challenges

490: The Power of One

| Aspergers Girls

meeeee

I have undergone tremendous growth. The type of transitions wherein some unknown force pulls the fighting body whilst self is kicking and screaming and begging for retreat. In recent days, I have endured countless bombardments of self-esteem. Acts, which are best described as, infused with angst, confusion, and distaste. Each repeated occurrence brought on by events in which I, as self, directly submitted. As if I was, in a place of some higher part of being, orchestrating the mayhem to illustrate a lesson that a part of me had avoided, but in retrospect surely required.

In the previous days, I have been quite the proverbial doormat, I confess. Vacant, in respect to the manner in which I allowed and, I dare admit, sought out people to be a mirror to my attributes of self-doubt and self-loathing. As it was, I chose to partake in uncomfortable exchanges. I allowed my esteem to be penetrated by forces that weren’t for my benefit; at least, not beneficial in the short-term. (For in the scheme of life I am one who upholds that the self can render all happenings to blossom into some sort of benefit, even if minute in size. Just as the scale of emotional evaluation leans towards the element of intense agony, there on the other side is room for benefit always, or at least the feasible creation of benefit.)

As aforementioned, I was a doormat. I don’t know if I have always been such a symbolic representation of an open invitation to trample all over said self, or if this way of existing is something I adopted based on prior occurrences of heartache. I assume, and could likely prove, I was definitely a doormat of sorts, decades before this moment; yet, I believe, based on a collective history, in the past I had established a set of standards and ideal ways of treating myself beyond that era.

Regardless, in the last days I reverted back to a time that is best described as reclusively in a state of self-admonishment, isolation, degradation, and grasping. Think desperate.

I reminded myself, whilst observing my actions and behaviors during the last month, of the person I was that lived during a time period where I lacked all grains of self-esteem and self-worth. A time when I pleaded for my cause of worthiness, while simultaneously drowning in a self-inflicted pool of disbelief of my delegated case. My self was lost. I was lost. And I forgot who and what I was.

Most recently, I found myself here, in the laps of proving and searching for validation of who I was for weeks, one after the other, fixating on a person to provide a valid representation of my worth. It was ridiculous to view my actions from afar, as observer twice removed with her palm smacking into her forehead. Undoubtedly, through it all, the houndings of surrendered esteem boggled and brazened my mind.

During these ordeals, I kept myself honest, explaining to my significant other what was happening, and exploring the shadow aspects of myself that were surfacing. My journey was a reliving of sorts, the trespassing into that of the last of the baggage of my past. A torrential place where I’d had hovelled up close to anyone for any cause, in order to attempt to feel alive and loved, a time period where if I were to be beast my tail would have been quivering between my legs and my voice quaking for attention. In these days of long ago and now more recent, I sought to be lifted by another person, to be recognized and celebrated, to be adored, and to furthermore be adorned.

The repercussions of my recent travelings cannot be explained in-depth, as the process entailed an exterior and interior part of this self, so greatly complex and unsubstantiated, that any evidence excavated and presented formidably here would fall short. That is to say that in an attempt, even in the greatest attempt, to explain what has transpired, I would be omitting far more than I was telling, not out of purposeful intention, but out of the incapacity to scribe what has no words: an experience beyond me.

I was submitted, by my purposeful actions, though much torture; again, not by any one source, or even by many, but by a collaboration of events transpired as a result of my higher-self renderings and doings.

In the end, if there be end, as I stand here now, I am much shattered and broken out of the shell of the past, reborn anew into a distinct stronger self. I have been granted ample means in which to review my behavior and ample paths in which to take said happenings and graduate myself from a degree of shame and regret to a higher plane of reasoning and vast understanding.

I am donned in gratefulness for the renderings by said higher power. Yet, in all truthfulness, I cannot and will not omit the aspect of feeling tremendous relief over the passings of such days. I am glad to be back home, if home be the word. For though I am much more grounded and made aware of my circumstances and previous choices, the place in which I landed, where I rest in this moment, feels unfamiliar and unexplored. As if I had been transported from a state of much confusion to a state of much clarity, only during the process of the journeying, the earth in which I previously stood had been altered and replanted with indigenous bearings, yet unknown to self.

489: I don’t understand…

| Aspergers Girls

1. I don’t understand manipulation; I mean I understand the definition of it; I can render it dormant in myself, stop it before it even surfaces. So I recognize its coming. But I do not understand manipulation in completion. It seems that much of the world functions as a whole by manipulating the environment and events in hopes of gaining a perceived outcome. I don’t like that attribute or any semblance of that attribute in myself. In so being, I constantly am evaluating and reevaluating my motivation in attempt to weed out any sprouts or seedlings of manipulation. Thusly, I am in a nonstop state of deep analysis of self in effort to be that which I wish to represent as truth and goodness, even as I exist in a world full of trickery.

2. I don’t understand pointing the finger at someone outside the self. Yes, I understand cause and effect. I understand it so well, indeed, that I see the flurry of possibilities and renderings in every circumstance I perceive. I see in black and white in a sense, but not in a segregated way. I see nothing as entirely right nor anything as entirely wrong. I see both sides; and I see what is outside those two opposing sides, in the middle, above and below. There isn’t any way of proving anything, as all is scaffolded off of a non-original thought positioned in my brain by some eventual found pattern or discovery. Pointing a finger is declaring I know. When I know I know little to nothing of this world. Pointing the finger is proclaiming I am correct, when no such person exits that is in complete correctness. I become exhausted in thought, as I wish to exist as many: to blame fully, to counter, to get irate, to live in a place in which I am both innocent and justified in action. But I cannot go there. I try. I try to don the same robes as the majority, and I am immediately succumbed by feelings of suffocation, regret, and a sense of ‘wrong.’ If I was to point a finger at all, it would be inwardly at self, in having found myself attached to a societal rule of blame as a result of turning away from self-responsibility and adhering to a false individualized and limited self-perception.

3. I don’t understand friendship. Being with others confuses me. I am often giddy and overcome with joy when I first engage with an old friend or new friend. I laugh a lot. I take on my friends mannerisms and way of being. I become less of a me I know little of, and more of this other I seem to suddenly understand a lot about. I am a sponge of sorts, soaking up what is in my immediate environment. Empathic, perhaps. Psychic? I don’t know. It almost seems biological at times, as if I can feasibly metamorphasize not into butterfly from caterpillar, but from one shape I had adopted to the next before me. I often smother another with my attention, wanting, and what appears to be love. But I know not what I am actually doing. It feels like a reunion of sorts, a coming together after eons apart. Only, when we again separate, I am left bewildered by my actions, and again wondering who am I. Worse, I doubt my genuineness, my authenticity, my essential being. To watch myself as observer morph and remorph is both baffling and disturbing. I long to simply be as stagnant one not taking on the persona or emotions of another. But as hard as I wish, I remain some tangent unborn onto self, and reborn in true form as another.

4. I don’t understand love. I have tried and tried and tried. I feel great bonds. I feel great affection. I feel admiration. I feel a like-vibration of sorts that brings on kindred feelings of sameness, recognition and home. I understand over-thinking about someone. I understand longing and wanting someone. I understand the bodily sensations of erotica. Yet, I do not understand the concept of love. I would declare with accuracy I love my children because yes, I would die for them. But is dying for someone love? If so, whom else would I die for? And I would further claim with accuracy I love my good friend, but why would be the next question. Is love based on standards of behavior, on me feeling good and safe, on me feeling lifted and self-validated in my existence? Most seems evident of selfish ego-needs. And so I become wrapped in confusion again of love. If it’s just a knowing and a feeling, then I have this type of ‘love’ a lot. If it’s a desiring to connect, then I have this too. I believe I could romantically love anyone, given the proper setting and environment, the proper influences through the years. I can be taught to love based on what I have been exposed to. I can be taught to choose another as my lover based on what I have collected as truisms. What if I love everyone, and that is the way it is? What if that is my confusion? In trying to separate and delegate and segregate love, I am left lost to myself. For I love but know not what for.

5. I don’t understand people. People confuse me. They can be so warm and generous at first. So available. So real. So genuine. And then they go into hiding. I overwhelm them, I think. It’s my nature to pounce out, to attach, to bleed out my soul, to engage, and to get so very excited upon connecting. I give and I give fully. This me, this all of me. And then I retreat to a place of deep regret. For again I was taken in by the beginning dance, this place of first greeting and meeting that I took for real and everlasting. You see, I stay the same, very much so, in this manner. I stay the same in my ability to love even though I know not of what love is, and in my ability to be me, even as I know not who I am. It is such a dichotomy of twisted thoughts that I seek harbor and refuge from my very brain. But the truth is I do understand me, in all my predictable unpredictability, I am the same. I am loving. I am real. I am me. And when others go someplace else beyond themselves, I am overwhelmed with confusion and self-blame. What did I do this time? Why can’t I stop myself from being SO me? Why can’t I accept that what is now won’t ever last that eventually the place where we meet as two complete souls joined in gleefulness will wear down. That I will be back to myself, wondering what went wrong.

6. I am naive. I know some people prefer the term innocent or unworldly. Of just plain kind and good. But the truth is I am naive. It doesn’t matter how many times I experience and re-experience a similar event; it still turns out the same. I still am baffled and surprised by the end result. You mean I let that happen again? You mean I was betrayed, tricked or cornered? How? Indeed my eyes are wide open. My brain is on high alert. But somehow my heart is in the lead. We follow my heart. This beautiful child-like love and we just can’t help ourselves. We fall with her, into her way of being, and we think this time we are okay. This time it’s alright. This time trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. I don’t know how to stop trusting. For I cannot see what I am not.

488: No One Need Say

| Aspergers Girls

No one need say what makes me tick or toc; I am what I am and I cannot change.

I can rearrange my thoughts and ideas, even alter my appearance. I can adapt new formulas, conditions, and ideals, even if I call them not these things. I can detach, reattach, release, let go, cling, fall forward. I can be a bountiful fool or a subject subjected to the demise of self; both relevant and in accordance to my own doing. I can surrender. I can go on bending knee to some source heartedly debated by dictators and pauper too. I can question my own doings and my own authority. I can cower backwards syndicated by onlookers’ gasping fear. And I can cower forward, a victor to self, and self alone.

I have choices, true. But they all lead back to the sameness. This being of me. This one left undone and unraveled, yet, precisely returned to where I remained before. I am a free mason in a sense, endless possibilities existing; though each road seems wearily the same, unremarkable and exhausting. To be outside myself is to be in a world that makes little to no sense. For I do not understand these motives, beyond that which appears to be selfish-desire to alleviate isolation of form.

For if in wholeness we live beyond surviving, strive in our being as unified one, then why are so many orphaned and left unsheltered, alone, bleeding out for justification of existence?

I do not know. I do not claim to know. I know not who I am, where I am going, why I am here, or how I was put here. Dropped, I suppose. Down to this torrid earth and submerged in an ocean of unfamiliarities. I long to grasp, to hold, to clutch, to blend, to become addicted to something other than thoughts. I have not the means to be without escape. And none of us seem to be different in this quest: to dive away from where we are.

There is pretending, yes, lots of games that temporarily make way for relief of the agonizing isolation. And there are the pretenders who know not what they do. But dutifully terrifying is the pretenders who know, who alleviate their own suffering through transpiring to make the others suffer more wretchedly. The tricksters, the gamblers, the demons risen. They terrify, in a sense, not because I recognize them fully but because I do not understand them in fullness. I do not relate to the carved-out ones, the angelic robes cloaked over the absence of core.

They frighten, the predators, the villains, the schemers, debaters, and those that call themselves the governing ones. For how they dictate causes demise after demise, and they feed upon the souls of meek. They teach, say they preach, that openness and vulnerability is weak. That secrets are just. That hiding and mystery are profound sweetness. They teach that I am wrong in my longing to share, to connect, to breathe. To finally breathe. They hammer with their cloven-hooved-heels, bang the very corners and edges of self, and lead the light to believe in falsehood. Masters of segregated isolation.

In their twisted perverted ways, I am found entirely faulty, my foundation itself built with inadequacy.

How can I live in a world of such gross falsehoods and appear as the same?

I cannot.

And so it is my burden to be singled out; found, even beneath the temporary masks I don. For to tread in this world, I take on the power that is them, their errors, their ways, their ever approaching doomsday. I walk as if for someone else, and not myself. Because to walk as me would be unseen and unapproachable.

In being here, in this place, I move in this way, their way: as a bit of him and a bit of her. I become the reflection of the scattered dust, much akin to the specks of iron forming shape to magnet. I stick. I absorb at molecular level. I become reframed. And here I wait, unidentifiable and beyond truth.

Stifled in wonderment, deep buried confusion, longing for the curtains to fall, the masquerade to end, the music to cease, so that no one need remain alone in such delegated foolishness.

487: Rain of Anger

| Aspergers Girls

I had the privilege and honor of seeing a shaman on Wednesday for a two-hour session. The experience was remarkable. I sat with him in such great comfort. He appeared a blank-slate: free, flowing, unblocked, and nothing cluttered. It was unexpected that I could be in the presence of someone and feel so me. I felt seen, heard, and loved. I understood him at a deep level, and he me. I saw myself, as I do in many people, and this version was heaven.

I won’t get into the details of the session as it is sacred to me. I will say he gave me three specifics. In example, with the facts altered, he said something to this degree: “Your discomfort has something to do with a little girl on a swing reading Orson Scott Card.” That’s not what he said. I have changed the details, but they are similar enough.

We talked about this and drew some conclusions.

The next day, about twenty-four hours later, someone mentioned to me randomly, out of context, the exact same words the shaman had said. A girl, sitting on a specific thing, reading a specific author. It was entirely uncanny and frightening. Just out of the blue, this person told me this. The statement did something to me. Tore through me. Terrified me.

I was able to find immediate connections and figured out why this message was important and significant. And the validation that the Shaman had foresight, or that I could feasibly create this, was intense.

Since the shamanic experience, I kid you not, my hair is curlier, I feel lighter, my mind is clearer, and I have embraced this RAGE. Yes, rage. I think it’s an accumulation of years and years of injustice I have endured, and my inability at the time to fight for myself, and the resulting habit of stuffing and being overly-kind.

It is enormous in intensity, and something has certainly shifted inside of me. I have had this terrible neck and head pain, as well. And been very sleepy.

This doesn’t trouble me. I think what I am experiencing is beneficial and indicative of much growth. I have been off-balance, to one side, for a very long time; so kind that I made myself sick, literally and figuratively. I have been longing for this shadow-side to peek her head out and to make an appearance. For years I have been searching for her. But I was frightened, as if I’d lose another part of me.

I don’t feel that way now. In fact, I sense I am gaining a part of me lost a long time ago.

I have let myself be victim for most of my life. Most recently by befriending almost anyone on Facebook, without developing boundaries or even standards. I had convinced myself that if some people can be all accepting and all loving, then why can’t I. But I forgot I am a woman. That there are predators. That not everyone will be nice just because I try my best to accept and love them. I found myself in this awful predicament of not being a caretaker but an over-accepter. I overlooked and tossed aside my own feelings of rejection, of concern, of fear. I avoided reality by living by some golden rule. I believed I could make everyone ‘good,’ or at least kind, if I was good enough. I overlooked huge potential threats and behaviors that were very much indicators of unstable minds. I invited dangerous people into my life.

I lost myself. I hurt myself. I put up with far too much for any one person. And I justified it by focusing on the good of all.

I became desperate and in search of a form of validation that wasn’t blatant or obvious. Yes, I liked myself, and yes, I loved myself. But I set myself up over and over for pain. Because I was essentially numb inside. I couldn’t feel anything but extremes.

I am starting to feel again, now. I am starting to feel when someone loves me. I am starting to feel when someone cares. I have rarely felt these emotions before. I feel less separate, less invisible, and more seen. I feel as if I have shed this robe of indestructible goodness, and donned instead one of acceptance of my human condition.

I have continued to escape into roles, one after the next, again and again. I don’t know if it will change. I don’t know who is coming next. But the woman, once child, who stuffed her pain, is gone. I won’t do that again.

I might go through a period of disorientation, I suppose. I mean, I already am. But that’s okay. I have been far too lenient with some people. Far too forgiving. It’s okay to forgive… eventually. But, gosh darn it, I need to let myself go through the other spectrum of emotions first! It’s like I beat myself up for having any ‘bad’ feelings.

I am tired of the guilt-voice I heard as a child, the one that didn’t allow me to speak my truth or to be anything but happy.

I can complain. I can get upset. I can be me in full swing. I am not some perfect angel. I am human!

The shaman gave me a great, great gift. Or I gave myself one, or we both conspired. Regardless, I am happy to be outside of the bubble of constant resilience. It’s okay to breathe here on earth for a bit, and to raise my hands up, not in helplessness, but in rage!

I am not afraid of me, anymore, or any aspect of myself. This is all unfolding as deemed necessary for my higher good; I know that. The coincidence of hearing the EXACT words of the Shaman was too out of the ordinary. Statistically impossible. And I had told not a soul these words he told me. And it came from someone I barely knew. And following the lead from there, proved fruitful.

I can’t express enough how everything seems topsy-turvy, turned upside down. I love that I am not attached to whatever I was three days ago, and I am not attached to whatever I am now. This is enough. I am enough. And if I want to roar, I will!

Mrs. Nice ‘Gal’… I am just so very weary of that role. Yes, there is niceness in me. Damn straight there is. Tons of it! Who I was before is not an act. I can see my extreme goodness and capacity for great love. But who else is in there, well she is dying to get out, strangled by her own accord. I am just glad she’s finally free. So immensely happy whilst standing in a rain of anger.

485: Back Awake

| Aspergers Girls

“I feel the safest when I am in the lap of vulnerability, tenderly tucked in the hands of truth. Here I am my self. Here I am true. However once released, a radical dichotomy manifests. For though I am safest whilst vulnerable, the aftermath of such actions brings imminent danger. Oftentimes after being exposed in the open, the lap of safety evaporates, and I am left swimming in a mist: the fog of regret, refusal, denial, and question. Having voluntarily been stripped and gutted, torn down and replaced, and surrendered in refuge to my own self, I become infant escaped into a new blinding darkness. Here I face a rushing fear of my own making. Another layer upon layer of self-doubt breeched and set painfully still within. Until I rebalance and reassemble and understand that in the risk I am reborn again.” ~ Samantha Craft, Everyday Aspergers

I am afraid. Each and every time I share with you I am frightened. This won’t ever pass. It is essentially who I am. A vulnerable wounded warrior. I accept this. I allow this. I find strength in this. Each day, like you, I reface the demons and hauntings. Each day, like you, I don’t give up. Each day one more shadow of untruth is conquered. I recognize that I face only that which is a mere shadow of doubt and fear. There is nothing out there in the forest black that threatens me. And still I tremble, some child lost in the universe of self, desperately reaching out for companions in the company of ghosts.

I am understanding today that this is okay. That I am entirely okay to be frightened. Of course, I am frightened, I feel the weight of the world. I feel inside of you. I feel inside of pain. I feel the all of all. And it is overwhelming. Until now I was fighting some invisible battle, the fight between strength and weakness. I was teaching myself subconsciously the ways of the world, some offset rules of behavior and insidious goals that equate strength to the absence of fear. I am beginning to see myself in a new light. Something that resembles the final breaking of the iceberg. In that I am set out, divided in myself and left to melt into the waters of union.

I am sensing that this interior battle is coming to an end. Or at least one end.

I am the meek one. I am the weak one. This isn’t going to change. But in this is my strength. In my inability to don the robe of pride. In my inability to be filled with praise and take refuge in compliments, this is my gift. Until now I felt numb and lost, in a perpetual state of always approaching. Now I feel centered and rebalanced, allowed to sit where I am and take note.

I am not that which is becoming anything. I am that. I am all. And in this knowing I am understanding multiple aspects of myself. There is no struggle, and yet I continue to struggle. There is not truth, and yet I continue to seek.

There is just being.

There is just being in this state of grace whatever it brings. The heartache, the question, the agonizing emptiness, the void that longs to be filled, it is all the same game, the same dance, and the partner is fear. And still I wait, thinking that if I move swifter than the rest of me I shall outrun the mystery. This isn’t true. Nothing is ahead of me, as nothing is behind. I am not being chased nor am I am the chaser. And thusly, I am in a place of waiting, waiting until the runner in me subsides, exhausted and forlorn, and returns to the only choice: that of basking in the light of truth.

I am what I am, and nothing I do or find or invent will change this. I am honorable, good, and opaque. I am that sunrise and sunset. I am that wave and that droplet. I am that which is everything. And like the tree, I need not surrender to the storms, I need just be: strong in the steadfast of my existence. I need not take up armor or weapon of mass destruction. There is nothing to excavate, demolish, or retrieve. I am already.

And here I am today, wondering why this took so long, remembering from before this exact place I stood, and watching all the scenarios of me pass by—the costumes, the robes, the dank-dazzling masks. Had I not been here all along, this child of the universe, entirely bathed and set out in truth?

I am tired of fighting this invisible ghost of me. Very weary. I surrender her to you. In all her ways. Her supercilious-self and forthright searching. I am as beacon and you are my light. You are shining within me and I within you. I am done looking. For today, I am done.

And when I arise to yet another version of self, I will remind her too, to rest, to be, to stop, to just wait. And in the waiting I shall let the movement and rush of the world subside, pass by as nothing but whispers of wind, touching down and embracing that which is us. Touching down and hushing us back awake.

meeee