Losing Your Mind? Here is What You Don’t Want to Do!
1. Don’t rely on phobias for diagnosis. At one time or another, you probably had: 1) Nomophobia: fear of being without your cellphone; 2) Soteriophobia: the fear of having a dependence on others; 3) Syngenesophobia: the fear of relatives; 4) Ecclesiophobia: the fear of churches.
2. Do not rely on the projective personality test where you are asked to draw a house-tree-person picture, unless you are prepared to know your overall brain damage, your possible rejection of home life, your need for satisfaction, and how you present yourself in society; and, if indeed, you are feasibly psychotic.
3. Don’t read A Course in Miracles quite yet; you might think you are a present-day prophet.
4. Don’t list all of your psychological symptoms on your blog; only the ones that make you seem interesting, quirky, and fun. In other words, avoid discussing the paranoia you sometimes feel when you believe your computer camera has been hacked, and others are watching you pick your nose.
5. Don’t check yourself into a psych-ward, unless you have a high tolerance level for patients who go by the first name of Jack-Off, nurses with bushy eyebrows who scowl and shush you for laughing, and cheesy television shows from the late 70’s like The Chipmunks of North America.
6. Don’t peruse the DSM-IV (diagnosis code book); you’ll likely determine you are narcissistic with rapid-cycling bouts of depression and mania or have the earmarks of oppositional defiant disorder.
7. Don’t see a therapist in training (intern); she’s more confused than you, and still trying to shake off her last frightful bout of DSM-IV, mental-health self-analysis.
8. Don’t trust a psychiatrist, if after fifteen minutes and a short multiple-choice test, he casually says, “Hmmmm. It doesn’t seem like you qualify for this condition. But here’s a prescription I want you to take, just incase.” He’s likely closing in on earning those pharmaceutical credits needed for that trip to the Bahamas.
9. Don’t rely on a fetish search. Depending on your state-of-mind, (and your alcohol intake), you might believe you have: 1) Dacryphilia: an attraction to tears and sobbing; 2) Flatulophilia: an attraction to farts; 3) Liquidophilia: an intense need to submerge your private parts in water; 4) Scatologia: a desire to make obscene prank calls to strangers.
10. Don’t look for signs from beyond. Two hundred blog hits, a sunny day, and a good bowel movement are not signs of sanity.
11. Don’t pull a Tarot Card. You will likely misinterpret the tower of inferno, the fool, and the card with all the daggers.
12. Don’t rely on numerology. It’s the only numerical field where the meaning of the numbers change, depending on context, culture, and interpretation.
13. Don’t think about thinking about thinking, or write about writing about writing, or talk about talking about talking. Just don’t.
14. Don’t Google: I’m nuts. For some reason Justin Bieber shows up.
15. Don’t over analyze that dream about the flying banana slugs attacking the golden-winged big toes.
16. Don’t rely on your mother, your mate, or you mutt. Your mother is your maker, your mate your mirror, and your mutt a mini-you.
17. And lastly, if you had a particular type of brownie, don’t call the emergency room. Wait ten hours, the room WILL stop spinning, your heart will not explode, and you are not crazy.
Disclaimer: If you took this seriously, seek professional help immediately.
Seeking a way out of insanity: Get a good night’s sleep, study the great minds of our time, and read a few pages of someone else’s blog. You’ll soon discover your less insane than you imagined.
At any given time, from the age of fifteen to twenty-seven, I tried to have a best friend and a boyfriend. This pair of people anchored me: the best girl and the best boy. In some ways, people would consider me lucky, as I seemed to attract the handsome boys. But some handsome boys, and boys in general, I later discovered, could be bad boys, too.
Many people with Asperger’s Syndrome have reported that they didn’t have a romantic relationship for a long time, if ever. Me? I instinctively clung to boys starting at the age of five. Probably as a result of the gap I needed to fill based on the absence of my father and the busyness of my single mother. Being an only child in a world of ghosts, precognitive dreams, and extreme sensitivities to people, places, things, while having an acute sense of sight, sound, hearing, and touch, left me longing to cling to something, if only for balance and retreat.
As I reached my teenage years, I became liken to a high-quality, food storage, plastic cling wrap. I’d seal a male over with my entire essence, and remain stuck there, in full-grip mode. I remember thinking I was experienced with relationships. Keen on how they worked, what to do, and how to keep a “man.” But I wasn’t. I was weathered for certain: rusted around the outside like a metal pole set out in the rain one too many winters. But I definitely wasn’t experienced. I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to take care of my needs and wants, beyond lassoing a male to do things for me. I was quite pathetic, in an unintentional, hadn’t-meant-to-be, way.
By my early twenties, after graduating from college with honors and starting my first teaching job, I was deeply ashamed of the woman I’d become. And more times than not, I didn’t know the part of ME that I played in life—didn’t know my lines or even where to find the script. From one moment to the next I was changing. In one scene I played the role of the dedicated soon-to-be school teacher, and in the next a desperate crazy fool clinging to whatever man she could get her hands on. A fisherman in the game of love, I’d learned to bait my hook and cast my pole, but hadn’t known to catch and release.
As time passed, each man I met, no matter where or when, who showed the slightest interest in me, soon became my new love interest. I was fortunate in high school to have had two boyfriends (at different times) that treated me tenderly and with respect. However, later, I dated men from all walks of life, most of whom were extremely damaged in someway or another. And all who were addicted to something or someone.
The worst of being with a man came in not what they ever did, but what I let myself do. I made men my bed, and I slept in them while walking through life. And I fooled myself repeatedly into thinking I was content. It didn’t matter if the bed was too small, or too big, or if it had lumps. It didn’t matter if the mattress was missing all together and I was made to sleep on the cold hard floor. It only mattered I was in the bed, or at least what I’d thought to be a bed. My mind fooled me. My heart fooled me. My logic fooled me. While all along my spirit wept.
There has never been such a horrible part in my life as the years I walked half-blind to my own wanting. In essence I was a prisoner, unable to move forward, sideways, or even backwards without pushing, dragging, or tricking myself in any given direction. Best to stand still in one spot—best not to move an inch—if that was possible. But it wasn’t. I had to keep going. I had to keep stepping somewhere.
The highlight of my dating career had to be the season I spent with the habitual lying, sexually addicted Don—a man five years my senior, who behaved ten years my junior. At first glance I’d fallen head-over-sandals in love with Don. The summer day he confidently strode through the Catholic daycare where I worked, I’d tucked myself halfway behind a shelf of books and drooled over his perpetually sun-kissed skin. He was everything I’d wanted, dark and handsome, and tall enough to look down at me with his bedroom eyes.
The times Don and I were together weaved in and out sporadically through a span of half a decade. When I first met Don he was separated from wife number one; when I last reunited with Don, he was struggling to patch it up with wife number two. I was the in-between, but one Don swore up and down he intended to marry.
The majority of our relationship played out like an ill-plotted soap opera, with me as the dimwitted, star-struck mistress, and Don as the notorious villain. I can laugh now, find many lessons in the journey with Don, even thank him for the crash-course in what-not-to-do ever again; but back then, having no other models for beneficial love relationships and no avenue for escape, I was stuck in the mire of pain and misery, a self-invented trap that I had no idea of how to release. I cried daily. I wrote dark or needy poetry. My focus from morning to-night was Don. My life was Don. My reason for living was Don.
There was the time I dialed his number obsessively, about twenty times, just to hear his voice on the machine; the time his lover called me and said: “Just so you know I’ve been sleeping with Don every morning after he leaves your house. I’m those ‘business trips’ he’s been on.”; the time he totaled his uninsured truck out-of-town, and called me to come get him from the hospital, even though he’d been secretly rendezvousing with another that day; the time Don and I threw a Halloween party (which I obsessed and over planned about) and no one came (except a few of my teaching program college mates), because all of Don’s “friends” didn’t respect him; the time I drank an entire bottle of wine and slammed my finger in the closet, because I’d yet again been waiting for Don to show up.
He had a habit of just not showing up. Just not being there. I’d come to expect it. To recognize the raw acid-burning pain in my chest that signified the abandonment soon to come. There was pain continually lurking behind the wall of my psyche. I’d be in bed, the only one awake, and ritually would cry up to the heavens, begging for a way out, for understanding, but mostly for a way to make him love me.
I didn’t know any better. No one had taught me. And Mother, though I love her, hadn’t prepared me. Everything I’d learned from romance came from Mother or movies, or maybe from watching soap operas or another person. I didn’t have standards. I didn’t know what standards were. And I didn’t know why someone wouldn’t or couldn’t love me. I thought everyone was good, everyone just, everyone honest, everyone sorry.
“The Journey. The Journey is what brings us happiness. Not the destination.” ~ Peaceful Warrior
Kahlil Gibran
When I hurt, I try to understand others’ pains and struggles.
I use my pain for humility.
I use the pain to knock me off my pedestal and out of the driver’s seat.
I use the pain for clearer vision and rebalancing—to question my bearings, my ego, my strength and determination.
I am so blessed, as hard as the journey is, to be able to empathize with a variant of types and degrees of pain.
To learn from pain.
To make pain my teacher.
To connect with other people through pain.
I know this. I understand this.
I accept more pain will come.
Pain is not my enemy.
No one and nothing is my enemy.
Every person has good inside of them, even if the good is masked or painted over in the cloakings of black.
I bring Pain into the light.
When Pain is no longer hidden in shame, buried, or ignored, Pain stands equal with Joy.
Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: On Joy and Sorrow
On Joy and Sorrow Kahlil Gibran
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, “Joy is greater thar sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.
In my years of living, I have seen the most pain and the most strength in the rooms of support groups.
This piece is dedicated to anyone who has ever frequented the basements and halls of recreation rooms and churches, in search of companionship, understanding, and support.
I have found that the most accepting, loving, and open-minded people understand pain.
This is a true and fictional story. The essence is truth, but the facts and details are not. Because of anonymity and out of respect to others, I would not attempt to write a prose of someone’s actual experience, except mine. The feelings are true. The pain is true.
Some people claim recovery is like an onion; in the way you peel one layer of experience and emotion away to find another. To me, recovery was more liken to being trapped inside the core of the onion itself and trying to forge my way through so I could breathe.
The Goodbye Girl
Laura Marling: Night After Night
You Light Up My Life
Below is a gift I received through the action of two kind souls.
I have been selfish and blinded. I have hurt the most precious being on this earth, my very flesh and blood, my baby, my angel, my bear.
I am so very sorry. And you have every right to be mad at Mommy. You have a right to have emotions, to feel emotions, to have pain, to express the pain, to experience that pain, and to above all share that pain with whomever you choose to share that pain with. I love you so much that I am crying with joy. I am washing the tears from my cheek. And I am crying big tears of “I am sorry.”
This is the most important letter I have ever written. The most important words I have ever written. And Mommy has written thousands of pages of words. You are that important.
When I was little, I promised myself every night and every day, in the morning light and in the dark, how I would love my child with all my heart. How I would never cause him or her pain. How I would be there. How I would carry the pain.
I would die for you. Right now. I would die for you. I love you that much.
I am sorry I haven’t shown you lately how much I love you. I am sorry I have ignored you. I am sorry I haven’t been present. It is my fault. And I am heart-broken because of the choices I made. You are not to blame, one bit. You did nothing wrong. You are perfect.
If you could see me now, crying louder than our doggy howls, crying so hard, because I never want you to feel alone or unloved, unnoticed or forgotten, you would understand how much you mean to me.
You would know that you are not Forgotten. That you are loved beyond measure.
You are my beautiful, divine, and loving son. I am the luckiest mom on earth! You make me smile with delight. You tickle me inside with your jokes and puns. You are amazing. You are brilliant. You are the joy that fills my day and the reason I fall asleep proud. You are a bright star that brings the family an element of surprise, adventure, truth, and great passion.
Our family is complete because of YOU!
Your passion is so huge that it fills the whole of our house. Your creations, inventions, and experiments—as they explode in our bathrooms, across our kitchen, on the balcony, and all around the house—they announce to the world: I am brilliant! I am creative! I am GREAT!
Our family is whole because of you. Because of your brilliance and charm. Your directness. Your ability to see and feel at a deep, deep level. Your gift of knowing things beyond this world. Your gift of bringing a smile to our face, over and over. Your memory is fascinating. Your strong will and determination is amazing.
You will go far in life. You have so very much to offer the world.
And I am so very sorry that I have not been there for you. I am ashamed. I am saddened. I was wrong.
I’ve been lost in my own world and pain. I’ve been hiding from events in my life. I’ve been afraid. I haven’t been brave like you. I haven’t been courageous like you.
But you know what?
You have made me braver with your words today.
Know why?
Because I love you so much, that your very words pulled me out from where I was hiding, and motivated me to stop being selfish, and to see the beautiful gifts in my life. Gifts like you, and your smile, and your loving eyes—and your huge, huge heart!
I am so blessed!
Look at you. Look what God has giving Mommy! A beautiful, intelligent, healthy, loving, charming, courageous boy. Who could ask for more? Why have I been so blinded in my own worries and fears?
You are glorious beyond words.
So this is both my sorry letter to you, my loving son, and my thank you letter to God.
Thank you God for my boy. Thank you for his angel heart, for his angel hugs, and for his patience with his mom. I know how blessed I am. Please forgive me for not appreciating this marvel you have placed before me, for this gift you have trusted in my care, for this wise being at my side.
“Thank you!” I shout from the highest mountain. “Thank you for this greatest gift in the whole of the world. Thank you for my glorious boy. For my super, fabulous kid who makes my world marvelous.”
Today, my son, I honor your words and concerns. I honor you. I honor all of you. All parts of you. Everything about you is absolutely perfect. There is nothing I would change, nothing I would alter.
I can’t wait until you get home; I’m counting the minutes. I will get on my knees and say: “I’m sorry.”
Then I will wrap my arms around you, and say: “I love you farther than all the universes can reach. I have loved you for a thousand years. Darling, don’t be afraid. I will love you for a thousand more! I will love you forever and ever! I am here.”
You are either going to love this post or say to yourself (or perhaps your neighbor): Look how long this fricken post is!
Here’s some easy listening music to get you through the first 5 pages.
No. I’m not kidding.
It’s a soundtrack song from one of my favorite shows of all time. If you haven’t seen the movie, you haven’t lived!
Love Actually: Christmas is All Around song, by Billy Mack
This is NOT connected to the story in anyway. But this post is so fricken long that I don’t have time to look for other images that aren’t copyrighted.
I did what would be the equivalent to my very first “unfriending” of an individual yesterday.
I pressed the button on the social network site and PRESTO-MAGICO (said in a French accent), they are gone from my life.
Through this unfriending process, I realized that I have NEVER once un-friended a person!
I mean real, walking, living breathing life—friends I hang out with, who I touch regularly…okay, that just didn’t sound right.
Today I reached the massive conclusion that I did not come equipped with an un-friend button. Whomever or whatever force created me, forgot to install the un-friend button. (And I don’t mean my mom and dad.)
I’m also missing the whole and complete manual that explains the workings of friendships.
Luckily, through sweat and tears (literally lots of tears), I’ve managed to recreate my own friendship manual that looks fairly equivalent to other people’s manuals. Of course, MY manual is written in some obscure language only Crazy Frog can read.
I’ve lost a number of friends due to my quirkiness and lack of friendship manual. Not so much now, but a fair number in my early years, and a recent loss in my late thirties.
There are two that stand out.
One loss happened with a friend I was close with for a good four to five years. And then one day, she just stopped returning my emails, stopped returning my calls, and un-friended me on Facebook. And her brother in England, he un-friended me, too! No explanation. No closure. No reason. Just erased me from her life. And at the time, she only lived a block away from me.
This is what I imagine she would say, if she were asked to explain why she dumped me. Remember I had no idea I had Aspergers at the time, and neither did she.
She freaked out a lot over things.
She was needy.
She obsessed about her health and writing.
She worried a lot.
She was very intense, too intense.
She talked too much about her church.
Oh, and she insulted my husband one too many times, like when she said, in front of his whole poker gang:
“I bought you these specific low-salt chips because your wife told me your blood pressure was high.”
And another time at a party when she said, “I told you that you should have gotten that mole on your forehead checked out a long time ago!”
The other friend, was the only friend I made the first four years of college. This college friend simply disappeared. She stopped returning my calls. And when I phoned for the tenth time, her father informed me that his daughter was too upset to talk to me and no longer wanted to be friends. I’m still clueless on this one. But I imagine this person would have said something to this tune:
She talks about spirits and ghosts all the time.
She talks about precognitive dreams.
She dates men out-of-town she hardly knows.
She obsesses about men she just met.
She talks nonstop.
She’s odd. I mean who has never once bought themselves a soda?
And how could she not know I was dressed as Mrs. Bundy on Halloween? Doesn’t she watch Married with Children?
Interestingly enough, these two friends both have the same name. I’m not super fond of that name anymore.
I try to keep my blog PG-Rated, but these stories are probably PG-13, some strong language.
Vignette: The Bleeding Napkins
The thing I remember most about Renny, besides her over-sized nostrils and cooked-spaghetti-like hair, was the bleeding napkins.
“We show them at the county fairs and other places,” Renny said, one afternoon in her dingy kitchen. Squeezing my face together, I covered my mouth and nose with my hand and stared out at the pile of gray and blue cat carriers stacked high in the corner.
“You’ll get used to the smell in a few minutes,” Renny apologized.
I smiled. “I like your orange wallpaper,” I offered.
Renny pulled down an enormous bag from the pantry shelf and proceeded to fill up five bowls with cat food. Nine cats and three kittens came running. “Mother and I show them at the cat shows,” she announced, and pointed to a shelf laden with dusty ribbons, plaques and miniature, gold trophies shaped into cat faces.
“Do you get money?” I asked from behind my hand.
“No,” Renny frowned. “We only get the prizes.” She pushed aside some dirty dishes in the sink and filled up a large water bowl. Then she wet a stack of napkins.
“Oh,” I said, sinking my hands deep into my jean pockets. I breathed in. Renny was right, the smell was fading.
“I used to have thirteen cats when I was little,” I said. “But only for a couple weeks. We had three cats and two got pregnant, and soon there were thirteen. But I like the number thirteen. It’s my favorite. So that was pretty cool.” I was rambling. I rambled when I was nervous. “But then one day I came home and there was only one cat left, Ben’s cat. That’s all. And I asked Mom what happened and Mom said that she found them all good homes. But I knew she hadn’t really, because it was only one day. And no one can find twelve cats homes in one day. So I knew they were dead.” I peered out at Renny who didn’t seem to be listening. “Did I tell you ten of them were kittens?”
Renny glanced up and smiled. “Come in here. I have something I have to do,” she said. The water dripped off the napkins, making a trail from the kitchen into the living room. Renny kicked an empty soda bottle out of her way and tossed a clump of her sister’s clothes onto a chair. “It’s a good thing we don’t have carpet, my mom says. But they still find their way to the couch, mostly this couch. That chair over there isn’t so bad. You can sit there if you want.
“I’m fine,” I answered. I picked at the green alligator appliqué I’d sewn by hand on to my old shirt, an alligator I’d plucked off of a ten-cent, stained polo shirt purchased from the local thrift store.
Renny stopped moving, and asked, “I do this everyday—well most days. Do you want to try?”
“No, thanks,” I said with shifty eyes.
Renny set the pile of wet napkins on the arm of the couch and began separating them from each other. One at a time she spread white all across the seat of the couch, until there appeared to be a long line of paper ghosts.
Like magic, the napkins began turning red, bleeding out from the center to the edges. I twisted my face in disgust. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Flea poop,” Renny said quickly. “It’s one of the downfalls of having cats. But it’s worth it. You saw all those ribbons.”
My eyes widened. I gulped. “I guess. Do you think I can use your bathroom?”
Five minutes later, after I’d rinsed my hands under the water several times and stuck my head out the open bathroom window, I found Renny atop her waterbed. There were no blankets. Well there were, but the covers were all piled in a corner of her closet. But there was one big orange sheet.
“My mother’s old boyfriend Ben used to have a waterbed,” I said.
“You’re pretty safe up here from the fleas. Here.” She tossed a training bra at my head.
“Yuck. What’d you do that for?”
Renny flashed an unfettered smile. “My sisters have them. I thought it was about time I got one. Plus when a guy goes to feel me up, if I’m not wearing a bra, what’s he going to think?”
I touched my sunken chest and frowned. “Who’s going to feel you up?” I looked up. “Do you think I need a bra?”
Renny jumped down from the bed. I flicked a flea off of my arm and examined the floating green cluster of goop in the water under Renny’s waterbed liner. “Yuck,” I said. “You need water conditioner or to drain it.”
Snatching the bra from my hand, Renny held it up against her shirt and galloped about the house neighing like a horse. I followed, prancing about with a pair of Renny’s floral underwear on my head. We were both out of breath when we heard the sounds of barking laughter.
We peered out the living room window. At the end of the driveway, Renny’s sisters flashed their black bras at two shaggy-haired boys. Renny’s mouth was agape, her pointy ears turning red. I pulled my eyes away and focused on the flea on my sock, catching the parasite with the first try and popping it in between my thumbnail and finger. A drop of blood squirted out.
Renny stepped away from the window, taking the string of the blinds with her. The blinds clanked and scraped against the mildewing glass causing a miniature dust storm. Coughing, I ran to Renny’s bedroom and sought retreat from the fleas under the orange sheet.
Minutes later, Renny lifted the lid of a red and white cigar box, and pulled out a small bud of marijuana. “It’s the expensive stuff,” she said and bit down with a sour face.
I wasn’t too impressed, but smiled anyhow. “I’ve tasted the seeds before,” I offered.
Renny chuckled, set the box down, and pushed an orange tabby cat away. “Mom keeps the dope hidden in her closet but my sisters are always stealing.” She pulled off cat hair from her sock and scanned her slovenly room, the whites of her eyes turning pink. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “I wish I lived with my father.”
Everyday Asperger's 
