thoughts

498: Call Me Aspie: The first part of a thousand-page manual

| Aspergers Girls

I have Aspergers, and I tend to:

1. Fixate on a certain problem or puzzle, and process this for weeks, if not months, until some part of me reaches a solution. During this time, I may seem frantic, melancholic, elated, discouraged, confused, shattered, and exhausted. As soon as I have a sense of closure, I might feel bewildered and ashamed of my behavior. There will be a brief reprieve, until my brain latches on to another puzzle to solve.
2. Over-process certain events and happenings, particularly exact words used and sentences used by others, as I try to determine the underlying facts and supposed truth. This will reveal itself in multiple questions and inquiry on my part; sometimes the same questions over and over; the repetitive nature is involuntary and necessary, as it brings some relief to the messages circling in my mind. In such cases, it is best for me to confront a person right away and ask a brief question than to burden myself for a day, becoming incapacitated and virtually numb from all the over-thinking about feasible meanings and outcomes. The over-processing can and does burden other people, and leave them questioning their own ability to have patience. I will apologize and mean it, but will not be able to stop the over-processing, even as I am hyper-aware of my behavior and possible consequences based on my actions. Telling me to not over-think is not helpful and not feasible.
3. Lots of giggles. I will appear more childlike than most, and find humor in things that most adults won’t. I find the beauty and fun in many occurrences and statements, and can act a bit immature at times, focusing on little events that make me chuckle. I also will giggle nervously or crack a joke in an attempt to relieve tension and discomfort, even as it might appear nothing was said or done to cause unease. In times of nervousness, particularly when getting to know someone, I will make inappropriate comments, lacking the ability o filter my thoughts and having a desperate compulsive desire to share. On the other hand, others quite enjoy my company, and my smile can be contagious and enlightening. Cherishing the little things does have its benefits; and some will find this behavior refreshing.
4. Over-share. I will share more than most. It is part of who I am. It is difficult for me to determine what is appropriate to share, what is too much to share, and what is enough to share. I like to talk about myself, because I want to be seen and understood. I like to listen about other people, too. But if I am nervous or uncomfortable or preoccupied, these states of being will pull me away from the ability to focus on another. I have to be 100% there to listen to another; and if I cannot be, the attempt to be there seems a waste of time. It is better for me to get everything out and then return to my friend and support them fully when I am able, then to ‘pretend’ to be listening when I am on overload with thoughts. Initially, I might monopolize a conversation or become dumbfounded and not know what to say or how to relate. I survive, in conversation, by analyzing the other participant, and trying to match my style of communication with that person’s style. If I cannot see the person, such as on the phone, I might become nervous and uncomfortable, wondering how the person is reacting to my responses. This is not about people pleasing. But it is about adapting self, so that I do not drive people away with my tendency to over-expose self and trust fully.
5. Be Emotional. I am triggered a lot. Little things trigger me. A simple word, an expression, a reference, a link to a website, a song, a memory, etc. Because I am easily triggered, I might be very content and happy one minute and then turn morose and in deep reflection the next. These states are generally temporary and I can evaluate the trigger quickly. Once the trigger is noted, I have the capacity to take steps to analyze how to pull myself out of deep contemplation and to alter my state of mind. In other words, with practice and self-awareness, I can quite readily pull myself out of a ‘dark’ emotional state. If the trigger is extreme, I will need to talk and process the event to bring relief. Often a hug or human touch might help from certain people whom I deem safe; other times human touch is the last thing I want and any form of human contact, even attention, will actually cause me to retreat and pull away.
6. Be extremely loyal and honest. I have high integrity. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I don’t take anything lightly. I have the ability to have fun and be light-hearted and to forget about my intensity, but my integrity and sense of being the best person I can be never falters. I carry extreme guilt if I try to deceive another and can rarely hold anything inside, particularly events that seem to demonstrate a semblance of betrayal or untruth. This inability to hide things can hurt another person without intention. Some things are perhaps better withheld. But secrets and lies eat away at my soul, and I can concentrate little if I feel I am not being transparent and authentic in my dealings with others. In some cases if I kept my mouth shut, I would feasibly come out ahead, with more gained than lost. Opening my mouth is risky, and can often lead to a loss. Regardless, I was born to speak my truth, and have yet to find a way to make this stop.
7. Love deeply and forever. Once I love someone, I always love someone. Once a friend, always a friend. I can pick up with a person I haven’t spoken with for years, and the reunion feels like yesterday. I don’t care why a friendship ended, if someone wants to come back into my life, my door is always open. I have learned to take some measures to guard my heart against those that might cause harm to me, but for the most part, I will love a loved one for always. There is little anyone can do to make me dislike him or her or to make me remove him or her from my life. I love easily and fully, and love to give. Receiving is sometimes difficult and feels uncomfortable to me, but I understand that the ability to receive is a gift to the giver, and work on this act often.
8. Get upset when others are emotional. Even as I am an emotional being and cannot stop myself from expressing my feelings, others’ emotions frighten me. It seems hypocritical, but the reality is I am not comfortable with emotions. I tend to overreact to simple displays of emotions, such as slight frustration, fleeting anger, or momentary confrontation on another’s part. While I long for passion and emotional connection, I also run from outward displays of feeling. I feel guarded, in a sense, to the deepest source of love inside of me that is afraid of being harmed or invaded. I would rather feel numb and dead at times than have to figure out what someone meant by their tone of voice, words, or actions. I will literally freak out from the slightest alteration in someone’s tone of voice or mannerism, if the upset appears to be directed towards me.
9. Second-guess my own statements and how I express myself. I re-explain myself and overcompensate for mistakes I might have made. I like myself. I like my mind. I am for the most part comfortable in my skin, despite my challenges, but I fear that I have come across the wrong way and represented myself in error. It is of upmost importance to me to clarify and to check for understanding; this action of revisiting a discussion to add clarification is a natural and instinctual part of my nature, as much as flight is to the eagle. I cannot suppress the behavior, even as I watch myself going through the process and doubting the effectiveness of said actions.
10. Dream and Imagine. I spend more time inside my head than outside of my head. Based on my intense ability and natural tendency to fantasize, I often create realistic scenarios in my head of what could or might be. I go down a thousand different avenues of feasible scenarios of a given situation. Over-analyzing each aspect and evaluating the possible outcomes. This is almost done at a subconscious-level, and continues practically nonstop until my mind has reached a conclusion that brings about some form of comfort. Uneasiness of mind is found in the ridding of possibilities, unknowns, and a state of limbo. If something is open-ended, my mind attaches to the concept of the unknown like one Velcro strip to another. I cling there, in this hyper-state of awareness, attempting, without much effort or detectable impulse, but tons of energy, to factor in each and every variable, in order to attempt to make sense of what seems to be the foundation below me slipping. I float here, in a dream state of possible happenings inevitably until closure is reached. During this time my ramblings, processing, and evaluation after evaluation is often processed aloud or in written form. These bombardments of thoughts manifested into visual or auditory form can cause feelings of discomfort to some. Yet, this is how I function.

This post is dedicated to Lisa, Alyce, Jennifer, David, and Ryan… fellow Aspies who never give up on me. Thank you. ❤

496: When ‘Aspie’ isn’t You…

| Aspergers Girls

When “aspie” isn’t you….

I will never be like you. You can try to understand me, and you will see glimpses, but you will never get me, never. Trying to explain me is like trying to explain a color that doesn’t exist, a color I can readily see and am familiar with in all its shades and forms, but still a nonexistent color to you. It’s like trying to explain what a wish is to someone who doesn’t believe in magic. Or showing an alien artifact to a scientist and expecting him to interpret the unknown elements. It can’t be done. I can’t be done. I can’t be undone. I just am and you just are. And here we are: two distant stars.

You understand this planet, at least to a degree you do. I don’t. I never will. I don’t get the things some might call simple. I don’t get the things some may call average or familiar. I don’t understand lies. I don’t understand life without immense passion. I don’t understand why anyone would dare to hurt anyone or anything on purpose. But I do understand hurt. What is it other than the bleeding soul?

I long for you to understand me. To hear me. To see me. But so many, this you you are and the other you’s out there, they won’t. They just can’t. It’s not about lacking capacity or something that is better or worse, or something that is special or odd. There are no labels. Where I come from, wherever that be, the boxes, the names, the titles, or what have yous—these invented ways of deciphering and existing—they don’t exist. So it’s not about dividing or exacting. None of that matters.

What it is about is separation, the split, the way in which my mind and the heart connected cannot fathom the ways of the world, and how, in this separation, I am left isolated daily, walking outside the existence I lead, feeling more than any soul ought to, and knowing more than I recognize.

You can’t see me. You can’t truly see me. You can’t understand. And I hide behind this smile, though genuine it be, waiting and waiting for the time to come where the veil is lifted, and once again, I am here, no longer isolated in a land I don’t recognize.

Sam Craft, Everyday Aspergers
5

493: circumstantial

| Aspergers Girls

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To make sense of the trail of breadcrumbs I’ve left behind, I trace back, in intricate steps, to where I have been and what I have done. Remembering less than recalling. Bringing in what was seen, especially to recount to the mirage of cluttered self.

I am what I am continually; though to me this ‘I’ seems to weave in and out, sporadically, in childlike spurts. Evaporating parts bleeding out with last breath into another mirror of something else. I remain less grounded, and more adrift, from the constant state of limbo that is.

Circumstantial, or not, something or another has twisted me into a form that neither has structure or defining markings. I am that blob of sorts, that almost-liquid blue that slips between the bewildered child’s fingers. And I grasp, too, attempting to take a hold of what exists.

I don’t know where I am headed, anymore, in vocation, in love, in life, and that terrifies me with a numbness so surreal I am left stagnant in thought, even as a million pieces of recollection spin through. It is as if I am this tiny creature locked in a corner shelf, desperately seeking but having not the sight nor knowhow to find what it is needed; and atop this imprisonment, even what I desire seems an anomaly.

I suppose the other half of me was lost in some torrential storm, ions ago, before I even found this earth, or rather it found me. I suppose I was beamed down not of my own accord; and if this journey had been choice, then hungry for erotic adventure, I must have been. For to be subjected, by my own doing, to this world, would surely be the mark of a madman. And still the beauty surrounds me everywhere: ravenous hope.

This tinkered-love again arises as thief in the night, stealing rationality from the place it harbors, deep within the torn regions of heart. I dare not say I understand anything anymore; in that I be more a victim to my own secret wishes than the bystander to the robber. Tis truth, as I set out knowingly to be excavated by prying, wanting hands. Yet, nothing I desire, all at once, but to be devoured.

And here is where the journey seems mindfully stealth, exceedingly mockery-bathed, dipped in the jester’s own naivety. The dancing fool I be.

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.