society

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.

Looking for aspie friends? Join everyday aspergers Facebook like page to the left.

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

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

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.

488: No One Need Say

| Aspergers Girls

No one need say what makes me tick or toc; I am what I am and I cannot change.

I can rearrange my thoughts and ideas, even alter my appearance. I can adapt new formulas, conditions, and ideals, even if I call them not these things. I can detach, reattach, release, let go, cling, fall forward. I can be a bountiful fool or a subject subjected to the demise of self; both relevant and in accordance to my own doing. I can surrender. I can go on bending knee to some source heartedly debated by dictators and pauper too. I can question my own doings and my own authority. I can cower backwards syndicated by onlookers’ gasping fear. And I can cower forward, a victor to self, and self alone.

I have choices, true. But they all lead back to the sameness. This being of me. This one left undone and unraveled, yet, precisely returned to where I remained before. I am a free mason in a sense, endless possibilities existing; though each road seems wearily the same, unremarkable and exhausting. To be outside myself is to be in a world that makes little to no sense. For I do not understand these motives, beyond that which appears to be selfish-desire to alleviate isolation of form.

For if in wholeness we live beyond surviving, strive in our being as unified one, then why are so many orphaned and left unsheltered, alone, bleeding out for justification of existence?

I do not know. I do not claim to know. I know not who I am, where I am going, why I am here, or how I was put here. Dropped, I suppose. Down to this torrid earth and submerged in an ocean of unfamiliarities. I long to grasp, to hold, to clutch, to blend, to become addicted to something other than thoughts. I have not the means to be without escape. And none of us seem to be different in this quest: to dive away from where we are.

There is pretending, yes, lots of games that temporarily make way for relief of the agonizing isolation. And there are the pretenders who know not what they do. But dutifully terrifying is the pretenders who know, who alleviate their own suffering through transpiring to make the others suffer more wretchedly. The tricksters, the gamblers, the demons risen. They terrify, in a sense, not because I recognize them fully but because I do not understand them in fullness. I do not relate to the carved-out ones, the angelic robes cloaked over the absence of core.

They frighten, the predators, the villains, the schemers, debaters, and those that call themselves the governing ones. For how they dictate causes demise after demise, and they feed upon the souls of meek. They teach, say they preach, that openness and vulnerability is weak. That secrets are just. That hiding and mystery are profound sweetness. They teach that I am wrong in my longing to share, to connect, to breathe. To finally breathe. They hammer with their cloven-hooved-heels, bang the very corners and edges of self, and lead the light to believe in falsehood. Masters of segregated isolation.

In their twisted perverted ways, I am found entirely faulty, my foundation itself built with inadequacy.

How can I live in a world of such gross falsehoods and appear as the same?

I cannot.

And so it is my burden to be singled out; found, even beneath the temporary masks I don. For to tread in this world, I take on the power that is them, their errors, their ways, their ever approaching doomsday. I walk as if for someone else, and not myself. Because to walk as me would be unseen and unapproachable.

In being here, in this place, I move in this way, their way: as a bit of him and a bit of her. I become the reflection of the scattered dust, much akin to the specks of iron forming shape to magnet. I stick. I absorb at molecular level. I become reframed. And here I wait, unidentifiable and beyond truth.

Stifled in wonderment, deep buried confusion, longing for the curtains to fall, the masquerade to end, the music to cease, so that no one need remain alone in such delegated foolishness.