isolation

484: Communication Barrier: Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

Fixation on another person is an ego attachment that represents no true or stable emotions of affection. It is my attempt to connect to source through hyper-focusing all of my energy like a laser beam onto one entity. All thoughts of the reality of the person and my own personhood are lost. I long to own the individual, per chance I might feel the love of God and fill the emptiness and void of being here on earth. For me the object of my attention can be anyone—marvelous or messed up. I am blind to the reality of the situation until the fixation passes. My brain needs a puzzle, something to solve, something to fixate on. This temporary ‘one’ becomes a portal that sucks up self and pulls my mind into a different realm or fantasy. The process is both a form of escapism and the relief that comes through the act of rearranging aspects of a puzzle; the intensity is insurmountable in moments, akin to an underwater tunnel pulling me under into a vortex. When I resurface, I am amazed at the way in which I have imprisoned my being.

~ Sam, Everyday Aspergers

Sometimes my fixation is an attempt to be seen. For most of the time I walk in this world, I feel utterly invisible.

Here is how I currently view communication:

I see two lines, two vibrations, almost like sound waves. (The two lines are parallel and horizontal.) And the top line, the top wave, is what is coming out of a person’s mouth, and the bottom wave is what I am feeling, what is underneath what he is saying: his insecurity, his fear, the reasons why he is forming the words he is forming, the sentences he is forming based on his own insecurities and needing me to fulfill a part of him. Since he is always focused on his fear and the outcome, he is not focused on connection, he is not focused on me. I don’t need him to be focused on me for ego-needs, I need him to be focused on me so I can feel him. As long as there is a discrepancy I can see in the two vibrations, there is no connection.

In being that there is no connection, I am constantly looking at two conversations at once. I am looking into what is coming out of his mouth, but I am also simultaneously listening to what is at his heart-center, what is at his core, all of the things he is not saying and that he wants to say. Often I can pick those up, and I can tell the person exactly what I am thinking and feeling, and this frustrates him, because I am more than likely correct. This creates this constant communication barrier in which I am listening and knowing what is being said is not ‘true.’

When I talk to someone with Aspergers that discrepancy between the two wave lines is not there. It is also such an intense communication that if one of the other participants fluctuates and he/she tries to hide something, the other person will point out the discrepancy in communication, no matter the distance. Whether the two be in different states or countries. From a distance, she might say, “That doesn’t match what you are feeling. What happened? How did your energy shift?”

When I am with a person with Aspergers, I am no longer alone. I am seen. I am not invisible. To most of the world I am invisible, and it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying being a person who can look at people and see entirely inside of them, and see their fears, and see their blockages, and listen to them talk and know most of what they are saying is just an imaginary game. And to realize I am not really connected at all, but rather some free-formed ghost waiting to be seen.

482: The Greatest Casualty

| Aspergers Girls

sam

I woke up with three pages of information involving archetypes and symbolic representation, and the challenges I face of being keenly aware to the illusion of life; in so much that I am aware of the way I must choose icons in order to live and communicate in this dimension. This followed by the off balance of duality at my core level, if it be off, in that I am primarily feminine energy. Then I was conceptualizing the time space continuum, in regards to how I can’t think in simple format but instead in what is a visual expansive viewing in which, in a short amount of time, it seems I am viewing a series of variant options and pathways to conclusion.

It is impossible for me to think in a linear fashion.

I think in where some are persecuted and ostracized for perceived secrecy and aloofness the opposite occurs with me. As I am interpreted as smothering, over-sharing and clingy. But in truth I am at the same point as the latter, in so much that I am overwhelmed with thoughts and information, and my coping mechanism manifests itself as verbally processing likely to off set the feasibleness of insanity. Couple my intensity of thoughts and emotions with my capacity to remote view others emotional, say spiritual state, from a distance, and I become bombarded with such vast amounts of data I overload.

I struggle with being seen beneath what appears to be a constant shifting of perception and representation of what I am. I become that which I am observed by, and, in essence, I am reflected to that person through his limited capacity to view what is before him. In this sense, I remain entirely isolated and invisible, much lost to my own self with intense longing to be seen. Ironically unable to see myself as nothing more than fluidity.

The greatest casualty for me, in great contrast to some, is my advanced empathy and ability to tap into another’s emotional field, as this capability serves to intensify my awareness of suffering, isolation, and the tendency for most of the world to be asleep, if not lost somewhere trapped within what they perceive and what is. My greatest discomfort comes in craving to be seen as a true representation of love and compassion, vibrating at a frequency that is both beneficial and of comfort, but feeling the discrepancy between who I am and what the other is interpreting.

I am that I am, yet others in their closed ways turn me into their wishful dream. I long to break out of the isolation and this brings the fever to my writing. However, the more I try the more blinded I become to the rest of this existence; in essence, sinking into this self I neither know nor understand.

I cannot see faces in real life. I have no idea what I look like. Each moment I shift as do others. This makes the world very uncomfortable for me. Perhaps it is the eyes that are the only thing that remain constant. ~ Sam

470: Past Twelve: Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

image_1351969307655010

I have to say that twelve was rather easy. I was still very much a child, almost fairy-like, or elven, always into innocent mischief and adventure.

The turmoil hit at the age of thirteen. That is when my hormones shifted and life suddenly became bleak, overwhelming and unmanageable. I discovered a new form of escapism then, a more ‘difficult’ escapism than before; I became more observant of myself and actions, understanding complexities in a new degree that felt unfamiliar and frightening. Before, I would leap into my imagination quite naturally and without pretense. Now, it seemed as if I escaped to get away from some pending danger.

Wherein my world once felt light and airy, full of possibility, and all things magical and hopeful, it now felt dark, dingy and doom-filled.

I didn’t have an active social life for most of my teen years, choosing instead one girlfriend to hang out with and one boyfriend to adore. I had the same best friend from seventh grade until I graduated high school. I never thought to have many friends. I hung out with her, copied her, adopted her taste in music and clothes. I think because I was pretty (but didn’t know it), I easily found boyfriends. I tended to stick with one boy as long as I could or until circumstances forced a breakup. I too, copied what I thought he liked. I tried to appease. But with young men, I found myself continually lost and alone with a separation between us I could not understand or explain. While having a significant other brought me this sense of being less fearful in public and the ability to go out and do more, the relationship also brought me this deep seeded feeling of being complicated, misunderstood, too emotional, and never kind enough.

I could write a full book on the challenges of my teenage years. Here I have attempted to summarize some of the key points:

1. Suffering with feelings of extreme isolation and oddness, but not being able to understand or articulate why I felt this way.

2. Wanting to be like my peers but not wanting to be like my peers. Recognizing their character traits disturbed me, particularly manipulation, game-playing, deceit, cliques (groups of children that didn’t allow other children into the group), lying, cruelty, pretending and gossip.

3. Not knowing why, for most of my childhood, despite circumstances, I had felt happy and content, and that now all of a sudden I felt a deep sadness and a disconnection from the rest of the world.

4. Developing an over-analytical sense of self that encompassed all areas, including how I looked, how I moved, how I spoke and even how I thought and reasoned.

5. Developing a hyper-critical awareness of my appearance, wherein before I could care less. It was an extreme shift from being comfortable in my skin to wanting to change who I was. Along with this intensity of dislike towards my own image, I also did not recognize my own face in the mirror. I had no idea the size of my eyes, my face, my nose, or lips. Nothing seemed distinguishable, and every time I looked in the mirror the image seemed unfamiliar. I consciously did not realize this was happening. I did not understand why I looked at my image so much and analyzed it. I thought I was vain and self-centered, even as I hated how I appeared and assumed no one liked my looks.

6. It did not matter how many times someone told me I was beautiful on the outside, I couldn’t see it, and didn’t believe it. I twisted compliments in my mind. I took a sincere compliment about my appearance and truly believed that the observer was lying, blind, misinformed, tricking me or not educated.

7. I did not trust life. I began to see the unpredictable nature of adults and teenagers. No one around me changed, but suddenly an invisible barrier was lifted and I saw reality more clearly. I had seemed to be coated before, protected in some shield in which the world appeared wonderful and filled with love. I had trusted everyone and believed in everyone; yet now, I believed the world was a scary place, and thought that I had been born on the wrong planet.

8. I didn’t understand my own emotional intensity. I loved deeply. I longed. I was passionate. I was a poet. I was this exploding young woman filled with romantic intentions and the want to get married and have children. I didn’t have any interest in being a teenager. Some part of me wanted to skip from young childhood straight into adulthood. I saw young men as a means of escaping the destitute of reality. I jumped into a fantasy land of tomorrow, when I would be raising a family, and far beyond high school and all its pains.

9. I still trusted everyone. I trusted strangers. I trusted anyone who was an adult. I trusted children. I trusted my peers. I shared from the heart. I told my deepest secrets. I cried openly. And people did not respond in a manner that was beneficial to me. I was preyed upon in all ways: physically, emotionally, spiritually and logically. People could sense I was innocent, naive, and inexperienced. I was very much a victim without knowing I was a victim. I couldn’t tell right from wrong. Because I assumed everyone was good at heart, I assumed everything anyone did was ‘normal’ and ‘okay.’ I didn’t understand that concept of boundaries or self-protection. No one taught me. I didn’t know boundaries existed. I believed people.

10. Concepts that came naturally to other girls did not come naturally to me. I did not understand or follow fashion. I didn’t think to. It never crossed my mind to try to fit in and assimilate to the teenage world. I was still very much twelve inside, even as my body changed. I didn’t start dressing like my peers and learning how to apply makeup until I was ostracized, ridiculed, and singled-out.

11. I didn’t understand sexuality. I had a cute figure and was well-endowed. I did not understand how different ways I walked, sat, or bent over could be perceived as flirtatious and even labeled ‘slutty.’ I didn’t know that I had turned physically into a young woman who men found attractive. Even as they called out names at me, or shouted inappropriate comments about my body in the halls of high school, I didn’t connect the dots. I didn’t know what I had done. And in not knowing what I had done, I didn’t know how to make changes in an attempt to stop others’ behaviors.

12. I copied television and movie stars. I acted like my favorite stars. My role models were a brunette from Gilligan’s Island and a brunette from Charlie’s Angels. And I moved and acted like them, or some other dark-haired daytime soap opera actress. I didn’t know I did this, but I did it nonetheless. I needed a role model, and I found mine on television. Mimicking the traits of sensual and sexual adult females did not add to my ability to fit in; my actions instead served to highlight my inadequacies and oddities. I did things halfway, some very awkward child trying to catch up to her peers and changing body, and not knowing how to even begin, and not recognizing that her subconscious chosen methods were damaging her chances of fitting in further.

13. I didn’t understand my bodily changes and the monthly menstrual cycle. The change had been explained to me in various classes at school, briefly by a parent, and in review of some books, but that information was not enough. I think, in retrospect, I had needed someone to walk me through the process daily for the first year. To explain and reexplain, to reassure me I wasn’t dying or sick, to comfort me when the new and unfamiliar body pains and sensations came, to give me more advanced biological descriptions of what was happening to me. I didn’t do well with change. Change scared me. And here, my entire body was not my body anymore. It was terrifying. I didn’t understand the entire concepts of sex, of the ways I might get pregnant or how to tell if what my peers said was truth or lies. I didn’t understand how things worked.

14. I didn’t understand the concept of holding back. I said things like I saw them and felt them; that is until I was so shamed in school, I clamped up and hid in the corner writing song lyrics in pencil all over my desktop. I didn’t understand social rules and social games. I came across as overzealous, as immature, as goofy, giddy, and somewhat of a ditz. I didn’t understand most jokes. I laughed a lot, out of embarrassment or discomfort. I developed a nervous giggle. I seemed fake to other people, when ironically I was truly myself. People questioned me, especially my facial expressions and body language, and worse they criticized me. If I walked with my head down, with my eyes glued to the floor, my peers claimed I was rude and stuck up, too good for them. If I smiled, I was a flirt. If I avoided eye contact, I was showing disrespect or further showing I thought I was hot stuff and ‘all that.’ I didn’t know how to be. I wasn’t given the tools or the freedom. Everything I did was judged or deemed wrong. I quickly began to surmise the world was a terrible place in which no one was allowed to be herself. And then I concluded I didn’t even know who my self was.

15. I cried a lot. I isolated myself a lot. All the traits of Aspergers were triggered as puberty hit. I was overwhelmed with entirely too much for any child. Not only was my home life unpredictable and chaotic, not only was my body changing, my peers suddenly my enemies, but my own mind was turning against me. I couldn’t tell who I was, what I wanted, and had no idea where to go for help. When I tried to tell adults I was afraid to live, they claimed I was seeking attention, that I was fine, or that I was creating drama. When I went crying to the school counselor, he told me plainly that I was a beautiful attractive and intelligent young lady. And questioned what I could possibly have to complain about. I was attacked on all fronts. No one believed me when I said I felt different and alone. No one believed the deep pain and shattering of my life I was undergoing. I became suicidal, never able to go through with any attempts, but always wondering how it would feel to escape this life. I became more and more of a recluse and found small ways to make my life more manageable. I ate the same lunch every day. I kept the same routine. I knew what path to walk in the halls at school. I knew how to hide. I learned how to pretend to be someone else in mannerisms, dress and behavior. I became that which was nothing but a ghost of me, and I lived that way for most of my days.

_______________

Everyday Aspergers the book available in 2016. Join our Facebook Clan or follow the blog for newest information on book release, including contests and give aways. 🙂 ~ Sam

poetry from my teenage years

image_1353700586831934

457: Lost Again

| Aspergers Girls

I am so very sad today.

I have been crying since last night. This is a confusing part of my life; more confusing in some ways than the rest, and less in other ways, but regardless confusing. I find myself alone and frightened, and at the same time protected and guided. I am stepping out of self, as I often do, and watching silently, as I process through what need be done. I am certainly mourning; what I am mourning is not as important, as the reason why I am mourning. I am mourning over substantial loss. The what of it? The who, the reasons, the particularities, the details, don’t matter much. It’s all the same pain. All the same tears. This sadness.

I am mourning because if I don’t I cannot move on, and will find myself in this dreadful place of sorrow far too long. And so I weep, not because I am forlorn or even truly lost, for I know soon I will be content, but because I know I need to go through this to get to the other side.

I feel misunderstood as of late, and this has been a constant in my life, this aspect of being misunderstood.

I have moments of bliss, when I connect to what I choose to call my angels or God, moments of profound insight and reprieve. I find refuge in my moments of connection with the collective, the All, the source. But the instances don’t last, and I am left here; or so it seems.

This morning I am feeling very much ‘left,’ broken and left, as abandoned debris. Even as I know this to be an untruth, I still experience it as a strong reality. I still watch as a part of me suffers so, in the regurgitation of fears and missed opportunity. I am not selfish in my dallying in pain, only staking myself here a bit, until the time comes that I can glide out and be alive again—in the light, and in accordance with my higher self.

This state is difficult to maneuver within; alongside the tears and sense of overwhelming despair, remains the long distance hope, unreachable though it be.

I feel misunderstood in many ways. And as hard as I try, this continues to happen. It isn’t that I am flawed or that the other is wrong; it’s just the way it is. And with each time this happens, I break a bit, having exposed myself fully and been knocked down dubiously. I haven’t yet learned how to not expose myself. Despite the little nagging voices that warn me, that tell me how to be, how to play, how to act—regardless I still don’t ‘act’ correctly. At least not in accordance to the mainstream, not even it accordance to the side-stream.

What is it about me that has to be this way? Why do I have to be different? And so complicated inside. So utterly confusing.
My entire life, I have only longed to be loved and understood. Loved in completion and understood in completion. I always thought there would be someone who could do this, beyond my own self and beyond God. Now I am beginning to think there isn’t anyone; that there isn’t a one or a somebody that can take away any of this pain brought on by isolation. And that scares me to a great degree.

I am trapped somewhere now, between wanting to explain myself over and over and be truly seen, and wanting to hide and not come out. Rather than depression, I would name this yet another trial of spirit, another relapse into the negation brought on by the yin and yang of life. I behold myself on that constant pendulum of rebalance. What goes up, must come down. And I am tired of the echoes that leech out of me, their sadness carried to the depths of my pores; then seeped out screaming, as my entire body washes away in ache.

I become so hopeful and childlike at times. I am this gleeful spirited one, dancing in the miracle of life, and the miracle of all, and then I am brought here, into the dark forest of dimly lit nowhere. A scope onto self and self alone, the rest forgotten and folded away, some unkempt laundry tucked out of sight. And I stand here, suffocating in my own vomit of misery: shaken, lost, alone.

I don’t understand it, why this life is this life, and why I am made as me. Why so much has been shown to me and given, and so much taken away. I don’t understand this at all, and the concept of the inability to understand boggles my brain, causing me to loop and decipher the aspects of my own torment. As if, I, as logical being, could master my own self and recreate the concept of reality, pull myself out of the burden of misery and into the sunlight of hope.

I sit here in battle with shadows, or some form of regret, and I play out this scene again followed by again.

Hello, I say to the downcast one, hidden in her corner, huddled and terrified.

Hello, I say again. My lips moving and my voice carried, yet somehow captured and set aflame before reaching the hovel where the child rests asleep in fear.

Hello, I scream, shaking the ground and the space in between us; the separation so narrow a fleck would serve as bridge.

And still she neither moves nor reckons I am here.

Instead she gathers herself as garbage and recollects the foul smell of the world must be her, and if not her, at minimum her own doing.

She is lost again, in some forgotten place, between this world and the next, trying to find her way back to a place in which she does not belong.

455: Love and Loops

| Aspergers Girls

I have been trying really hard to not loop, to not spin, to not take something that is nothing and turn it into a monster. The largest portion of this sense of self is lost in doing so, in succumbing to the voice of fear and believing what I hear. The greatest part of spirit knows that fear is all but illusion, and only love exists—prevails beyond the illusion of naught. Still I get lost in the murky waters of falsehoods, daily, if not hourly, trapped in a labyrinth beyond human logic.

Because I am vulnerable, I lose sight of my purpose. Because I succumb to this falsehood, I lose sight of the all. I become a pawn in some minions’ game of discourse and confusion as I stumble down endless reasonings leading nowhere.

I have watched myself as the observer and taken soul-notes, or more so delve through time for answers, and if not answers than at least a glimmer of insight. I have listened to my heart-mind, and focused on the powers that rest beyond intellect. And in so doing, I have found some peace. I have found some recourse beyond the dilly-dallying of the mind, beyond state of anguish.

I have discovered, with full vitality, a remedy beyond this place I am. I have seen a solution that is far more reaching than letting the pain play out to the end. I have seen: It is not that I need to seek the meaning and find the solution, but that I need to release the need for solution.

Before I believed this meant releasing to the process—to allow or give permission for my mind to go through the torment. Now I view the occurrence with new eyes. There is no need for me to wallow in this state of pain day in and day out. The truth of the mystery of release is found in not releasing, not focusing, not trying, but simply replacing.

Releasing through replacement is my remedy. And not replacing with the tools of busyness or distraction. For though they be sweet, the intermingling of heart-mind into a daunting or thusly thrilling task or adventure, they too come to a conclusion, an end that certainly leaves me back on the dock of gloomy comings. A place where I am once again triggered by an invisible made visible.

I’ve come to see that what I am sensing is not so much an intellectual attack as a spiritual attack. A dark nature of my own doing or another’s, I know not. A creation brought on by self-manifestation or a power beyond, I know not enough to ponder. But whatever the affliction, rather karmic, energetic, or simply part of my journey into greater peace, the affliction exists. A pain so palatable I can taste it—hold it in my mouth and bite down. It’s thick and dirty, and filled with deception. Trickery of what is and what isn’t. And mask upon mask of who I am.

In the end, at the bottom of all the lies is this desperation, this clinging, that makes my mind scream out. A lost woman forlorn and in destitute wondering about from that which she came.

To experience is to remember. To experience again is to cry so deeply in recognition of the unraveling loss of control that the tears become the enemy. The shell of self emptied too, so despite the remnants of what I thought I was, who I thought I was, I become something entirely altered, different even within the mirror I reflect upon. Wherein even the home in which I sought rescue and escape is shattered—no place to crawl back into, no matter if it be demolished or in disarray—no shell exists. I am left out in the open barren space of nowhere searching for a way back home to nothing.

And so I have put into practice a new approach, scouring over the teachings I have collected in my mind, and surrendering a gentle submission of knowing not enough to conquer this affliction. Instead, I retreat into a place in which I connect my heart and mind, and I give to myself the gentleness of love.

I let into my mind only one word: LOVE

And I repeat this over and over and over: Love, love, love

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

That is all.
That is the all.

And here I rest, unable to untangle my own mind with any other words, unable to be the puzzle solver or mender. Unable to recollect what brought me here again—for one solution inevitably leads to further spinning and descending into the abyss.

Instead, instead of anything else in existence, I choose love.

And there I rest, repeating the source of light over and over, until the healing waters come, and I realize whatever or whomever it was that afflicted me, be it self, illusion, or other, I am whole still. Returned to the womb of discovery. Returned to the self complete and renewed.