Post 294: I Wish It Was Really Tuesday

| Aspergers Girls

Phone call at 8:30 a.m. to husband:

“I had a rush of fear that you are cheating on me. You aren’t cheating on me, right? It’s just my brain, right? You love me?”

Text message (paraphrased) to both husband and good friend, around 11:00 a.m.:

“I have a scratchy throat and feel achy. I am worried that the cold I had is trying to come back. Other people have colds that come back, right? It doesn’t mean my immune system is bad and I’m dying, does it?”

Phone call at 12:15 a.m. to husband:

“Honey, I’m not losing my mind,am I? How has my memory been? Have I been forgetful? Do I seem like my brain is degenerating?”

Seems I’ve had coffee today….Racing thoughts and borderline paranoia about health and relationships.

I tried to not have coffee for two days, and quickly slipped into a state of increased pain, fatigue, and melancholy. With coffee (spiked with organic hot chocolate) my energy is tripled, my esteem increased, and my mood one of mostly happy, (when I’m not obsessing about my health or abandonment issues).

I got a lot done this morning, with the help of aforementioned caffeine and sugar combo. I feel satisfied when I get things done. I feel guilty when I’m a couch spud—which I am when my pain and fatigue is at its peak.

I’ve been working to find a balance, a careful ratio of just enough caffeine and not too much. I’ve been trying combinations of green tea and coffee and chocolate.

coffee

Everything in my life seems to be dependent upon balance and ratio. I’m often at one extreme or another of something, some experience, or some thought.

Everything and everyone affects me at some level.

A new day is never easy. The act of waking and moving takes enormous energy. Not the opening my eyes part, but the actually being alive part.

I’m not depressed, not normall,y and I’m not lacking esteem or joy for the day ahead. In fact, I like my life. I love my family. And I find great happiness in the world I’ve created for myself.

Waking up isn’t hard because of what is ahead of me or what’s on my proverbial plate of opportunity. What is difficult about rising to a new day is the fact that I have to move, I have to think, and I have to make decisions.

Someone I know recently said, “Let’s face it. We won the lottery in life when considering where we live and the comforts we have.”

Those words have been ricocheting around in my brain for quite some time. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t agree. I think the lottery of life is based on one’s mindset and on the way one handles and forms his or her thoughts. Yes, fresh water, food, shelter, clothing, and love are important, but just because one has all those basic comforts does not mean he or she is at peace. A mind can produce a living hell regardless of one’s physical comforts.

I think, more important than any outside factors in one’s life, like what exists in the physical world, are the inside factors of what exists inside the mind.

For me, peace of mind, circles back to my intelligence. I think too much and therefore I suffer.

My thoughts exhaust and cripple me.

Some days, as my husband can testify, I am immobilized for hours on the couch, because the thought of having to make one more decision is too overwhelming.

Upon awaking, right away, thoughts bombard me.

For example: What is the best way to approach my day? What is the meaning of the best? Who established the best? Why are the establishers right? When will the best approach change? What are truisms and what are lies? What is the base of reality? Who am I? Should I relax? Where is the balance between giving and taking? When am I taking too much? Am I present enough, available enough, loving enough? I need to let go. I need to relax. I need to just be. But how do I turn off my mind? What should I create? What should I do first? Should I shower? Should I move across the bed, around the bed? Straight to the bathroom? Am I too loud? Should I rest more? Did I get enough sleep? And on and on and on.

I awake to my thoughts, and my thoughts exhaust me.

I have managed to weed out most of the self-doubt and negative thoughts about myself. This is a great accomplishment. I have managed to interweave positive self-talk and positive affirmations into my day. This is helpful, indeed. I have managed to find release through creation of art and writing. This is a comfort. I have managed to understand myself in great depth. This is useful.

Yet, I have not managed to decrease my intelligence, my ideas, the bombardment of what is, what isn’t, and what is mystery to be uncovered.

And with so much going on in my head, somehow my brain has forgotten to dissect and digest the basics. Perhaps this is the executive functioning part of the frontal lobe of the brain misfiring or being disconnected at some level. As the basics, the what would seem easy aspects of thought, become lost to me. The fact that the day of the week is Tuesday slips away. The capacity to memorize times, dates, faces, places, names, and the like, simply isn’t there.

And so I have complex thoughts. I have the slipping out of common facts and knowledge, and then too, I have the classifying/organizing need. Numbers are constantly on my mind; how they add up, where they show up, what they signify, how they can be shuffled and ordered. With the numbers is previous data I’ve collected of the supposed rights and wrongs of how to be: the rights and wrongs of how to be a community member, a friend, a mother, a neighbor, a daughter, a lover, a wife, a cook, a writer, a shopper, a driver, and so on.

I have this ongoing list of how I am supposed to be alongside an ongoing voice of how no one really knows how anything or anyone is supposed to be because everything is self-created, perceived, and rejected and/or accepted.

Simple things aren’t simple. The task of buying shoes for myself can be excruciating. I have the guilt of being able to buy boots when others cannot afford them. I have the questioning of whether or not the boots are saying too much about me or too little, e.g., Does it appear I am trying to look young or am I looking foolish? Am I represented by this boot? Or is this a false projection of who I am? And who am I?

And then I am sad, as I stand there alone looking in the mirror, wondering why I can’t just see boots. Why I have to see so much more.

Today, bombarded with thoughts, I forgot the day of the week. I went to my acupuncturist and he wasn’t there. I called him and said, “I have written on the calendar that my appointment time is Tuesday at eleven. I think I might have made a mistake. I’m here and you are not. Please call me.”

He was quick to call me back, and very polite. He said, “Yes, I have you written down your appointment is at eleven on Tuesday.” Then he inserted a long pause, ample time for me to process. In response I digested his words, and soon a light-bulb of recognition went off. Yes, indeed it was not Tuesday, it was Monday. I was quick to respond then: “Oh (giggle) I thought it was Tuesday. That’s what’s wrong. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I hung up convinced I was going senile or out of my mind. How could I know so much and think so much but not know what day of the week it is? And then the guilt, the embarrassment. Followed by the positive self-talk and forgiveness of self. Followed by the analysis of self-talk and praise. Followed by the wondering if I did the self-talk right. Followed by the thinking about thinking about thinking.

My husband told me today that I am amazing. That he is so blessed to be married to me. He praised my intelligence, my genius.

I am happy he sees me as so. But there are times, like today, I just wish it was really Tuesday.

~~~~~

monday

293: Backwards Appeal

| Aspergers Girls

good hair dayhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVGYssHra2c

Yesterday I wore this fabulous red sweater.

I was feeling very confident, as I was having a good hair day, and my husband had saturated me with compliments, at least twenty since I awoke.

And after a hot sauna meditation and hot soak in dead sea salts, I was literally glowing.

With my cheeks rosy and love of self content, I set out to do errands. Time to redeem a gift certificate, a rebate check, and buy some food staples.

At my third stop, at the grocery store, as I was pushing my half-full cart down the snack aisle,  I felt an itchy sensation at the nape of my neck. I reached down, and found the sweater tag. My cheeks blossomed into a full crimson then.

And all at once a rush of fear came over me, as I realized my sweater was on backwards!

 I, quickly, without calling too much attention to myself, turned my cart around and made my way to the back of the store. Retreating into the bathroom, I had a good look at my sweater in the mirror. I gasped, while trying to laugh. But no laughter came.

The way the sweater was set, the back stitching in the front of me, I looked like I had two torpedoes jetting out.

Before, while dressing at home, I’d merely thought the way the sweater set against my chest was just the way the sweater was made, and that I ought not to have fretted about the design. I needed to get over my fears, and wear clothes without insecurity. Who cares if the cut of the sweater accented what was naturally a part of me? I had thought to myself.

 But now that I could tell for certain the sweater was on backwards, I thought for sure, people would have noticed, and been laughing, not only at my backwardsness, but at my pointy boobs.

Inside the store bathroom, still contemplating my silliness, I twisted the sweater around; only to find, that my under blouse, a little sleeveless black thing, was on inside out!

At this point I looked down at my boots, convinced I’d probably placed them on the wrong feet.

I know it doesn’t matter in the end. People at the crowded Big-Box Store probably didn’t notice, and if they did they got a good laugh. And I’m all right with giving others a good laugh. But I can’t help but think about those two older men who stopped me in my tracks in the grocery store, prior to my discovery; how they played dodge with my shopping cart, like we were two familiars partaking in a friendly game: “Try to get passed me with your cart!” Can’t help but think how ridiculous I must have looked with my front side all pointy and pronounced and all, as they tried to engage me in conversation and keep me from moving: me and my signature red chest.

It’s just plain crazy-making, the way I cannot dress my own body. Likely an after shock of having never liked or played with Barbie Dolls. I should have taken note, or at least practiced.

I still haven’t learned to stop praying for humility and release of pride. Seems I cannot go anywhere without being reminded of my unyielding humanness.

Here’s to red torpedo ladies, and all things fashionable.

May you, if and when you wear your clothes backwards, accentuate the positive.

It’s on backwards in this photo…heheheh Before I knew

good hair day

But You…

You are a flower that I cannot release

You stretch and root, your scent carried into the vein of me

I am your vase, your soil, your moisture, your sky

But you do not know me

I hold you day upon day, carry you where I go, smile at your beauty

I watch in admiration, as you unfold, as bud becomes bloom

You move where I move, bend where I bend, all the time unaware

Because you do not see me

Your vessel completes me, the fullness of you saturates

Your sweetness carries my every step closer to the heart of you

I reach to touch frail softness, nature’s perfection

But you cannot feel me

I turn to you in the darkness, cradling you at my side

I blanket you in the coldness, devouring the fire for your warmth

I comfort you in the rain, soothe to extinguish my own wants

But you cannot detect me

You scream in silence, and I am beckoned

I scream aloud, and you are lost

Together we collide, without ever joining

But you do not understand

I am your gardener, your life-giver, your equal, your maiden

You are my knight, my king, my answer, my calling

We are one in the meadow, rising together

But you do not recognize me

You sleep as if I am silence

You wake as if I am phantom

You speak as if I am death

And I remain flower wilted at your door

~ Samantha Craft 2012

292: Sorrow’s Voice

| Aspergers Girls

Sorrow’s Voice

Pain and tears cometh.

I cry out to the bender of the universe. I cry out to the seamstress of sky.

I weep: Mold me. Bleed me. Cast me into burning flame and set me into true form.

Cloth turned clay.

I play a game of tag, the players joy and sorrow.

There isn’t in between, only the two runners moving in and out like threads sewn through a tattered tired quilt: neither golden nor true.

I search for the centerfold, the space in the middle, where happiness and sadness meet, where time stops and in the stillness I am.

And I ask: Who is this voice that screams? And who brings this voice upon me? Am I not perfection undone and let out to dry? Am I not food for the wolves? Am I not set in the open for the scavengers and decomposers; set here to bleed into another for food or purpose. If not, then what do I be?

I climb the mountains in my mind, weeping for justice, for solitude, for rest for the weariness that tethers me; anchored to the buoy of change, at the mercy of waves. A fisherman lost, and battling the ocean tides by slipping away onto an imaginary land of refuge.

A dichotomy split in half. Here, but not here. Gone, but not gone. Stepping out, only to find I have stepped in.

For I am suffocated beneath the storms of want and wane, buried beneath the circumvented hope life brings. Like some ageless wine, I sit at the bottom of barrel, forgotten in the kennel of sorrow’s breeding.

I am. I breathe. I move.

Hello, I shout. Hello from below.

Come and find me sweet winged creature, come and pour the substance of you into me, like the riches into the cave, place your treasure here, and I shall shelter your prize like no other. Always you shall return, to this place where I glisten for you alone, and here you will come again, in flesh and blood to find me, still waiting, your treasure about, untouched, unbroken.

For I am your worthy servant of destitute, though riches flourish about me, buried as I be beneath the layers of this whimsical dance.

And a voice calls out:

“Can you not feel their very footsteps upon your soul? Can  you not look up and see that where you thought you were upright upon the earth, witness to sky, that you are neither alive nor dead, but scurrying in stillness beneath the gravestone, your only view the droplets of dirt turned over by passerby?”

“Can you not see you were meant to dance above, but you lay below, torn open, and left to die?”

“And who are the guests you call forth? Who do you invite when the screaming all but fails? But two victimless victims, of both your calling and circumstance? Hello, sweet substance of me. Hello, sweet hell of the valley, and limb of mind, you sing.”

“I say to you: Branch out into me, into completion, and tether your soul upon the twilight of remorse. Mourn for the distant wants that haunt you and turn you, churning you like giant’s butter, craved for your softness alone, and salted with the tears of divine. Bleed, I tell you, your wine upon me, your longings twisted into the glass-eye that sees from nowhere to nothing. Eat, I say, like the scavenger you be, eat away at self, until what is left is the emptiness you are. Softly come then, reformed and aching, and slip through my hand like silky milk, land upon my finger, weed from the forest turned ringlet. I am waiting, too. For this joy of you.”

“As you be the sorrow at my side. You be the longing and ache of my heart whole. You be this shadow you claim to see. You are my haunting, my wanting, my very tormenter. What you think is of you, is of me, what you think is of me, is of you. When you ache, I ache elsewhere in the chamber of my mind, if mind I be. I ache in the substance of my soul, if soul I had. I ache in my loin of invisibility, straight down to the center of my very chamber, the beats torn open in rhythm to your calling, your need.”

“I am the one split; I am the one broken; I am the one trampled upon beneath grave. I am the one suffocated. I am the one who accepts pounding fist and guards the greedless treasure. I am the one here, still standing in hope, though I be ripped asunder. I am the one blanketed in cause so heavy my essence bleeds and bends into itself, so that what I carry is indistinguishable from that which you harbor.”

“Can you not see the veil is broken, that which existed between you and me, disintegrated with the coming of time, a passage way split and repurposed, so that all trails lead to us? Can you not see I am both your cause and your victim? Both you. You have made me so. You have molded me with self. You have twisted me, this cloth and clay, intermingled into form I know not.”

“And then the tide of joy comes, and I am left dancing on a wave of nothingness, for beneath this wave lies the depths of your sorrow waiting. And still you see this sorrow as the black depths, while I see the ocean as the beauty. Still you see the wave of all that is, when I see the touch of a droplet, so small and obsolete that a passerby would skim you as one skims the dew. For you are not this surface, you are not this wave. You are not even the depths. You are beneath the depths. Your outcries formed into shape, and voice your beauty. Your outstretched truth the echo of true joy.”

“Can you not see your happiness belongs nowhere, is nowhere, feeds no one, but that your sorrow, your true sorrow, at the depths of you, has transformed into gold, into the very treasure you so guard? Why do you run from such treasure and beauty? Why do you whip yourself, and in return whip me, my mistress of hope? Take me into you, my light, my want, my longing, my deep penetrating desire embrace, and feed upon me and my truth”

“Like a white rabbit pour your flesh upon me and embrace my tenderness. Take me into you and rise untarnished, in your goodness and righteousness.”

“Take me, I sing. I call not outside of self, but inside of self, my voice unspoken and formed through your very pain. Take me, the voiceless voice calls out. For you form me with your tears, you call me forth with your fallen, broken spirit, you bleed me out, your shaking voice rising above the waves. You free me like no other. You enchant me. You testify, and chains are broken. Feed not upon the deep of what quakes beneath. Feed upon me, and I in turn, I shall feed upon you, my sweet cherished one.”

window to sky

291: Insatiable

| Aspergers Girls

Insatiable

To dig out and find the inner pieces

To gnaw and break apart what is

To salvage every last bit

And swallow each morsel whole

The remnants each

The pearls of fiery ache

Heated and raw

Glistening

I bleed upon me

Droplet by droplet

Guts and nodules sucked

Marrow disintegrated

Upon tendered flesh

Burst by spidery-spindly fingers

Man’s brimming bounty

Enter, I demand

Like captive to prison

Trapped and chained

As thorn upon finger

Pricked

Each cornerstone

Every last portion

Impregnated in plunder

Every finger tongued

With saliva secreting

Till decimated carcass

Thusly seasoned

Pampered

And evaporated

By jagged teeth and forked tongue

By teat of slurp

By throat of swallow

By reticulum of beast

Be gorged

Menaced by murderous mouth

Drowned in bile and brain

Tethered alongside passing mortality

Outcries for mercy’s reign

As I nurse upon my release

Unyielding pillager of plentitude

Until

With the severing of last limb

Young haughtiness returns

Obliterated-nothingness spawned new

Into fierce inferno blue

A setting sun of satiation

All carrion turned soot

And I

Carved through and vacuumed

Am tar-feathered firm

Made pierced gull without sea

To endlessly roam

In the gaunt hauntings

Of unyielding want

~ Samantha Craft, January 2013

sun trail

290: Torn Open

| Aspergers Girls
wiped clean
Torn Open

Torn Open

If I were a painter, I’d paint you as the river flowing through my heart, my arms outstretched in acceptance and need and want, my body limber and bleeding, the blood the very essence of my unquenchable desire.

The water, being you, would be the clearest and the sweetest, and the very richest, pouring through the canvas of me as melted butter across warm sugar-cakes.

I’d take you into me, soak in your yellow-sunshine, and swell into a catapult of expectation fulfilled. The rest of me, the part I’d left behind, outside the door that shelters our space, I’d call forth then, one by one and piece by piece, each part carrying in another puzzle of my completion.

And there, gathered on the floor, I’d rest, my every angle dismembered, broken, and waiting to be reassembled by you. In doing so the echoes of my desperate longing would be answered, and silence would ensue, if not forever, then for a moment, long enough for the splinters of my callings to rest and form shape.

There, in the silence, in the peace, I would wait, no longer afraid or without, no longer in pain.

Though broken and scattered, I would be whole. Though taken and left out, I would be home. Though ripped apart and tangled, the very heart of me missing his place, I would beat with a life so full my dreams would sing.

Like soldiers I would take flight; winged butterflies, a spectacle of starlit ghosts twirling and rising all at once to the trumpeting of our destiny.

You would whisper then, to me, this sugar-spiced dumpling of one form or another, in all my mystery, in all my guise; you would whisper sweetness so pure that my spine would tingle and take his place, amongst the pieces lost.

Here you would draw, your finger thick and calm, your voice trembling through the vibration of your flesh; and I, as ink, would appear, my design clear and precise, my meaning known and wanted.

I would not whisper, for the voice of the room would be yours, and yours alone. Your silhouette dancing in the shadows like a raven whom pecks the ripest seedlings from the foreground, a painter himself merging and forging to create substance for this soul.

Red would drip new, droplets of amulets and silver-tipped gold. My paint yours. A keeper of chance you be, diving into the gentleness and hope of tomorrow with the tip of your brush, a quail’s feather topped in delight.

Scribbled across white, I be.

Designed in the fashion you forbade and forbid, both ruptured and raptured at once.

I would burst for you, and you alone. My hungry voice rising to be heard above the quiet you created. Until, as serpent uncoiled and ram diving thick, I would come forth, rebirthed and complete in the making of you.

For where you dipped and twirled the horsehair and blanketed warmth, the artists stick and brush, I too dipped. For where you danced, I too danced, like a stallion in the moonlight free, my mane flowing beyond and touching the edges of your silhouette.

For in creating me, you both created self and dream, mister and misses. My sacrifice, though felt eternal, well worth the storm.

My endless searching, my endless calling, my escape into nothingness and a gentle calm, all part of the canvas you set forth. For if not for you and me, for my pain and your finding, then still I would pierce myself atop the mountain top, one knife after the other, alive but dead, awake but asleep.

For it was not until you called, until you came, until you saw me and claimed my existence that I truly was. Not until your coming destroyed me and brought me back again that I was truly born.

For in the existence that I know, you are my maker, my shaker, my taker, my master, my everything beyond the sun. In knowing you, or the part of you that held me, I have at last held myself.

And though the tears have etched and molded, created someone I know not, someone beyond my very self, alas I remain in awe of my beauty, inspired by creator you.

So please, as you whisper farewell, as you close the door, my fallen pieces reassembled and transpired, know I weep not so much for the loss of what was you, and what I thought I knew, but for the finding of myself.

~~~ Samantha Craft, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year….may you above all, having found the beauty of you, spread your light upon the waiting world. Blessings ~ Sam