isolation

470: Past Twelve: Aspergers

| Aspergers Girls

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I have to say that twelve was rather easy. I was still very much a child, almost fairy-like, or elven, always into innocent mischief and adventure.

The turmoil hit at the age of thirteen. That is when my hormones shifted and life suddenly became bleak, overwhelming and unmanageable. I discovered a new form of escapism then, a more ‘difficult’ escapism than before; I became more observant of myself and actions, understanding complexities in a new degree that felt unfamiliar and frightening. Before, I would leap into my imagination quite naturally and without pretense. Now, it seemed as if I escaped to get away from some pending danger.

Wherein my world once felt light and airy, full of possibility, and all things magical and hopeful, it now felt dark, dingy and doom-filled.

I didn’t have an active social life for most of my teen years, choosing instead one girlfriend to hang out with and one boyfriend to adore. I had the same best friend from seventh grade until I graduated high school. I never thought to have many friends. I hung out with her, copied her, adopted her taste in music and clothes. I think because I was pretty (but didn’t know it), I easily found boyfriends. I tended to stick with one boy as long as I could or until circumstances forced a breakup. I too, copied what I thought he liked. I tried to appease. But with young men, I found myself continually lost and alone with a separation between us I could not understand or explain. While having a significant other brought me this sense of being less fearful in public and the ability to go out and do more, the relationship also brought me this deep seeded feeling of being complicated, misunderstood, too emotional, and never kind enough.

I could write a full book on the challenges of my teenage years. Here I have attempted to summarize some of the key points:

1. Suffering with feelings of extreme isolation and oddness, but not being able to understand or articulate why I felt this way.

2. Wanting to be like my peers but not wanting to be like my peers. Recognizing their character traits disturbed me, particularly manipulation, game-playing, deceit, cliques (groups of children that didn’t allow other children into the group), lying, cruelty, pretending and gossip.

3. Not knowing why, for most of my childhood, despite circumstances, I had felt happy and content, and that now all of a sudden I felt a deep sadness and a disconnection from the rest of the world.

4. Developing an over-analytical sense of self that encompassed all areas, including how I looked, how I moved, how I spoke and even how I thought and reasoned.

5. Developing a hyper-critical awareness of my appearance, wherein before I could care less. It was an extreme shift from being comfortable in my skin to wanting to change who I was. Along with this intensity of dislike towards my own image, I also did not recognize my own face in the mirror. I had no idea the size of my eyes, my face, my nose, or lips. Nothing seemed distinguishable, and every time I looked in the mirror the image seemed unfamiliar. I consciously did not realize this was happening. I did not understand why I looked at my image so much and analyzed it. I thought I was vain and self-centered, even as I hated how I appeared and assumed no one liked my looks.

6. It did not matter how many times someone told me I was beautiful on the outside, I couldn’t see it, and didn’t believe it. I twisted compliments in my mind. I took a sincere compliment about my appearance and truly believed that the observer was lying, blind, misinformed, tricking me or not educated.

7. I did not trust life. I began to see the unpredictable nature of adults and teenagers. No one around me changed, but suddenly an invisible barrier was lifted and I saw reality more clearly. I had seemed to be coated before, protected in some shield in which the world appeared wonderful and filled with love. I had trusted everyone and believed in everyone; yet now, I believed the world was a scary place, and thought that I had been born on the wrong planet.

8. I didn’t understand my own emotional intensity. I loved deeply. I longed. I was passionate. I was a poet. I was this exploding young woman filled with romantic intentions and the want to get married and have children. I didn’t have any interest in being a teenager. Some part of me wanted to skip from young childhood straight into adulthood. I saw young men as a means of escaping the destitute of reality. I jumped into a fantasy land of tomorrow, when I would be raising a family, and far beyond high school and all its pains.

9. I still trusted everyone. I trusted strangers. I trusted anyone who was an adult. I trusted children. I trusted my peers. I shared from the heart. I told my deepest secrets. I cried openly. And people did not respond in a manner that was beneficial to me. I was preyed upon in all ways: physically, emotionally, spiritually and logically. People could sense I was innocent, naive, and inexperienced. I was very much a victim without knowing I was a victim. I couldn’t tell right from wrong. Because I assumed everyone was good at heart, I assumed everything anyone did was ‘normal’ and ‘okay.’ I didn’t understand that concept of boundaries or self-protection. No one taught me. I didn’t know boundaries existed. I believed people.

10. Concepts that came naturally to other girls did not come naturally to me. I did not understand or follow fashion. I didn’t think to. It never crossed my mind to try to fit in and assimilate to the teenage world. I was still very much twelve inside, even as my body changed. I didn’t start dressing like my peers and learning how to apply makeup until I was ostracized, ridiculed, and singled-out.

11. I didn’t understand sexuality. I had a cute figure and was well-endowed. I did not understand how different ways I walked, sat, or bent over could be perceived as flirtatious and even labeled ‘slutty.’ I didn’t know that I had turned physically into a young woman who men found attractive. Even as they called out names at me, or shouted inappropriate comments about my body in the halls of high school, I didn’t connect the dots. I didn’t know what I had done. And in not knowing what I had done, I didn’t know how to make changes in an attempt to stop others’ behaviors.

12. I copied television and movie stars. I acted like my favorite stars. My role models were a brunette from Gilligan’s Island and a brunette from Charlie’s Angels. And I moved and acted like them, or some other dark-haired daytime soap opera actress. I didn’t know I did this, but I did it nonetheless. I needed a role model, and I found mine on television. Mimicking the traits of sensual and sexual adult females did not add to my ability to fit in; my actions instead served to highlight my inadequacies and oddities. I did things halfway, some very awkward child trying to catch up to her peers and changing body, and not knowing how to even begin, and not recognizing that her subconscious chosen methods were damaging her chances of fitting in further.

13. I didn’t understand my bodily changes and the monthly menstrual cycle. The change had been explained to me in various classes at school, briefly by a parent, and in review of some books, but that information was not enough. I think, in retrospect, I had needed someone to walk me through the process daily for the first year. To explain and reexplain, to reassure me I wasn’t dying or sick, to comfort me when the new and unfamiliar body pains and sensations came, to give me more advanced biological descriptions of what was happening to me. I didn’t do well with change. Change scared me. And here, my entire body was not my body anymore. It was terrifying. I didn’t understand the entire concepts of sex, of the ways I might get pregnant or how to tell if what my peers said was truth or lies. I didn’t understand how things worked.

14. I didn’t understand the concept of holding back. I said things like I saw them and felt them; that is until I was so shamed in school, I clamped up and hid in the corner writing song lyrics in pencil all over my desktop. I didn’t understand social rules and social games. I came across as overzealous, as immature, as goofy, giddy, and somewhat of a ditz. I didn’t understand most jokes. I laughed a lot, out of embarrassment or discomfort. I developed a nervous giggle. I seemed fake to other people, when ironically I was truly myself. People questioned me, especially my facial expressions and body language, and worse they criticized me. If I walked with my head down, with my eyes glued to the floor, my peers claimed I was rude and stuck up, too good for them. If I smiled, I was a flirt. If I avoided eye contact, I was showing disrespect or further showing I thought I was hot stuff and ‘all that.’ I didn’t know how to be. I wasn’t given the tools or the freedom. Everything I did was judged or deemed wrong. I quickly began to surmise the world was a terrible place in which no one was allowed to be herself. And then I concluded I didn’t even know who my self was.

15. I cried a lot. I isolated myself a lot. All the traits of Aspergers were triggered as puberty hit. I was overwhelmed with entirely too much for any child. Not only was my home life unpredictable and chaotic, not only was my body changing, my peers suddenly my enemies, but my own mind was turning against me. I couldn’t tell who I was, what I wanted, and had no idea where to go for help. When I tried to tell adults I was afraid to live, they claimed I was seeking attention, that I was fine, or that I was creating drama. When I went crying to the school counselor, he told me plainly that I was a beautiful attractive and intelligent young lady. And questioned what I could possibly have to complain about. I was attacked on all fronts. No one believed me when I said I felt different and alone. No one believed the deep pain and shattering of my life I was undergoing. I became suicidal, never able to go through with any attempts, but always wondering how it would feel to escape this life. I became more and more of a recluse and found small ways to make my life more manageable. I ate the same lunch every day. I kept the same routine. I knew what path to walk in the halls at school. I knew how to hide. I learned how to pretend to be someone else in mannerisms, dress and behavior. I became that which was nothing but a ghost of me, and I lived that way for most of my days.

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Everyday Aspergers the book available in 2016. Join our Facebook Clan or follow the blog for newest information on book release, including contests and give aways. 🙂 ~ Sam

poetry from my teenage years

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466: I am what I am Becoming

| Aspergers Girls

I was going to title this post: Chocolate Gives me Hemorrhoids.

Then I laughed, as I logically made a streamline of comparisons about my love of chocolate and my love of community, and how, much like chocolate, community always leaves me with an uncomfortable, yet very bearable, consequence.

And I chuckled more, as I deciphered the numerous ways in which I still over-share and over-quauntify my thinking.

Divergent, I am. This is true. Definitely true. But far less true than I believed two years ago.

I woke up with a flash this early morning. My brain wanted to write a post, my body adamantly disapproved, and fortunately vetoed the whole reckoning, and forced us back into sweet slumber. Yet, before I fell back to sleep, a good hour of delightfulness (not), I kept hearing these words over and over: I am what I am becoming. I am becoming what I am.

It made a lot of sense at one in the morning. Not so much now.

Still, I gathered this little summary, from my mind, this afternoon:

“Identity is a pendulum. Each individual is grasping onto what he thinks he is and releasing what he no longer believes himself to be. Even as no one is what he seems, and all is as illusion, we give and take based on temporary boundaries set upon the image of ‘self.’ In saying ‘I am what I am becoming,’ I recognize I am in state of constant transition, never stagnant, undergoing various degrees of transformation. In stating ‘I am becoming what I am,’ I am aware that I become those elements that I hold onto as truth.”

Indeed, the complexity of my mind carries on.

I have hesitated in regards to writing another post, as I had opted to give myself ample time off and away from the computer. I found myself being sucked into the online life, instead of attending to my very relevant and real existence outside the computer. In other words, I used technology to escape reality.

I did this escapism for about two years. I have no regrets. The journey was necessary, relevant, and fostered much growth. But I am done.

I thought I would soon be writing my last post. But I don’t think so, yet. I am not quite ready.

Since pulling myself off of the computer, I’ve made some dynamic shifts in my life.

Here’s a list. Because I love lists:

1. Recently, I have stopped going on social networks (Facebook), except briefly for one day a week. I might occasionally have a private chat with a friend there, but the rest I leave alone. This has been hugely freeing. I was spending a good four to five hours a day on Facebook, and though it felt necessary and even ‘good’ at the time, the energy I gave out and took in (from others) affected me greatly. Now with more time freed up, I find myself having as much energy for endeavors, outside of my home, as I did some nine years ago, when I would have easily been identified as a ‘social butterfly.’

2. I have adapted a bit of a ‘bitchiness’ to me. Likely because I am PMSing, but primarily because recently I allowed myself to get hurt one too many times. As a result, I felt the need to lather on a thicker coat around my aura. My husband reassured me this morning, without my probing, that yes, I was still overall very kind and loving to others. This came as a huge relief, because my little bit of bitch-waves feel like the titanic of disaster-moods. In actuality, I probably behave like most typical nice people now. I am just quick to say ‘no,’ set boundaries, self-talk the necessities of self-care, and make appropriate choices based on what is ‘best’ for me, not others! What a concept.

3. I jolted myself out of some dark place of self-wallowing and self-pitty; and to tell you the truth, when I observe similar behaviors in others now, I get kind of jaded and sick to my stomach. Like I want to barf and scream: Stop focusing on yourself! I feel I can do this because I have been there and done that. I’m surely not innocent. And I am not trying to judge, either. Just merely wanting others to find some inner peace and self-love. Somehow, likely through a series of letdowns and heartaches, I got a good look at myself. Somehow, the curtain to my current reality opened long enough to see that I was bleeding out with borderline narcissism. Yes, it was beneficial to spend some ‘cave’ time taking a good look at myself, my weaknesses, my strengths, my challenges, my hopes, my dreams, etc. But enough is enough! There finally came a day where I woke up and truly shouted out loud: ENOUGH! And you know what, I have barely had an Asperger’s trait since. Genius traits, yes. But stuff like looping, fixating, over-analyzing, worrying to extreme, and all that pain-in-the-butt nonsense, I just stopped. No pill. No magic. Just one word. Enough! And so it is, going on two weeks now, even as I enter the PMDD zone, that I adamantly refuse to drudge into the muck of self-pity, self-rejection, and agonizing fear. Like I said, I adapted a bit of bitchiness to get me through. But that too will pass. Ironically, it’s a nice change.

4. I have realized to a GREAT extent that I become what I focus on. It’s like my super power. I can become fantastically brilliant and fanatical at whatever I choose to spend time on. I can become so engrossed and impassioned with my endeavor and laser-focus that I pull others in with me. Case in point: this blog and my like-page, and the following. I reluctantly and without plan, became some sort of Aspergers super-hero. And I say this with no pride, whatsoever, but with a rather oh-my-fricken-godess sigh. Seriously? What was I thinking. Not that I don’t love people I have met and continue to meet along this journey. But the act of continually losing my self-identity and morphing into something brilliant I barely recognize as self has become quite the bother.

5. Recently, I became so much ME, I lost sight of the rest of the world. And I became so much ASPERGERS, I forgot who else I was or could feasibly be. I forgot that before I found out I had Aspergers I was highly-sucessful in social arenas. I forgot I liked going out. That I liked people. And that even though I was an introvert, I was what could be classified as an outgoing, very likable introvert. Somehow I convinced myself, in the past 24 months, that staying at home was a viable option of entertainment for the rest of my existence. I kind of became a Chicken Little, only the sky wasn’t falling, my whole life was.

I had five more things on this list and accidentally deleted them all; which is likely for the best, for the bitch in me was taking over a wee bit more than I am comfortable with. I will end this post with a brief list (yes, another list) of what I have done for myself in the past 12 days.

1. Joined several social groups in the area including spiritual groups, socializing gaming groups, jazz and music groups, movie groups. I schedule an event and then go meet an entire group of strangers. It’s so fricken scary and fabulous, all at once. And I am enjoying myself without the post-game evaluation of am I good enough and did I say and act the ‘right’ way. I don’t go there anymore.

2. I have started to practice my guitar more often and continue to take lessons.

3. I have rented dvds on Buddhism, set up a prayer table in my room, hung up cool white lights in my room, and have been reading books that aren’t in my typical genre. One currently is a humorous non-fiction book about a womanizing drunk.

4. I have given up gluten and try to eat very little white sugar. Though my intense moments of chocolate indulgences continue to surface; thusly I sit less.

5. I have bought myself some new hats and sweaters and boots. Nothing spiritual or ah-ha about that, but still fun.

6. I have made a set schedule so everyday I know what’s ahead. For example on Mondays I go to a quaint cafe and have the freshly made soup and salad and read and I walk three miles around the lake. On Thursdays I go to a coffee shop and go online with my laptop. On Fridays I make dates with friends and I go to the mall and play Netrunner with a lot of introverts. I am taking myself to see movies, too.

7. I try to walk five days a week 1.5 to 3 miles. Something I am ever so thankful I can do.

8. I am listening to my mediation and positive affirmation cds more frequently. Visiting the library to attain uplifting music; lately I’ve enjoyed Mozart. It’s a nice break from love songs that currently make me either gag or cry.

9. Tonight I am going to a poetry reading and bringing some of my poetry to maybe share. Tomorrow I go to a cafe that is having their monthly gathering on the planets’ alignments. I have tickets to many performing arts events, some with friends, some with my spouse, and some with strangers!

10. I have on my calendar to check out the weekly mediation at the Buddhist center and to join a community group, such as Rotary, soon.

The way I see it is: if I keep my interest varied enough, and nothing consumes me, I won’t morph or attach into any one genre, event, or way of being.

Until next time. Wishing you the best in all you are becoming!

457: Lost Again

| Aspergers Girls

I am so very sad today.

I have been crying since last night. This is a confusing part of my life; more confusing in some ways than the rest, and less in other ways, but regardless confusing. I find myself alone and frightened, and at the same time protected and guided. I am stepping out of self, as I often do, and watching silently, as I process through what need be done. I am certainly mourning; what I am mourning is not as important, as the reason why I am mourning. I am mourning over substantial loss. The what of it? The who, the reasons, the particularities, the details, don’t matter much. It’s all the same pain. All the same tears. This sadness.

I am mourning because if I don’t I cannot move on, and will find myself in this dreadful place of sorrow far too long. And so I weep, not because I am forlorn or even truly lost, for I know soon I will be content, but because I know I need to go through this to get to the other side.

I feel misunderstood as of late, and this has been a constant in my life, this aspect of being misunderstood.

I have moments of bliss, when I connect to what I choose to call my angels or God, moments of profound insight and reprieve. I find refuge in my moments of connection with the collective, the All, the source. But the instances don’t last, and I am left here; or so it seems.

This morning I am feeling very much ‘left,’ broken and left, as abandoned debris. Even as I know this to be an untruth, I still experience it as a strong reality. I still watch as a part of me suffers so, in the regurgitation of fears and missed opportunity. I am not selfish in my dallying in pain, only staking myself here a bit, until the time comes that I can glide out and be alive again—in the light, and in accordance with my higher self.

This state is difficult to maneuver within; alongside the tears and sense of overwhelming despair, remains the long distance hope, unreachable though it be.

I feel misunderstood in many ways. And as hard as I try, this continues to happen. It isn’t that I am flawed or that the other is wrong; it’s just the way it is. And with each time this happens, I break a bit, having exposed myself fully and been knocked down dubiously. I haven’t yet learned how to not expose myself. Despite the little nagging voices that warn me, that tell me how to be, how to play, how to act—regardless I still don’t ‘act’ correctly. At least not in accordance to the mainstream, not even it accordance to the side-stream.

What is it about me that has to be this way? Why do I have to be different? And so complicated inside. So utterly confusing.
My entire life, I have only longed to be loved and understood. Loved in completion and understood in completion. I always thought there would be someone who could do this, beyond my own self and beyond God. Now I am beginning to think there isn’t anyone; that there isn’t a one or a somebody that can take away any of this pain brought on by isolation. And that scares me to a great degree.

I am trapped somewhere now, between wanting to explain myself over and over and be truly seen, and wanting to hide and not come out. Rather than depression, I would name this yet another trial of spirit, another relapse into the negation brought on by the yin and yang of life. I behold myself on that constant pendulum of rebalance. What goes up, must come down. And I am tired of the echoes that leech out of me, their sadness carried to the depths of my pores; then seeped out screaming, as my entire body washes away in ache.

I become so hopeful and childlike at times. I am this gleeful spirited one, dancing in the miracle of life, and the miracle of all, and then I am brought here, into the dark forest of dimly lit nowhere. A scope onto self and self alone, the rest forgotten and folded away, some unkempt laundry tucked out of sight. And I stand here, suffocating in my own vomit of misery: shaken, lost, alone.

I don’t understand it, why this life is this life, and why I am made as me. Why so much has been shown to me and given, and so much taken away. I don’t understand this at all, and the concept of the inability to understand boggles my brain, causing me to loop and decipher the aspects of my own torment. As if, I, as logical being, could master my own self and recreate the concept of reality, pull myself out of the burden of misery and into the sunlight of hope.

I sit here in battle with shadows, or some form of regret, and I play out this scene again followed by again.

Hello, I say to the downcast one, hidden in her corner, huddled and terrified.

Hello, I say again. My lips moving and my voice carried, yet somehow captured and set aflame before reaching the hovel where the child rests asleep in fear.

Hello, I scream, shaking the ground and the space in between us; the separation so narrow a fleck would serve as bridge.

And still she neither moves nor reckons I am here.

Instead she gathers herself as garbage and recollects the foul smell of the world must be her, and if not her, at minimum her own doing.

She is lost again, in some forgotten place, between this world and the next, trying to find her way back to a place in which she does not belong.

453: The Waterdrop

| Aspergers Girls

I have been caught in a rut. In a spiraling stream of water that is heading down the drain. I have forgotten I have the tools I need. I am reclaiming these tools today, at this moment.

Physically I have been sick, very sick. Mentally, I have been suffering. And spiritually I have been fighting some unrecognizable battle.

hospital me

I have found the answers, the passageway, my ‘out’ through careful observation of self, of others, and through letting go long enough to gain perspective.

I had a rumbling of insights that were more disturbing than pleasurable, like bad food on an empty stomach. I keep gurgling up something of self, and pushing it back down, in an attempt to stop this ghastly taste of me from penetrating my taste buds. I have been forging through the forest of reason in effort to find the end, the stopping point, the light into the resting field.

I have had no success in my futile ways. No success in the instigation of force or the instigation of spinning logic.

My only refuge has been in dismissing ego long enough to take a good look at the circumstances unclouded and without residue of pain and fear. To peek through the window as the observer and not the trembling wounded child. This has been difficult. Not an easy task: to dismiss the part of self that wants attention, recourse, answers, and love, and to let in the part of spirit that is complete. I have fought this process with clenched teeth and starving nails.

Essentially dragging my own physical self out of the cave she wished to remain within.

In stepping back and watching me gyrate, from one retched cave of bitter-pain to the next, I have noted the effect. I have witnessed how the deeper I dig in self-pity and remorse, the deeper I fall, and the more I attract further elements to solidify my pathetic state.

I have witnessed how like attracts like, how the more I became what others thought I was, the more I brought to me others who saw me the same.

Effectually, I was a metamorphosis in full swing, becoming what I focused upon.

I was told, while in a weakened physical state, that I was wrong. That I was twisted in my thinking. That I was creating my illness. I was told this repeatedly by doctors. But then the other doctors would come, and claim what illness I had. Explain to me the sickness, validate my physical pain. I could not find any reprieve. For one minute my reality was one person’s and the next the other’s.

I was so fragile in self, from the continuing weakened physical state, that I took on whatever the onlooker perceived me to be. I became a yo-yo in truth, vacillating based on a random output from others. One minute I was up with hope, one minute I was down. Of course, somewhere inside of me I became the judge and jury of right and wrong, of hope and no hope. I took the stimuli and decided within which person’s words were damaging and which were helpful.

Here was my first turn off the course of love: In thinking anyone beyond self could dictate who I was, how I felt, and how I would be.

I got caught up in the concept of time. In the clinging to output and the desperate need of outcome. I began to focus on the end and not the present. I began to fear the future and the unknowns. I forgot that there is no definite, there is not stagnant, there is no way to control anything.

Fear consumed me. And soon the past became my hauntings. And all I could here was the doctor’s judgments. I wanted nothing more than to be protected by the next onset of judgment placed on me. Nothing more than to sleep the time away and wake up outside of the hospital back in my bed with solutions, with the ability to live again, outside the debilitating illness.

My future became my only hope and my past my only nightmare. I was consumed in helplessness and dismal self-fear. I began to reach out for any glimpse of rescue. I began to panic. Terror took over, and I slipped further into the net of ego consumption. I became the feed, the broth, the stock for the over-bearing demolishing ghost of wanting. My desires took over. And everything began to collapse.

In my weakened physical state, having barely slept or eaten in weeks, I began to see everyone as the enemy. And in turn, they began to see me this way. This validated my worthlessness. This fed the fear further. Until, soon, there was nothing I could see clearly. I began running faster from my core self and began slipping further into self-demolishing-demise.

I was never depressed, but I was constantly forlorn and terrified.

None of what I had studied mattered. None of my angels could I hear. And none of my hope could I find.

People I knew found me in this state, and I became in their eyes what they wanted to see. I could feel it happening. A part of me watched as the others about me began to project their fears into me. I became a sponge of sorts, absorbing their negative energies—their shadows. Being an empath since birth this was my natural tendency. And being so weak, I had no will to protect myself from their self-reflection.

I became a mirror to everyone about me. I became sensitive to all their plights and pain. They put into me what I was putting out: disbelief, suspicion, fear, accusations, desperation, rescue. And the others, who were not in this state, the ones that were more content, more or less pleased with their world when they met me, they soothed my soul. I could feel their energy. Still it seemed some giant game of cat and mouse. I was being chased down by whatever mood the cat was in, either batted like paw to a string or scratched and scratched, the post itself.

Soon I was such a mess, I was hysterical. Fear entirely consumed me. I could not help but cry and rage. I exploded like a child. I was helpless in all degrees, every part of me severed. Still the observer of my own self watched from a distant, though he faded in and out now.

At home, the situation did not change. My children were enough dismissed by their own actions, that my mood and altercations did not affect them enough to project my fear back to me. But the adults were not as removed. They were too close to me. And soon I became what they saw, too. They absorbed my fear, and I absorbed theirs and we existed as this interchange of pain, blame, and desperation.

Had I known how to stop, I would. But I could not see the all as an extension of self. I could not see that the poison in me was leaking out everywhere. I was already so weak and afraid, and all I wanted was support, but my own power, my own ability to manifest from my emotional state my physical world, became my own greatest injury. I was limping by my own doing, using fear for a crutch, unable to look and realize the situation.

Soon more and more around me became my enemy, validating my worthlessness and fear. Soon their fear grew exponentially. At a time I needed nothing more than unconditional love and affection, I was judged, controlled, criticized and belittled. All of me became subject of fixing. Here I felt in defense and went into fight mode. Here I let fear entirely take over.

I’d forgotten how beautiful I am.

I discovered myself perpetuating this ‘fear,’ bringing this fear into other friendships and relationships. I began to spill out. And more and more ‘unfortunate’ events transpired. I don’t accept blame for my circumstance. I refuse to self-punish. I refuse to bring further fear into me. I also do not blame others. I spent enough of the past day doing so. I still have a quench of anger and a quench of distaste for those I encountered. But I recognize if others project into me, then I must in theory project into them. We are equal players. A tango exists, and neither is the leader or the follower, both trapped in this movement where fear is the dictator.

I have found my only refuge is in the continual release of all anger and blame; this means for self and others. Holding onto self-punishment or the punishment of others is detrimental.

I have remembered what I have been taught in the last two years, through readings, meditations, dreams, and daylight visions. I have been shown how to alleviate my pain and suffering through the release of past and present, through the release of all emotions not representational of love. I cannot go back and fix what has happened, nor can I make amends for what was. I only can stitch my own wounds back together with the thread of awareness and growth and confirm to self I did the best I knew with what I had. I can treat myself with self-respect and enough love to dispel the fear. I can let go of what will be of the future and what will come of the past. And stop replaying the ghosts in my head, the ones feeding me horrible lies of self. These are in my control: letting go, being in the present, focusing on love and love alone.

This is my life boat. To be. To love. To live.

home me

I have had a hard time of it for certain. In some ways, I know I created the chaos. In some ways, I know others were active participants. Where I end and others begin is still a grand mystery to me. Many a reader has told me I read his or her mind when I write. That I seem to capsulate the aspie experience. But what if they are reading mine? What if we are one mind? What if this is just one giant stream of consciousness, and I’m just a water drop with a voice?

452: Scarlet White

| Aspergers Girls

The agony is torture, pure fire to the soul—the way such solitude is split into ravenous venom, devouring me as leash to the chain, choking the breath of life.

I am that I am. And then I am not. Lost again in some unfathomable labyrinth of thought.

Where and why eludes and leaves a trail of dust dried blood. Help, I scream from somewhere else. Inaudible and out of direction. No path left. No place to go. But inward, where I already dive deeper in the vine of self.

Is it not this place again? The familiar place of no sunrise and no sunset. Where the cold dribbles down the walls of caves, and placates the answers with sweet soft denial. Is it not this somewhere found in the furrowed causeway of my mind’s nimble foresight? My meanderings all leading back to here. Some forgotten spot of eternity missed.

I am a vagrant, a vagabond, a ghost traveler to my own shadow. Unable to distinguish between in and out, what is penetrating and what is piercing, what is poking to release its plundering poison and what is slicing to divide where I begin.

I am invaded by darkness, the soul long forgotten in the night, the enemy out to demolish the light. I am what is not in the way I move without motion and touch without rhythm, stagnant in an air of dismal lies. Here I stand in the place I was, only the place no longer is. Here I stand in the place I was, only I no longer exist.

Wobbling is my fortitude. Swaying, ignited by the dreams unwound, the sword plunged further into the stream of mystery spat open. Coughing up the remnants of who had been. Torn down into oblivion, obliterated and left as carrion to the greedy hunger of naught.

They find me, these naysayers, and call out to the lost sheep I am, with doings undone in their torturous view. I am but what they wish, set asunder below them, and made to bleed about as the rabbit sunken in the snare of despair. My white coat diminished by the scarlet fever set upon me.

Who am I but this child undone, left in the valley of rivers, and blown into the sea of forgiveness? Chiseled and chiseled, as if stone were the heart of me. Made to blend in with misery, to melt in the doorway of pain. Charred to the bone with the starch black of misery.

And here, still, he comes. With his arrow strung across the shoulder of time. His answer seized in the windstorm. Here, still, he is. This gentle grace of knowing naught and knowing all in the splinter of thyme. He enters me as clear day. The light upon my forehead new. The pressing spot of hope spun open into the rebirthing. Come, my lady, he declares, pronouncing me the victorious one, the homecoming of his awaiting. Come, my lady, he mends, his words the golden thread of healing.

And I follow, as blind lady lost in his rapture, spread open by the seams to his glorious name. Come, I do, and trace out my destiny in his waters, dancing in the stream of desert turned dream. At last in the home of home. No longer chased down by the dark ones seeking to erase what has been brought to them as buried treasure uncharted. No longer stalked by the nightingale’s ghostly brother, who pecks out a song of bitter vengeance.

In only this way I am free. In only this way. When the darkness sets upon my soul and the bleeding ceases to flow without follow, and the voice comes, from the seeping of my chaliced tears. Only then I am home. Only then, in the making of self whole.