A bunion of a gal, I called Cousin Betty, leaned on a century-old redwood tree picking at a quarter-size scab on her elbow. She was unsightly, red all over with flakes of skin saluting the wind. When I thought about Betty, I visualized a witch hunched over a littered kitchen table yanking on the blue ligaments of a cold chicken leg with her silver-crowned, tobacco-stained teeth.
I couldn’t help myself.
This complete story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers
I’m a SUPER FREAK this morning. I am pretty sure my youngest has restless leg syndrome. And he definitely talks, moans, and moves a whole lot in his sleep. Oh, yes…..traveling once again, and so very much reminded of my human condition. This time an eleven hour drive to California with my three boys, ages ten, thirteen, and fourteen…..oh boy! Literally!
Just pulled this writing up from early May 2012. Today, again, having slept in a hotel (sigh) I am dealing with much overload, lack of sleep, exhaustion, and grumpiness. Hope to have a happier disposition tomorrow after a decent night’s sleep. If you see a woman having a meltdown on the side of Highway 5 in California…that would be super freak me!
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On the first day of our trip to the Island of Maui, I was reminded of my over sensitive system. I hadn’t imagined the plane fight would be such an unpleasant experience. I’d forgotten, or more likely, I’d hoped for change.
Many people with Aspergers, if not all, are extremely sensitive. They feel emotions and feelings in great depth. Likewise, their senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are very acute. Often, a person experiences sensory overload when he or she is outside his everyday environment. In some cases, home or perhaps nature, are the only places that are tolerable to the senses. Outside of the comfort zone, a person with Aspergers can likely feel an overwhelming degree of agitation, pain, and misery. This is one of the reasons I prefer to spend more time at home than in public places. Sensory overload can lead to meltdowns—which are akin to adult tantrums—a screaming out for help, when one does not know how to help one’s self.
In considering sound, where many people can block out background noise and focus without distraction, people with sensory sensitivities hear everything at once. There is no mute button. And there is no making the noise stop, beyond earplugs and escape.
The other senses work the same. Textures irritate. Smells overwhelm and overtake. Sights hurt. And even the taste of air is unpleasant.
It appears there is something about the Asperger’s sensory and processing system that cause people to sense things in the environment in segmented over-exaggerated parts, instead of whole. Instead of looking upon a crowd and seeing a crowd, one looks upon a multitude of bombarding shapes and sizes, each movement as uncomfortable to view as the next.
People with sensory sensitivities are acutely aware of everything happening in their environment and everything seems to be occurring all at once. There isn’t release. What would be a soft unnoticeable hum to one becomes a piercing roar to the other. It is as if someone has turned up the volume of every single sensory organ.
There is no relaxation, only the constant stream of shards—parts of chatter, parts of the ticking clock, parts of the rattling and hum. There are parts of smells, all sorted out and classified, not mingled, not forgotten. There are parts of tastes—the breath, the air, the fragrances, the poisons chemicals. Sights are in parts. Fragmented pieces that attempt to make a whole, but fail. A face not remembered except as shape of wrinkled wide nose and color of dark narrow eyes. Even the mind is in parts, continually breaking down wholes to subsections. Whole to parts is easy. Parts to whole is hard. Nothing is as it appears. Everything is in parts. It is the parts that bring agony, the endless parts that bring with them the impossibility of finding retreat in the whole.
With my sensory sensitivities, the six-hour ride in the airplane to Maui was torturous. No mind control, mantras, visualization, or distractions could stop the parts. And lacking the ability to help myself, sank me into self-blame. I sat in misery wishing to time travel into sweet oblivion. I became depleted, agitated, and depressed. Meltdown was avoided, but angry eyes prevailed.
The worst was the piercing babies’ cries. There were at least ten babies on the plane. There wasn’t a time when one wasn’t screaming.
I did find refuge. I had my words. I could write. I could escape through the process of creating images, feelings, and thoughts into story. Words were my parachute and freedom, a passport away from the screaming shards.
I have the hardest time writing when I am trying not to confront what is troubling my mind.
At those times, when angst is knocking on spirit’s door, I tend to write romantic and lust-filled poetry, or distract myself with stories from the past. I tend to grasp onto my muse, my anchor, a jolt that compels me into another state of reality.
Today I am insecure. I am insecure about my appearance, my personhood, my ability to shine, and my very spirit. I am looping in thought. And the taters are hitting the fan. I am worried that I am not enough, even though innately I know I am. I am worried that I am a facade, even though at my core I know I am authentic. I am worried about my health and a host of other items.
Insecurity is an emotion I’ve dealt with pretty much my entire life on earth, at least ever since my mother and father divorced. My insecurity quadrupled in size when my mother divorced my stepfather, and I was never able to see my step brothers and sisters again. My insecurity grew when my best friend was kidnapped, my pets died as I predicted, my homes constantly changed, and my mother became lost in her own world. The emotion mutated and divided when I mistook a teenager for the man I would marry someday and teenage girls for trusted confidants. And grownups as safety. The emotion enveloped the whole of me when I reached adulthood and realized I was very much still an infant.
I remember being so brave, so strong, and trying and trying to do the right thing. If I could only do the right thing, then life would be manageable. I remember with clarity the day my friends collected starfish on the ocean shore; I remember running up the sandy hill to the the truck, and hovering in the camper shell weeping, because no one would listen as I cried and shouted on the beach that the starfish were living creatures, and my friends were killing them. I remember lots of times crying in enclosed spaces…in tents, in closets, under covers, in bushes….anywhere I could escape the sadness surrounding me.
I figured if I tried hard enough, I could make a difference in my world and within myself. Take away the horrible pain. I thought if I tried enough, I too would get the promises, the opportunity, the good stuff.
I tried so hard that I succeeded in many ways, I gather. Only I don’t know what I succeeded in or for whom.
I like to pretend sometimes I have the answers.
I like to pretend I am carrying this grand light of wisdom and trust, of faith and hope, of all things precious and divine.
I like to pretend ego is in the backseat, Source at the wheel, and my present moment is the only one that matters.
I like to pretend.
I can’t tell imaginings from reality. I can’t find the line. I doubt the line even exists.
Sometimes I think I shine too much. Sometimes I think I lost the earthly cloak that stops the inner glow, that stops me from becoming depleted. I wonder what I’ve given up in order to shine. I wonder if the dark is perhaps a better place to go.
I thought writing would be my avenue, my escape, a way I could finally be me. But the pressure is building and the patterns are starting, and everything seems a repeat. Again I am soother, lifter, giver, sweet Sam, adored, gentle, kind…so kind. I’m still flawed. I get that. I’m not perfect. But I lean to the side of trying to be perfect, trying to be what I think others want to see. I make others my gods, my suitor, my love. I make people my exact reflection; their opinions my barometer. I see in my own mirror what I imagine others see. And then I tell myself not to. To stop. To trust. And then I wonder what and whom to trust, when my very existence seems a dream.
No matter how many times I tell myself I am enough, I still search. I think that if a certain person loves me then everything else will be erased. I dream of being rescued. I dream of escaping this life. A life that by most standards is wonderful. I have no idea where I would escape to. I have absolutely no idea. I just know I long to escape.
My mind is constant. Everything and everyone is questioned. Each comment I answer is weighted and analyzed. Each word I write a drop of blood, a hope that I spoke correctly, I answered honestly, I did my best. Each letter of the alphabet carries the weight of an elephant.
Typing is not typing. Typing is risking. Each word leads to thoughts. Each thought to more evaluation. Why do I care? Why can’t I let go? Why can I not accept me? Why does one person hold my world and my worth? Why can I not care only about the other and not about me? Why is my ego still here? Why do I have any motive at all except love? What is the right amount of drive? Am I too driven? Am I not driven enough? Am I too honest? Am I not honest enough? What is telling the whole truth, if not laying out my emotions? What is truth?
And yes, what of this light? This grand light? Is it anything beyond descending and decreasing photons………….
Sadness set in this evening, or what is soon to be yesterday evening. I blame it on potatoes. Carbs usually make me tired, trigger pain, and make me question my entire existence. Yes—this is the power of the Tater Tot in my life.
tater tots Potatoes
Other things besides deep-fried hash-browned potatoes do that to me, too—trigger stuff. All sorts of things, really, and all day long, and sometimes into the late night.
It is interesting, to say the least.
I have all these parts of me, most of which I very much appreciate, but then I have these additional parts, that in many ways feel like spare parts left over from an old model. All these parts just lying around, scattered about on the ground, serving no purpose but to cause me to stir….which I guess is a use in and of itself….to stir me.
It’s super hard at times. Seems so much in my life is a potential tater tot. I employ all types of remedies to avoid the taters; I really do. So much positive thinking. So much positive measures and actions. All in all, I find spending time with me marvelous. That is until the taters come.
Thing is it seems these taters, they inspire me. Something about the tater angst, I reckon.
When I receive things in prayer, often the words I hear are common to me.
(*) Therefore “angel,” “heaven,” and “eternal life” are in the text, because those are words that resonated with me at the time of the writing. The words can easily be replaced to fit another’s comfort level.
This was scribed by me over a year ago. Had I asked this same question today, no doubt the response would be somewhat different in word choice and content. Still this stands the test of time for me. I continue to find the message comforting and affirming.
Spring 2011
On FEAR
(by Samantha Craft)
There is a lot of energy in your area that is directed towards fear: fear of illness, fear of disaster, fear of future, fear especially of repercussion of past choices. This fear is a necessary part of the process of human evolution. At the same time, this fear is necessary to release.
Fear creates more fear, even as fear sleeps below as nothingness. It can create. This fear is nothing, and yet it produces. This is a concept of debate, but nonetheless true.
Without fear we do not learn to release fear. In the process of release, we discover, if even for a small moment, a sense of tranquility and knowingingness that is best described as lifting of the veil.
In fear we find refuge from our common problems; we escape momentarily from what is around us in the present, and let go of where we stand, our foundation slipping beneath us into oblivion even without us taking note. People respond to fear like iron flecks to magnet. This fear calls to us, promising us solution and reprieve from our ordinary dwellings of spirit.
This fear is a falsehood, with false intention and false promises.
Answering the call of fear does not do little; answering the call of fear does great—in this we mean there is no small amount of consequences of responding to the call of fear; there is only large amount of consequence.
Fear begets fear, begets fear. Fear instills fear. Even a discussion or revelation of the consequences of fears’ travels, begets even more fear.
There is similar process with love, except love currently (for you) does not have the same magnetic pull. Perhaps because the axis of the earth, as you perceive it, is more prone for fearful thoughts and circumstances. Perhaps more because the axis of the mind is more prone for fearful thoughts and circumstances. For as the earth is on an axis, thus is the mind, spinning out of control with the simplest of perceived threats.
WE must turn back and find from where the threat has risen, from what the ultimate fear has stemmed from. When we look closely, and with open spirit eyes, we shall soon rediscover what we already innately knew; we shall witness that fear is always a derivative of death. What we fear ultimately is what will bring us to death. Death is perceived as an enemy, a curse that falls on the unlucky and cursed. Death is something to escape, to run from, to spend countless energy in all forms sprinting from.
There is no escape. Death is here. Death is all around you. Death is in the flower giving birth; to the tree releasing his soul; to the ocean bleeding on the shores; everything sheds, releases and is reborn.
Instead of running from death, it is beneficial to run towards love.
WE are so busy creating in our minds the scenarios to escape death, that we become blinded by our neighbors, by the needy, by the naïve, and staves of hopelessness.
You need not fear this word created as Death, for he is as real as your shadow, as real as the reflection on the water where you look and cannot touch. For if you touch these illusions they diminish before the brain can process their possible existence.
You too will diminish, as a shadow that was born for only moments. In this moment you are but an existence within an existence, a shadow within a shadow.
There is no escaping a threat that does not exist. Only escaping a mind that tricks you as the coyote tricks the layman. You are but a crippled traveler, thinking he has set eyes upon an oasis in the desert, running towards the illusion of water to relieve a thirst that does not exist.
Fear not this self-created death—fear more the response you have created in your world to an illusion—to the actions of the fearful—to what you leave behind and forget when fear is the house you reside your spirit, your soul.
You are so much more than illusion and self-created pain and fear. You are like the dove with the laurel branch offering guidance and reassurance amidst a land that has been washed away. You need not fear, for your wings will carry you to the highest ground, to the place above fear, where you can look down, as a scope to the world, and examine all that is beneath, before, and after.
Above are the answers; lift your head to the heavens (*), and then go above this place of fear.
You have no control over the evolutions of time, the events that mark your destiny, the places you shall and shall not travel.
This is written: That no man shall know the end times until the end times have past. That no man shall suffer unknowingingly and undutiful without the assistant of his angels. That no man shall be alone. For if one man is alone, all man shall be alone.
And in the end, when the sun has ceased to shine, and the heavens (*) have opened welcoming every last soul to the eternal promise (*) , we shall sing for all that has past, for this enemy in fear, for this teacher; for though he has troubled and hindered, has forbade and tackled, he has also inspired the multitudes to cling like diamond to his sister, and rocket to the sky.
We shall be triumphant, not in our measurement of fear or release of tiresome aches. WE shall be triumphant in our ability to overcome the magnificent foe of fear.
And in this way, when we gather together around the burning embers of fear, embracing the love that bleeds from fear’s core, then, and only then, shall we see the illusion of all that was, is and is yet to be.
There is no you, only us, only we, only eternity in the notion of forever. You are love. You are fear. You are everything you embrace. So we beseech you to embrace love, to see the heart that resides in the core of the fear that grips you. Love yourself, love your neighbor, and in this all will be healed. Forever.
Everyday Asperger's 