isolation

516: A Gallant Longing

| Aspergers Girls

I process everything. I am a processing machine. I even process the process of writing. Today I feel ‘guilty’ for yesterday’s writing, as it didn’t represent the ‘true’ me. Even as I search for the ‘truth’ of who I am, stumbling again into myself and not knowing where I fall, I somehow still manage to pinpoint who I am not. It’s strange, even to write. But seems to be the way of it. All so complex and bothersome. Like most days, I wish I was rather emptied of myself.

Yesterday my post ended with freedom, with the removal of ‘self’ and judgment, with the capacity to move into this world unseen and to be okay with that. Yesterday that was a true statement. Today it’s not.

I didn’t lie. I meant what I said. I was in a brief over-confident mood. I was in an I-will-will-myself-all-better-state. I get that way from time-to-time. I wouldn’t call me hopeful or resilient or ‘positive’ during these moments of zealous confidence. More so, underneath my skin somewhere, when I approach my writing with such voice, I am a bit perturbed at life in general. I guess you could say I was sporting an under coating of frustration and trying to paint over myself with some form of strength.

I tend to only feel good about the words I have scribed that provoke a soft appeal and gentleness. I tend to be attracted to my sharings which display an intense vulnerability and a vast uncloaking of self. Yesterday’s post wasn’t one of those posts.

I am not ashamed of the writing, and not regretting it, just, I guess, wondering how I can so easily shift and transform. It’s unsettling to say the least, when the person I was a moment ago isn’t the person I am now. Perhaps, I say in jest, I have some advanced multiple personality disorder in which I am both congealed and disjointed all at once with legions of aspects of self bursting into bits and pieces of everything.

Yesterday, I was PMSing. I ‘suffer’ from PMDD, endometriosis, and an autonomic blood pressure condition (closely related to POTS), as well as hyperjoint mobility syndrome, each of which are triggered by fluctuations in hormones. PMDD is enough in and of itself to drive me batty, but the physical pain sometimes leads to a week of being couch bound. This has been an on going event for most of my adult life. It’s not new, and it’s not strange or unknown. But somehow the debilitation is still rather scary and depressing, particularly, as I was hospitalized about a year ago from an extreme episode. Anyhow, I really don’t want sympathy or to rant or complain, just to explain.

I suppose in moments of couch-bound, sloth-mode, semi-hibernation, I get particularly prolific in my writing. One reason being that there is really nothing else I can physically do, beyond playing computer games, watching movies, and reading, oh, and the occasional romp to the kitchen to binge eat. Having the capacity to write during these hormonal nightmares most certainly brings me a sense of purpose. Also, I think the hormones, or what-have-yous, affect my thinking, in that I have more thoughts and that I am more vulnerable to outpourings. And too, to be totally truthful, sometimes I write during my PMDD only because if someone reads my words I will feel less isolated.

I force myself to write during these times, not because I have to, but because I want to. And that is the primary difference in the particular self-focused writings (like today’s and yesterday’s) versus the majority of my writing.

Most of the time, believe it or not, I don’t want to write, but feel driven to write. Usually, I don’t hear my own singular voice, but more of a collective gathering of thoughts. I have surmised, after continual coincidences, that I somehow tap into the collective Aspie condition. As silly as that sounds, this has been my truth for the span of over a year. It appears Aspies jump into my brain and stir me up. As much as they’d like to believe I am reading their minds, I tend to think they are invading my thoughts—little hitchhikers whispering. Or, rather, we are all just splashing is some giant heated pool of knowledge, and I, by some odd twist of faith, have been granted the capacity to spurt out what we are swimming in.

When I write, I see images and sense words. I don’t actually hear anything. There isn’t a voice I can describe or even an intonation. There is more of a feeling of what I believe is a type of communication I don’t readily recognize as familiar. There is no emotion beyond love. And an easiness and comfort exits without effort. There isn’t a questioning of what I wrote or a judging. There often isn’t much editing involved. It just kind of IS. And I like that.

The process of writing in most cases takes away some of my Aspie thoughts—those perpetual queries that ransack my brain.

I believe the intention behind ‘my’ words creates the overall feel of the work. Much like a painting, my heart is reflected in the renderings. If my intention is to share and nothing more than the words are light and airy, filled with a sense of hope. In this manner there is a radiating wellbeing resonating from the writings. A knowing everything will be okay. A connection, a reaching out, a holding and a holding ground, in which travelers come and visit, and find a place of respite.

I miss that peaceful flow, that rescuing-retreat. I missed it yesterday. I miss it today. I guess I’d rather be part of a collective than this ME. I’d rather sit with a gathering of us than alone—a gallant and worthy longing, indeed.

514: Aspergers: The Potency of Knowing

| Aspergers Girls

Today, I know more about myself and my makeup than any other time before. Today, I know more about my world and my place in it than I ever thought possible. I understand concepts at a deep intellectual and spiritual level. A grasping that even I gasp at from moment to moment. I see interconnections everywhere, and I reach conclusions at a constant and continual warp speed. I am and I am not, and I feel forgotten and fed at the same instant, spread out and dipped in a breaded-pudding for some type of monstrosity to munch and munch upon. I am twisted, and I am broken, and I am entirely undone into myself. And I am lonely…again.

I have twice-forgotten why I am here: my mission, my purpose, repeatedly dreading what is to be and what is to happen, and immersed in a fear-state regarding what has already transpired. I see now that I have lived in a constant state of reliving fear. Everything has been about anxiety, everything wrapped in misgivings and in the sap-trappings of my flight/fight mentality. I am inspired by mishap and mayhem. Miss-shaped by my potentiality to turn each and everything into imaginary illusion and puzzle. I don’t know how to live—say be—without deciphering and analyzing. I don’t know how to look upon my own world, without seeing the impending danger. I’d like to believe this isn’t true, and I’d like to believe further more—with enough belief, say faith—that if I believe enough I can make it so. And I’d like to believe that I can change. But now I stand at the crossroad of wondering if indeed my very nature, my very infrastructure, is not one of exact design predicated by the intense longing to solve. And if so, if I am mere machine set out for deciphering, if my mechanism be one of constant discovery, and if I am have stumbled or purposely fallen into hyper speed, then what is to become of me? And have I not, by simply being as I am, caused my own fate?

I am confused, but not entirely. And I am torn open, but not fully. There is a part of me strong, always strong, holding on, just as the child clenching to her mother’s drapery, the curtain the last plight, the last hope, the last saving grace. If I just hold on, no one can tear me out of the house I am in. I am that hero on the swinging high bridge, the last rope unraveled, the planks removed, flanked and flailing in the unforgiving air, thinking if I let go, even for moment, I tumble to the death of me. And then again, I am. Lost just as before.

I can think, and that is my burden. I can think into depths I don’t understand. So deep I can dwell that in seconds I unravel information that by all rationalization should be data that would take another decade to retrieve, if not eons to fathom. I say this not as pompous one or know-it-all; abundant am I in feelings of guilt and regret. I say it merely as fact. I think, and I fall into a deep abyss of what is. And I come out having reached conclusions and understandings that are beyond my own grasp, yet somehow sticking to me much the same. I am removed, and yet still dwelling in this place of knowing. And in this knowing, I know I know not. I know that each and every place assumed reached is still another empty finish line. I know that everywhere are rules that do not exist and answers that are mere ghosts whispering their bent truth—like the rays of light manifesting mirage. What I see is naught. What I know is naught. And still I dive, twisted into misgivings of self and universe, the same.

This is how I live, from day-to-day, from moment-to-moment, somehow lost in myself, and still alive and here. Still performing the medial and mediocre tasks, whilst deciphering all about me, and all that lines the walls of the interior self. I am a complexity so entirely complex that I segregate myself, dividing and re-dividing to the ultimate-power trying to manage what is layered and layered within. I am the worst enemy and the staunch supporter. I am the fuel that keeps my churning and the water that attempts to douse the rioting debtors’ quarrels. I am that which turns the key and that which wishes to stop the engine. All at once, I am made to be without wanting to be—and here in this state I wander about, alone.

You cannot reach me, because you cannot find me, and my mind is unknown to you. Unless, you too, are this sort of mechanism made to churn and to long. To understand you are the machine and the person all at once. To understand that you are made up of the essential elements that make whole, and to watch yourself transition instant upon instant, morphing with each choice, each thought, each word, each influential force. And everywhere and everything is about. To be sensitive to the cycle itself, to the give and take, the yin and yang, the light and dark, the here and there, the wait and see, the envy and love—to watch self as bystander and take note upon note upon note of what is. This is to be awakened. This is to be semi-exposed to the power of the now and the power of the singular demolished and whole eradicated. To watch as the power is seen in all. To watch as the demons, too, turn into angels and warriors. To see the universal connections both outside of self and inside self, and to know, beyond doubt that nothing is of this being named I. And to still shiver and shake, thinking the potency of knowing must somehow diminish with enough discovery

505: Still Nothing: Thoughts on Aspergers Thoughts

| Aspergers Girls

Most of the nightmares in my life transpire in my thoughts of ‘what ifs’—all the grasping strings that loop and latch onto anything remotely tangible—off springs of my fear-induced imaginings.

It’s as if I have some super-human capacity to see the infinite ways in which chaos might occur. When in actuality the chaos is the makings of my mind, trapping me in its claw-like clutches and mistreating me to the torrential worse case scenarios. Had I appetite for thinking that in some way I knew the truth of the worst, I’d be liken to a monstrous phantom-demon munching at everything within grasp. I hate to think of me as the cause of my own demise; and still I tango with these intrepid thoughts.

In battling the inner voices that make me whimper with both familiarity and trepidation, I also forgo the inklings of an entity born from a loud-speaker booming in the background, an echoing of rapid and rhythmic beats. I hear, in this way, the familiarity of words, quotes and data I have scanned and often memorized at some subconscious level. I have all these voices. Yes, all these subjects repeating themselves that I have willfully collected as some treasure to the keeper in last attempt to rid self of the torture-makers at bay.

I have sailed out to wish it so. To demolish the outcomes in which I project what could be and even what shall be. I battle within, the voices of fear and the voices of reason, all enmeshed in a wild osmosis-like parade. Trumpeting ahead is the terror, always the terror. For whomever enters, whatever trapping I have collected—be it wisdom dictated by so-called gods or perchance-happenings masquerading as unbearable, unmanageable, and must-be truths—intermingle in a tsunami of thoughts.

Wherein many living beings, if not the majority, have the likens of a simple version of reasoning, mine—the way in which thoughts enter and stay, one hosting the other in their terrible over-established party—has the capacity to produce an unreasonable amount of possibilities, all in one colossal moment.

In this way the present becomes not only unbearable but a circus onto itself, each way in which I attempt to look springing forth a ridiculous, over-dressed and over-indulged showpiece giving its all in hopes of fair bidding for eventual attention.

Each thing, the scope of collection of thoughts, is tinkered and toyed and examined; myself a miniature by all means, spinning in a whirlwind of endlessness, infinity thrust upon me, my chest overbearingly shaken and loaded with a heaviness long past horrific.

And it is not as though I can stop this.

No ringleader exists. For each thought is alive, with feeling, emoting and giving off its own breath. Each life form produced where once was only the seed of imagining. And me, being ever so clever, swimming in the waters of uncertainty, plucking one after the other to find the hidden truth. Some hope-driven wanderer, I am, cursing again the tides that come.

I am grateful for my mind, and yet I am utterly disgusted with the way in which it wallows in its own self, and takes me to the corner regions where I shake alone, clutching my legs and edging into the bloated corners of existence. I am in a dark place, without hope, as the thoughts inch forward, one by one, each with a minion of sorts attached to its back; some evil knapsacks piled atop the crawling creatures, all housing an unlimited theory of possibilities.

‘Feasibly’ becomes a word birthed by the dark. For each inch of the world is limitless in breadth and direction; and so to live and breathe means to awaken again to the way in which nothing is controlled or understood. Even the entirety itself, as presented forth, is demoralized and left undone. Even the way in which the thoughts transcend transgress, wounded by the piercing brought on by my own demise.

I launch at my world, shooting daggers and arrows towards the waves of thoughts, and endlessly they lap up, taking me in pieces. I taste the bitter saltiness, tears mixed with the washings of me. I have no place to run. No place to hide; and all about me the hundreds of voices haunting with how it should be, how I should be, and how I should be able to stop.

And yet I know not how.

To say the worse of it is the thoughts is to not tell the full of the truth; for the worse of the matter are the thoughts behind the thoughts behind the thoughts. Given the over-capacity to evaluate and process, I experience multiple levels of reasoning in one swoop: a sea-bird of recourse taking in with wounded swallow the million molecular creatures of the ocean.

There is that which is reasoned: named I.
There is that which is the undone mask behind the reason: named Illusion.
And there is that which remains the reminding of the mind’s process that has come before: named Observer.

All of which dwell in one form, though existing separately. Each with the capacity to taunt in its own way, whilst promising relief through a final pointt singled out by the word: Answer.

And still nothing.

No matter what I latch onto, be it reason, be it recollection of illusion, be it observer of the mind-spinning process, each releases me into the turmoil further; each an honorable hand offering relief only to plunge me deeper within the confusion.

The trick, in saving self, is to not listen to any of them. For each voice is a haunting from past collection.

Some variant creature I am, set down upon this planet with the ability to hold into herself limitless worlds. And it is I who slips again and again through multiple dimensions of theory, only to end up as I began: lost, confused, drowned in self-imposed forsakenness.

The trick for the wanderer is to decide not to think. When the parade begins, to close the ears to the luring voices. To ignore the outreaching temptations of stone after stone unturned. To recognize nothing exists in the promises. To understand each promissory note of victory need be only deception and trickery.

Yes, I am made victim to the makings this mind bleeds, less self than the voices, floating on a makeshift waterbed, believing this time, this once, just maybe, the answer will arise. But yet, further away exists the eternal hope. Somewhere there is another voice that doesn’t require hearing. That doesn’t hurt when entering. That has no desire, and with no desire demands and hints of no requests or expectations. It is in this stillness my body rests in the valley of goodness, a place unbeknownst to the voices that carry me still across the external waves of discourse, without notice, without want, without care, that there exists a place beyond their pain.

502: Dear You: To my Aspie Sisters and Brothers

| Aspergers Girls

Dear You,

If you are reading this, please know you are not alone.

I know at times it feels that way—really feels that way; so much so, that even your keen logic cannot convince you otherwise. The voices will tell you are unloving, unworthy, undesirable. But the voices are lies. You are love. You are worthy. You are desire.

I have been in the dark place more times than I can count; it comes, the bleakness, spontaneously in huge volcanic ruptures. The pain itself tears at my heart and my soul and leaves me breathless and weak. It is then in the black that I cannot find solutions. When I believe I have no one. And that all about the world is my enemy.

But that is not truth, even as it seems very much truth. It isn’t. I know it isn’t. I know because I have witnessed our beauty in the countless people I have encountered on the autistic spectrum. Their truth and love are evident, their souls transparent.

Please know that by being here, you are making a difference. You are making a difference to me. Your pain is my pain. Your story my story, and we share a lifetime of similarities. I understand you; I truly do, just as you understand me. If we were to sit alone in a quiet place and talk, you would know me and I, you. We are sisters and brothers. We are one in our quest for truth, justice, and love.

I know how you suffer in your silence, and how you too suffer in your immeasurable thoughts. I know how you have to always balance what is inside with what you display on the outside. I know this extreme burden, the heaviness, the endless weary mind. How exhausting that task remains, day in and day out, night after night, in what seems a thousand lifetimes wrapped into one.

I understand how you see beyond the illusion of what is indoctrination, and beyond the falsehoods of societal norms. I know. And I know what isolation comes from our being. I know what it is to be ostracized, questioned, blamed, persecuted, attacked, and made victim. I know. And I stand tall still, more so for you than for my own self. For I will not stop. I will not shut out my light to please an enemy that moves against me. I will remain here. I will remain strong. I will remain whole in my determination to rise above the chaos that is this world. I will continue to seek out kindred souls, who not only understand me but understand the necessity for the demolishment of mediocrity. I will be here, waiting, always. Welcoming through my threshold truth seekers and the like.

I honor you, and our family, each individual who remains afraid but nonetheless holds steadfast to the value of authenticity. No. You are not alone. Not anymore. There are thousands of us here, much more alike than different. And even as we suffer at times in our isolation, in the end we are surrounded by circles and circles of friends on the same path.

Please understand that I think of you daily. Please know that I count my blessings with you included as a star in my night sky. Without you, I wouldn’t know where to stand or how to be. With you I remember my light. I remember me.

Much, much love.
Stay strong.
Stay true.
Your friend,
Sam

501: The Isolation of Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

Sometimes having Aspergers is the scariest thing in the world—not the name, or label, or stigmatism the word brings, not even the essence of Aspergers itself, but what it represents in my soul.

No matter how many friends I have, or people I confide in or reach out to, no matter how far I go in my search of self or how many ways I accomplish goals for relief, I end up back at the starting line. Facing forward with the force of the world against me.

Only someone with Aspergers will know what I mean; people not on the spectrum will think they can understand; they will look at their own depth, take in what they know, decipher their inventory, but with all of me I know it is impossible to understand the pain of Aspergers unless you have directly experienced it.

There is nothing more isolating than knowing myself completely, understanding fully the mind and the way in which I act and respond, and still being helpless to alter how I am. It’s not that I want to change me, but I do long for relief and a mild form of adaptation, minor assimilation, something that makes me feel I have made progress, even as I know I have nothing to progress from.

I am entirely an anomaly, in all ways, and in all forms. In fact, I am beginning to think I am the essence, the exact symbolism for yin/yang. For I cannot go out to one extreme of the pendulum without going full swing to the other side, in regards to emotions, experience, outlook, opinion, even circumstances.

To know so much is disheartening. To see so much, to be able to pick apart my mind piece by piece, and understand my inner-workings, and still remain what seems to be helpless is maddening. I can’t cease to think nor stop my methods of multi-faceted interpretation. My mind, some giant mechanism that grinds and grates to piece things together—every thing—including complex analysis of my own thoughts, emotions, and renderings.

Everything I am and everything I do, is adamantly dissected, without choice, including everything I watch, like some giant intertwined web spinning past my mind’s eye. It appears at times I am thinking three times over; that my mind is somehow capable of deciphering the immediate now, the effects of the immediate now, and the thought processes of the two previous aforementioned, and even the predictable outcome and by-product of the thinking process itself. I cannot help but become overtaken and mind-boggled, drowning in a perplexity of images and thoughts, some speaking over the other, some repeating, some making complete sense, and some the markings of a crazed woman.

Add this to the noise inside my head of all the rules I have been taught, (or more so taken in as truth), and I become cluttered with an endless echo of noise: my thoughts, my thoughts about thoughts, and their thoughts, as well as my analysis of all of these thoughts. I become so lost in myself, and this is only the first layer of a multi-dimensional sponge cake of mayhem.

Next comes the bombardment of guilt. The ways I should be, should act, the tools I ought use, the ways in which I ‘should’ think. The world is full of norms for the neurotypical, even full of remedies and concoctions for recovery and sanity, all of which do not work on me. I can’t go to therapy, as I know more than any therapist I have met, and can psychoanalyze them within the first moments of the first meeting—seeing straight into their insecurities, power-struggles and attachments.
I have proved doctors wrong, too, time and time again, based on my gift of keen research and self-awareness. I know myself inside and out; I know my body inside and out. And as a result of my intellectual and instinctual capacity, all the places ‘typical’ people seek out for comfort do me no good. In this there is no relief. There is no refuge. There is ultimately nowhere to go.

The only way is through it. Through the bleakness and drudgery. Through the hellish thoughts. Over and over through, until I come out returned.

No friends can help, definitely no foe. I don’t need foes. I punish myself enough. I shall never be good enough, kind enough, or loving enough. It’s not a matter of perfectionism. As I have said, the ways of the ‘typical’ aren’t my way. I am that dichotomy again, as I know I am good, I know I am enough, I know I am love, but then I know naught. There is that perpetual swinging, of self too, from one view to the next, never stagnant and never truly grounded.

Belief systems, religions, rituals, magic, or what have you, those don’t work either. Temporary bandages or bondages, considering the source, until I analyze them and their happenings to no end and find the loop holes, the questions, the reality behind the illusion.

I often wish I was more blinded to the ways of world, a bit more oblivious, a bit less aware, that I believed there was a something or someone out there in which to seek refuge. This isn’t to mean I don’t have faith, as I am sure some will conclude so, based on their perceptions and rigid belief systems. The truth is I have a faith, a blind faith, and that is what leads me to write, and teaches me the vulnerability of truth heals. Still, there is an overbearing loneliness in the rawness of truth.

The isolation is evident on all planes. I had for the stretch of most of my life sought out priests, reverends, psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual healers, astrologists, herbalists, shamans, teachers, professors, energy workers, and the like. Over and over they saw in me what they wanted to see, and nothing beyond. No one could penetrate me and get through me. No one could truly see me. In the end, my search accentuated my isolation, only added to my fever for connection and knowing.

I live my life questioning truth: the truth of everything. And then reaching the conclusion and revelation of the lack of valid truth, I spin back into the oblivion of not knowing. I live my life questioning if I am truthful enough. I worry about the slight chance of accidental manipulation on my part that might occur based on my own want and desire. I don’t even like to wish. Who am I to wish? I worry about being self-focused. I worry about being me. And everywhere, in vast unwavering quantity, is this judgment, these unspoken rules; these people being who they are and questioning who I am. And I am ransacked by their ways. I hide, I escape, I try to be nowhere and be no thing, but then the isolation is magnified and brought up to jet speed, and I long for the company again. I take strangers and their judging eyes over nothing.

I am intense. I am remarkably smart. I am keenly aware. I am often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misjudged. My only saving grace is in having learned to love others unconditionally. I see past it all—every preconceived notion and every label. I don’t care what you are or who you are. I just love. It doesn’t matter to me your job, your race, your creed, your habits, your ways. I just love. And I long to be loved that way in return, to be looked upon with the grace of the all-knowing, and to be penetrated with complete acceptance.

Sometimes I don’t think the issue at hand is coming to terms with accepting myself or knowing myself completely. Sometimes I don’t think it is about anything at all, beyond coming to terms with the fact that most people will never see my value and uniqueness because they are too blinded by their own disillusionment of fear.

This post is dedicated to my dear friend Pascal. We will miss you.