have said, the ways of the ‘typical’ aren’t my way. I am that dichotomy again, as I know I am good, I know I am enough, I know I am love, but then I know naught. There is that perpetual swinging, of self too, from one view to the next, never stagnant and never truly grounded.

Belief systems, religions, rituals, magic, or what have you, those don’t work either. Temporary bandages or bondages, considering the source, until I analyze them and their happenings to no end and find the loop holes, the questions, the reality behind the illusion.

I often wish I was more blinded to the ways of world, a bit more oblivious, a bit less aware, that I believed there was a something or someone out there in which to seek refuge. This isn’t to mean I don’t have faith, as I am sure some will conclude so, based on their perceptions and rigid belief systems. The truth is I have a faith, a blind faith, and that is what leads me to write, and teaches me the vulnerability of truth heals. Still, there is an overbearing loneliness in the rawness of truth.

The isolation is evident on all planes. I had for the stretch of most of my life sought out priests, reverends, psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual healers, astrologists, herbalists, shamans, teachers, professors, energy workers, and the like. Over and over they saw in me what they wanted to see, and nothing beyond. No one could penetrate me and get through me. No one could truly see me. In the end, my search accentuated my isolation, only added to my fever for connection and knowing.

I live my life questioning truth: the truth of everything. And then reaching the conclusion and revelation of the lack of valid truth, I spin back into the oblivion of not knowing. I live my life questioning if I am truthful enough. I worry about the slight chance of accidental manipulation on my part that might occur based on my own want and desire. I don’t even like to wish. Who am I to wish? I worry about being self-focused. I worry about being me. And everywhere, in vast unwavering quantity, is this judgment, these unspoken rules; these people being who they are and questioning who I am. And I am ransacked by their ways. I hide, I escape, I try to be nowhere and be no thing, but then the isolation is magnified and brought up to jet speed, and I long for the company again. I take strangers and their judging eyes over nothing.

I am intense. I am remarkably smart. I am keenly aware. I am often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misjudged. My only saving grace is in having learned to love others unconditionally. I see past it all—every preconceived notion and every label. I don’t care what you are or who you are. I just love. It doesn’t matter to me your job, your race, your creed, your habits, your ways. I just love. And I long to be loved that way in return, to be looked upon with the grace of the all-knowing, and to be penetrated with complete acceptance.

Sometimes I don’t think the issue at hand is coming to terms with accepting myself or knowing myself completely. Sometimes I don’t think it is about anything at all, beyond coming to terms with the fact that most people will never see my value and uniqueness because they are too blinded by their own disillusionment of fear.

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Pascal. We will miss you.

500: Unspun Love

| Aspergers Girls

Unspun Love

I am letting go of what was, of what I held on as truth, reality, this sense of REAL
There are webs upon webs inside of me, touching down in random places
With a stickiness of messiness, a buttercup of blood, daunting, unchanging, unforgiving
Had I been hurt, I could say so, but who is to say what causes the pain, whose action, whose way, whose plan
I can’t say that this is this because of this, as there is no definite answer, no exact knowing
No causation I can single out and assuredly point finger in proclamation
I do know there is pain; I know this well, and perhaps I know too, I blamed myself all of these years
Easier to blame self than another, I suppose, to take in what is poison than to spill out, making new suffering
There were numerous ways in which I taught myself falsehoods, temporary strings I weaved in hopes of categorizing my world
Into boxes I placed behaviors and actions, wishes and dreams, and watched the withering of my own undoing
I’d hoped that much would change without effort, in that I’d tried hard to keep trying, to keep going, to move
And prayers seemed increasingly unanswered or at minimum unheard
Mine was a dangerous labyrinth, the way in which my youthful days played out
Keeping time by the stars at night and the ringlets of towering trees, I danced
Always happy, I seemed, always light-filled and bright, Mother told it so
As did strangers and random passerbys; had I known to beware
One after one things left, disappeared, vanished, and were taken, gone before sunrise was woken
One after one I became teacher to the deepest soul-self, the tiny innocent creature named: me
And the lessons I gave were enough for the moment, as broken and rotten as they be
The world was a place of trickery and thievery; I’d remembered those men in Mama’s room
The town was a place of random violence, untruths, disbelief, and fizzled-out faith; I’d watched from my high-tower of soul
And everywhere, all about, the sense, I called ‘abandonment,’ erased a part of me
Built upon my cherished treasure, my beacon, my light, a bombardment stretched and pulled like dough into a gooey mess—rancid, undone falsehoods
I witnessed death; I witnessed children who vanished, family that dissolved, men and woman who made promises and then took sword to my delicate heart and severed
I didn’t understand laughter then, the type aimed at me; nor the glances of demise; nor the mannerisms masqueraded across the halls of scattered scholarly prisons
I didn’t understand what was outside, what seeped out of some and bleed into others
I knew enough to know that people weren’t to be trusted, that people caused harm, that people took what was pure and demolished it in the name of selfish ways
And yet, I knew, too, that I could not stop trusting and hoping, that I would forever be this someone locked in a cell of naïve-padded walls, unable to see beyond the rose-charm-pink that tinted my outlook
How I longed to be like the rest and learn, to take inventory, to observe happenings and conclude future meanderings through the mucky patch—my life
And still I wept in a prism of dichotomy, a blossomed keen awareness, lacking capacity to alter anything
Helpless was an understatement, a definition of warrior child turned fragile flower
For in the absence of assistance within, there would be no means in which to reclaim a foundation
Instead, I rather drifted in an open sea-sky of oblivion, blue into blue, not understanding the methods of instigators, nor where to house my love