communication

Day 216: Let the Grumpy Lady Pass

| Aspergers Girls

Let the Grumpy Lady Pass

“Guess what happens if you eat a raw snail? They have a parasite that goes into your brain and eats it. And our brain is not prepared for snail parasite. And you can’t defend it. It’s pretty much if you eat a raw snail, it’s all up to the snail if you live or die. If the snail has the parasite, you die!”

I am looking at snails with new eyes now, since my son’s enlightening comment on parasites. I have also reassured myself over and over that the chances are null that I will accidentally eat a raw snail and die from parasites eating my brain away.

Words are powerful, how they can alter the way you once viewed a person, place, or thing….even snails. Words can change the course of a life, too. Certainly happened for me. Just yesterday, in fact.

It was early afternoon, and I was strolling down the aisle in my favorite grocery store, when I spotted a blonde mother with five children. The oldest of her children, a young girl, was carrying her plump baby sister. The other three youngsters were little tots, all boys, ranging in height by a couple of inches from the next.

I stared, because that’s what I do when I’m processing. And about a dozen thoughts traveled through my mind all at once. I examined the mom’s facial expression, and instantly wondered if she was happy or frustrated with the shopping excursion. I noticed two of the boys had little shopping carts and that as a collective clan the family had barely gathered any groceries—just a couple bags of snack food. I evaluated and reevaluated, concluding that the mother enjoyed the attention of onlookers watching her shop with her little crew of miniature hers. In fact, I am quite certain she liked the attention. There were several of us shoppers trying to maneuver around the cute little ones, a line of about five or six of us squeezing our way down the aisle.

I was still watching and evaluating as I crept my cart forward. When I was near the mom, she eyed me closely. Then she turned to her troop and said, “Wait,” putting her arms back in stern gesture, “Let the grumpy lady pass.”

Immediately my right eyebrow shot up. Had she meant me? I was fairly certain she had. I rolled my eyes up and gave a quizzical expression, and then moved onward. A few steps ahead, I stopped to retrieve a can off the shelf. I noticed another lady standing close behind me. Feeling extremely self-conscious, and a bit flustered, I said, “Oh, I am sorry, if I am in your way.” She said, “No problem at all. But maybe you can help me find the artichokes.” I did. We scanned together, and I pointed them out with my over extended finger, while smiling big and glancing the direction of the meanie mom, as if to say, “See, how cheerfully helpful I am!”

Five aisles later, and I couldn’t get the meanie mom out of my mind. Was my expression seriously that sour? For a moment, I wished I was an always-smiling golden retriever.

By the time I reached the last aisle, my thoughts were still wrapped around the incident. By then, I had rationalized that the meanie mom wasn’t a very patient woman, and certainly wasn’t showing an effective example of behavior to her children. But I also reckoned she likely was juggling a full plate and was having a tough day. I also decided, with a mischievous little smile, that her husband, if she still had one, probably didn’t like her.

At the checkout area, I found the safest checker I could—a round-faced, middle-aged woman with a friendly natural grin. At the end of any shopping excursion I don’t look for the shortest checkout lines, I look for the least-threatening face. Typically, I chat it up with the grocery checkers as they are scanning my items. Conversation helps the time go faster, and alleviates some of my anxiety. Not much makes me more self-conscious than a line of strangers watching me; especially when they are waiting with those daunting expressions, seemingly cursing my high-piled grocery cart and wishing they’d chosen another route.

“I hope I don’t look grumpy,” I said, as I approached the checker and eyed the nametag Marge on a purple blouse. (Interesting conversation starter, don’t you think?)

I then explained, with rapid fire, what had happened on the aisle with the meanie mother. Marge smiled and responded kindly, and we bagged the groceries together. I told her about my Aspergers, and the man at the park who gave me his number as a result of my practice smiling, and she told me about her grown son with Aspergers. Turns out she homeschooled her son. He is now twenty and doing very well. We exchanged a lot of information and support in only a few minutes. I dodged the evil glares from the people in line. We were packing up the groceries rather slowly.

As Marge was bagging up the last of the food, she looked up at me, and said, “The main reason I homeschooled my son was because when he went to school he had to become someone else. He couldn’t go to school and be himself and still be accepted. He had to let go of who he was. God made my son in perfection. I wanted my son to be able to be who God intended.”

A bell went off in my head right then. My middle son was struggling in middle school even though  he was attending part-time. His anxiety was very high and depression was setting in.

I decided then and there to not send my son back to school and to instead homeschool him fulltime.

Later that day, as I calculated the probability of choosing the one checker out of a few dozen that so happened to have homeschooled a son with Aspergers, and as I processed that typically I would have not mentioned my Aspergers to a checker at a grocery store (had I not been upset), I smiled to myself about that mother and her five string of words that had changed the course of my life: Let the grumpy lady pass.

© Everyday Aspergers, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. https://aspergersgirls.wordpress.com

Day 213: Lost in my Mind

| Aspergers Girls

 

I have this person inside of me who is a judge, a stern judge, who questions and
reasons continually. He or she, or whatever it be, is relentless in their
search for truth, even when I plead that there is no truth. This entity
scrutinizes everything and everyone, even as I sit back from behind and shout
for him to stop. It as if he must dissect and find connections to
make sense of what he sees. As if my world is not enough and must be recreated
and categorized.

Nothing is easy for him. Nothing simple. Nothing plain. All is
complex. Even the eyes of a stranger are a deep hollow tunnel to dive into and
explore, to be lost from a near glance, and come out unquenched, only to dive
in again and again, to find nothing but the same. To feel depleted at every
turn because the answers don’t come readily, and when they do come they lead to
more questions.

It is an exhausting ride with no end. There is no coming up
without diving back down. There is no stopping. My mind is that rollercoaster
where the hands are up and you are screaming in glee, and then the turn comes
that makes you queasy, or the fear sets in, or the wheel make the sound that
pierces the ears, and you want to get off, you don’t want to ride again and again,
but you can’t get off, not because the belt is buckled, not because the wind is
fast and you face is slapping against it, only because you have forgotten you
are on the ride, and keep spinning round and upside down with no way to leave
what you don’t know you are on.

I can’t explain it. It is too complex and deep, and a mystery to me. I can see a forest, and getting lost in a forest, only to
awake and see that you are in a forest fast asleep dreaming of another forest,
but you are standing watching yourself sleep. It is a complexity so intense
that I am lost in my own world.

I don’t understand why others don’t see things
as I do, at least most others. How they can round a corner and think of nothing
but rounding a corner. How they can focus in a conversation and not feel and hear
and sense the thousand other things happening. What of the dust particles in
the air. The ticking clock. The grime on the couch. The fibers of the carpet
bent. The voice in the head rambling about woes. The tingling of skin. The
thoughts of the next word, and how the word carries a thousand different
meanings.

How can you talk to me and use these words when each word carries
this potential energy and meaning. Don’t you worry that I don’t understand you
exactly? Can’t you see we are not even communicating, really. That what you
sense and experience is not what you are conveying directly with words. That
what you are, whom you are is this huge collaboration of the way your body
moves, the way your eyes search, the sound of your voice, the pitch, the volume,
the breath, the sigh, the everything. How can I sit and be with you, when you
are communicating to me a fleet of ships in just one syllable, and all you
think I see is a row boat on the shore. No, you are a myriad of images.

I am a
vessel that collects, with every sound spoken and every thought unspoken, I
sense you with a sense I cannot pinpoint. I know you more than you think,
perhaps more than you know yourself. I can sense your sorrow, your insecurity,
your worry, your lies—the way you lie to yourself and corner yourself. I can
understand the depths of you while you remain on the outskirts in the shallow,
I swim in your deep.

And thusly, I do the same with me. I dance inside myself,
but not with joy, but in this tangled intertwined string, all twisted and
distorted, unable to tell one feeling from the other, because I am bombarded
all at once with experience upon experience.

To you a doorbell is a doorbell. A sound. An announcement. A door to be opened. To me a doorbell is a lion. A
ringing warning of what’s beyond, the thousand upon thousand possibilities of
one sound, one notion, one voice.

No, when you speak to me I do not hear your
words, I see your journey, I see your past, I feel your pain, I feel your joy. You come carrying the grand gift of you, wrapped and rewrapped, and hidden, and
haunted with ghosts, and you expect me to sit and take the crumb of you, the
one piece, when I see the monster lurching behind, the one that guards your
secrets. And he sees me. And he hungers after me, because he knows I can see
your treasures and truth. And out he comes to attack, to protect, to steal my
gifts. For he is fear’s gatekeeper, and I am fear’s mistress joy, and I wish
nothing but to help you see the beauty within.

I am stung by the wasps of you.
I am stung each time we talk, each time our eyes meet. For I can see you swarming
with truths you dare not whisper. I can see the bees behind you. Each carrying
a part of you, and yet you present yourself as single flower, and want me to
simply sniff and be gone.

How can I walk in this world when everywhere are
these bees, this noise, this stinging, whilst everyone pretends the flowers are
falling from the sky. How can I show you what I see when your eyes can only
reach to the horizon, and mine dig deep into the ocean sky, and swim beyond the
universe into you. I sense your depth. I sense your deep. I know you so well,
as reflection of me.

I know where demons hide and shadows and dark. I know
where light dances. I know the journey within the journey, but I am left to
smile shallow and speak a whisper. To bypass all the stories you carry and
wonder if by chance we shall meet again and you will let me swallow what is you,
so I may feed off of your loneliness and become one with myself.

Can you not see
we dance in isolation, this game of communication? Can you not see me standing
at the wall waiting for your hand? Can you not see we do not have this time,
this patience, this waiting. Now is now, and if you do not bleed for me, if you
do not purge yourself and throw up upon me, then I am left to drown in your
mire, fending for myself, while you walk blindly to your ways.

You bombard me
without knowing. You crush me. You crash upon me with your energy. You paint me
with your past, your future, your present, and your worries. You feed off of
me. You eat what you want and leave, all the while thinking you have merely
said Hello.

~ S. Craft, August 2012

Day 205: What my Husband Hears

| Aspergers Girls

What my Husband Hears (aka: Why my Husband is a Saint)

Words I spoke today during our time together. Mostly on our walk through the forest. 

1. Do you think I look slutty? Are you sure? Do other women dress like this? Is this shirt too tight? I don’t think I should wear this shirt in public? Does it make me look fat? How do you know I don’t look slutty?

2. Look at my eye again. In the light. Can you see the pink in my eye? Does it look better? Are you sure? How do you know it is better? What if it gets worse. I think it feels better. Do you think my eye will be okay? Can you see the dry skin in the corner? What do you think it is? Look closer!

3. I am taking so many photos. Thank you for being patient. This is more of a leisure walk. We are stopping a lot. I’ll have to walk more later around the lake. I haven’t walked in two days. These shorts are too big. You are right. I should buy some new shorts today. I wonder if I am a size four yet. These are too baggy. Yes, they are too baggy.

4. Take a photo here. Oh, stop here. Oh, look there. Oh, look at that tree. Oh my, look at that. Oh, look, look! Look up. Look at the spider web. Look at the water. Take one of me from uphill. I look better if you stand uphill. Not so much of my chest. You are showing too much of my chest. How do I look? Do I look okay? Can you tell my eye is pink?

5. I ate too much caffeine. I had that tea, and chocolate bar, and the chocolate gluten-free cake. Feel my heartbeat. Is it beating too fast? Are you sure it’s not? I think it’s too fast. I’m okay, right? Feel here. I need to rest. I am tired. It’s so fast. I have to stop here and catch my breath. This walk is not enough to burn off all the calories from the cake.

6. Oh, we should go this way, and when we get to the fork in the path then we’ll need to go up and to the right; otherwise we will end up on the wrong street. These maps are not designed well. We are educated and intelligent people, and we can’t even figure these signs out! How are other people who aren’t as smart supposed to figure them out? I don’t mean that we are smarter than everyone. Well, you know what I mean. Maybe we should turn and go the other way. What do you think? …..I told you this was the wrong way!

7. Are you staring at my butt and smiling. I can feel you smiling behind me and staring at my butt. You are staring at my butt. And you are picturing grabbing it. I can see you. I am psychic, you know. This proves it. You are staring, aren’t you?

8. Oh, it’s a little Toto dog. How cute. Look at that Toto dog. Oh, he is so cute. Did you see that little dog?

9. I think I would like to have relations with a ninety year old man to give him his dying wish. Is that wrong to feel that way? To want to fulfill a man’s dying wish like that? It doesn’t feel wrong. But maybe it is.

10. You know if you cheated on me, I would forgive you. It would be okay. I know it would only be out of lust, because I know I am sweet and you will not find anyone as sweet and kind as me. So I know it would only be a physical thing. And by me saying this, it will probably make you less likely to cheat, because part of the reason men do cheat is because it is a no-no and forbidden, and you are not supposed to. So, really, since I’m giving you permission, it takes the danger element out of it. But if by me saying this to you makes you want to cheat more, then I take it back. You don’t want to cheat on me now because I said that, do you? Should I take it back?

11. So there are different types of men I am noticing. There are married men who stare and I think oh they are thinking they don’t want to be with their wife and are sad, and they wish they were with another woman. But then there are men who look, but love their wives, and want to be with their wives, but they cannot help but look at other women. You’re a man. All men look, right? And I understand if you have to look. All men look at other women, don’t they? You look, and that’s okay, but you do it in a sly careful way. Some men aren’t careful, and that would be hard. But if I was ever single, I would never meet the type of man I am attracted to. Because I’m not attracted to the men that stare in an obvious way. I’m attracted to the men who don’t look, or look really fast, and I would never know they were looking at me; so how would I ever know they liked me? You see it would be hard for me, because I like the shy guy who is a little insecure and doesn’t know he is handsome, and those are the type that would never approach me.

12. What’s your type of woman? Is that your type? How about her? You like women who are more like me, now, right? Before you liked tall and blonde. But not anymore. Do you know which of your friends I used to be most attracted to? Do you know why? No, not him. He is not my type at all.

13. If I die this is where I want you to spread my ashes. Right under this tree. Right here. Remember, okay. Here or Mt. Rainier. But this is much closer to home. Don’t you think? This would be a good place. This is just as pretty as Mt. Rainier and that is a wonderful tree.

14. I used to date the most handsome men, and it was so difficult. I would never do that again. They were handsome but not very smart, and I’d walk in a room and all eyes would be on them. And people would come up to me and say how handsome they were. And I knew those guys cheated. They had all theses chances. It’s no good dating a man like that. No good at all. Don’t you agree?

15. Oh, you are a good catch. As you get older, you out shine more and more of the men that are getting old like you. You are aging well, and they aren’t.

16. I’ve loved you through thick and thin. Mostly thick. Except for those two months you paid all that money to lose that weight. Other than that, mostly thick.

 I didn’t know my husband was taking the photo. The trunk of the tree was so lovely.

I took a photo of this trail. Then my husband did. His photo was much better. He won the contest between us. I told him my photo would be better. I was wrong. The photo below was not taken from uphill. Still not too bad. And you can’t tell I have a cold in my eye. Or can you?

~

(This post was originally marked day 125….that’s my mistake…from a combo of after midnight, dyslexia, and too much caffeine. It’s day 205. No way am I going back 80 days!)

Day 186: Even the Darkness

| Aspergers Girls
Turtle through scope
Sam Craft

Monster of the dark, why do you come to me at night and steal my joy so readily; and leave me shaking, a small child, lost alone and terrified?

Monster: I steal nothing, young heart of mine, that you do not wish already stolen, that you have not already offered on table for me. Nothing you have not called me forward to retrieve and swallow whole. Nothing you do not already miss because you never allowed yourself to seize it. This fickle mind of yours, so solid in one truth, and then the next. How bitter the taste to savor something that is already abandoned.

Monster, I do not understand. How do I wish anything to be stolen?

Monster: You speak of love. Love, love, love. You cherish love. You want love; but when this love is given to you, you know not what to do with it. Instead it as if you spit on love. Spit and spit, unwilling to even grasp the idea of someone loving you. And yet you say you love? Ha! I laugh in your face. I spit in your face. If you loved than you would gladly take this love they give.

Monster, this is not true. You live in a false illusion. What you see is the fantasy world. You cannot see my world. Only muted shades of black and white. You see no colors. You do not know what I feel and what I hold to me.

Monster: Then why don’t you take in what these people tell you?

Monster, I do not know. I want to. I open my arm and hands and heart and mind, and I want to. But I cannot feel it, any of it. Everything of this world feels numb to me. This world of love. Everything seems a ribbon or prize…nothing that I am worthy of. I cannot take these prizes when I do not feel I have been a participant in the race or contest. Yet, life feels so very much like a contest, where in everyone is struggling for prize. And I don’t want to be like this, yearning for one prize after the next. Constantly striving. I just want to be.

Monster: But you don’t take at all. You don’t accept at all. You are this constant giver who will not receive. And that makes you a monster, too. Do you not see? The greatest gift is to accept what others give, to with open hand reach out and accept their truth as your truth. This is not absolute. This does not make them right or you wrong. This does not make you prideful. This makes you real. And yet you play this dance where you cannot accept, cannot stand to feel. What is it you fear from these feelings? What do you fear?

Dear Monster I fear loss. I fear if I collect anything—friendship, objects, compliments, words, or thoughts—that they will eventually be lost. People leave. People perish. Objects come and go. Opinions change, and words they are shape-shifters based on the speaker and witness.

Monster: Yes. Yes. But you miss the greatest point, the finite reason that your theory, your way, is flawed. For if you spend your whole life not accepting for fear of loss, then you spend your whole life losing for fear of accepting. You set yourself up from the start to suffer loss over loss, without remission. Where if you were to open your hands and let some slip into your possession, then chances are you will hold onto some and lose some. But then again, even the lost was once had. With your way nothing is ever had. Why are you so afraid to feel?

Dear Monster: If I let myself feel, I risk everything. If I let myself love, I risk everything. If I let myself think for a fraction of a second that I am special, I risk self. I do not know the fine line. I do not know how to remain humble and how to accept love at the same time. I know how to give love. I know that well.

Monster: No, you do not! You do not know how to give love. You think you do. You think love is sacrifice. Love is not sacrifice. Love has no feelings, other than love. Nothing that pulls and tugs, digs or plunges, nothing that burns or confuses, nothing that makes someone hurt, is of love. You are not giving love, you are giving fear. You are giving what you think love is. You are giving a safety net, a security blanket, a voice to calm the potential storm. Do not look at people as if they are about to explode or cry or reject. Look at people how you want to be seen. How do you want to be seen?

Dear Monster: I want to be seen as a loving worthwhile being of light. I want to be seen as important and special. I want to be held over and over again in kindness and affection. I want people to come to me for shelter and I want to receive shelter. I want to be weak and strong. I want to be happy and sad. I want to be me in totality and to be loved unconditionally.

Monster: Then you have your answers. Let people see your light. Let people see you are important and special. Let people hold you in kindness and affection. Let people be your shelter. Let people love you unconditionally, in all your states. They are trying, but you are not letting them, dear child. That is why I steal from you at night. For you leave everything out on the table like scraps for the dog. And I smell this waste. I smell this discarded love. And of course I come after you. I am hungry. I am starved. I am the monster that is you, who refuses to eat, and instead cried that there is no food. How many times must a man say he cares until you listen? You feed off of ghosts and cry of starvation when there are plates full all around you. How can you point fingers at me, this monster, who only comes out crawling when he is called by the bitter woes of you? You ring anger’s bell. You ring sadness’s bell. You summon me again and again with this feast of forgotten love. And I take. Of course I take, because you will not.

Dear Monster: Friend indeed, a part of me. Here to show me what I cannot see. How I trick myself time and time again thinking there is something in the shadows stealing and haunting my dreams; when in truth I am my own shadow, my own monster, my own robber of hope. How I do remember now, my familiar face—the hideous claws—the fang-like teeth—how I remember hiding them onto myself so I could face the world. So long ago, I hid you monster, my fierce protector and guide. So long ago when you were once beautiful, a lovely song, a summer’s sweetheart. How I hid you and disfigured you, and made you this hideous teacher to blame. And now you come out, to me, in truth, and I take your hand. I see your beauty. Your eyes. Your hair. Your breath. The very essence of you. You are beauty from the dark. I am beauty from the light. And together we make days upon days, birthed out of wholeness and completion. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing at all. When even the darkness is me.

Day 152: Sometimes When We Touch

| Aspergers Girls

 “I’m just another writer still trapped within my truth.” ~ Dan Hill

–

Sometimes when I dream, the honesty is too much.  Sometimes when I dream, I travel into the life and spirit of a friend. Sometimes strangers visit me. Always, always people come, in all forms, with all types of messages. And we touch.

Recently, I’ve had two friends visit in my dreams, just in this last six days. Both dreams were filled with extreme emotion, both dreams had anxiety, both involved an urgency. When I awake from dreams such as these, I am left with a residue, a film in my spirit, something that remains, the remnants of what was shared with me. A streak in the glass of my vision I can’t wipe clean.

If I am fortunate enough to confirm the happening in the dream, and make a connection, and find some validity in discovering what I sensed actually occurred in real life, I am able to discharge and remove some of the energy. If not, sometimes I take on the feelings of the other person, become overly concerned about something I do not understand and cannot even pinpoint. I may feel a rush of panic, fear, or injustice. I might weep. I might laugh. I might become hyper focused. I might hibernate; attempting to disrobe the feelings, only to emerge still weighed down and lost. I take on this energy, as much as I take on the dreams, without knowing how or why, and without knowing how to stop.

Sometimes I want to break down and cry. Sometimes I have to close my eyes and hide. The emotions are so overwhelming. I feel like I’ve been opened up and had another’s spirit poured into me. At times I become that person. At times I understand the person more than myself.

I dreamt once, years ago, of my long time friend. She was stretched out on a car and pointing to her kidneys and kept saying, “I need a bladder operation; the doctor told me I need a bladder operation.” I called my friend the next morning, and sure enough she had just found out she required surgery related to the tubing above her bladder.

Long ago, while I was napping my grandmother started wafting above my bed, a ghostly apparition draped in an aqua-colored dress. Swaying back and forth, an inch below the bedroom ceiling, she kept repeating the same phrase:  “Wake up.  Get off the phone.  I am waiting for a man from Egypt to call.” This made absolutely no sense to me, as I was sound asleep some two hundred miles away from Grandma, and I most certainly wasn’t on the telephone.  Still dreaming, and wanting desperately to get some rest, I looked up at Grandma and answered, “But I’m not on the phone.  I’m taking a nap.”

Grandma continued on, a stream of blue, weaving herself back and forth in my room, badgering me to get off the telephone.  Having found no luck, after I placed two pillows over my head to block out her voice, I sat up and screamed, “If you leave me alone, I’ll call you when I wake up.  Go away and let me sleep!”  On my words, Grandma vanished.

Within the hour I phoned my grandmother.  After a few minutes on the phone, I delicately described my dream to her, thinking at some point she’d say I wasn’t making any sense, and that would be the end of the discussion.  Surprisingly, Grandma responded, without pause for breath, “You’re a witch! I’ve been sitting by the phone waiting for a man from Egypt to call me about his interest in buying my house.  How did you know? Actually, I need to get off the phone now.  He might be trying to call.”

Years ago, I dreamt that two of my teaching colleagues would be going to Japan by the end of the year. They both came to my dream together and told me. That year both were surprised to learn they were traveling to Japan. One was accepted in an over-seas teaching program; the other unexpectedly was invited by a host family. Another time an old woman, a stranger,  came to me in my dream very upset. She said that my mother was going through her items and taking them, keeping them for herself. She showed me the room where the items were spread out. She showed me my mother holding her things. I told my mother the next day, and sure enough my mother had been to a friend’s house and had collected several items from her friend’s mom whom had just died.

There are so many visits, I could go on and on: a family drowned on the beach, my future house and the owners of the house, my future employer, my car accident, my grandfather’s car accident, my mother-in-law’s cancer, my friend house hunting, the person dying in the car off the highway, my husband’s co-worker getting married and denying it, my son’s karate teacher getting engaged, friends divorcing, friends weeping on couches …..so many various people visiting me to tell me about their lives.

When I was very little, animals visited me and showed me their death. Usually my pets, but once a friend’s bunny came in my dream. The animals usually died just like they showed me within seven days. Once my canary was slashed under the eye by a stray cat. Once my dog died on the Fourth of July after jumping a fence. The dreams came true, just as I had witnessed. Thank goodness I was able to tell my mother the night of the dreams, which then I called nightmares. She was at least able to validate my experience. To show me my dreams were coming true and I wasn’t insane.

Interestingly, it seems lately the more I share and write, and the more I am not afraid to be authentic and honest, the more these dreams and feelings are coming. And the more I’m visited.  I don’t mind the visits for the most part. I feel honored and know this gift or ability, or whatever one choses to call my visions, is a part of my journey. But there are definite times, like this week, when the emotions are so over powering that I don’t know what to say or do.

It’s times like these that sometimes when we touch, sometimes the honesty is too much. And then, all I want to do is to just hold my friend and cry, to hold on tight and not let go until the fear in us subsides.