identity

Day 108: Swim Deep

| Aspergers Girls

I’ve been reflecting a lot as of late. Of my choices and my personhood. I am slowly transforming and transitioning. I long for Crazy Frog to come out and lighten Melancholic Me. But I recognize this as a growth process. A replanting of sorts. And so I turn to words. My forever comfort through the ever-changing life.

Swim Deep

I don’t know how to pretend.

I don’t know how to fake emotions.

I don’t understand shallow.

I don’t understand fickle or lies.

I love with depth.

I live with depth.

But the depths frighten me.

I swim in the deep waters.

While others sit on the edge.

I know not why.

I watch the watchers watch me.

I question my truth.

I doubt.

I ache.

I weep.

I worry.

I turn inward in fear.

I long.

I long again.

But I still swim deep.

I will for always swim deep.

For there are no better waters.

 

 

 

Thirty-Five: Lost in the Masquerade

| Aspergers Girls

Okay. Day thirty-five and I’ve finally doused my fire of vanity! Yes, I’ve donned my reading glasses, and zoomed in on the font on my computer screen. Maybe I won’t have a raging headache today. What I goof-head I am. I can actually read the words I’m typing now, without squinting.

This morning, I have a lot of deep, philosophical jargon pinging around in Sir Brain. LV is in her pleated secretarial skirt, pacing about, taking notes, while wearing her studious glasses and practical shoes; (you might want to press my lingo button).

I was holding out for Crazy Frog this morning, but I think he is still away with the fairies, which leaves Little Me pretty much holding down the fort. Which is a bit scary, as this new form of thought has been emerging that I cannot quite pinpoint, but that seems liken to a black-caped, masculine-feminine entity, that hides in the dark behind trees, wears a mask, and carries various weapons of Sir-Brain destruction.

She’s more of a female but with a tomboy attitude. She despises feminine aspects in all forms, but yet finds herself a female. A difficult position to be in, I imagine. Anyhow she’s lurking somewhere within, and doesn’t have a lot of beneficial, high-energy words to offer me or other individuals. I imagine she is hurting somewhere deep, deep inside of her being, but that most people would try to bomb her before giving her the time of day. I can’t blame her for hiding. As I fear her myself, and wish to destroy her. Even as she whispers, “I am your teacher.”

I don’t have a name for her, but I think she’s the aspect of me that is responsible for explosive negative thoughts, that send me stumbling down the hole of self-destruction—the one who tells me I’m stupid for writing a blog, for exposing myself to the dangers of anything and anyone outside myself, and for thinking I have anything of substance to offer anyone. She is the barrier in the road, the stop guard with the automatic weapon that warns me to get out of my vehicle and stop moving, or she’ll shoot. I don’t know what she has to gain from acting the way she does. But there must be some motive.

She was with me most of the day yesterday. To the point I didn’t feel I had my footing in reality anymore. She was satisfied with the amount of time I’d been hiding in the house, refusing the act of even going to the grocery store or of taking a walk with my dog.

She isn’t depression. Depression doesn’t feel like an entity. Depression feels like a mass of fog that settles down upon me and leaves me temporarily disoriented and blinded, momentarily stunted in my ability to move.

No, she, this entity, that I shall name Phantom Eknow (eee-no)—for Entity unKnown—is definitely more than a feeling or fog. She is there somewhere, always waiting and watching, even in my happiest moments. She’s been there since I was a little girl. I remember laughing in my youth, and enjoying my day, while all the while wondering when the pain would resurface, the misery, the fear.

It is an odd sensation, talking about her with anyone. Especially as she is surfacing just as I am writing these words. I almost feel shameful, but not entirely shameful, because I’m holding out thinking someone will understand, and maybe be able to see their dark-caped entity, too.  That makes this seem worthwhile, this confession and sharing of sorts, the knowing that I am reaching out from this small place in which I live and breathing words into another human being in hopes of contact, connection, and shared understanding.

Part of the human isolation happening in the world right now is because of the fear of sharing our whole selves. So much is fear-based, that the very thought of being anyone but who someone else wants an individual to be is paralyzing the masses. So many are looking for a leader, a guide, a way, the answer, without taking the time to go within.

The fact that I almost feel shamed in sharing a darker element of myself is proof enough for me that a real oppression of authenticity exists. There seems to be two polar extremes in our world; all I have to do is tune into a reality show; which I don’t do, to view the extremes. There are always the crazed people doing terribly disturbing acts or the fake people dressed in garbs imitating idols.  It appears, many are immolating their inner being and light out of a fear of not being seen. When in actuality, the representation they are showing other beings is not a clear representation of who they are to begin with.

I wonder how many of us have PHANTOMS that we hide? Phantoms that are all caps, all capital letters, lurching inside, that we go on pretending aren’t there. I wonder if we brought them into the light and listened, what we would learn. Here is my Phantom. Here she is. Here I offer, to you, Phantom: the substance of what some people label my imperfections.

Why is it so many are trapped in this game of showing all their high cards, in hopes of recognition, while burying all their low cards in the dirt? What is it that makes a person trust another when they show their high cards, but makes them want to run away when exposed to the low cards? To me, the trust is found in showing what is hidden, not sharing what has been shared a thousand-times over. If I dig up everything and expose what was once hidden in the darkness, then what is left to fear in me? What is left for others to fear? If I am first and foremost authentic and genuine, and have nothing left hidden, then where can fear hide?

There is nothing to fear in being me, but this fear would like me to think so. The fear would like me to fret the plausible pains of exposing my true self, so that the fear can perpetuate its very own existence.

So many people talk about change. So many point fingers and blame. Yet, so many forget to look within—to take out the Phantom, to take out the power, to sit with the fear-based entity and listen to his or her story.

No wonder, that to me, and many others, the world often appears one giant masquerade ball—with the bug-filled wigs, restrictive corsets, and elaborate masks. For that is what the world is, at times, the majority seemingly set out in a dance of deception, where their true fear remains buried, and the pretend, disguised entity continues to twirl round and round.

I imagine a ball without the masks, where I am spinning with my phantom, twirling and twirling, and with each turn decreasing Phantom in size, until she becomes so small and obsolete that she returns happily into the unknown from whence she came. I imagine an endless room full of people spinning with their Phantom, until we are all left without a partner, and have no choice but to join hands together, and at last truly dance.

* I have to laugh, my original post (dyslexia) said Lost in the Mascaraed—which means lost in the eye makeup. Crazy Frog returns!

This Masquerade – George Benson

Are we really happy here
With this lonely game we play
Looking for words to say?
Searching
But not finding understanding anyway
We’re lost in a mas–masquerade

Both afraid to say
We’re just too far away
From being close together from the start
We tried to talk it over
But the words got in the way
We’re lost inside this lonely game we play

Thoughts of leaving disappear
Ev’ry time I see your eyes
No matter how hard I try
To understand the reasons
That we carry on this way
We’re lost in this masquerade

Both afraid to say
We’re just too far away
From being close together from the start
We tried to talk it over
But the words got in the way
We’re lost inside this lonely game we play

Thoughts of leaving disappear
Ev’ry time I see your eyes
No matter how hard I try
To understand the reasons
That we carry on this way
We’re lost in this masquerade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8eXCdjdSHE&feature=related

Day Twelve: Behind the Curtain

| Aspergers Girls

 

This is an excerpt from a previous journal entry in 2009. I wrote Behind the Curtain before I realized that I had traits of Asperger’s Syndrome. As I reflect back to this time period of my life, I now recognize that I was searching  for any explanation, in order to attempt to sort out the disorder in my mind.

Behind the Curtain

I made a decision a long time ago, when I was old enough to venture across the street on my own and play in the open field, that I would try to be a good person.  I already knew more than I ought to have known about the world, I suppose.

I remember years back looking up at the wide-open sky and wondering where the universe ended and more so where I began.  I recognized I wasn’t just my flesh and skin, was so overly aware of the inner core of my being that I felt as if I were walking a narrow line between this realm and the next.  There was turmoil at home, which left me with a general uneasiness, but there was another more defining uneasiness building inside of me, piling one atop the other, an unsettling recognition that there was so much more than the grownups could explain, and more so, ever venture to understand themselves.

Such knowing, at a young age, carries with it insecurity and reckoning of the uncertainties of the world, an acknowledging that reality isn’t what one’s peer group believes.   There was a stepping out of sorts, a separating at this point of my life, a kindling of new insight that propelled me onto the other side of the street, so to say.  As if, I was standing alone, isolated and curious, observing my playmates across the way.  I could hear them, I could even speak and they would acknowledge my presence, but I couldn’t join them.  My thoughts were a deep canvas, a three-dimensional painting I could step into and live.  From my side of the road, I would watch with wonder and interest, recognizing my own separation from humanity, without understanding what in actuality I was experiencing.  It was then, about the time most kids were discovering the wonderment of above-ground pools and slip and slides, I was discovering simultaneously the limit of my mind and the un-limitness of the universe.  I had wanted desperately to understand where I belonged and where I fit in, for I wasn’t as the birds left to fly in the sky; I wasn’t an adult with the freedoms; and to me, I wasn’t a child.  The others were all different than me.  It was as if I had been given an alternate pair of lenses in the way I interpreted the happenings around me, in the way I analyzed the truth behind words, and the actions behind truths.

I knew too well already about death and dying, as I knew too well about living.   I knew when I slept my dreams would come like torrent winds and tear me from where I slept and carry me forward into another realm of consciousness.   And I knew well the dreams would sometimes speak to me and give me glimpses into the future.   I could tell my mother things, speak to her about the dreams, and then we would watch together to see if the  essence of my dreams was true, if in fact the dream had revealed an element of an event to come.   And often the dreams did.

Knowing a dream can speak, can whisper some form of truth, and can open a door and allow one to peek into another universe is most unsettling to say the least.  But then, as a child, when I stopped to analyze the happenings, to grasp why I knew things before they occurred, I felt a shudder of confusion, and further uncertainty about where I stood, where I breathed, where I actually dwelled on the planet.

And I knew things about people, I felt certain I shouldn’t ought to feel.   I could tell things about people, understand their intention, feel a part of their spirit. From early on in my life, certain people left me feeling heavy and invaded, while others, though nothing on the outside was perceivable peculiar or different, left me with a flowing sense of calmness and general well being.  Some people felt like gifts, a present I wanted to play with and keep close to heart, while others I wanted to return from whence they came.  I wondered what was in people that made them thus so.  Why some seemed so light and airy, and others weighed down by an invisible ghost of woes.  I wished to speak, to find out, and became increasingly inquisitive and interested in adults, for I secretly hoped one of them would have an answer for me.  I searched out a guide, even though I knew not what I was searching for, or even that I was searching, and I am certain they came to me at different intervals in my life as needed, though I did not recognize them.

As I grew older, the feelings inside of me also grew, filling up every inch of new space.  I was so abundantly filled with emotions that at times I often felt as if I were drowning inside my own being.  I could hear things by then, too.  See things.  See things no one else I had encountered could.  I continually felt more isolated and lonely, though I had people around me, I nonetheless remained isolated in thought and spirit.  It seemed to me that no one understood me.  For years I longed to be like my classmates.  I came to see them as narrower and straighter than me, like the letter “x,”so that nothing could fill them and leave them gasping for air; wherein I perceived myself as wide and curved, like the letter “o,” so that everything and anything could use me as a vessel.

The later years were painfully difficult.  When the teenage trials came, I felt bombarded and stampeded with emotions.  If there was ever a time I believed I was from another universe, it was then.  I played a game—that is how I saw it.  I pretended to be someone.  I was lost, lost on some stage, trying to find where I’d hidden my true self.

I still feel as if a part of me is hiding somewhere, afraid to come out entirely, for fear of misunderstanding and judgment.  The tender part of me, the piece of myself that doesn’t understand in the smallest bit the cruelty and harshness of this world, remains divided and alone, always hidden behind the curtain.

Day Four: Identity Alien

| Aspergers Girls

Powerful dreams last night. According to Jungian theory, my shadow side was showing me what my true obstacles and fears are through the subconscious process of dreaming. Quite a fruition.

Basically, I am beginning to understand the workings of my mind somewhat to a greater degree. Nothing outstanding, but definitely enlightening. Much of my processing as of late has been focused around my recent diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. While I knew I had all of the traits for several years, and had studied profusely on the subject matter, (as my son has Asperger’s), I’d yet to truly come to terms with the diagnosis for myself. I was actually quite surprised at the reaction I had after I’d heard of my diagnosis. My mental health counselor said something to the effect of: “You? Yes, you definitely have it.” That wasn’t the sole basis of the determination of my diagnosis of course, but that’s what sticks out like the proverbial thorn in my memories.

Beyond the major Aha that lit up every cavern of my brain, what surprised me, upon hearing the diagnosis, was my immediate reaction. I went into a precarious tailspin of depression accompanied by rapid thinking. I wrote and wrote, journalling out all of my feelings. And then I charged to the next step, something I always do, this charging. For instance, I’ll have anxiety about some sort of news, realization, event, or upcoming event, and I move quickly from anxiety to organizing and fixing.

With this Aspergers diagnosis, I went from an emotional state of depression to the act of barging straight into the logical: “What do I do with this information?” For me, whenever there is a “what”–a loose end so to speak, something that has yet to be solved or promptly closed–I cannot rest until the “what” is answered. On the Myers-Briggs Test I’m and INFJ — major piece of INFJ is needing closure. I could get into my zodiac sign, too, but I won’t go there.

Back up, girlfriend! So I have this irresistible urge to put things in order, whether in the physical sense (e.g., books, dvds, furniture) or in the mental sense. Being that I received this diagnosis of Aspergers, which resulted in this need to figure out what to do with the information, I started spinning possibilities. Perhaps I could run groups for females with invisible disabilities when I am a mental health practitioner; perhaps I could query a literary agent and write a book, (I’ve read the ones out there about females with ASD–it’s a start, though very limited): perhaps I could be a subject in a study by contacting Judith Gould in the UK; maybe I could write a letter to Tony Attwood; perhaps I could go onto get my doctorate and ultimately change the diagnosis for females with ASD; maybe… you see the point. And truth be told, the could’s that I listed in all of those statements, were loud should’s in my mind..

I’m trying to paint a picture here, however lacking in clarity. Trying to explain that beneath this lump of a diagnosis, that literally feels like a weight on my chest, I’m pushing up and out, searching for a way to make sense of it all. While at the same instant, I’m stepping back and watching my silly self, and recognizing that the reason I’m trying to make sense of it all at such high-speed and in direct measures is a result of me having this condition to begin with. I’m trapped in those mirrors, the type that face one another, so the viewer sees herself multiplied into infinity. Except, I’m the viewer, examining the viewer, examining the viewer, and psychoanalyzing myself. It’s a blizzard in my brain.

Through the processing in my dreams last night, I came to recognize this journey, as of late, is all about my identity. I’m trying to figure out how this new diagnosis defines me as an individual. It’s all about ego, a Tibetan Monk would inform. But in this society, where I currently live in Northwest America, for me, it’s all about settling my brain.

I’m currently compartmentalize my traits and attributes, in a similar way as I box up everything else in my life. The human brain instinctively categorizes and organizes in an attempt to classify and understand what it is taking in through the five senses. My brain, an aspie brain in overdrive, is likewise trying to categorize and organize by scaffolding off of past experience and knowledge bases. But then my brain gets stuck and doesn’t know where to store all of this new information. I’ve run out of boxes, or they’re misplaced, or mislabeled, something to that degree. What it comes down to is I’m not sure how to classify this condition, and therefor not sure how to classify my identity.  I’m not sure the effects, the consequences, the outcomes, not sure at all about where to place this on the shelves of my subconscious.

I’ve tried to figure this aspie diagnosis out repeatedly, tried to connect the diagnosis with something similar in another’s life. Is this like finding out you have diabetes? No. How about that your father was another ethnic race than you first thought? No, but closer. What about someone telling you that the whole entire way you understood and processed your life, which you believed to be typical, was in fact entirely different than much of the mainstream. That in truth your brain was wired differently? Oh, much closer, but not quite there. Okay, then what if the person said you are an alien dropped down from another planet, trying to figure out the ways of the world, with a brain that doesn’t work the same way as most people around you? Now that, the alien business, makes the most sense.

So, there it is: I’m an alien. And that’s what this feels like essentially.

I didn’t plan on that. The alien business. All I had the intention of sharing was how, throughout my whole life, I’ve latched on to identities to define my place in this society; I analyze and study the identity and then try my best to perfect said identity. Whether I am copying an actress , a best friend, or a teacher, I am doing what I know best: perfecting a role.

Now, with this diagnosis, this Aspergers gig, I wonder, if in truth, I’m not clinging on to the Asperger’s role, my new identity so to say, and then trying my best to play the part. To be the best Aspie Alien out there. And if so, am I driving my self to extremes of the condition in the process?

Back to the dream. Interestingly, my dream was about starting over at a new school with a new identity, and I had the freedom and choice to create myself anyway I wanted to.

Only I didn’t know what I wanted. And I didn’t know who I was.

I wonder, if in fact, we aren’t each wondering in our own way what we want and who we are.