self esteem

343: How I long to be the sun

| Aspergers Girls

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How I long to be the sun…

I am such a dichotomy of prisms, multi-faceted in a way that confuses me, the observer.

I keep looking into myself and finding only tunnels, web-like hallways leading in all directions. There is such mystery here, and clutter. I am an open book, but not to myself. I am an open book to only that which I let out and that which I allow in. Even as I share so much, I hold eternity inside. I worry, when I have all the reasonings harvested of why not to worry. I fear, when I have all the reasonings set out of why not to fear.

I am this pendulum; this constant pendulum. I know not what moves me, but I am continually moved. At times I feel I become the person you are. At times, so many times, I lose the person I am. I absorb the world, all of the ingredients brought into me; and then I am left, in my loneliness, both awe-inspired and drowning in pain of recognition.

I see too much. I feel too much. I know too much. And there is no remedy.

I am the heap of pain that one carries on his shoulders. I am the sorrow of the mistress. I am the angst and guilt of the destroyer. I am the pillager weeping at the joyful bounty. I am the child in the glee-filled park. I am the mountaineer on highest peak. I am the widow crying at the grave. I am the tie tightened around my very neck, chocking me from the outside, to match the fury of pain within.

I am enveloped in need and then enveloped in release. I am tortured by thoughts and misery, and then let free by understanding and the depth of beauty. I am unstable, yet stable in my instability. I am consistent in my varying degrees of emotions. A spit-fire of desire brought to tender knees by only the touch of your words.

I am affected by all and none. This silence speaks to me. And the loudness hurts. I am the fury in your eyes. I am the heartache in your bosom. I am that raw pain that eats away at you. Time and again I rise, some mercenary to the many; unable to stop my vengeance; my need to take revenge, to beat the rhythms of my own soul down.

I am anger. I am rectification. I am renewal. I am lust. I am all this and more. And they merge and spin inside of me, claiming their take, and taking more than was offered. I eat of myself, devouring the agony.

If only I could find a way to balance the esteem of you with the esteem of my own being. If only I could find a way to stop the pain you feed me. Your naked trembling fear. To unchain the leash that takes me to the dark side of my own moon.

How I long to be the sun, the perfect sun shining overhead; and then with one touch, without consequence, to set free with flame this yearning for rescue.

~ Sam 3/20/13

316: 50 Reasons to Leave Your Lover

| Aspergers Girls

Me 4

1. He tells you as he is making out with you, “Someday your future boyfriend will be really glad I taught you this.”

2. He corrects and critiques the way you break your bread, showing you how to separate the roll into four equal pieces.

3. He stays up all night scraping the black factory-painted pinstripe off of his truck because he can’t sleep until it’s entirely gone.

4. He stays up all night making cardboard hotels for cats, convinced he will be rich off of his invention.

5. He owns a limo, but it turns out he’s the driver, and he likes to tell you often what he watches the passengers doing in the backseat.

6. He explains that he likes you a lot, and will share a bed with you, but doesn’t feel comfortable sitting on the same couch as you.

7. He steals your expensive perfume bottle (again) and “secretly” gives it as a present to his other girlfriend.

8. He doesn’t have driving insurance and totals his truck while on a secret rendezvous to the mountains with his other lover, and then asks you to come get him at the hospital.

9. He says, after your first dinner date, which he planned to be out of town, that he is too drunk to drive home but has conveniently already booked a hotel room nearby.

10. He promises he just wants to cuddle.

11. He says he has a romantic surprise for you, and when you enter the room there is a “toy” and a video camera set up.

12. His father tells you, after your lover has gone missing for three days: “He is just like me, a player, and he ain’t changing.”

13. His mother takes you out to an intimate lunch and tells you, “You are so smart and lovely and kind, why are you with my son?”

14. He takes you to an antique store to teach you have to shoplift.

15. He sells you a stereo that he bought with his roommates “stolen” credit card.

16. He doesn’t come and find you when you run out of the house crying.

17. He calls his ex-girlfriend when you are still in bed together.

18. He has rearranged the photos of you as a couple each time you come over.

19. He lives with his sister, has no job, is addicted to pain-killers, and is a chain-smoker.

20. He makes you gag.

21. He makes you wish you lived on another planet.

22. He says, “I don’t love you, I’m certain.”

23. He is the roommate of the other really odd guy you dated.

24. He has an ex-wife that warns, “Watch out, he is trouble.”

25. He enters a room and every woman wants to give him his number, and he takes them.

26. He has deep dark brown bedroom eyes, and he knows it.

27. He shows up late all the time, and always has a very detailed excuse.

28. He says, “It depends, are you planning on losing weight,” when you ask him if you should cut your hair shorter.

29. He tells you how to dress.

30. He tells to wear long fake fingernails painted pink.

31. He is in therapy with you and seeing another therapist with his wife.

32. He enters the athletic gym, and the male employees look at you, raise a brow, and say in a derogatory tone, “That’s your boyfriend?”

33. He was the first man you saw after breaking up with your other boyfriend who was the first man you saw.

34. He claims he cannot tell you where he lives because it is a temporary situation and he can’t give you his phone number because he doesn’t have a phone.

35. He plans a party and not one person shows up.

36. He asks your father for your hand in marriage, shortly after his mistress, holding a baby, kicks down his apartment door in an attempt to kill you.

37. He does things with himself at stop signs you know are plain wrong, but he insists everyone does it.

38. He lies to his mother.

39. He yells at you because you packed the camping ice-chest wrong.

40. He tells you that your suspicions about his cheating on you means you are paranoid.

41. He likes beer with his breakfast.

42. He takes you out to drink “brain freeze” alcoholic shots for the first date.

43. He tells you all about his special adventures with his guy friend, with a twinkle of love in his eyes.

44. He takes you to a party and you find him half-naked in the bathroom with his ex-girlfriend, and he claims she is helping to adjust his Halloween costume.

45. He tells you how you could be prettier.

46. He asks you to buy something for his mother’s birthday because he can’t afford it.

47. He takes you on an out-of-state trip, via airplane, to his hometown and disappears in the early morning to meet up with a past lover.

48. He calls you from a phone booth, a few blocks away, claiming he is out-of-town working for a few days.

49. He doesn’t say, “You are beautiful.”

(He points out your mistakes often, like forgetting to add number 50 to this list.)

Please protect your aspie daughter. Teach her she is worthy. Love her unconditionally. Pay attention to her. She doesn’t know as much as you think she does. She thinks, like herself, that everyone is kind-hearted and filled with good intention. Teach her about red flags, about predators, about liars, about trickery, and about manipulation. Teach her about appropriate behavior and conduct. Consider her an angel on earth, uneducated about the ways of this world. Hold her and cherish her. And above all teach her how special she is.

This was my first album; I used to play this song over and over and over. I memorized all the lyrics. I was so awesome.

Random thought: What if the reason why my dog is so very happy to see me every morning is because in her reality one night is 100 years!

298: The Weight of Me

| Aspergers Girls

I don’t understand my body, what it looks like, what others see me as, how I am supposed to look, what is expected, what is healthy, what is normal, what is standard, what is right.

There is a layering of problems associated with my body image.

1) No Norm Exists

No norms exist related to body image except what society, or more so the media and advertisement companies and other corporations want me to buy into. There is a belief system that varies from year to year, dangled in front of me. I don’t want to be a fish: a hungry guppy rising up to take hold of some enticing treat that will likely gorge me, stab me, break me, or result in me being sliced open, gutted, and fried to a crisp. Nor do I want to see the bait. But everywhere this bait floats about, the hook hidden and waiting to damage.

2) I Have a Degree of Body Blindness

It is hard for me to see myself as a whole, and to see others as a whole. I can see when someone has some extra padding, a few extra pounds beyond this societal standard of ideal weight, but I can’t hold the whole of someone’s image in my mind. If I was asked to sketch a body, I could not. Everything would be out of proportion, including the length of the arms and legs, the scale of the neck, and the angles of the face. Everything I take in is somehow mutated and rearranged, so that what I recall in my mind’s eye could likely be a Vincent Van Gogh painting. I cannot see my own body, clearly, as well. I rely too heavily on the eye of a camera, only to have discovered as of late that the camera is not an adequate portrayal of my weight, as the aspects of my clothing, the way I am standing, the angle of the camera, the type of camera, the lighting, and even my mood, posture, and expression, affect the end result (the photo image).

I’ve studied myself in photos for months, and still am baffled by what I look like; and how I look to myself, changes each and every time I glance at my reflection. And even the reflections are deceiving; how I appear in the rearview mirror, the glass of a window, or from one bathroom mirror to the next, always shifts, and I find a new person staring back at me, reversed and bewildered. I am left to wonder where the real me exists. In front of the full length mirror I stand, turning and processing, in awe of the stranger standing there. Photos will generally depress me, as they do not seem to represent who I see myself as. And worse, I can’t really see myself at all in form. I am like an unformed mass, shifting as the flowers and plants vary with the seasons. I cannot find myself, as hard as I seek, at least my outside self; for I seem as mysterious as the birth of the universe, as infinite, and as ever-changing.

3) I latch on to rules and examples of beauty even though the societal norm of perfection is unattainable

I have been brainwashed. I have been bombarded with images of what I should look like. I have been told, in the form of photos, movies, sitcoms, commercials, advertisements, magazine covers, billboards, department store displays, peers’ behavior, and various fix-yourself-now articles, that I am somehow wrong and in need of repair. In addition, I have been informed that if I go through various steps, I will then be adequate, and once adequate I shall be accepted, loved, and adored. I have seen this “beauty” scenario unfold and be reinforced when I was a teenager; seen how the people around me responded and took note of me if I was dressed the “right” way, if my hair was “good,” if my makeup enhancing, my body shapely. I have seen the attention that the socially accepted “beauty” brings. I have also seen and felt how empty the experience of acceptance based on exterior beauty alone can be, seen how fickle and cruel the shallow admiration is. I have felt like a tree adorned for the holidays, sparkly and the center of attention, only to be later tossed to the side of the road waiting my fate. But still, I have this brain, some type of organizational system working inside of me that searches for the “rules” the standards, the way to exist on this planet and in this society. I think, deep within, that if I can find the right path, I will fit in. Yet, I am faced with an unhealthy path; one that leads to imperfection after imperfection, and demands my money, and worse my soul.

4) I exist at one extreme or another

The place of middle ground in all areas of my existence is foreign to me; as hard as I study and try to get there, I cannot. My mind works in extremes. I am generally high or low, calm or hyper, still or moving, cautious or daring, charming or a pain in the butt, loving or stand-offish. The in between space baffles me, and analysis of the concept of middle ground leaves me stranded in thought, wondering why I cannot be “that way,” the way of the masses, the way of the easy life.

Though I try hard to find balance, I continually find myself swinging on the spectrum of intensity, the volume of my every minute, high or low; the intensity affected by the tides, the planets, the food I take in, the music surrounding, the sounds, the energy of other people, the thoughts roaming within, the expectations placed on myself, the voice that rises and interrupts my doing, the inconsistency of trying to be, and the varying degrees of living in the moment.

I am unsettled. Every inch of me unsettled. And like the shifting of my body image in my mind’s eye, my state of being shifts. My efforts are circumvented by the infectious factors all about me. In being this way, I take on tasks with a high degree of interest or I give a task no regard whatsoever. This, this taking on of tasks, applies to the way I manage the weight of my physical body. I can be extreme for months with a diet, avoiding certain fattening and bloating foods, avoiding sugar, avoiding all junk food, avoiding grains, etc. But I can only exist in the state of extreme for so long, and then I break, and where I had felt to be in a constant state of fathom, I now emerge into a state of feast, starving and deprived. My weight fluctuates depending upon where my pendulum of intensity exists. I am at the mercy of my passion or lack of interest.

5) I feel better at my ideal weight, but the definition of my ideal weight varies depending on source.

I would like to say that I am comfortable in my own skin, but I am not. I have latched onto an ideal number for my weight based on how my clothes fit and how I appear in some photos. Not all photos, because even my ideal weight looks odd in most images. To me, when observing myself, I can appear obese and bloated, even though I am told I am skinny. Ideal weight is listed and available on medical charts. But this weight standard is obsolete. I have always been much heavier in scale number than I appear in form. I was stick-skinny in high school, skinnier than most everyone, but I was heavier on the scale. I am 5’ 4” and in the last several months average about 139 pounds. This is a high weight for some people, but for me I can fit into size 4 or size 6 pants. For me this is thin. At 137 I start to appear gaunt and unhealthy. I know that I appear best at 139 pounds even though this amount weight is repeatedly reinforced in movies, magazine articles, and charts as “heavy.”

I am confused by contradictory data, and contradictory data is everywhere. There are sources that say it is good to go into menopause with weight around the belly, and some fat on the bones, as this decreases your chances of bone loss. I have read it is natural and healthy to have some excess body weight as one approaches their fifties; yet so many studies warn of various diseases and fatalities if the weight is not monitored and controlled. I look back at paintings from the centuries before, and think the voluptuous women look lovely. I look at the stick-skinny, starving-themselves women, and think they look stern and unhappy, rigid and angry. I look at myself and don’t know what I think, beyond a woman struggling to find the “norm” and what is “right,” in a world with variables and contradictions.

I latch onto numbers. So I latch onto 139 pounds as my standard, as my ideal, as my place to be. But I have a slow metabolism. I can eat one meal a day and gain weight. Is my esteem wrapped up in my weight? I don’t think so. I think my esteem is wrapped up in the unattainable image I think I am supposed to attain: an image I cannot see in my mind’s eye, an image that is deceptive, contradictory, and unachievable. I am not wrapped up in looking skinny or attractive enough, I am wrapped up in trying to figure out what I look like to begin with, how to keep a number on the scale from fluctuating so I feel stable in a very non-stagnant world.

I just want to fit in, or more so blend in. I don’t want to stand out for a perceived “negative” attribute; I don’t want to be unhealthy; I don’t what to exhibit gluttony; I don’t want to appear “wrong.” All these “norms” and expectations I set upon myself. And I don’t know how to turn the voice of expectation off. How to just be with me. How to just love me. How to see I am not this vessel that ages daily, slowly deteriorating towards death.

6) I set different standards on myself than other people.

I logically can tell myself that I do not care what others look like, and this is the truth. My dearest friends can be any weight, and they are just as lovely and beautiful to me. I don’t take notice of people’s weight as much as their eyes or their kindness. I love all shapes and sizes, and find attributes that are unique and different to be interesting and attractive. I like a woman with a little fat on her, personally. And if I were a man, or a person attracted to women in a physical way, I would choose someone for their inner beauty and character, not for their weight. Weight would not be a factor at all. And as a female attracted to men, I am not attracted to the weight or fitness-level of a man. At this point in my life, I could be in a romantic relationship (if I wasn’t married, of course) with any shape or size, any ethnicity, and any age (within reason).

The outside exterior of another, male or female, friend or stranger, no longer affects me like it did in previous years. I see the collective person: their soul, energy, purpose, drive, love, heart, etc. all interwoven to produce a beauty. Yet, I cannot do this with my own self. Make myself see my collective beauty.

I know I am lovely inside. I know I have a huge heart, massive amounts of sensitivity, compassion, integrity, honor, and love, but yet, when I evaluate my own beauty I go back to this fictitious number on the scale.

7) I don’t know where to turn for help.

If I let go of my rigid goal of maintaining a certain weight, I would gain weight. While I might be able to learn to feel comfortable in my own skin when I am heavier than now, I face other complications as I gain weight. When I add on pounds my chronic fatigue and chronic pain increases, exercise becomes harder, and just moving in general is burdensome. When I gain weight I do not recognize myself, or rather I recognize myself even less, and I am confused when I see my image.

However, while striving to maintain my weight, I put unyielding pressure on myself of what to eat and what not to eat. I punish myself for cheating. And for me cheating is having organic cheese puffs instead of organic red peppers with my humus. I tell myself terrible messages, such as I don’t have willpower, I am going to gain weight and no one will love me if I am not attractive, I will forever be alone, and on and on.

In addition, food affects me drastically. I cannot eat anything, beyond pure protein, without having instant pain and fatigue. So, I often go most of the day without eating, because as soon as I eat I have a reaction, in that extreme fatigue sets in coupled with pain in my muscles and joints. I have tried many different diets, food combinations, etc. for many years, to no avail. I have come to the conclusion that I am allergic to earth food, and that’s just the way it goes. For me eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables all day is the best, but I crave more.

There aren’t any answers out there. I’ve searched and searched; I’ve waited. I’ve dug deep inside. I’ve meditated, medicated, supplemented, detoxed, etc. I finally reached the point where I believe the best thing for me to do is to stop analyzing my diet and being so extreme. But that’s what scares me; for when I let go, the weight comes back, and so does the resulting painful effects. I’m searching for that state of limbo, where I can just exist without effort, without constantly trying to rebalance, where I can just be. But even the searching hurts.

8) I find my security in the number on the scale.

You could tell me I’m lovely. For a short while I would bask in your compliment. But then, the words you gave to me would fade away, and within a day, or sometimes hours, I would no longer feel your compliment. Instead I would wonder once again if I was truly too ugly for this world. I know this sounds absurd, but this is the untruth that plays out in my mind. I do not understand what I look like, and thusly do not understand how you perceive me. And everyone perceives me differently based on their own life experience and developed tastes and biases. Everywhere I go, I know if someone takes note of me, I am being evaluated. And I dislike that invasion and aspect of being in society.

I want to be seen as the interior me, but am forced to be first presented dressed in this physical essence. In some ways my weight is the only thing that I can control about my appearance, the only thing I can keep the same when all about me is shifting. The rest of me, beyond the finite number on a scale, I cannot see or determine. I cannot find the truth of what I am on the exterior, and so the only security and constant I can return to is the number on a scale. I have a lot of dependence on the number.

It’s not that I want to control my weight; it’s that I want to control some semblance of my existence. I want to understand my physical being, even if it’s only one small aspect, one three digit number.

Everything changes so much in my world from moment to moment, from thought to thought, and event to event, that numbers have been my security blanket for years. So, yes, the number on the scale is my enemy or friend. As it climbs I fear the future, and as it decreases towards the “ideal” I know I am moving forward towards a part of who I was or am. The further I am away from the number on the scale that I have decided is “the number,” the further I am away from my own sense of self.

I long to find my security for my physical self somewhere beyond a number and beyond an image. But I often wonder, if I cannot view this illusion of self, then how can I be secure. Rather it is acceptance I seek. Acceptance of the unknown and the release of my dependence on outsiders to quantify who I am. An acceptance in the knowing that although I am invisible in regards to my appearance to physical self, I am solid in my understanding of spirit.