challenges

260: Owning my Beauty

| Aspergers Girls

eigth grade

I never ever thought I was pretty.

There is something beautiful about a person who  cannot see her beauty on the outside. A sad humbleness that pulls the person into the eyes and soul—a vulnerability that others pick up on innately but generally cannot recognize or pinpoint.

When anyone complimented my looks, I thought one of many thoughts:

1)   You can’t really see me

2)   This isn’t how I normally look

3)   You must have poor eyesight

4)   You are lying

5)   You want to hurt me

6)   You want my body

7)   You are just saying that to be nice

8)   I hate me

9)   You say that to everyone

10) You must feel sorry for me

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I could never own my beauty.

This view of myself, as being not adequate on the outside, is something I’ve held onto since I was eleven. I can theorize until I’m blue in the face, and come up with a plethora of reasons why I doubted my beauty, starting with my overbite and chipped front tooth and ending with being victimized by men.

But the truth is, I think I was made to be that way….this way. I think I was chiseled and molded into this me that I am.

There are beliefs I carry that say: To love yourself in completion is to be vain and conceded.

There are thoughts that scream how can you think you are pretty, look at your flaws?

There is the dark voice that says, you will age and no one will love you.

I’m starting to have flashbacks of all the times strangers came up to me when I was younger, and the messages they said:

You have such beautiful eyes. So intelligent and wise.

Your face has so many angles and emotions; you should be a model.

Oh, I can tell by looking at you that you are one of them—a deep soul.

Do not worry, you are prettier than her, inside and out.

Wow, they didn’t make teenagers like you when I was in school.

Has anyone ever said how beautiful you are?

Those were strangers. Off the street, they would approach me.

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And I never could take in what they said. Never believe it. Never for a moment feel their words or truth. I always had doubt and disbelief. Actually it was beyond doubt. The compliments I quickly shifted into sadness and fear. For what if they were to see the real me? What if they realized how very wrong they were?

Something did happen, though. I began to see how my exterior gained attention.

In some ways I was fortunate. In my youth, with this “beauty,” people were typically accommodating, overly-friendly, and eager to date me. However the experience was more over misfortune because I felt I was not seen for the real me and thought furthermore that because I was truly ugly that I was playing some game of trickery. I believed one day people would awaken and the truth of my ugliness would be seen.

When I went to college, ripped away from my best friend of six years, and not having my boyfriend at my side, I felt extremely self-conscious, vulnerable, frightened, and paranoid. I was beyond shy. I walked with my head down and never ever peered up. I gave off the vibration of Keep AWAY at all costs. I was lovely, but untouchable. I thought I was ugly and unwanted. No one said hello to me. Only one boy in five years at college. I thought for certain that validated my beliefs; that in truth I was born ugly, unwanted, unneeded, and desperately flawed.

If a boy tried to make contact with me in class, I brushed him off with my insecurities or was clueless that he was trying to connect. I took “come on” lines at face value. If a boy asked about last night’s homework, that’s what he was interested in. Not me, only the homework. If he said I looked young for my age, that was the truth of his statement, nothing beyond, no agenda, just an observation. I couldn’t feel or see people reaching out to me. I was lost in my own world of ugliness and isolation.

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When I gained weight in my early twenties, and then later gained sixty pounds from my pregnancy, I saw how others treated me differently based on my weight. I began to see how fickle and surface-level people could be. At that point I had nothing to turn to. I hated myself on the inside and outside, but at least for a long time I could get by on these supposed “looks.”

At this time, I began to really hook onto and believe all the negative messages I told myself. In fact, I had been right all along: I was horribly ugly.

It has taken me the last few months, since late April, to reclaim the beauty I misplaced when I was eleven years of age: thirty-three long years. For the first time in my adult years, I can look at my face and not cry, cringe, or loop over my image. For the first time I am embracing this wonderful woman I am, and morning for the lost years, when the word beautiful was masked behind a curtain of fear.

What I find odd, is I didn’t judge my friends or strangers in the same way I judged myself. I saw their beauty. Their souls shined through. And all I saw was gorgeousness. Now, when I look at myself, my soul shines through, and I too am the same, one with all, pure loveliness.

Some will call me self-centered, vain, obsessed with my looks, or shallow, but I know the truth. I am home. I am reconnected. I am in love again with me. A child reborn.

I still have doubts. I still have those thoughts…and that familiar dark voice. But there is a light, no doubt, that outshines the rest. A light I am learning to embrace more each day.

Photo on 11-20-12 at 10.24 AM #3

255: The Fig

| Aspergers Girls

A lovely blogging friend commented that she can see both peace and sadness in my eyes.  I think I was born with the sadness. I don’t know from when or where, but it seems to have always been in the depths of me.  As far as the peace is concerned, that is something that has taken extreme dedication, focus, and prayer to acquire.

This is a short story from the many writings I did in efforts to heal myself. I believe I shared this piece before but cannot remember. I spent a period of four years writing. I collected some 265 typed pages in the form of a manuscript, much of which I have shared on this blog. People have inquired about the idea of me writing a book. I used to be hyper-focused on becoming a published author, so much that it became my goal and identity. With time, I came to a deep inner peace about my works; I understood that the passion for writing a book, though a necessary passion at the time, came from a place of ego and self-want. I am not attached to publishing any longer, especially not attached to gaining monies or recognition. I pray continually for humility and what is best for my higher good and those of others.  I maintain an energy of release when I write: the release of stagnant energy, the release of want, of validation, of need. I write purely in hopes of being a light and answering my calling. I put intention and healing vibration behind every word. In most of my writing there is a distinct rhythm. This rhythm is intentional, and filled with my love. If I heal along the way, that is a wonderful bonus. What is more important to me, at this point in my journey, is giving to the world. That is what life means to me.

The Fig (Based on True Events)

By Samantha Craft

In some ways, during the first year at our duplex, our home served as a transitional stopping point for strangers:  a person would arrive and rent out our spare bedroom and then, as if they’d landed on the jail space on the board game of Monopoly, after a few rolls of the dice, they’d move on.

Our first roommate, kindly Jeff, a man in his early twenties, arrived a few months after Mother and I had moved in.  Sprouting a fantastic full head of cherry-red clown hair, Jeff was entirely intriguing—from his gigantic gold-rimmed glasses to the smooth glass eye with an iris-blue center he’d pop out from time to time and let me examine up close in my hand.  Jeff had a puttering V.W. Bug that jerked and spat and carried us to fancy places like the local Taco Bell and the red-boxed television booth at the corner Lucky grocery store where I could watch Woody Woodpecker cartoons.  Sometimes, my favorite sometimes, Jeff carried home his work case laden with the grocery store price numbers, each type housed in its own tiny pull out drawer.  They were a hard flexible-plastic, nothing I’d seen or touched before.  These clear drawers and the miniature treasures inside each drawer out rated any old doll house in my book.

For a very short while, Ruth, an eccentric plump puppeteer with wiry-white hair, lived in our home.  She also had a case, but a much more impressive wooden one which housed her enormous stringed-puppets. Though the puppeteer wasn’t with us long, I fondly recall her performing puppet shows with her life-sized floppy marionettes out on our front patio.

 

The rest is in my book 🙂

 

Post 252: Dear Father

| Aspergers Girls

I am processing so much, so fast; it is quite overwhelming. Please understand this post is healing for me. I am not reaching out for support or love. In writing this and sharing this truth, I am healing my own self. Your presence and eyes are enough. I do not need or expect words of comfort. I do not need anyone to tell me that I am enough. Innately, I know I am enough, that I am beauty, that I am good. But this little girl needed to be heard, so I could heal further. I am okay. I am better than okay. I am facing my demons head on and surviving. Not only surviving, but smiling through tears. So please know I am okay. I am okay in me and with me. I like me. I love me enough to be who God intended me to be. And I love you enough to trust in your love. ~ Sam

 

Dear Father,

You don’t love me, and you never have. If you do, it’s limiting and conditional. I am made into a person who is judged and evaluated, or worse not seen or spoken to. You have been my everything since I was born. My superman. My rescuer. My hope. The man created to love and hold me, to cherish and lift. And yet you have done none of this.

I am left hollowed from the inside out, a forgotten child, who has had to find her own way, whilst left alone without you. You came out of obligation, if you ever came at all, out of guilt or need. Never out of connection or thought for my betterment. Life has been about you from the start, and continues to be about you: your hobbies, your interests, your wives.

You have said to me once I am beautiful. Only once. On my wedding day, and I hold on to that word as if it were the last sound of my life. How I have longed to be held and told I am lovely and worthy; how I have missed the embrace of a father, and thusly sought out the embrace wherever I could.

Through torment I wept for you. Through miserable relationships and false dreams. I created fantasies and idols with men, in hopes of finding you again.

Yet, still I weep and walk alone. No one is you. No one is my father. Not even you.

You live but you are dead; in the sense of being and not existing. You choose each day to reject or worse forget. Your silence and aloofness my hellfire.

Some child in me still believes I can find you in someone else, find the love and approval. I imagine them as you. I place your face on them. I replay the words over and over, with your voice and your heart. But, still I know this is not you.

I hunt down people in hopes of them being you. Have from the start—a small child searching for her father in playmates and strangers. I have exposed myself to countless hurts, hoping to appease and please a someone who was not you, but that I believed to be you. Every time I am rejected, again by you.

Why? Why can you not see my beauty and love? Why is your view of me not what the world sees? Why do many love me, when the one I need the most to love me, does not? What have I done wrong? What is innately wrong with me that you would refuse the gift I am? Why am I left unopened, still on this shelf of pain waiting to be taken? To be taken and held. To feel a father’s arms around me. A hug. An embrace. To see your eyes. To look in your eyes and see adoration. What is that like? What does it feel like to be held by a father? To be loved by a father? What does it feel like! I need to know. I need to know. Just once, before I die, I need you to hold me.

I have wept for you since my hands were tiny and fragile. I have wept for you endlessly. I walk in silence but the tears cut through my soul. They eat at me and destroy my truth. They huddle me into a corner and persecute me. I cannot be in this world when I know my own creator detests his creation. My own God I set into your mold. And I am left shattered, broken, while still untouched and waiting.

Please love me, so I can stop my search. I am so tired. So weary. So alone without you.

Please see me. Please see my beauty. Please release me from my torment.

I beg for your love. I cry out for your love. Across the universe I reach for you. This child I am.

Post 248: Love

| Aspergers Girls

Love

He came at dawn’s break

With glowing light

My heart made soldier

To his delight

My fingers his minion

And beckoning call

My body his vessel

As tethered, I fall

Captured entirely

In untimely game

From the utterance only

Of one simple name

Love, how you choose

Like buttercup of land

And captain my freedom

In hourglass of sand

Unturned and still motion

Time plays without one

My world on a shelf

Until love is undone

~ Sam Craft, November 2012

Thoughts on Love

There is the love of mother to babe, sister to brother, neighbor to neighbor.

There is the love that reminds one of self, a reflection of beauty and recognition.

There is the love of accomplishing a sought after goal and reaching one’s highest potential, a satisfaction.

There is a love of enduring and suffering, and sticking things out.

There is a love of familiarity, having known each other to the point of predicting the next move, next statement, next thought.

There is a love of journeying together through trials and tribulations, and hopes and dreams, a love of endurance and strength.

There is a love of opportunity, of hope, of guessing, of wishing, a pulsating-driven love that makes one leap out of bed in hopeful expectation.

There is a love of infatuation, lust, and mingling, perhaps driven biologically or through soul, or a combination, but nonetheless hot and steamy and wanting.

There is a love unreturned that leaves one empty and doubtful.

There is love unrecognized, ungrown, unnourished, ungiven—the love of neglect and forgetfulness.

There is the love of ego-centered built only to uplift self, to praise one to feel good about another, the prospect of another’s potential temporarily filling the void of the emptied.

There is the love of uncertainty, resembling the love of obligation.

There is rule-bound love, created for conforming and people-pleasing, a mask placed on and off as needed.

There is the love of twins, separate but one, who move as mirrors as one another, and cannot help but love what is them.

There is the love born of hate, where battle was fought, enemy lost, and the tears wash out the anger to expose the commonalities of humanity.

There is a love of knowing, of caring, of wanting to fix and make better, to appease the need to reach out and help.

There is the love of smothering and clinging.

There is the love of using to gain, to hide, or move ahead.

There is the love of respect.

There is the love of awe.

There is the love of mystery, a captivating intrigue, without reason or explanation.

There is the love of company, companionship, the release of isolation.

There is love in the word alone, the vibration and energy produced in thought and sound.

There is love in the beauty of one or many, the beauty of nature, the beauty of art, creation.

There is love that is all-encompassing, beyond borders and definitions.

There is love that is far-reaching and healing.

There is love beyond measure, pure elation, recognition and union.

There is love lost.

There is love unopened.

There is love in silence and emptiness.

There is love in a touch, in a dream, in a memory.

There is love in illusion.

There is love.

I’ve been trying to understand what love means since last April. This has been a year of much transition and healing for me, and along with this healing has been the extreme necessity to understand love. This morning I awoke before dawn and was able to visualize a clear understanding of love as the word applies to my life.

I recognize now that I sense a soul print of each person when I first make contact, even if that contact is through words and not face-to-face.  This is not through any one sense, but from another sense I’ve yet to recognize or label. In some ways, the process of sensing a soul print seems to be a combination of all the senses with the addition of a knowing and feeling at a cellular, muscular, and both physical and non-physical level.

When I meet someone, the soul print is in the form of energy and makes pictures in my mind. I feel the person in different parts of my body; for example a tightening of the stomach or shoulders. With many people I feel uneasy both physically and emotionally, and I assume spirtually; with a select few I feel very safe.

For some reason, I can recognize peoples’ insecurities, fears, and misgivings readily, usually in general terms, and sometimes in specifics. I can easily sense states of unrest, panic, unease, addiction, deception, and interior motives. I can readily sense pure thought and unconditional adoration.

The person’s energy triggers memories in myself, and I can connect the energy to past experiences and past encounters.

I’ve felt these “feelings” since I can remember.

I feel energy with every word I write, think, or say. Likewise, I feel energy in other people’s words, whether it is the universal energy of the collective-thoughts of a word, or the intention behind a person’s word. Some words feel false, contrived, and unnecessary. Some words feel like trickery or falsehood. Other words feel free of clutter, clear, and pure.

I can feel a person through their words. I cannot explain it, but know it to be true.

When I worked as a spiritual counselor, I could sit with a person and tell them what I saw, how I perceived them to be energetically. I could see his or her trials and challenges, and also could see direct tools to assist in removing stagnant energy.

I don’t see things in levels, or heights, or degrees. All is equal. However, I see people stuck in a certain spot, often repeating the same patterns and lessons.

I can sense the energy of people trying to be strong and domineering, when they are actually wounded and lacking. I can sense anger and resentment, and these tend to be the most challenging senses I encounter.

How I feel upon meeting someone the first time, does not change. I know instantly if I can spend time around a person and be depleted or remained balanced. I know instantly how much I want to be with that person and if he or she is nurturing to my soul.

Why this information is important to me is because I realize now I equate love to the energy I feel from a person. I don’t feel love for a person. I feel a vibration and sense a soul print.

Where some people say love can grow with time, I do not understand this concept. I love from day one. If I feel nourished by someone’s energy, I feel an elation that would equate to falling in love.

I don’t love a select few. I love everyone. But I feel better around certain people more than others.  One could say I “love” a person based on the energetic vibration. Only vibration levels change. So that would be a false observation. I love a person’s soul print. It’s an underlying vibration that stays the same regardless of how that person feels at a given moment.

I understand now that I do not understand the mainstream’s idea of love.

Love doesn’t grow. I feel exactly the same way for a person the entire time. Their soul print doesn’t change.

At times when a person is happier or sadder, I feel these emotions, but his or her emotions do not affect how much I love or don’t love. Sometimes a person’s actions can have a rippling energy effect of joy or dread that reaches me, but the actions do not affect how much I love or don’t love. My love is not based on outside sources, something I can view externally, judge, discern, or categorize. If I love, I love.

I understand now why I can tell someone I love him or her after knowing them less than a day. And that as hard as I try to love someone more or less, I cannot.

I understand why I cannot get enough of someone whose energy is nurturing and giving and kind and centered. I see more and more how I am attracted to balanced and secure energy: people that love based on the unconditional energy-factors and not the limiting external factors.

When I love someone, I stop seeing the person in human form. Their face and body disappears. This is why it’s hard for me to remember faces, as I’m not focusing on the exterior; I am focused on the energy. When I love someone, I don’t care what they look like, how they age, or change, or are altered outside; there comes a time when I don’t see the outside at all. But there are elements of the physical I might recognize from dreams and distant memories. Something in the physical that draws me to them.

I’ve written this all out because of a driving need to understand love. But now I see the complexities are beyond my understanding entirely. So I will rest in the fact that the more I know myself, and the more I focus on being a beneficial light, absent of ill-will and judgment, that the more I will benefit love. And in this way I will grow; only to perish again with the seasons, and once again reseed, resurface, and stare in wonderment.

Post 246: Inside of Me

| Aspergers Girls

Sometimes I set rules upon myself. Rules that have stuck to me from a time before.  Perhaps a word, a saying, a post, a telling, an insult, or advice. Perhaps the news, a reading, an article, or a thought. Rules that materialize and become real, and have a life of their own. They live. They breathe. And they wallow in me. They make me cry or weep or scream.

Sometimes the rules feel thick and deep: muck and mire and all things fire. Sometimes the rules feel light and airy, with a consistency of jello—something to bounce off of and expand into. I get trapped and confused and mingle in the ever-changing texture.

Sometimes the rules feel bleak and non-purposeful, not necessary, silly, or even stupid; as much as I despise the word stupid, the rules feel that way. All contorted, sorted, and placed out to trap and confuse. To leave downtrodden and in misery.

Sometimes the rules feel abstract and unreal. Like an invention to appease the masses or control, or mask what rests beneath.

There are rules to everything and everyone, as if we are part of some gigantic game. Move forward this way and in that direction, but not too fast or too slow, or too willingly, or too purposely. Step back and allow space, but not that much space or that much emptiness. Fill up this area. Not so high, though, and not so narrow. Go wider. Go denser. Go more to this side. Not there. There. Over there!

You see? You see the rules, how they sway and mix and mingle and disperse? How one builds atop the other and then just vanishes like the light of day; when all along the sun remains. The rules remain. They are like a haunting, a ghost with an endless appetite that eats away, dismembering thoughts and peace. Taking the peace of mind with the pieces.

I am not a woman of rules. I am a woman of being, of breathing, of living, of feeling, of experiencing, of accepting, of loving.

If you do not have rules then you cannot set me in a box, place me where you think I belong, where you think I dwell. If you do not have rules, you cannot see me with eyes of judgment and distaste, cannot build me up, only to knock me down and watch as I bleed.

If you do not have rules, you cannot make me bleed.

Rules. What are they? What do they be? And how do I stop the rules inside of me?