After yesterday’s post I feel like my panties are dangling down around my ankles. Feeling fully exposed here. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of what I shared. Long past those emotions. I am human and have had hard times, like us all. But I feel a bit naked in my exposure of self, having had shared such a vital part of my life without much explanation.
I think it is important to understand that at the time of my nervous breakdown I had been on a low dose anti-depressant to control my chronic muscle pain. The medication entirely numbed me emotionally for years. I lived very much like a robot. I couldn’t cry even when I was sad. And I couldn’t feel the depths of my experience. I was in less pain, but had no emotions. I was numb in all aspects.
Being numb to myself had major drawbacks. I didn’t have an off button, or anything to balance my actions. Feeling nothing, I had no way of checking in with myself. I no longer knew exhaustion. I gradually became an over-achieving, control freak. Eventually, I started to despise more and more of who I was, and recognized the real me was covered and masked underneath. I decided, without consulting anyone and without being aware of the dangers, to stop my anti-depressant. In my eyes the drug was serving as a painkiller and little more. I didn’t understand that in stopping the prescription that my brain chemistry would go all haywire.
Within days of stopping, my appetite came back so strongly that I couldn’t stop eating. I gained five pounds in two days. And much worse, my serotonin levels plummeted making everything look bleak. And my emotions, they returned in a mad rush. I felt like I was opening a storm door of emotions that had all been hidden in an expansive closet for half a decade.
After several weeks, I couldn’t stand the intensity of emotions and my huge appetite—I could actually taste life and food again but was out of control—so I started back on the medication. Reintroducing the anti-depressant into my system led to suicidal thoughts. This is when I ended up in the admissions to the psychiatry ward. I’m not saying the medication caused my breakdown but it definitely altered my brain chemistry enough to push me over the edge.
The Quiet Room
After two colored pills, I entered the last room at the end of the hall. Muffled snores, bleach, staleness—each welcomed me.
I found my bed. I pulled off my sweatshirt and spread it across the pillow.
Darkness.
I stared up at the shadowed ceiling.
There was no sleeping.
As midnight approached, I stepped through the vacant corridor, light and clumsy, like a puppet pulled by a master puppeteer. “I can’t sleep in there,” I mumbled, looking at the nurse’s wide forehead. “I can’t sleep with a stranger in my room.” I lowered my eyes to her white shoes, long laces, scuffed toes.
The nurse looked me over with a cynical smile. “What are you afraid of?”
I felt a punch to my stomach. “I just can’t sleep in there,” I answered.
Huffing, the nurse pulled down her glasses. “Fine, come with me, then.”
I padded down the hall, thinking I might fall down, hoping I would wake up, knowing this was surely hell. The tall nurse stopped. She edged her eyes around me, trying to see inside. “You can stay in the Quiet Room for the night. But it’s not where you are supposed to be.”
Chastised, I didn’t move. I knew this wasn’t where I was supposed to be. None of this place was where I was supposed to be. She didn’t know me…
The rest of this story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers.
“Was it your voice or another voice that told you to kill yourself?” the stranger asked.
“My own voice,” I whispered from a mouth I could no longer feel.
I brought myself forward in a chair, a purposeful push, only to prove to myself I could move, that my brain synapses fired. I nodded solemnly in the direction of a blank white space. There was a stain in the high corner. I was unable to focus, unable for the first time to pretend. I had always been able to follow someone, to take the cue from the people around me. Here I could not. Here, though I was clothed, I was stripped naked, paralyzed with the thought that there were no answers…
The rest of this story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers
This is the song I used to sing and imitate…when I was like ten. As I’ve said, I didn’t carry a barometer for appropriate behavior. I loved this song. I loved Natalie Wood. In my mind, this was a perfect song to sing in middle school in the cafeteria, while swaying my hips about and tossing my hair. Trouble started when I didn’t outgrow my delight in life—this innocence to dance and sing, and just be. Big trouble, as I approached high school, while still a ten year old in my mind.
I got downright cute and sexy approaching freshman year in high school, but didn’t know it. Once I turned fourteen, I always thought I was ugly. I was entirely clueless why the boys gawked and the girls jeered. Why the boys wanted my number and the girls shunned me. To me, I was still some scrawny kid inside. I didn’t see my sexy, my curves, my short shorts, my passionate eyes. I didn’t see what the others saw. As I matured into pretty, in my mind, I was still a little twiggy girl with buckteeth, a chipped front tooth, stringy hair, high-water hand-me-down jeans, and a flat chest. I had no idea I’d blossomed.
This was the other song I sang loudly in the middle school cafeteria
I used the moves and all. I was special. I was confident. I was damn awesome!
Before I turned fourteen, I was engorged with passion, full of life, energy, and the feeling I could conquer the world. At the end of eighth grade, Mother plucked me from the coast of California and moved me to Massachusetts to live with her longtime lover. All at once, I knew no one, was loved by no one, and knew not who I was.
This was a time of unmentionables. I transformed from wild stallion to fearful doe. I hid. I stayed in dark rooms. I pretended not to exist—this after being driven down a long country road by our twenty-something neighbor who was married to the flat-chested lady I babysat for the next door over. A scene, I blurred and blanched out of memory, that sucked out my passion, that transported the little girl I had been to a frightened woman, terrified of life, terrified to live.
I stopped living at the age of fourteen. I just stopped. My daily laughter turned to daily tears. I no longer danced. I no longer sang. I just existed. It was then I began to see my past, to compare what I’d been through to what my peers had been through. I recognized all at once how different I was, how damaged, how hopeless.
I stopped living because I finally saw my mother. I saw who she was and how she never was who I longed for her to be. I stopped living because I was ostracized at school, made fun of for my “California” looks, for my clothes, for my curves. I stopped living because when I looked in the mirror I was something horrible, unrecognizable. I wasn’t me anymore. The spirit of me, the joy, the lover of life, had been siphoned out of me. I was staring at a stranger in my skin. My eyes dulled. My heart numbed. And my entire view of life grey.
I no longer trusted the world or anyone in it. And I didn’t know where to go, how to be, and knew not enough to tell a soul of my agony. I angst perpetually from want, desire, and deafening loneliness. I ached for companionship, for people, for someone to shout out they loved me, for someone to see me—for someone to find me, wherever I’d gone.
I dreamt of ending my life. I dreamt of my prince, my twin flame, my soul mate, and would spend hours with him, in some enchanted place my spirit held. I imagined wherever he was, he would know the heart of me, that his heart would match mine, that he would be holding my heart, and would someday find me. I wept and wept and wept for him as much as I wept for the lost me.
I walked emptied.
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that my spirit returned. I don’t know how, or why, it just did.
I have ever changed. This joy-filled, spirit of light has once again turned on, filling me with child-like glee. I have a plethora of things I want to do. A list that keeps growing and a spirit that keeps yearning and celebrating. I’m dancing inside. I’m walking on air. I’m not caring how silly I look. I’m loving me. I’m embracing my beauty, the beauty I lost thirty years ago.
Only in waking, some three decades later, I am finding myself in a strange land somewhat, surrounded by strange people I almost don’t recognize. Questioning my place, my role, my purpose. Wondering who I was for the last thirty years. Who I’d become. What choices I’ve made. How I’d let myself suffer. How I’d numbed my life.
I’m not recognizing photos of me from a month ago. Not understanding where I’ve been and who was inside of me for so very long. I can’t explain this transformation. I just can’t.
But looking into my eyes, I can see that the little girl who danced passionately without fear in the cafeteria, swinging her hips back and forth and tossing her hair about, is back. The lovely happy girl who played beside nature, climbed the trees, sang and dance, cuddled with puppies, held hands, and skipped and skipped long after sundown across paths of gold, rainbows, unicorns, and her forever friends, has returned to me. And I am embracing her fully, and never letting her go.
I don’t know how to fake being happy. I am an open book. Even if someone taught me how to fake happiness, I couldn’t do it.
My eyes can’t lie, and neither can my soul. This inability to fake my emotions can bring about challenges. Perhaps cause others discomfort. Even my love can be over zealous, and maybe a bit smothering, depending on interpretation. And, thusly, so can my sadness.
But my gift of truth in emotions is greatly beneficial. I see things in me quite clearly, and have an expansive self-awareness. I am able to make beneficial change for myself. I can also see emotions in others. Everyone is like a water pool to me—sometimes crystal clear, other times murky. I feel the waters. Some are cold, some warm, and others entirely refreshing.
I carry much feeling within—both others and mine. This can be an overwhelming experience. Sometimes my emotions cannot be separated from others. This is challenging when people I love are going through hard times. I often wake up feeling upset and not knowing why, until I find out a close friend is suffering. Today, several people I know are going through life challenges. I feel a pull of despair. Other days I feel pulls of elation.
Today I also am experiencing my own transition, as I went from the tropical climate of Maui, Hawaii to the cloudy, rainy skies of Washington. My body’s physical pain is retriggered by the climate. My mind, too, is affected by the darkness of outdoors. I have bid goodbye to great friends on the island of Maui, and the healing salty sea. I have a houseful of people adjusting to time change and some sickness, too.
Today, I reflect on ways to raise my energy, despite the events circling within me and about me. Today I reflect on my long time sun.
Long Time Sun
Sometimes I forget my long time sun.
I forget that I hold the key to my own joy, peace, and serenity.
I forget because I hold deep desires to be seen.
I forget that I am already connected and understood.
I forget because I long to be accepted.
I forget to love myself unconditionally.
I forget because I cling to external ideals, ideas, goals, and plans.
I forget to let go.
I forget because I fall into familiar patterns.
I forget I hold the light to freedom.
I forget because I want to be noticed, loved, and adored.
I forget I am enough.
I forget because of life’s unexpected twists and turns.
I forget life is an endless transitioning cycle.
I forget because I ache from others’ words and actions.
I forget to comfort my own heart.
I forget because I see truths I don’t wish to see.
I forget I can choose how to see my world.
I forget because I turn inward and focus on myself.
I forget I am not the only one hurting.
I forget because I think I am in the shadows of dark.
I forget that I am a long time sun.
The Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life
Everyday Asperger's 