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I was not built to be alone, especially not in this world. In talking to other aspie women, there seems to be a split, right down the middle—those that are more comfortable being alone and those that need a companion. I appear to be the latter.

However, I run into trouble with relationships, in my inability to understand what ‘love’ is, what ‘standards’ are, and what ‘boundaries’ are. Without these basic states of awareness, I do expose myself to danger and chaos. The chaos mostly found in the aftermath of a decision I made based on nothing but the heart, it seems.

I am fragile. I am naïve. I am not able to comprehend the simplest of what would be deemed ‘red flags.’ In truth, I don’t understand ‘red flags.’ I lack the ability to look into someone and see what is flawed, wrong, or an indication of posing a potential threat to my wellbeing.

The reason for my limitations is two-fold. First and foremost, no matter how many times I am hurting from an encounter with another, and feeling the repercussions based on something I interpreted from the other’s words or actions, I lack the capacity to hold onto this ‘lesson’ and learn from the experience. It is if I can be hurt repeatedly by exposure to circumstances, feel the deep penetrating pain and remorse, and oftentimes shame, but then this experience and recollection/evaluation is erased from my memory, and I am wiped clean with a definite innocence and renewed sense of hope.

It appears one person cannot diminish my light or my quest, that I cannot be knocked down, jaded, shaded with the scope of a negative outlook, or rewired to be more cautious. I just can’t.

The second factor involving my limitation is the process in which I measure words and definitions. Everything I think and say, even write, as is the case at this instance, is evaluated for clarity and accuracy. My life is truth. My cause is truth. My message, whether it be in written form or demonstrated in aspects of my daily living, is truth. If I falter at all it is in my inability to accurately express the truth within. Words are entirely limiting and mere factors of what is the whole of me. In this way, I believe, I would best serve myself and the world if I was gifted with telepathy, in that I could simply think, or even pre-think, and in the act of willing my experience the images and truth of my heart would seep out without the necessity of language. Had I been born into a world where words were non-existent, I might perchance better survive.

Everyway in which people evaluate and judge other people makes little sense to me. I love people. I understand that we are each ‘flawed’ human beings with ‘issues,’ ‘baggage,’ and that which is primarily observed as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ attributes. I understand that most of the population in this society judges others based on their own made up collection of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs.’ Therefore, I understand that upon meeting a person, most singular beings take out this imaginary scroll of collected experience, perception, and conclusions and utilize this list, scribed by self alone in the limited scope of how he or she understands and choses to interpret the world, and then sets about to fit others into a category, a box, and/or hierarchy. Individuals are made into this or that, labeled, and discarded into a place that one deems they belong. I see this. I get this. I know this. But I can’t do this. I haven’t the means or know how or skill set. Even as I see it as a gift I carry, I see it too as a curse, in that to not be able to evaluate is to not be able to avoid personal danger.

In my tendency to be over-forgiving, over-trusting, over-loving, and incapable of holding a grudge, I am made in one way weaker, yet in another way stronger. Still the weakness often prevails. And even as I cannot hold resentment, I still very much seep over in tears and confusion recalling a hurt I have experienced whilst with someone, and in this state of seeping with sorrow, my voice might shake and even sound angry. But inside, deep inside, where the me of me resides, I feel nothing but compassion and love. I do not know how to loathe, to hate, to want to set something right, as I do not understand wrongs.

Perhaps this is because inside of me I cannot find the aspect of wrongdoings. This is not to say I do not abide by a concept of ‘evil’ or ‘darkness.’ This I can see readily. Nor is it to say I do not harbor my own set of essential ‘flaws.’ It is to say, that in my perception, anyone deemed ‘monster’ or ‘insane’ has lost a bit of his or her soul, and in truth, the evil-doer is lost onto him or herself, and the spirit thusly in a distant land, the body taken over by something out of hand. And in this way I love the distant spirit that is asleep in a far away place, and behold the ‘wrong-doer’ as primarily innocent in his or her own unsolicited suffering and absence.

As I walk in this world, I do not know how to decipher the person in front of me into what he or she is, other than a human being and spirit, and feasibly a reflection of my own self and my collection of established and attached truths. I do not know how to feel angry towards someone, who like me, is suffering in the human condition. How can I be judge and/or jury, when I readily recognize the disjointedness of our society, and the suffering endured from the conjoined isolation and fear brought on by lack of love and understanding? How can I punish, with the act of my judgment and dismissiveness, a one that is merely trying to survive their own chaotic world? Are we not each and everyone starved animals, preying upon some source or another hoping for escape from the fear of loneliness?

I understand the concepts of fear and love, intensely. I know when there is pure love there is no fear. I know when there is fear there is no love. I also recognize that in the illusion and creation of fear, that love remains, even if only visible to the one that is clear at heart. I understand that fear is a manifestation and part of the human physical conditioning. And I understand that fear serves its purpose at one level as biological manifestations we be. But to a similar degree, I understand that there is no fear and that love resides beneath all.

These concepts are engraved into me. I am sketched by some unknown understanding with knowings of unconditional love. Therefore, when I meet someone, I love them instantly, or in rare cases, wherein I sense ‘evil’ or better yet and absence of wholeness of spirit, I am repelled. Yet, for the most part, those I meet I love. Despite whatever ‘flaws’ or ‘garbage’ they harbor, I might momentarily believe I sense.

In first encounters, I can logically gather a long list of pros and cons of someone, but then everything turns murky and gray, and what I thought was truth is just a collaboration of my preconceived notions. In actuality, each person I behold is not whom I think he or she is, and never will be. This doesn’t confuse me; it just is.

Confusion arises primarily when I am asked, by self, or encouraged by another, to evaluate a situation involving an individual and decide if a relationship with that person is indeed ‘healthy’ for me. I run into trouble foremost because I don’t understand how to do this. I can come up with endless lists and variables in regards to the aspects of another being. Considering most people have lived decades, the aspects of their lifetime and personhood are seemingly limitless. How am I to decide what is worthy for me? How am I to be judge another when my soul intention is to love?

Standards come into place, then, in the effort to evaluate another. What I have been taught, and what I have absorbed as ‘acceptable’ and ‘not acceptable.’ Some standards make sense, because they are biologically based—manifested and made evident at a physical level. In example, I feel harmed when I am in a situation of physical abuse. This I can recognize, because the action of physical harm is more concrete and evident than say another form of abuse, such as the more abstract condition of emotional harm. But there are very few standards that are black and white. There are a plentitude of means of evaluating that have endless outcomes and feasible ways to play out. There are many more that scream of a lost broken soul in search of home, and nothing more. I cannot understand how to seek out that which is perfection when I, whilst on this earth, lack perfection. Still, I recognize the greater good in me and the good in others.

So the dilemma becomes when is enough enough? When is someone not enough for me? Is it when I start to wither and die inside? Is it when life seems even more full of perils and deceitfulness? Is it when I feel worse about myself? Is it when my energy is zapped or my heart bleeding out? I do not know. And how am I to recognize in another something that is foreign in myself. If I be but a shade of blue and all I see is shade of blue, how is it I will decipher the ravaging scent of purple?

I do not know how to decide who is good for me, when I do not have the ability to choose what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad.’ I see the infinity of reasoning, into the endless ways. Perhaps this is my brain. Perhaps this is my heart. Perhaps I am this soul, so entirely aware that the evidence becomes so grand in scope I have not the wherewithal to look upon the entire truth. And in so being, I behold only a subcategory, a sliver, a facet that dictates the rest, or attempts to highlight the truth. Yet, I recognize what is. I recognize what shrouds me in all my circumstance: this limiting truth, a bear minimum extracted from the whole of whole.

And who am I to know? Who am I to know? know?