self esteem

531: The Balance Beam

| Aspergers Girls

I have a hard time giving to me. It’s not about esteem, as far as I can logically decipher. Nor is it about being selfless or completely altruistic; though I strive for those ideals, I highly doubt they’re attainable in my human suit.

I have a hard time feeling my achievements and accomplishments. It’s not that I don’t take note of my hard work and efforts, and even the path I climbed, (or sometimes slid down rapidly screaming for help), to get there.

More over, I don’t think I have the capacity to feel, essentially, who I am.

I can see that I am intelligent, kind, and for the most part understanding and forgiving. I recognize what could be quantified as a kind of ‘goodness’ in me, and even an over-riding sense of wanting to serve to serve and not to gain approval. I get all this about me. I see it. I recognize. But somehow I can’t feel the experience.

I don’t know if one would call it a sense of pride or fulfillment, or other abundant amounts of labels—but whatever it is that other people seem to get and obtain, in an abstract way after achieving a goal, I don’t seem to have that. I can’t even say if it’s a feeling or outcome, simply because I don’t understand.

Perhaps this inability to understand is because I don’t think the race or game, or what-have-you, is ever over; and to top that off, I don’t even believe that the race or game actually exists. I see the process of achievement as a cluster of something or another, all unrecognizable and indistinguishable amongst the rest of life’s happenings.

To me, I do to do. I give to give. I care to care. I exist to exist. There isn’t this motive or agenda underlying my actions or ways. And if there is, the motive, if not for others, feels heavy, poisonous, and akin to wretched waste.

I just am. And this way that other people sometimes maneuver through life baffles me: the secret schemes, the plots, the webs spun and re-spun. And furthermore, along the same lines, in comparing the declared ‘loser’ to the announced ‘winner,’ the latter seems nothing of grandeur in comparison to the agony of the defeated one.

With this said, I cause myself great harm in overanalyzing my every move. The spectator I am, observing self, tinkers about with scoping tools, contemplating if my action is suitable representation as reflection of interior. If, in fact, in the light of the day, what is said or done, matches my intention or desire. In a constant state of analyzing, I am aiming for the path that is in direct resonance with my soul self.

In addition, I cannot detect the idiosyncrasy of common conversational rules spawned by the associate facing me; yet, I can dissect with fine-fashion the inner-weavings of my own motives. So much so that I deliberate with self questioning if my words are appropriately suited for ‘proof’ (to self) of authenticity.

Is the exterior self accurately representing the unspoken self? I ask. Still with this perceived self-harm, I need this way of being. The manner in which I tread upon a dreamland stage, whilst all about more selves collectively critique the actions portrayed by the exterior, is a proverbial limb of my essence. To be without such manner of existence, I would find myself broken and obsolete, and abandoned, the same as wood for fire. And as tree, I would weep.

In honesty, the worst of the matter is when another enters my zone: the place in which I sit unsettled watching for discrepancies between what is intended and what was produced; distinguishing the gaps, molecular they might be, between what is felt intrinsically as truth and what is displayed as reflection. I hide within, in constant wonder-state, questioning if what I have done is honorable. And here the pain comes, as the mind blunders and rallies for evidence of what is honorable.

Again, I find myself today, in the balancing act of striving for neither perfection nor satisfaction, but rather the gentle center point that does more to extinguish self and lighten all. It’s a varying balance beam of grace that beckons me to be all I can be, but not too much.

506: The Risk is Worth it. Thoughts on Friendship.

| Aspergers Girls

I don’t believe I have any answers that anyone else cannot find for himself. Or to non-negate the previous statement: I do believe I have no answers that another cannot find for himself. I have a hard time reasoning in my mind the authenticity of any self-proclaimed or manmade accentuated leader who hints, dictates, or infers that he has the answers. I am quick to steer away, and feel quite many a qualms, when I hear of anyone who thinks they have found the answer, the truth, and the way. I know too much to be a blind sheep, and too little to proclaim I know enough. This is not to say I diminish or shake a finger at modern religion or any new up and coming spiritual fashion, only that I seriously question and outright deny the fact that any human can foreseeably house the answers for another; and certainly without the answer, he has no right, if rights be the matter, to dictate to another how to live or present oneself.

I find the purest souls to be the most delightful in their attempts to literally do nothing but be, and to let be. Those that don’t pursue fame, recognition, reward, and esteem are the ones I gravitate towards, the ones who are actually repelled at multiple levels by anything to do with being in the spotlight. Those are the ones I tend to uphold as seers and seekers of truth.

Secondly, I know enough of myself to know that I am highly influenced by my environmental and physical condition, including my own stamina and mental-conditioning. What I present as reality, and perhaps a semi-temporary-truth one day, will likely be obsolete at another juncture in time.

I don’t like to sway people. I don’t even like to ‘not like.’ Still I don’t like to form judgments, or to reach conclusions about others. Of course some things, some actions, and some people (because of said actions), stand out as recognizably out of the arena of blandness. I mean to say, they make a mark that is recognizable to both my heart and mind. Mostly, it is the things that seem mean, spiteful, unjust, and not lenient which stand out, particularly something that might be deemed ‘evil’ or ‘perverse.’ But even then the lines (and labels) merge into this gray area, and I find myself neither here nor there, trying to counter both sides of an argument that has converged inside my mind.

With all of this said, I offer a few things about my thoughts on friendship. And if that wasn’t an Aspie preamble, I don’t know what is!

Aspie and Friends:

1. I prefer online friends. Online friendships eliminate much of the burden of communication. I have time to think, to edit my thoughts, to respond in a slow and delicate manner, to take time, to get back, and to not be seen physically. Most of my challenges with communications come in the mode of sensory overload and in my evaluation of what I am seeing. Yes, I still evaluate with online friendships, but about 75% of the stress of communication, particularly nonverbal processing, is eliminated. That’s not to say online communication doesn’t offer it’s barriers and weaknesses, but overall, particularly when I take the time to check for clarity, online communication scores high above face-to-face encounters. I mean I could lose myself in a freckle or hair color and miss half of an entire conversation. And forget about the background noise and nonstop monitoring of my tone of voice, inflection, and talking speed.

2. I make online friends. It’s scary but I do it.

3. I support some friends, when I am capable, and they support me when able.

When I am at my lowest, I will sometimes reach out to three or four people at one time, most of whom are Aspie or whom have Asperger’s traits, and if not Aspie then people whom I deem for the most part trustworthy, nonjudgmental, and possessing the capacity to love unconditionally.

4. I reach out to several people at a time because someone might be busy and I also don’t want to overburden one friend with my intensity.

5. I am not blessed to have many friends. I don’t mean that in a bad way. Of course I am grateful for people in my life but no one blessed me with them. I made the friendships, day after day, year after year, risk after risk. Yes, it is hard. Yes, I mess up, and yes sometimes I get super hurt. But I am not fortunate, or even lucky to have friends, because I have worked HARD to make and maintain these friendships. And I have worked hard on myself to learn how to be the best friend (person) I can be.

6. I accept my faults, frailties, and entire humanness. I am far from perfect but I avoid beating myself up. Yes, I allow myself to have a pity-party sometimes, especially when many changes are occurring in my life. However, I have friends that understand these aspects of me.

7. I only interact with certain friends during my most vulnerable times. I choose a select few friends to confide in about particularl things, especially subject matter in which I want no advice or solution finding quests.

8. If I am not careful, and I talk to a friend who offers advice or her view of the situation, the conversation can do me more harm than good. I have learned to be selective. It is a survival mechanism. Some friends can handle my intensity, others my insecurities, others my wild-imagination, and a rare few the complete me. I have learned I can’t be the complete me around everyone; I will get hurt. I have learned I can be complete by dividing myself amongst many friends. I don’t think this survival skill is specific for those on the spectrum, but I do believe Aspies are vulnerable in their ability to be strongly wounded by others, and that they often find themselves in positions of offending or shocking, without that intention.

9. Friends are not easy for me, for there is a part of me who, despite an inconceivable amount of self-reflection, insight, and work, will always think I am not a good enough friend. This isn’t a self-esteem issue. I do like me. It has to do with the extreme ways in which I can psychoanalyze myself and dissect conversations. I am always, and will always be, an observer of others, twice removed from discourse and continually dissecting and evaluating and reliving over and over past conversations.

10. I have one friend in which I can just spill my guts and fears and anxiety and she will JUST listen. She doesn’t do tit for tat. In that I mean she doesn’t ask me for advice, expect me to listen or to return the favor. She just lets me process. I think every Aspie (and every human being) needs someone who will just listen.

11. I recognize I will always feel like I don’t give back enough in friendship. It is just the way it is. When people give to me, in time or other ways, I feel an immediate want and obligation to equal the score. It’s not that I mean to keep score, only that I naturally don’t want to take advantage of anyone.

12. I love to have friends from all backgrounds. I am not picky. Or maybe I am, if you think the capacity to love without conditions, to be honest, to be giving, to be kind, and to be genuine is picky. But with that said, and a little trustworthiness thrown in, I am capable of being friends with many, many people. There isn’t a checklist.

13. I think I need friends. I think everyone does. I think the risk is worth it.

I don’t neccesarily think the introduction matches the list. But, oh well. My friends will understand. 🙂

13 is my favorite number.

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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.

491: Standards: A Long Time Coming

| Aspergers Girls

kind

I love how in life, messages, like the quote above, come to me at the perfect time. I have had a hellish year. I avoid that word, but in this case it’s the most effective descriptor I can find. I shall counter balance it with my giddy spirit and lots of love! I promise. Plus better to face the truth of events and be done with it. Gather the happenings under my hemline, sit with them, and then release. Like a whoopee cushion.

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I have reclaimed and re-found my giddy self that was lost about this time last year with the onset of the first of many challenging events. The little-happy-loving girl in me went into hiding, for the most part, and became the fierce warrior she needed to be. I can’t say I enjoyed myself much at all in the last twelve months, except in brief moments, in between the intervals of extreme spiritual, mental, and physical exhaustion.

A lot happened that I won’t go into, as I steer away from discussing others’ personal lives, beyond my own. But on the scale of stressful life occurrences, you know those common stressors, well let me just say I encountered many; if not in full, than to the point of hovering around at the perimeters of the feasible happenings.

Limbo is a great word to describe where I have been for a year.

One of the greatest benefits of this recent journey is I have ended up with a vast understanding of what I will and will not put up with in regards to befriending others. It took me long enough to figure this understanding of ‘standards’ out! Over four decades to be precise.

Here is what I now know of MY STANDARDS:

First off:

It’s okay not to like someone and choose not to associate with that person. This is not a reflection on me as a person. It does not mean I am impatient, imperfect, or have a low tolerance. It does mean that I am recognizing my comfort-zone. I am not recognizing limitations. There is nothing limiting about me. I am setting boundaries with people who affect my energy to a degree where it affects other areas of my life and my interactions with loved ones.

Because I have this capacity to see into people, to read people at a psychological and/or spiritual level, I tend to steer right passed what is blatantly infront of me (addictions, abusive behaviors towards me, RED FLAGS, HUGE RED FLAGS) and forgive someone of EVERYTHING, upon initial meeting, and continually, as needed. I will forget about a person’s current negative behavior, rationalize his/her actions, or not even notice danger signs or the fact that I am extremely uncomfortable with him/her.

I understand now that I cannot help nor connect with everyone. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But sometimes those of us with huge hearts get a bit askew in regards to reality. In truth, some people are, excuse my language, really messed up.

Some people are just too far beyond my capacity to sort out. Not that I have super powers or anything, not that I am a fixer or helper. But because I am kind and open-minded, I sometimes fool myself into thinking I can be friends with anyone. While I think I can feasibly see the light and potential in most, I certainly don’t need to take on someone who substantially drains the living life blood out of me! There are crazy, really crazy, people out there who will harm me, if given the chance. I need to bind myself to this idea, and face that reality.

It’s okay to have standards! (repeat three times)

STANDARDS for a person I choose to associate with:

1) Not delusional

2) Predictable and Reliable

3) Apologetic when aware he/she has trespassed against someone

4) Vibrate at beneficial energetic level most of the time; I know not all people crave this, but I know myself

5) Honest, trustworthy, has integrity, non-manipulative, etc.

6) Not sexually intrusive or acting perverted

7) Doesn’t demean a gender, sect, denomination, or creed

8) Loves him or herself, and, if not, is self-aware enough to work on getting to this place

9) KIND, KIND, KIND; this means they don’t have ANGER issues. I do not like people who blame, judge, or point fingers. And that’s okay. I can be kind but not fond of people. I can love but don’t have to include everyone in my life.

10) Doesn’t disappear and abandon our relationship over and over; I don’t care what the reason, I don’t want or need that in my life.

11) Cares about self and other people

12) Avoids passive-aggressive behavior

13) Doesn’t use body, sexuality, or images of self in attempt to get what he/she wants

14) Has looked at their issues; isn’t perfect, is even far from perfect, but is self-aware and willing to work on betterment

15) Doesn’t suck my energy, use me in any way, or expect things of me beyond basics (like similar things as listed on this list)

16) Truth seeker

17) Non-clingy

18) Doesn’t do either of these extremes: worship me (put me on pedestal) or degrade me (criticize me in attempt to feel better about him or herself). I don’t want to be on someone’s mind ALL the time. I want him or her to have a life. And I don’t want to be the object of desire or loathing.

19) Doesn’t monopolize my time and attention

20) Has something to offer. I am not picky. I mean a smiling face and a good heart is a fine offering.

490: The Power of One

| Aspergers Girls

meeeee

I have undergone tremendous growth. The type of transitions wherein some unknown force pulls the fighting body whilst self is kicking and screaming and begging for retreat. In recent days, I have endured countless bombardments of self-esteem. Acts, which are best described as, infused with angst, confusion, and distaste. Each repeated occurrence brought on by events in which I, as self, directly submitted. As if I was, in a place of some higher part of being, orchestrating the mayhem to illustrate a lesson that a part of me had avoided, but in retrospect surely required.

In the previous days, I have been quite the proverbial doormat, I confess. Vacant, in respect to the manner in which I allowed and, I dare admit, sought out people to be a mirror to my attributes of self-doubt and self-loathing. As it was, I chose to partake in uncomfortable exchanges. I allowed my esteem to be penetrated by forces that weren’t for my benefit; at least, not beneficial in the short-term. (For in the scheme of life I am one who upholds that the self can render all happenings to blossom into some sort of benefit, even if minute in size. Just as the scale of emotional evaluation leans towards the element of intense agony, there on the other side is room for benefit always, or at least the feasible creation of benefit.)

As aforementioned, I was a doormat. I don’t know if I have always been such a symbolic representation of an open invitation to trample all over said self, or if this way of existing is something I adopted based on prior occurrences of heartache. I assume, and could likely prove, I was definitely a doormat of sorts, decades before this moment; yet, I believe, based on a collective history, in the past I had established a set of standards and ideal ways of treating myself beyond that era.

Regardless, in the last days I reverted back to a time that is best described as reclusively in a state of self-admonishment, isolation, degradation, and grasping. Think desperate.

I reminded myself, whilst observing my actions and behaviors during the last month, of the person I was that lived during a time period where I lacked all grains of self-esteem and self-worth. A time when I pleaded for my cause of worthiness, while simultaneously drowning in a self-inflicted pool of disbelief of my delegated case. My self was lost. I was lost. And I forgot who and what I was.

Most recently, I found myself here, in the laps of proving and searching for validation of who I was for weeks, one after the other, fixating on a person to provide a valid representation of my worth. It was ridiculous to view my actions from afar, as observer twice removed with her palm smacking into her forehead. Undoubtedly, through it all, the houndings of surrendered esteem boggled and brazened my mind.

During these ordeals, I kept myself honest, explaining to my significant other what was happening, and exploring the shadow aspects of myself that were surfacing. My journey was a reliving of sorts, the trespassing into that of the last of the baggage of my past. A torrential place where I’d had hovelled up close to anyone for any cause, in order to attempt to feel alive and loved, a time period where if I were to be beast my tail would have been quivering between my legs and my voice quaking for attention. In these days of long ago and now more recent, I sought to be lifted by another person, to be recognized and celebrated, to be adored, and to furthermore be adorned.

The repercussions of my recent travelings cannot be explained in-depth, as the process entailed an exterior and interior part of this self, so greatly complex and unsubstantiated, that any evidence excavated and presented formidably here would fall short. That is to say that in an attempt, even in the greatest attempt, to explain what has transpired, I would be omitting far more than I was telling, not out of purposeful intention, but out of the incapacity to scribe what has no words: an experience beyond me.

I was submitted, by my purposeful actions, though much torture; again, not by any one source, or even by many, but by a collaboration of events transpired as a result of my higher-self renderings and doings.

In the end, if there be end, as I stand here now, I am much shattered and broken out of the shell of the past, reborn anew into a distinct stronger self. I have been granted ample means in which to review my behavior and ample paths in which to take said happenings and graduate myself from a degree of shame and regret to a higher plane of reasoning and vast understanding.

I am donned in gratefulness for the renderings by said higher power. Yet, in all truthfulness, I cannot and will not omit the aspect of feeling tremendous relief over the passings of such days. I am glad to be back home, if home be the word. For though I am much more grounded and made aware of my circumstances and previous choices, the place in which I landed, where I rest in this moment, feels unfamiliar and unexplored. As if I had been transported from a state of much confusion to a state of much clarity, only during the process of the journeying, the earth in which I previously stood had been altered and replanted with indigenous bearings, yet unknown to self.