girls

388: Keepers of the Light

| Aspergers Girls

I invite you to listen to this song first.

I started singing You Light Up My Life, around the age of eleven. I think it was the only song I wrote down the lyrics to and memorized. That, and Away in a Manger. I used to sing songs at the tippy-top of my lungs, squeaking and squealing to anyone that would listen, including my downstairs duplex-landlords, who sometimes brought me indoors for cookies. I could tell when I sang, by looking in the observers’ eyes, that people didn’t think I sang super well or close to on key. I could tell they thought I was a lonely child searching for attention. I could tell that they were smiling in an attempt to help me feel accepted. But I couldn’t say all that. I didn’t think to say it. I didn’t know that everyone else, or most everyone else, didn’t think like me. I figured we all knew what was being unspoken. That we all just pretended we didn’t.

When I sang my heart out, I slipped into a fantasy world. I leaped across time and stood on stage. I imagined refuge in a bountiful light. I imagined being lifted and protected and seen. The song itself didn’t free me; nor did the audience observing. What freed me was the freedom I was—the capacity to be me. What trapped me was the realization that all about me others weren’t free.

There was a time where people approached me for my light. They were drawn to me. Something about me pulled them in. I know now it was and has always been Spirit. Then I did not know, and I didn’t wonder; I thought everyone had this; I thought everyone heard God and could see through people.

I remember going to the church around the corner, a Catholic cathedral where I never once attended mass. I was drawn there, at times, the little girl I was, with her un-brushed hair and with her big searching eyes. I would swing on the monkey bars in the church playground over and over, until my hands blistered. Then, if I hadn’t already entered, I’d walk quietly into the empty church and just breathe. I felt safe there. I felt connection. But I didn’t know why. The candles, the light of the candles, they spoke to me, as did the colors of the glass windows and the movement of sunlight through the grand space. I wasn’t frightened. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t anywhere. I just was. Sometimes time stopped and I traveled into the future where I would walk in as full-grown woman and be, with the others, I would be.

I wasn’t a religious child. I wasn’t even spiritual. I was magical. I believed in magic everywhere. I believed everything, each and everything. I believed in everyone around me. And I loved everyone. I trusted them. I gave myself freely: my attention, my time, my love. I had an over-flowing abundance of love. And I was me. There wasn’t anything about me that I had created. I radiated from within.

Something about me, or perhaps something within me, gave me the incapacity to be anyone but me. This gift of being authentic was beautiful. But because I trusted and believed others so greatly and so freely, when they told me what they thought, I believed them. Because if they were beautiful and I loved them and they were perfect, then they must know, they must have the answers.

I believed when they, the others, told me that I was just a child and didn’t know things. I believed them when they said life was hard. I believed them when they cried and cursed what was wrong and unjust. I believed it all. And I began to see that I lived in a world entirely complex in its simplicity. I began to see that I held all the secrets of love and joy, but that none could see them. I knew how to laugh and how to make other people laugh; and I did so without intention or want; I just was joy.

Then came the passing of days, when I learned my joy was not enough. When I learned that my heart, no matter how big, could not make a difference—at least I thought. Soon as my friends grew older, they changed. Their views became more broken and fragmented, their opinions stronger, their hatred taking shape. Divisions were made, as I watched, fingers pointed, sometimes at me, but mostly at others. And everyone started playing this part that didn’t make any sense; except that their ways kept people, for the most part, in an imaginary role of control.

I began to see that love was divided and measured. I began to see that love came and went, as did people. I learned that love didn’t mean love; what some called love actually meant conditions and fleeting moments of spiked emotions of some sort that didn’t feel or look like love at all. I learned that whatever shape I took, I could receive part of this love, that wasn’t love. But since I couldn’t find the other love anymore, the one I held in the backyard during slumber parties and collected, as the others laughed with me, without cause or pause for judgment; since I couldn’t find that love anymore, I took what I could. It never felt right. It felt false from the start. It was false love created by my want for connection and the growing emptiness I had inside.

My actions seemed to define me. I seemed to become who people thought I was. It didn’t matter how much goodness I had inside me; no one could see it, unless they chose to. No one. And when they did think to see the goodness, it was because I emulated them; I showed them a part of themselves they liked, or wished to like. I showed a commonality or I complimented them by my presence or in my spoken words. I collected false-love this way: pretending to be who they wanted me to be in an attempt to connect. To say I played, would be false, as there was no joy in this. To say I fought, would be false, as there was no friction. It was a space and place that I am incapable of defining or marking. For how can I define a place in which everything was false—the only thing real my want to fill the emptiness of falsehood?

This falsehood permeated much of my life, far into adulthood. A falsehood that eventually blinded me as well, to my own inner light. I had to snuff my light to continue to exist. I was given no choice.

I had to extinguish who I was, if I ever wanted hope of connecting. At least this is what I conditioned myself to think. I learned to track the actions of another to determine my next move. I could tell from every flinch, every switch of voice, every motion. Responses were my indicators. Reactions my compass. I stopped feeling inside my own body. I became numb to my needs; everything was masked in my effort to predetermine how to respond to the responders. For I could see in their eyes the judgment, the dislike, the wondering. I could see so much that they wouldn’t ever say. Particularly their thoughts about me, or about the way they perceived me. I knew they thought what they dare not say. I knew there were all these connections going on just in seeing me. I was being categorized and dissected and figured out. It’s not that I thought I was that important, it was that I thought they were. I think all along I knew they were a reflection of me or at least a mirror to my own experiences. I knew we were one and the same, but didn’t know how to define the feeling. And so I would watch, until I laughed and joked, trying to squeeze the joy out of someone whom had seemed to forgotten where he or she put it.

Mine, my joy, was always there, right in me, never gone. Even with all the poured in sorrow, I had this joy. It was always growing and blooming. There was always hope. It seemed no matter how much the others responded in a way that carried the potentiality to sting like thorns, that I still kept my hope. There was this unstoppable faith. Something in that song about the light through the window, about the light itself; I knew this. I saw the light n my dreams and I heard light in the whispers. I knew my destiny. I knew my calling. But this too, I was often told was wrong. I was made in form divinely perfect, but undoubtedly I frightened people. And this brought me to a place of confusion, so very great, I dare not venture there even in thoughts and rememberings.

For how could I, one held by the angels and light, have been so terribly flawed? And why did all around me seem to be such blindness? I searched and searched as a child—in the trees, under the school buses, in the grassy fields—for reprieve. I slipped into my imagination. I hid in the shrubbery and shadows documenting my own thoughts. And I came to the conclusion I was someone made wrong; though even this, deep down I knew to be untrue.

In time, I learned to conform. I learned to tuck away the voice of truth and the rays of light. For I believed the misery of disconnection to be far worse than hiding my light. And so I hid, for a very long time. And though I was a keeper of the light, it dimmed.

And here the dark found me. So very freely, as if beckoned by the very ache of my soul. I walked forsaken to my self for decades. I learned, through my mind, to hear the lies before the truth. I heard the negative talk, and I collected this, for if I did not believe them, I could not be with them, and then I would have to be alone. In order to connect, I had to believe what others said about me. If I believed in my light and my angels, and in my very soul, than I would be without the company of humans. I would only have the invisibility of my hope and joy—and alone whom would I share anything with?

Eventually, the lies became my truth. My whole truth. I was what others created me to be. And then a shift happened, in which they were what I created them to be. I began to see like other people. I began to believe the lies. I began to think that yes, only my point of view counted. That yes, I am in control of my world. And yes, I am the most important and special. I began to be a love-leech collecting falsehoods. Love, love, love ME! I demanded. Love me through validation. Love me through listening. Love me through answering back how I expect and want you to respond. Outcomes became my life. Hope became my misery. I latched onto the yellow brick road of illusion. I thought, if I was just good enough, and right enough, and had all the answers I would WIN! I would be LOVED! This is what I was taught. This is what was walloped into me. This is what I ATE because nothing else was offered.

Until the pain of emptiness became so great that I knew I was wrong. I knew that life was not meant to be like this. I knew somewhere inside my little girl protecting the light was dying to come out.

For me this has been my greatest gift: my affliction.

My very agonizing pain was what set me free. The very discomfort that kept shouting within of the falsehood was my greatest joy. I was given a lantern since birth. And I walked four-decades pretending I was not, in hopes of gaining false love.

And now, as I step back, very much the little girl I was, with my lantern bright, I see I kept this light hidden for a purpose. I suffered for a reason. I suffered because everyone else was suffering. I didn’t retreat because I was so different after all. I just retreated a bit later along my path. I just retreated knowing I was retreating. There wasn’t anything different about me, except I was born awake. I was born with the affliction that is both my teacher and my cross to bear. I was gifted the wisdom at a young age, and through this affliction I was formed and made, through this affliction my lantern was fueled. I see this clearly, more clearly each moment I am here.

I see that we each have these lanterns, and that for some of us it hurts more to hide them. But we all have them. For some of us we know we are hiding them: this is the affliction.

I see now that I am struggling to turn up the lanterns of all, when all I need do is turn on my own.

In so many ways, in every way, I am that little girl, with her joy, with her lantern strong, standing on the hillside and beckoning my friends onward. Only this time I can see. I can truly see. I know now my once perceived greatest weakness is my greatest comforter. I know my need to be love, my need to shine, my need to be free is the only need I ever choose. I know that in my affliction I am made whole. I know that in my wholeness I honor each and every soul. For in the embracing of what has always been and shall ever be, I have embraced the world. I have embraced the light.

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Related Post: Behind the Curtain

10 Things I Would Say to a Female with Asperger’s Syndrome, if I were her Therapist

| Aspergers Girls

10 Things I Would Say to a Female with Asperger’s Syndrome, if I were her Therapist

1. I would like to offer something to you, if that is okay. I believe, at this moment, I cannot in any way understand what it is like to be you. I do not believe I know what it is like to be anyone, and I understand you carry with you a vast collection of experiences and knowledge. With that said, I want to try to understand as much as I can about your journey and perspective, so that I can be here with you, not as your teacher, or counselor, or therapist, or even friend, but as another human having a human experience. I don’t consider myself to know the answers; in fact, I believe you to have all the answers that we require to move through this process of discovery. I look forward to this journey with you.

2. I am here for you; you are dedicating your time and your attention, and I respect your commitment to be here. I recognize you have a choice of whom you see, and that you may or may not fit with my person as a whole. Please know that if there is anything about my presentation, my office, or my mannerisms, even my personhood that make you uncomfortable, I am open to you telling me this and will try my very best to be receptive to your input. Please know that any type of discomfort you feel, at any time, and at any moment, takes top priority above any discussion. I understand there may be many thoughts on your mind and that I am by no means able to alleviate all your misgivings, and I recognize this is not possible; yet, I still say this in hopes of creating a safe place for the both of us to sit together. I try in my practice to release the need of agenda, plan of action, or a blueprint we need follow. I am by no means perfect, but stating this to you helps me to remind myself that my top priority is you not my thoughts and needs. This allows the two of us to focus on what you believe is at the heart of your thoughts at all times, and keeps me from thinking I know the answers; as truthfully I know I do not.

3. If there is something of peak interest to you at the moment, perhaps an interest or a hobby, I am here to listen. I don’t mind if you need to talk the entire time we have allotted, that is what I am here for. I am here to listen above all else, to be present, and to receive you as a whole and complete person. I don’t see myself in lacking and in return I don’t see you as lacking either. I think we are both where we are meant to be and I am truly honored to be in your presence. I am not going to write notes about you, if that is okay, as I wouldn’t think I’d much like a person writing notes about me, but instead, I would like to offer you this paper to take home to write down your thoughts after our meeting; if you do not, this is perfectly fine with me, and if you do, wonderful. Feel free to ask me questions about my journey and respecting the therapist/client boundaries, I will offer out as much vulnerability as I can. I would take joy in meeting you equally in this journey, and will strive to remind myself when I become preachy or seem to think I know more than I do. I am human, but I know, beyond a doubt, that what is important in these rooms is not within me, but within you.

4. I wonder if you might be comfortable telling me what the driving force behind you feels like? Where do you think your inspiration comes from? Why do you think you have the intelligence you do? The drive? The stamina? How often do you think about who you are and what you are? Is this inquiry something that interests you or makes you uncomfortable, or something perhaps I am totally off base about asking? I ask, because in the females with Aspergers I have encountered, there is a depth of wisdom that honestly leaves me in awe and makes me curious as to how the universe works inside the mind; and I thought through this direction we might open doors to discovery? What do you think?

5. I am comfortable with whatever subject you want to discuss. There isn’t a set topic I have in mind, nor do I feel at this time there is going to be a need for a topic. I would like to know what pops into your head, and to listen to you process your thoughts, if you are comfortable with this. I think the more I can hear you talk, the better I will be able to approach the challenges you might be presented with through the course of us working with one another. Also, this may or may not apply to you, but if you are more comfortable, I have a lovely plant set in the corner there, and I am more than pleased to watch it as you talk, if me watching you makes you uncomfortable. Also, I can respect your body language and the way you choose to communicate, because I know this is what works for you at the moment. So please know I am not evaluating your body language, tone of voice, or anything about the quality of your speech or subject manner. I understand in my working with other females with similar, but of course their own unique way of perceiving the world, that sometimes they might need a full hour just to speak and process. In the past I have scheduled hour-and-a-half blocks of time, suggesting that the client speak for half of the session, to process her thoughts, and then we meet together and have more of a back and forth discussion. What are your thoughts on this? What would work with you?

6. I believe that there is a serious need for more information about females with Aspergers. What type of information have you found? Is there something specific you think I might be able to gain knowledge from, a book or resource? If you are comfortable, I would appreciate any information you have collected that resonated for you in regards to how you feel; this might be about females with Aspergers, poetry, paintings, or any form of expression. I would especially like to hear if there is anything you wrote, perhaps a poem or a short story. I think I can gain much insight in our journey together, if I am able to see the two of us, symbolically, exploring outside of the constraints of this office, and in the realm of something you may of have created, or perhaps will create in the future. If not, would you like to tell me what you see when I show you particular paintings or what you feel when I read a poem? I have collected some items from other females with Aspergers, a variety of expressions through different art media that I store here at my side. Sometimes, with clients, we look in the basket to see if there is something that resonates?

7. In working with other females, those that have traits of Aspergers, whether diagnosed or not, I have come across a checklist of attributes that typically fits the Aspergers experience well. I would appreciate being granted the opportunity to read this to you, to see what you think? Or you are welcome to read the list yourself, either aloud to me, or to yourself. I think there might be some connecting links here we can explore together. If you would like, we can develop a list of priorities, or address perhaps five items that caught your attention. For instance the concept of the anxiety that builds in planning for an upcoming event outside the house. Then we can decide together where to go from there.

8. I am well aware that sometimes certain techniques I have implemented in my psychotherapy practice aren’t universal, in meaning they don’t fit with everyone. I recognize that we are each unique in our experiences and learning modalities. I have done research on various learning styles, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and sensory integration challenges. I would like you to know that I am aware some of my approaches might not be the right “fit” for you. Such as in the past I implemented positive self-talk to a lovely client, and she explained to me that the form of therapy I was using, called “cognitive therapy,” was adding unnecessary stress to the stress she already carried. I am so thankful she told me, because from there we worked together and developed a new approach. With this client we looked at her favorite books and created stories about the characters in the book; this type of approach resonated with here. With another client, she explained that she had been through years of self-help and group therapy and only initially needed a safe place to be. And so we spent many of our sessions with me listening and her sharing. Another client loved Carl Jung and the thought of the collective unconscious, so we took that route together. Please know this is your time and I want to spend the time doing what fits your style, not mine. I think, if we both explore the vast range of possibilities, we can easily find an avenue that suits your comfort-level and learning style. Also, as a reminder, nothing we establish is necessary, or set in stone, or needs to meet completion; we can change midstream; in fact, I like to do that, as it reminds me that I am not the one in control, nor do I need to be. This frees up space for me to be more present and attentive to your needs.

9. Are there any specific spiritual practices you gravitate towards? Or any types of methods of relaxation you incorporate. I found with one client that even the thought of implementing a practice was daunting and actually sparked an avoidance of doing such practices. How do you feel about goals and lists? Have you ever partaken in specific grounding exercises, self-centering, or body awareness visualizations, and is this something you might be open to exploring together? For my own self, I find that when I am in my body and aware, I can better detect where the anxiety is coming from in my environment. I can then talk to this anxiety, and other emotions I have, as if it were a person. Do you understand what I mean? Do you ever personify numbers, or letters, or parts of your body?

10. I know of someone who says she thinks people with Aspergers are: “Keepers of the Light.” I like this definition, as I see such pure traits in women I have met on the spectrum or believe themselves to be on the spectrum; there is a source of pureness, innocence and this honesty that just bears all thorns. I cannot tell you how much I long to experience some of the truths you carry and to understand what this journey of yours has brought to those around you. I see you as such a gift to me and to the world. What would you like to call Aspergers? What name shall we give this journey?

All rights reserved. May be printed for professional use in therapy setting. May not be redistrubuted or used in any other manner. Thank you. Please maintain author information on the paper. Author of the blog Everyday Aspergers. Samantha Craft, M.Ed. Writer and Educator. Female with Aspergers with son with Aspergers.

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355: To the Professional

| Aspergers Girls

Take away the notepad and paper, take away the laptop, or whatever you are about to write on. I am more concerned with what you are writing and thinking than my own self.

I am uncomfortable looking at you. I don’t like your office, for one reason or another. Maybe you are messy or maybe too clean. It might smell in an offensive way or be too dark and cluttered. Then again the sunlight might be seeping through and displaying the dancing dust and pulling me in thought to germs and uncleanliness. If you cleaned, I am hoping you didn’t use toxins, and I am wondering how many people have sat in this chair before, and how they sit, how they position their body, but mostly how they position their mind.

I am wondering with each word I speak what you think and if I have answered to meet your expectations and intentions. I can guess half of what you will say and how you will say it, because I have studied you from the moment we met, and I have studied those like you before. I know more about the human language and the nuances and gestures and games than you can imagine. I can feel your energy, and I can feel how your opinion of me switches. I can feel you weighing in on me and my words balanced against your thoughts.

I am uncomfortable in all ways and trying to present myself as comfortable. And this you probably know, as I already know, and you are watching me closer, as if in watching I will grow in security and trust. But I won’t. I will feel for you what I feel for everyone. I will either like you instantly or you will make me want to run. And with the liking I will analyze why and if this is valid, this feeling of companionship and connection. I will linger here a short time, especially in comparison to if I want to run. If I want to run my thoughts will circle around you for a favorable amount of time, working inside and outside of your being and attempting to decipher the danger. If I distrust you, I will likely always distrust you. This may be nothing you have ever said or done; this is my natural instinct.

I have been preyed upon by predators and sought out by experts. I have been probed and prodded and measured one too many times. I do not like the way you measure me. Not one bit, and I want this time to end.

I want to like you, and if I don’t, I fear my own rejection; I fear the dialogue that will reach into the contours of my mind and debate the whys and hows of my own inclinations.

I will listen to you as best I can, but don’t count on me hearing all of what you say. One word will set me adrift into another place, one unusual sound or one ordinary sound from you or from the room that is silent. I will hear what you do not hear. I will hear the quietness through the silence. I will hear the pauses in your monologue, and I will question your expertise.

I will wonder if you like me and then wonder why I even care, and why it is important that you do like me, even if I despise you and everything about your space. I will still want to be your friend, and a part of me will still love you, like some pup you picked up from the alley while in a mode of rescue. I will seek harbor and refuge in this space you have provided, knowing I am paying, or someone is paying for this form of companionship that frightens me.

I will question your degrees, your education, your protocols, your knowledge, your booksmarts, and your conclusions without hint of regard. I will dive down corridors of your soul and wander about hunting out the darkness. And all this I will do as you sit there scratching away notes about me.

For I will have compiled a list a volume thick in the time you have taken for me to answer a few questions. And simultaneously, I will have composed my own representation of self to you, pulling out what is expected, and what might make you comfortable, playing the game so you can see me and not be swooped away by the real me that is locked away behind this tattered worn curtain of self.

You can’t reach in, as hard as you try, unless I know you recognize me. I won’t let you past, unless I know you are real, that you have felt the deepest pains and angst, that you, too, have been in the shadowed darkness weeping for reprieve, that you have been abandoned, ostracized, left for nothing, created into something others wanted you to be. I will not let you near, unless I know your heart has grown in the depths of the oceans and shoots out to save those who wither.

Your documented degrees mean nothing to me. Your schooling is lost. What you knew and what you think you know is not this me staring back at you. I am in no textbook and in no past discoveries. My experience is uniquely mine, and unless you have dived into the caverns of my mind, unless you can see the world of illusion, as I can, then I have no purpose or need for you.

Entirely, I sit. Entirely, I am. And I understand beyond measure what grips you and shakes you and what makes you spin. I can tell in your eyes when you are complimented you are lit, and when you are unsure you folly. I see you, like a master watching a child; I see your discomfort, your waverng, your questions. But mostly I see straight to the purity of your soul, straight into the core.

So don’t waste my time with man invented games and manmade questionnaires that nibble away at my character and personhood. I am beyond this, these guesses and marks, this test to prove something that needs no proving.

I am not this Aspergers. I am not this Autism. I am human in need of being seen.

I am not a test subject, nor am I confused. I am not sick. I am not ill in the slightest sense. I am a unique and special individual born out of the ashes into the phoenix. I am both God and Goddess and have so much to teach you.

So do not look past the secrets in my eyes to check off the boxes of your own design. Seek first in me the wisdom I carry, the answers, the knowledge. See what I have to say. Hear what my world is like, for unless you have lived inside of this me, then you are the one that remains alien.

Don’t pretend you understand my condition or my brain or my way of life. Don’t pretend you can help me. I already know your tactics and trickery. As innocent and as kind you be, to me everything you present I shall take apart and examine from source.

Present to me your own self, the deepest part of you, the part the rest of the world hides so readily in a game. Take off your mask and meet me in the playing field I recognize: one of pureness, naiveté, child-like heart and genuineness. Do not strip me of the very armor that sews my seams. Uplift my attributes and charm, the gentle grace that illuminates from the spirit I am.

Do not think that because you have a title or name that you are therefore anymore or any less than the others. You are still garbed in your fashions and mystery. Undress, strip down, bear your nakedness and show me your frailty. That is the only reason I am here. Not to teach you how to help me. Not to teach you how to change me. But to show you what truth and beauty is.

My way is not wrong. Nor is my mind hindered. My way is the one of the child of goodness and authenticity, and until you understand that what I carry is no less damaged than the stars in the sky and no less worthy than your very own heart, than you cannot reach me.

If you want to help me, if you want to truly help me, then become my student, so I can become yours. Meet me as one. And see that I am not your patient, your client, or your case study. I am me.

In all my uniqueness I am me. And in this, in being me, in being all of me, perhaps in your wanting to help me, it is truly I that will set you free.

316: 50 Reasons to Leave Your Lover

| Aspergers Girls

Me 4

1. He tells you as he is making out with you, “Someday your future boyfriend will be really glad I taught you this.”

2. He corrects and critiques the way you break your bread, showing you how to separate the roll into four equal pieces.

3. He stays up all night scraping the black factory-painted pinstripe off of his truck because he can’t sleep until it’s entirely gone.

4. He stays up all night making cardboard hotels for cats, convinced he will be rich off of his invention.

5. He owns a limo, but it turns out he’s the driver, and he likes to tell you often what he watches the passengers doing in the backseat.

6. He explains that he likes you a lot, and will share a bed with you, but doesn’t feel comfortable sitting on the same couch as you.

7. He steals your expensive perfume bottle (again) and “secretly” gives it as a present to his other girlfriend.

8. He doesn’t have driving insurance and totals his truck while on a secret rendezvous to the mountains with his other lover, and then asks you to come get him at the hospital.

9. He says, after your first dinner date, which he planned to be out of town, that he is too drunk to drive home but has conveniently already booked a hotel room nearby.

10. He promises he just wants to cuddle.

11. He says he has a romantic surprise for you, and when you enter the room there is a “toy” and a video camera set up.

12. His father tells you, after your lover has gone missing for three days: “He is just like me, a player, and he ain’t changing.”

13. His mother takes you out to an intimate lunch and tells you, “You are so smart and lovely and kind, why are you with my son?”

14. He takes you to an antique store to teach you have to shoplift.

15. He sells you a stereo that he bought with his roommates “stolen” credit card.

16. He doesn’t come and find you when you run out of the house crying.

17. He calls his ex-girlfriend when you are still in bed together.

18. He has rearranged the photos of you as a couple each time you come over.

19. He lives with his sister, has no job, is addicted to pain-killers, and is a chain-smoker.

20. He makes you gag.

21. He makes you wish you lived on another planet.

22. He says, “I don’t love you, I’m certain.”

23. He is the roommate of the other really odd guy you dated.

24. He has an ex-wife that warns, “Watch out, he is trouble.”

25. He enters a room and every woman wants to give him his number, and he takes them.

26. He has deep dark brown bedroom eyes, and he knows it.

27. He shows up late all the time, and always has a very detailed excuse.

28. He says, “It depends, are you planning on losing weight,” when you ask him if you should cut your hair shorter.

29. He tells you how to dress.

30. He tells to wear long fake fingernails painted pink.

31. He is in therapy with you and seeing another therapist with his wife.

32. He enters the athletic gym, and the male employees look at you, raise a brow, and say in a derogatory tone, “That’s your boyfriend?”

33. He was the first man you saw after breaking up with your other boyfriend who was the first man you saw.

34. He claims he cannot tell you where he lives because it is a temporary situation and he can’t give you his phone number because he doesn’t have a phone.

35. He plans a party and not one person shows up.

36. He asks your father for your hand in marriage, shortly after his mistress, holding a baby, kicks down his apartment door in an attempt to kill you.

37. He does things with himself at stop signs you know are plain wrong, but he insists everyone does it.

38. He lies to his mother.

39. He yells at you because you packed the camping ice-chest wrong.

40. He tells you that your suspicions about his cheating on you means you are paranoid.

41. He likes beer with his breakfast.

42. He takes you out to drink “brain freeze” alcoholic shots for the first date.

43. He tells you all about his special adventures with his guy friend, with a twinkle of love in his eyes.

44. He takes you to a party and you find him half-naked in the bathroom with his ex-girlfriend, and he claims she is helping to adjust his Halloween costume.

45. He tells you how you could be prettier.

46. He asks you to buy something for his mother’s birthday because he can’t afford it.

47. He takes you on an out-of-state trip, via airplane, to his hometown and disappears in the early morning to meet up with a past lover.

48. He calls you from a phone booth, a few blocks away, claiming he is out-of-town working for a few days.

49. He doesn’t say, “You are beautiful.”

(He points out your mistakes often, like forgetting to add number 50 to this list.)

Please protect your aspie daughter. Teach her she is worthy. Love her unconditionally. Pay attention to her. She doesn’t know as much as you think she does. She thinks, like herself, that everyone is kind-hearted and filled with good intention. Teach her about red flags, about predators, about liars, about trickery, and about manipulation. Teach her about appropriate behavior and conduct. Consider her an angel on earth, uneducated about the ways of this world. Hold her and cherish her. And above all teach her how special she is.

This was my first album; I used to play this song over and over and over. I memorized all the lyrics. I was so awesome.

Random thought: What if the reason why my dog is so very happy to see me every morning is because in her reality one night is 100 years!

304: Time Travel Back to Pre-Teen Me

| Aspergers Girls

I sometimes think if I could go back in time to meet my pre-teen self, I wouldn’t. Mainly because of the whole “Butterfly Effect” and my inner dread of somehow erasing my own children, or possibly my own self.

But… if I was able to travel back in time and actually be triple-pinkie-promised, by the Big Man in the Sky himself, that nothing would change in my life when I returned, and that my entire memory of the event would be wiped out, and that the girl (that is little me) would not be negatively affected in any way whatsoever or have her life altered drastically, and I could verify I was really talking to God, and get the archangels, all the great gurus, and talking trees to back Him up, then, and only then, would I maybe consider traveling back in time. I’d want a contract too that insured I wouldn’t explode on impact, and I’d likely ask for a cute Dr. of some sort to come along.

In meeting me there are several things I’d want to say. Beyond the greetings, and saturation of unconditional love, positive affirmations, kudos, information about boys, men, and safe dating, and lessons on proper etiquette and manners, and compliments on my beauty, and the reassurance that all would turn out, and so much more, I’d definitely want to set myself straight on the whole hygiene and puberty thing.

I’d probably put the hygiene stuff into a list form, specifically listing things I was relatively clueless about.

1) Brush the back of your hair. I went until my early forties not realizing that just because I cannot see the back of my head does not mean that everyone else can’t.

2) Look at your toe nails every once in a while. Try to get into the habit of cutting them and cleaning them. Despite what your stepmother once told you, in an attempt to get you to cut your nails, you will not get nor die of toe fungus. Never. Stop obsessing. And if, and when, you go to get a pedicure, try to remember to clean your nails first. As an aside, you will feel guilty getting pedicures and making someone clean and touch your feet. The best way to solve this is to tip big, preferably in cash. You’ll always forget to cut your children’s toe nails too; so teach them young or they will look like little hobbits.

3) Remember that food gets stuck between your teeth. I know you don’t like smiling in the mirror. Eventually your chipped, discolored, and dying front tooth, and your extreme overbite, will entirely vanish. Look in the mirror, open your mouth, check in between your teeth, and floss. If you don’t have floss, you can use a piece of your hair. If you learn this before you are a senior in high school, your boyfriend’s older sister will not have to teach you these things in a public restroom.

4) Scrub your hair with your nails when you shampoo. Suds up the soap and scrub all over. Scrub hard and only use a dab of shampoo. The chemical shampoos will cause an allergic reaction; so start saving up now for the expensive natural alternatives.

5) I know you don’t like washcloths, but try ever so often to scrub behind your ears. You will discover in your forties that dirt collects there.

6) You don’t need to go to the dermatologist at all, until after you are in your forties. The spot on your eyeball is a freckle, it will not kill you. It will not grow. It will not change. You only have like five dark freckles on your entire body, and the doctor will not consider that a concern or a lot. The red spots are red freckles. There is nothing they can do about the dark patches you got from pregnancy on your forehead and along your jawline, except offer expensive laser treatment. Just wear a hat and sunscreen in the summer. When you move to the dreary northwest, you’ll be too pale most of the seasons to notice. (By the way you will get every pregnancy side-effect imaginable. Don’t panic. You will be fine.) That one dermatologist you see about the age-spots on your arms, well he will way over charge you to burn the spots off, your arm skin will turn red for weeks, hurt like hell, and the treatment will make no noticeable difference. And by the way, that skin doc closed down shop permanently two years later after being sued for malpractice. You were smart not to pay that $400 he wanted to remove the one red scalp freckle.

After answering hygiene questions, I’d sit myself down and tackle the topic of puberty. Then I’d leave my little self a reference letter:

Dear Beautiful Me,

Those books mother gave us in third grade aren’t going to help you in most areas. I know the nude beaches were creepy, but wait until you watch those movies in that Human Sexuality Class you take in your first year of college. Maybe prepare a bit for that. Your bodily changes at age twelve will totally freak you out. Hair is supposed to grow in those places. Please, please, please try not to kiss so many boys. Perhaps fixate on a movie star and write him letters—a much better choice than boy chasing. Do not, I repeat, do not tell your friends everything. Do not tell anyone about kissing boys, your body, or fantasies. Write it out, and don’t show anyone. Keep it under lock and key. Try very, very, very hard to share nothing private with ANYONE. Remember we spent an entire day together, you and me, discussing the concept of PRIVATE. Take out those notes and refer to them again and again. Do not under any circumstances draw pictures of boys’ private parts or the diagrams will get passed around middle school. I guarantee you will regret it. It’s funny when you are thirty, and a great joke to retell, but so not worth it! The entire “here comes the period” drama… you are not bleeding to death. That terrible feels-like-your-guts-are-being-eaten-by-a-mutant hamster clan, those are called cramps. Take some pain reliever. It will improve after you have babies. Don’t wait four months to tell your mother. The toilet paper won’t work. Give mom a note, if you are afraid to speak to her. And talk to her years before the event, so you can fill up an entire walk in closet with supplies. Huge Warning: Do not take the free samples of super-size expandable tampons that they PE teacher gives out in gym class. That should be illegal. But if you do by mistake, whatever you do: DO NOT USE THEM. Also, do not look too closely at that baby-birthing area, after your first child. Your insides are not on the outside. I totally promise. The emergency examination by your family doctor caused by your full on panic-freak-out-episode will result in the same level of humility as the penis picture in middle school. And goodness, use soap and water or shaving cream when you first shave, unless you want a scar atop the shin bone area of your leg the rest of your life. Oh, and don’t announce to the other seventh graders standing in the lunch line: “Look, I got a new training bra.” That circles back to the whole privacy thing. Read the reminder list, please!

Love,
Sam (Who somehow turned out just fine, despite all the little mishaps.)