challenges

Day 231: Temporary

| Aspergers Girls

(This is a continuation from yesterday’s post: Day 230 Tornado )

From the backseat of a dented sedan, amongst a cluttering of mismatched suitcases, I drew in my breath through my nostrils and lowered my head in doleful resignation. There, outside my car window atop a plateau, slept a muddy-brown structure—most of its windows draped in faded tangerine sheets.

“There it is,” Ben said, curling his lips into a satisfied grin and tapping his hands on the steering wheel to the beat of the song Sexual Healing.

The car engine stopped.  The music stopped.  And Ben started.  “Just take a look,” he said with an easy stroke to Mother’s sleeveless shoulder.  “It’s just like I told you. Look!”

Glancing forward and to the left a bit, I followed Ben’s rounded back up, and then across and down the length of his burly arm to his stubby finger which pointed through the window to a pathetic dwelling; which alas, to my deep disappointment, appeared to be the worst house on the best street in town.  Not only was the house in desperate need of paint and the yard weeping with neglect, but the mailbox itself was a rusted clump of sadness.  My soon to be new home, this place I would slumber and eat, shower and dress, and partake in life in general, was ironically misplaced, set out in front of the world in its worst garment and accessories.

Knowing what to do, almost instinctively, I narrowed my eyes into a half-squint and scanned the surface alternating the image of the house from blurry to clear and back again to blurry.  I’d looked at my reflection in the mirror in the same way, after discovering by blurring my reverse-self I was momentarily able to erase all visible flaws.

 

The rest is in the book 🙂

 

Day 230: Tornado

| Aspergers Girls

Tornado

One midday, beneath the shade of a leaning cypress tree, after the late-spring sea fog had lifted, I stared out to the crashing waves with a grave impassivity.  In the past years, I’d grown deeply attached to the ocean side town. I believed in a sense we were one, the town and I, joined together in the same way the redwood trees unite their roots underground.

Aggrieved and spiraling with emotions like a blender on high-speed, I replayed Mother’s words, her promises; there would be new bedroom furniture and a private school, and a nice house.  I could wear a school uniform like Jane.

Mother had strolled into my room twenty-minutes earlier with a confident air and found me absorbed in my sticker collection book, categorizing each sticker by theme.  I was on the butterfly page. There were 33 butterflies—one more butterfly than fairies.  Mother had a faraway look, a deep and distant gaze that made me think she was traveling with the angels in the sky or the dolphins in the sea.  I knew innately from all my years with Mother that she was happy; and so I also knew she wasn’t going to tell me her boyfriend Ben was finally leaving; still, I held onto the hope, even though all the signs pointed in the opposite direction.

 

The rest is in the book 🙂

 

Day 227: Independent Thought

| Aspergers Girls
Happy Me….before I got super sick!!! Two weeks ago. Seems like months ago. Still recovering. Hope to be back to self super soon.

Independent Thought

There are too many rules inside this head, of what to love and what to dread,

Of whom to trust, and whom to fear, of when to speak and when to steer,

Away from one and towards another, and follow instead the words of a brother,

Where rests this inner truth that’s real, within spoon-fed morsels of how to feel,

In mountains high of indoctrinated texts and rivers wide of created sects,

Of where to stand, for what, and why, of when to grin and when to cry,

To find the answers, when none exist, to hear their echoes, when all just twists,

This tattered net, transitioning mesh, idealization of living flesh,

Curses at unwanted things, traps illusion in greed’s spindly strings,

Dark and nettled, bent to shape, the landscaped thoughts, thusly raped,

Of truth that breathes within the self, of passion, of love, of grace and stealth,

What kinship have thee, what ancestors whole, where is character bred, in life’s foothold,

Must I reap what others sow, and follow through where they too go,

Oh what of  this seared misplaced soul, unraveled at seams from tellings told,

Draped and ripened in merriment, branded with steamed discontent,

Belly full,  treasures vast,  spirit bled for youthful gifts,

A charade, half-finished, that never ends, and claims the light of one again,

A painted canvas of needy spades, digging up foundation that was never made.

~ Samantha Craft, September 2012

Day 226: Said Sadly, Sam

| Aspergers Girls

I cannot blog for you tonight, said sadly, Sam, as she sat upright

To avoid the mucus inside her chest, that was springing forward like a pest

Again the sound from hacking host, dislodging phlegm from coast to coast

As far as spit and spew can fall, she’s come up first in fame of hall

Coughing trophy at thy feet, blue ribbon prize for winner to tweet

Perhaps YouTube the latest sounds, the whooping bird that left the grounds

I cannot blog for you at all, said sadly, Sam, curled into ball

Tummy hurts from all the pills, low-grade fever has trumped the chills

And everywhere I turn to see, I spy a mess staring back at me

Laundry piles and dust bunnies dance, and cobwebs laugh at circumstance

I’m forced to sit, and sit and be, to soak up liquids and drown in me

Who shall pull the plug and drain, the constant woes and annoying pain

Especially the voice inside the head, that cries and barks: Go back to BED!

~ Sam Craft, 2012

Day 219: Between the Poopies and the Poppies

| Aspergers Girls

(There was a previous photo of me going into an outhouse. lol)

I didn’t actually go into the outhouse. It’s like my least favorite place in the world. I prefer bushes. And I don’t poop. I’m a princess, and princesses don’t poop.

*

*

California Golden Poppy by Sam Craft

~~~~~~~

This is me thinking I am standing up straight. I have no idea what I look like most of the time. Am I a bendy doll? Now I’m starting to realize why guys might think I want their number.

Between the Poopies and the Poppies

I have a difficult time understanding the middle ground.

I am at one extreme or the other.

I am a prude or I am sexy.

I am trying whole heartedly or I give up.

I am excited or I am bored.

I am starving or I have no appetite.

I hyper extend my body backwards or I hunch forward.

I  smile huge or I frown deep.

I  have extreme hope or I have extreme sorrow.

I feel joy or I feel agony.

I think I’m cute enough or I believe I’m too ugly to leave the house.

I worry obsessively or I let everything go.

I am overly fatigued or I have extreme energy.

I  cling or I walk away.

I smoother another or I want nothing to do with a person.

I overshare or I clam up.

I’m talkative or I want complete silence.

I obsess or I walk away in disinterest.

I am confident or I am insecure.

I like myself or I hate myself.

I’m trying to find that middle ground, somewhere between the poopies and poppies.

Between the crap and the sunshine.

Between the stench and sweetness.

Between the ugly and the beauty.

I just don’t know how to get there.