505: Still Nothing: Thoughts on Aspergers Thoughts

Most of the nightmares in my life transpire in my thoughts of ‘what ifs’—all the grasping strings that loop and latch onto anything remotely tangible—off springs of my fear-induced imaginings.

It’s as if I have some super-human capacity to see the infinite ways in which chaos might occur. When in actuality the chaos is the makings of my mind, trapping me in its claw-like clutches and mistreating me to the torrential worse case scenarios. Had I appetite for thinking that in some way I knew the truth of the worst, I’d be liken to a monstrous phantom-demon munching at everything within grasp. I hate to think of me as the cause of my own demise; and still I tango with these intrepid thoughts.

In battling the inner voices that make me whimper with both familiarity and trepidation, I also forgo the inklings of an entity born from a loud-speaker booming in the background, an echoing of rapid and rhythmic beats. I hear, in this way, the familiarity of words, quotes and data I have scanned and often memorized at some subconscious level. I have all these voices. Yes, all these subjects repeating themselves that I have willfully collected as some treasure to the keeper in last attempt to rid self of the torture-makers at bay.

I have sailed out to wish it so. To demolish the outcomes in which I project what could be and even what shall be. I battle within, the voices of fear and the voices of reason, all enmeshed in a wild osmosis-like parade. Trumpeting ahead is the terror, always the terror. For whomever enters, whatever trapping I have collected—be it wisdom dictated by so-called gods or perchance-happenings masquerading as unbearable, unmanageable, and must-be truths—intermingle in a tsunami of thoughts.

Wherein many living beings, if not the majority, have the likens of a simple version of reasoning, mine—the way in which thoughts enter and stay, one hosting the other in their terrible over-established party—has the capacity to produce an unreasonable amount of possibilities, all in one colossal moment.

In this way the present becomes not only unbearable but a circus onto itself, each way in which I attempt to look springing forth a ridiculous, over-dressed and over-indulged showpiece giving its all in hopes of fair bidding for eventual attention.

Each thing, the scope of collection of thoughts, is tinkered and toyed and examined; myself a miniature by all means, spinning in a whirlwind of endlessness, infinity thrust upon me, my chest overbearingly shaken and loaded with a heaviness long past horrific.

And it is not as though I can stop this.

No ringleader exists. For each thought is alive, with feeling, emoting and giving off its own breath. Each life form produced where once was only the seed of imagining. And me, being ever so clever, swimming in the waters of uncertainty, plucking one after the other to find the hidden truth. Some hope-driven wanderer, I am, cursing again the tides that come.

I am grateful for my mind, and yet I am utterly disgusted with the way in which it wallows in its own self, and takes me to the corner regions where I shake alone, clutching my legs and edging into the bloated corners of existence. I am in a dark place, without hope, as the thoughts inch forward, one by one, each with a minion of sorts attached to its back; some evil knapsacks piled atop the crawling creatures, all housing an unlimited theory of possibilities.

‘Feasibly’ becomes a word birthed by the dark. For each inch of the world is limitless in breadth and direction; and so to live and breathe means to awaken again to the way in which nothing is controlled or understood. Even the entirety itself, as presented forth, is demoralized and left undone. Even the way in which the thoughts transcend transgress, wounded by the piercing brought on by my own demise.

I launch at my world, shooting daggers and arrows towards the waves of thoughts, and endlessly they lap up, taking me in pieces. I taste the bitter saltiness, tears mixed with the washings of me. I have no place to run. No place to hide; and all about me the hundreds of voices haunting with how it should be, how I should be, and how I should be able to stop.

And yet I know not how.

To say the worse of it is the thoughts is to not tell the full of the truth; for the worse of the matter are the thoughts behind the thoughts behind the thoughts. Given the over-capacity to evaluate and process, I experience multiple levels of reasoning in one swoop: a sea-bird of recourse taking in with wounded swallow the million molecular creatures of the ocean.

There is that which is reasoned: named I.
There is that which is the undone mask behind the reason: named Illusion.
And there is that which remains the reminding of the mind’s process that has come before: named Observer.

All of which dwell in one form, though existing separately. Each with the capacity to taunt in its own way, whilst promising relief through a final pointt singled out by the word: Answer.

And still nothing.

No matter what I latch onto, be it reason, be it recollection of illusion, be it observer of the mind-spinning process, each releases me into the turmoil further; each an honorable hand offering relief only to plunge me deeper within the confusion.

The trick, in saving self, is to not listen to any of them. For each voice is a haunting from past collection.

Some variant creature I am, set down upon this planet with the ability to hold into herself limitless worlds. And it is I who slips again and again through multiple dimensions of theory, only to end up as I began: lost, confused, drowned in self-imposed forsakenness.

The trick for the wanderer is to decide not to think. When the parade begins, to close the ears to the luring voices. To ignore the outreaching temptations of stone after stone unturned. To recognize nothing exists in the promises. To understand each promissory note of victory need be only deception and trickery.

Yes, I am made victim to the makings this mind bleeds, less self than the voices, floating on a makeshift waterbed, believing this time, this once, just maybe, the answer will arise. But yet, further away exists the eternal hope. Somewhere there is another voice that doesn’t require hearing. That doesn’t hurt when entering. That has no desire, and with no desire demands and hints of no requests or expectations. It is in this stillness my body rests in the valley of goodness, a place unbeknownst to the voices that carry me still across the external waves of discourse, without notice, without want, without care, that there exists a place beyond their pain.

503: The “Truth” About Lying (An Aspie perspective)

I put myself into a situation last month wherein I found myself lying in totality more than I had in my entire life. I fooled myself into thinking the act of telling falsehoods was somehow protecting someone’s feelings. But the truth of the matter is my lying only compounded the challenges and hurt the person I was trying to protect.

Having always been an overly honest, frank, yet gentle person, I had never experienced the domino effect of lying before. I hadn’t been in a position before in which I was creating new lies to cover up previous lies, nor in the position of trying to recall what I had said in previous mistruths to validate and confirm current mistruths. I found the whole process excruciatingly exhausting, and both physically and emotionally daunting. I finally reached a point where I told the person the whole of the situation, mostly because I was ‘caught’ in the process, and also because I couldn’t stand to tell one more lie.

The truth about lying is that the act itself causes me great distress.

Because of the way my mind works, I overanalyze the simplest of things; however, the most prevalent means of overanalyzing is seen in my natural, seemingly instinctual, ability to search for truths, (and try my best not to lie). To complicate the ordeal, having been around this earth long enough, (I am ready to be beamed up.), it’s quite clear that truths are too complex of matters to ever be discovered in completion. To truly peel the outer layer of the proverbial onion off to find the core of truth is impossibility—the process in and of itself futile.

Yet, still my mind peels and peels, thinking at last I will figure out the reality of truth; even as I know now, at least conclude now, that the only reality is love and service, and trying my best to be the best version of me, whilst allowing myself to be human without gluttony-based-behavior manifested as self-punitive thoughts.

Regardless of any knowings, my brain will continue to try to find the truth, the facts, the reality, etc. The reason, it seems, is I have this engrained responsibility to be authentic. I mean it’s carved into my essence—the very heart of me wanting nothing more than to be me.

And that is where everything gets complicated. For there is no me I can find.

Beyond this philosophical plight, there remains the undeniable, double-stubborn part of me that insists on being honest, even as the depths of honesty elude me. They, the depths of honesty, are complicated by manmade rules. Whether the rules be about feelings, or disclosure, or privacy, or social behavior, the rules affect my ability to figure out how to be. This in itself in a quandary: For if I am in constant state of trying to figure out how to be me, then when am I me? My mind gets stuck on wheels of thought like the aforementioned, and I become exhausted.

In this interplay of finding truth, simple acts become tiring, thinking becomes tiring. Everything is a hurdle and I the limping former track star trying to merely move beyond the obstacle. I become utterly dumbfounded and lost in a maze of possibilities. In partaking in something as simple as ordering coffee at a local spot, I undergo distress. I wonder if my facial expression is what I am feeling. I wonder if my tone of voice accurately reflects the inner me. I wonder if in my response to ‘how are you,’ is a true response. I wonder if my thoughts are kind about the person, and if they are not kind thoughts, I wonder what is kind? I become lost from the simple act of facing a person at a cash register for under five seconds. Time slows down, too, as if I have the ability to process things at the opposite of hyper-time, and enter a zone of almost endless contemplation, until I am pulled back by a sensory trigger such as the voice of another or chime of a machine. I then question my actions. Was I ‘ADHDing’? Was I time traveling? Was I over-thinking? And then the judge comes forward, the voice I stopped pushing down, and now simply observe and let slip away. The voice reminding me how different I am than most around me; how most of my life is spent in another world, way beyond the experience of the common bystander I observe.

And the thoughts don’t stop then. I am in a constant state of preparation of truth. Sometimes I think a certain species was created to be a light bearer of truth; this species being Aspergers and those on the spectrum. At least sometimes this appears the case to me. But I think whomever plopped some of us down, forgot the enormity of the task of the act of bearing truth, forgot the infiniteness of truth, the way the frays off the branches of thoughts bleed out into millions upon millions of splintered-possibilities, and how the mind can only handle so much. I think this creator, or these creators, whether it be God, aliens, genetics, or mutations, overlooked the humanness of us, the frailties, the ways in which our own minds would override our sense of freedom and hope. And how inevitably in longing for the truth, more than anything, we would lose sight of not only ourselves, and those around us, but the very gift of life.

502: Dear You: To my Aspie Sisters and Brothers

Dear You,

If you are reading this, please know you are not alone.

I know at times it feels that way—really feels that way; so much so, that even your keen logic cannot convince you otherwise. The voices will tell you are unloving, unworthy, undesirable. But the voices are lies. You are love. You are worthy. You are desire.

I have been in the dark place more times than I can count; it comes, the bleakness, spontaneously in huge volcanic ruptures. The pain itself tears at my heart and my soul and leaves me breathless and weak. It is then in the black that I cannot find solutions. When I believe I have no one. And that all about the world is my enemy.

But that is not truth, even as it seems very much truth. It isn’t. I know it isn’t. I know because I have witnessed our beauty in the countless people I have encountered on the autistic spectrum. Their truth and love are evident, their souls transparent.

Please know that by being here, you are making a difference. You are making a difference to me. Your pain is my pain. Your story my story, and we share a lifetime of similarities. I understand you; I truly do, just as you understand me. If we were to sit alone in a quiet place and talk, you would know me and I, you. We are sisters and brothers. We are one in our quest for truth, justice, and love.

I know how you suffer in your silence, and how you too suffer in your immeasurable thoughts. I know how you have to always balance what is inside with what you display on the outside. I know this extreme burden, the heaviness, the endless weary mind. How exhausting that task remains, day in and day out, night after night, in what seems a thousand lifetimes wrapped into one.

I understand how you see beyond the illusion of what is indoctrination, and beyond the falsehoods of societal norms. I know. And I know what isolation comes from our being. I know what it is to be ostracized, questioned, blamed, persecuted, attacked, and made victim. I know. And I stand tall still, more so for you than for my own self. For I will not stop. I will not shut out my light to please an enemy that moves against me. I will remain here. I will remain strong. I will remain whole in my determination to rise above the chaos that is this world. I will continue to seek out kindred souls, who not only understand me but understand the necessity for the demolishment of mediocrity. I will be here, waiting, always. Welcoming through my threshold truth seekers and the like.

I honor you, and our family, each individual who remains afraid but nonetheless holds steadfast to the value of authenticity. No. You are not alone. Not anymore. There are thousands of us here, much more alike than different. And even as we suffer at times in our isolation, in the end we are surrounded by circles and circles of friends on the same path.

Please understand that I think of you daily. Please know that I count my blessings with you included as a star in my night sky. Without you, I wouldn’t know where to stand or how to be. With you I remember my light. I remember me.

Much, much love.
Stay strong.
Stay true.
Your friend,
Sam

501: The Isolation of Aspergers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

500: Unspun Love

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