I’ve stuffed my emotions for so many years. The fire in me is now burning, and I’m loving the independence, and new found freedom. I feel like I’m thirteen again. Only much more wise, mature, confident, and damn sexy!
I love songs, like I did back then. I am dancing. I can’t get enough of the outdoors. I am enjoying my friends, as we giggle a lot over girl talk.
I am so excited for life and all life has to offer. I am very satisfied with who I am, where I have traveled, and what I have overcome. I feel like the Cat’s Pajamas. I am the Cat’s Pajamas! I’m great, incredible, and special. Just like YOU! And I’m moving towards my own style and own innovation.
I’m chuckling over the silliest things, like this definition of bee’s knees:
Coined circa, in the 1920’s, bee’s knees means something along the lines of very good, excellent, great, amazing. A bee’s baskets for pollen are located near its knees, so when the bee’s baskets are full of pollen, they are filled with the good stuff.
That just cracks me up! Filled with the good stuff!
I feel filled with good stuff. I truly do.
And of course this stuff turns into the sweetness of honey! Yummy honey….
I also laughed aloud at the less popular terms of endearment that never quite made it through the years—words like: the flea’s eyebrows and the canary’s tusks. I so want to call someone the flea’s eyebrows. Just once. “Hey, you sexy!” “Yea, YOU.” “You, MY MAN, are the flea’s eyebrows!” I’d like to say that to a biker dude with a bunch of awesome tattoos or a twenty-year old kid, just to freak him out. Old lady diving off the deep end.
I am truly enjoying this rush, whatever it is. I don’t really care anymore. I am happy. Balanced. Loving. Focused. And for the most part feel sane…just constantly aching. But hey, an ache in the loins makes for marvelous poetry….
Here’s a poem I wrote in a matter of seconds yesterday, posted, then deleted. I fretted the words would seem silly and non-sensical to the onlooker. But after reflection, I really dig this poem. It makes sense to me. It moves me. It makes me feel alive. And that’s what I am aiming for during this phase of my life. What moves me. No one is stopping me this time. I’m me. And I love me.
Whatever transitions are happening in 2012, I seem to be surfing the wave of the collective unconscious. Or, like my bud Lisa said, maybe it’s early menopause.
Like I said. Makes no difference. Bring it on!
Maui 2012
Ocean to Moon
Butterflies at bedtime
Tuck wings into sleep
Dream of when we last touched
And emptiness moved in rhythm
The ocean to the moon
Coming from the twilight
Of heart’s intention
The summer wakening
Whispering sweet surrender
We dance
As lovers last remembered
When wisdom paid her toll
We dance
As enchanted lairs
Where lioness is held
Kissing tender
Beneath the nape of desire
Spin me round the eagle’s call
Inching in as rivers to sand
Play me
This tired swooning captain
Into the darkened state
Where silence beckons
And aches divide
Nothing
But ever merging ecstasy
giggles….”Do you want to have a slumber party in my basement”….giggles
I have recently formed a friendship with a woman with Aspergers, and I have to say, it is the easiest friendship I have ever had. Though it is long distance, we chat every day, sometimes for hours. What I notice about her are the same traits I notice about me. Our lives and our thinking are so parallel, it is almost creepy.
Essentially, we think and process the same way. We have the same worries. We see things in the same light. We both require the same security in conversation. We need validation, and we give out the whole of ourselves. We are able to focus on one another entirely. Everything else can stop. We become priority. Talking to her is the easiest thing I’ve done in my life. She is genuine, open, and entirely honest. She analyzes everything she says before writing, and then analyzes it again after writing—just as I do. She frets over her words, as I do. She wonders whether she is good enough for a friend, too intense, too different. She over-compensates with love and compassion to be certain I feel safe and understood. She offers advice straight from the heart, only because she has a calling from God to do so. She sits on every word, measuring the potentiality for miscommunication and the probable consequences of her message. She spins and loops about what she has said, and how the words might affect our relationship. She thinks about me often throughout her day; I am never an afterthought. She loves me whole-heartedly. She knows when I need her to sit and be with me, and puts aside everything else in her life to show me she cares. She takes the time to write to me, no matter what is happening in her life. As soon as she knows I am available to chat, she comes my way with a smile, heart, or message. She is my soul-sister, mirroring me in every way, and I so love what I see.
Through my friendship with this special lady and through her comforting words expressing her own experience with friends, I am just beginning to understanding the difference between the way I communicate to friends I am passionate about and the way people without Aspergers communicate back to me. I am realizing that many times in my life, I was ultimately not rejected, but that my friends didn’t understand my communication style, misinterpreted my words and actions, and were actually incapable of duplicating my enthusiasm and dedicated attention.
I find this true today with another friendship I have formed with a very kind and loving person. Though this person is one of the sweetest souls I have met, at the same time, we communicate so entirely differently. This is no fault of anyone’s—and is solely the result of our brains being wired differently. Where I am as eager as a puppy to jump all over the conversation, day or night, anytime, anywhere, my new friend prioritizes, plans, evaluates, and places me within a schedule. Aspies generally don’t do that! We have this gift of focusing entirely on what we are interested in and what are hearts want at the moment. Everything, and I mean everything else in our world, disappears when we are wrapped up in our passion. Bills might not get paid, beds not made, pets not fed—we don’t neglect, we just forget as we are sucked into another realm.
To me this is a form of escape. I can do this with certain people, and my communication with them becomes my temporary haven away from all the stresses of the world—away from the constant overload of sensory input, and worries of everything that is shouting to be done, the continual spinning of thoughts, ideas, emotions, and need, the pounding fear of the world’s expectations and anticipated actions. In having a special friend, I am able to forget myself momentarily and be only a part of his or her world: just me on a stage with them, with everything else on hold. I’ve done this my entire life. And I do believe this aspect is a primary part of me, nothing to be fixed or changed; this is just me. Living on this planet, if I did not have opportunity to escape, I would surely hovel in a corner and never leave. This world is ultimately a very scary place for me.
I am also realizing that I hurt much more inside when I talk to people than when I talk to my new friend with Aspergers. This, again, is no one’s fault, and purely reflects the dynamics of two people with like minds joining verses two people with very different minds connecting. It does not matter how sensitive, caring, loving, pure and honest a friend is, if he or she doesn’t have Aspergers, he or she will never truly get me. That’s not to say I can’t have very fulfilling friendships with all types of people; it just means I know deep down inside that unless a person has a brain that functions like me, there will always be this piece about me that the other person will not understand. Whether he or she is aware of this makes no difference, because I am aware of this.
I am working through some hurt now. Trying to understand why my needs are entirely different than most people’s needs in a relationship. Backtracking through all the past times I overwhelmed, confused, or was misunderstood. I am acknowledging that broken relationship were not because of whom I am as a person. Broken relationships were a result of me communicating the only way I knew how.
Some of the things I’ve noticed happening in the new relationship I have with someone that does not have Aspergers:
1) I am sad that my friend is not always able to talk to me at every moment of the day.
2) I continually worry I over-shared, and at the same time cannot help myself from over-sharing. I get this overwhelming urge to share. And have this urgency about me to expose my truths, as if the world shall end tomorrow and if I don’t get my thoughts out, I shall die unknown and unheard.
3) I want to know EVERYTHING about my friend. Every fear, love, past event, thought, experience.
4) I wonder why the person has not answered my message in a timely fashion. (For me that would mean within a second of when I wrote the message, because I ought to be number one priority! Insert laughter here.)
5) I question why the person wants to be my friend, as I am so intense, so prone to having my feelings hurt, in continual need of validation, and questioning my worth.
6) I worry beyond worry that my friend does not see the purity of my heart. And when I am misunderstood a thousand daggers pierce my soul. For if my friend sees me as mean, manipulative, a liar, lacking compassion, closed-minded, angry, vengeful, demeaning, or the like, than I know he or she is not seeing me.
7) I want to be seen. I want to open myself up like a book so the friend can read every single page and know my beauty. I want to shine so bright that my friend believes me when I say I love unconditionally.
8) I try constantly to say the exact word. I fret over every sentence. If I am chatting online, I reread everything I wrote ten times, wondering if I chose the wrong words, wondering how the person will interpret, wondering if I am expressing the heart of me.
9) I want to delete most of what I say. I sometimes have an odd sense of humor, or don’t get something, like a simple word, or simple explanation. My friend’s innocent comment can send me off the deep end, send me spiraling down to earth, with a heavy landing, so that I feel deadened and crushed inside.
10) I find that I am so very innocent and naïve compared to other people. In conversation, I feel as if I am about the age of ten or even younger. A little girl still searching the eyes of the person I adore and wondering if he or she adores me. A little girl needed to be swept up and hugged and told how beautiful she is, how special, how loved. To know that I am unconditional accepted and very much appreciated. I long to be told, I love you, every few minutes, in order to feel safe, in order to understand I am not being judged, misinterpreted, or thought about in a “bad” light.
11) I am just realizing I don’t really understand love at all. Love to me means something entirely different than to most people. I don’t understand the degrees of love, how love builds, how friendship starts out at one level, and then grows into love. I love all at once. This huge bundle of love. And I plop this love right down at my friend’s feet. If I didn’t feel that bundle of love, I wouldn’t be the person’s friend. It’s very simple to me. Of course I love you, you are my friend. What does like you a lot even mean? Does that mean I like you for now, and might always like you, but if you prove to be more special, I might consider loving you? That hurts me. The word like hurts me. If love is the end point, then why am I placed at the starting line? Why wouldn’t a friend love me from the very beginning? Can he or she not feel the same connection, bond, and love as me?
12) I sometimes say things, hint things, and describe things that are very clear to me, and the other person doesn’t get what I am saying at all. I sometimes do things that take the whole of me, take so much risk, preparation, and forethought, but my actions aren’t met with the same extreme of emotions. Speaking to my friend sometimes is akin to tearing out my bleeding heart, setting my heart pounding on the table for my friend to see, and my friend casually walking by and saying, “Oh, that’s nice.” Only to then continue walking. I take out my heart and think the person will know, but my friend does not. My friend does not know that everything I say is a dynamic risk.
13) I don’t know how to turn down my intensity. I don’t have light and carefree days. I don’t have a way to shut me down or dim my emotion. I don’t even have waves of love. Everything remains level at a very high extreme. Nothing is little or unimportant. Nothing downplayed. Nothing forgotten. Everything remembered and brought back up to the surface over and over for reanalysis. Scenarios are played out in the mind of how I could have said something better. How I could communicate clearer. How I should communicate less. How I should be less enthusiastic. I swing a harsh whip at my mind, slash and slash with should haves and could haves.
14) Simple statements from my friend can send me spinning. What does that mean? Did I do something wrong? Did I blow this friendship? Was I too intense? What does my friend want me to say? How should I say this? What if I am wrong? What if I am misjudged? Did I say too much already? Should I laugh now? Should I offer support? Is advice okay? Am I a bore, a nuisance, a weirdo, too odd to keep around? Why is the conversation over? Why not talk more? Why am I not a priority? Am I not nice enough? Not kind enough? Not pretty enough?
15) I cherish my friend to no end. I would walk the end of the earth for my friend. I love my friend. I hold my friend up high. I see the light within. I see the purity of heart. I go straight to the soul and relish in the beauty. I see the love within. I see the potentiality for greater communication and connection. I see so much, but am standing across a bridge with a cavernous pit between us. I long to cross the bridge, but the bridge is broken, and I can only stand alone and stare out into the distance, reaching, and longing to touch.
The crows are among the world’s most intelligent birds. Crows can be aggressive, quarrelsome, and sometimes playful. The voice once heard is not easily forgotten. They have an astounding range of calls. There language is complicated and still being discovered. They are excellent puzzle-sovers, have good memory, and quickly learn. They live in community, support their own, and love for life. They hold the spirit of kings.
There wasn’t any reason to hide, at least not at first. But I crawled inside my tiny closet anyhow, me and my red plastic piggybank. Inside the squared-space that was layered in frilly dresses and the smell of cedar sticks, I would hold tight to my piggy and pretend.
At first I could imagine Father was back; and not just once or twice, but all the time. In my thoughts he’d hold me tight, bounce me up and down on his knee; and then he’d stand up, grab hold of my hands, and twirl me so fast I’d fly up off my feet. And we’d laugh, giggle so hard the tears would pearl at the corner of our matching oval eyes, his with the amber light, mine with the deep ebony.
Inside the dark of the cramped space, I’d travel back to my silver-haired nana’s adobe-style house, the one with the red-clay roof tiles and the white stucco face, that sat on a steep hill on Washington Street, a one mile hike up from the barking sea lions basking on the rocks at Fisherman’s Warf in Monterey. I’d breathe in and remember a time before, a time before I understood how homes, and heads, and hearts could break.
There in my memories, my petite nana scooped me up effortlessly and dotted me in tangerine-orange kisses, while my smiling Aunt Rose Marie squished and rearranged my cheeks. And stout Nano, after leaning over and flashing his bald spot, winked and pulled on my earlobe, offering out a kindly, “We love you, Little Sam.”
Father was there, too, moving in his own cautious way, inching forward and offering everyone his one-arm embrace. I’d tried to make him different in pretending, make him hug me tight and kiss my cheeks, but the truth always had a way of winning out.
I’d see us all napkin-bibbed at our seafood feast, so that it seemed with the salty air we were all fisherman sailing the ocean waves. As we cracked open crab legs and peeled tiger-shrimp, Nano stitched together grand fisherman tales in an Italian accent as thick and refreshing as homespun ice-cream. Afterwards, with bellies filled, we all helped with the dishes, me with my very own floral dishtowel, and my wide smile still swathed in pizza sauce.
Nano took his leave soon, snuck out to the back porch with a big platter of scraps. Two minutes later, when Nano reentered the house with a lick-cleaned plate, looking more satisfied than he let on, he muttered, “Damn cats. I hate cats,” and then held onto his belly, gave me a wink, and chuckled.
Sometime after seven, when all the plates were stacked neatly back in cupboards, the plastic tablecloth wiped clean, and the eight-track tape of Italian music drifting through the room, we gathered round the table for a game of penny poker. Holding the cards proved somewhat cumbersome, but somehow I managed to win every single hand, and in doing so compiled a stack of pennies: ten-high and ten-long.
“One hundred pennies; look how great you did,” Aunt Rose Marie would laugh.
I smiled with eyes of pride, and then reached down and yanked at my stockings. It was possible, I found out, to stack the pennies the height of my mug of hot chocolate before they tumbled down. Nana leaned over and braced herself against the edge of the table, saying softly to my father, “You need to bring her more often. We miss her. And we miss you.” Then she looked over at me. “We have a surprise.”
My dark-haired aunt came forward carrying a plastic piggybank loaded with coins. Though it was only a smidgen bigger than the palm of my little hand, I was amazed. For the next several minutes everyone watched, as I cradled the plastic piggy.
“Now you save that. It’s not to open. Put it in a special spot.” Nana turned from me, pulled down her silver-framed glasses, and eyed her son. “You’ll bring her again soon, won’t you?”
Father nodded and stood up to retrieve my small wool coat from the back of my chair. “Yes, I’ll bring her soon,” he answered, as I slid into my coat, holding my piggy tighter.
Mother would arrive long after supper, all done up—the fair Audrey Hepburn—her curves hugged by a linen suit of strawberry-milkshake. “Hello, Beautiful,” she would say, fussing over my blue-silk hair ribbons. I would gaze up at Mother, then, with my deep brown eyes and tug on my braid. I savored the word beautiful much like I did Nana’s hard taffy candies which left my tongue all purple and sweet.
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.
It was an ordinary night for a child who had grown accustomed to the unordinary. My dog Justice trembled under the bed, while Led Zeppelin vibrated through the wall. Inside the sheets, all wrapped up in Mother’s essence of bath oil and sandalwood, I tossed and turned. Then I laid listless and awake—a lump of boredom. I could smell the funny smoke again and hear bottles clinking.
I pleaded with God, “Please make the people go away.”
All at once, a melodic voice called out, “Hello, Little Girl.”
But I knew the voice wasn’t God.
I was certain my God didn’t have a Jamaican accent and dreadlocks. “We didn’t know you were in here, Pretty Lady. I’m sorry if we woke you,” the stranger apologized, as he approached Mother’s bed.
I leaned over casually on my arm, wanting to seem mature and interesting enough to earn his attention. “You didn’t wake me,” I responded, with a fake yawn, tapping my little chin with my tiny fingers a few times. I was accustomed to seeing strangers in the house, but not at my bedside. Still, I wasn’t nervous in the slightest degree. I’d liked meeting Mother’s friends. They were all interesting in that odd way…
The rest of this story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers
Everyday Asperger's 