In searching I have circled back, some ribbon turned into itself, lost inside a chamber of nothing; the layers and fabric thread red, bleeding the rainbow of colors twisted in perfection, and then spun down into an invisible white of naught.
I am but reflection, brought on by the sunlight that feeds illusion, stood upright in the eternal darkness, amongst the shadow speakers with the absence of ray, interwoven in solidarity into the corridors of nowhere.
I am but the eyes, ears, mouth, and skin revved up in latitude and longitude, the fingers finding me in the stillness, and measuring my righteous substance.
I am liquid amber dripping through the hands of no one—from him whom also stands in the shadows of no place and no being.
What am I least the tethered and labored music to the masses, the scent of the familiar last touched?
I am witness to the sum of my ever-varying parts, the intricate detection of bystander, the wanderers’ stopping point, however brief or meandering.
And though I exist, this ebb and flow made of conclusions and withdraws, of mediocrity placed upward or down in measure, I only exist of what illusion bends and claims real, a lost swimmer forgotten down the tunnel of not knowing what is and not comprehending the vessel that breathes.
And what of this air?
Does he too stand in the shadows mesmerized by his own selfless self; and in so doing suffer the want of recognition?
Am I but a thumbprint upon the eternal quilt of timeless time? Or rather the print inside the print; the molecular structure’s birthing house brought asunder, turned out, and opened for examination?
Where am I? Where am I hiding?
Beg me not to come out and view this self, so casually circumvented round the mysteries of never.
Beg me not to come out and spend my own self to make richer the dollar maker.
How can I be, when all about me there be nothing?
And how can nothing be, when all about nothing I be?
Where is this existence that hovers somewhere between us and them, between this I and this we?
Is we found inside the pupil, the wires that tell the openings to vision what to see?
Is we found inside the olfactory tubes, lined up and waiting to be called upon?
Is this me in this mirror of disillusioned oppression, made opposite to stare back into the light that is never justly exact?
Or am I, too, the sunshine, my ray only pleasing to the touch of those craving warmth?
Do I burn or do I freeze? Do I make-believe and then make the truth come true?
And if truth be still, if truth stop long enough for witness, then what witness sees this truth of truths? Whose truth is thusly so the path to what is and what isn’t?
How can I be so feather-like in the wind of life that to drop me here in this plane would set me adrift, scattered dust swept through the giant’s hammock strings?
What am I?
And in capturing a voice that answers, what ghost enters through this painted threshold into the emptiness of phantom chamber?
Beneath the forest floor, where roots meet and entangle, I wait, my hands stretched out in the shape of destiny, each limb bent in the design of fate. My face shines there, in the bleeding darkness, the soil rich, the harvest collected thusly so and set down at the imagined feet of one.
Like dusk blending with dawn, the daylight hours disappear, and time spreads thin, one hour yielding to the next, and falling faster than the dying star. For death himself is here, beneath this earth, where this child rests her heart, a loving seed for one.
And near this death moves life, effervescent in her appearance, her gown golden-weaved in delight.
Though death be near, his shadow thick, his breath heavy, life—she dances in a play, a widowed partner pleading for Mercy to bring her mate. And how life sings, her voice the holes of flutes, both carrying and holding the beauty that comes with creation. She bows, her hands echoes’ shadow, her arches the very threshold of his coming.
In an instant she is here and then gone, and then returns again, a spinning image of self, reappearing with the turn of merry-go-round; lost and then found; lost and then found again. Unattainable she remains, her platform chance, her shape fortune.
Please come, I call out from below, my chariot less driven than wished upon. Please come, I call out again, the pleading heard by the chambers of my soul.
Though my voice be nothing in comparison to life, in all she offers.
I am but invisible, hidden like the worms that burrow forward to the core of something.
My voice unheard, my face unseen, I cry out and then cry in, calling on the very goddesses of fairytales past in hope of capturing the heart of one.
He doesn’t come. He doesn’t hear.
And if he does, if by chance my wishes scurried across the broken channels of connections, and voice he found, then voice alone is turned down and dissolved by his wanting naught.
Unfound, I weep.
Unfound, I turn.
And thusly I wander in the deepening depths of feverish want.
In dreams I ride the cloak of death, draped in his darkness, the sorrow and suffering removed. And there, from my own tombstone risen, fine seedling is spat forth.
To bloom again and touch the daylight with green.
For if it be death that must come, then death I call upon, to release me from this bitter-thorned suffering.
Cometh death to my bedside of garden. Unlike the soldier before, find me, your shadow seed, your princess, your warrior made choice breed.
I whisper. I whisper.
I whisper death.
Death rises, without desire. He drifts in with the victorious gait of one who knows defeat by scent and scent alone. And takes me from the grip of forbidden grounds, and shapes me down deeper, trumpeting his mark into me, a brander by trade.
And I am slaughtered, a sow made sweeter for the taking. Bled out to be made ready for sup and fed upon, one mouth upon the other. Until all parts vanquished, I am free. Spread verily thin, a rail to a speck.
How thankful then I be, the sum of my parts scattered and forgotten.
How thankful then I be, for the agony released.
Until I hear his name.
The one I claimed mine. The one I called, whom before never came.
Until I hear him call out to me, his lost maiden found.
Until I watch his search, this one, for my mystery. His dreams taking him not to me but to the essence of whom I might have been: the sun per chance, or at least the rays, the warmth captured by his tawny skin and creasing edges.
And a part remembers, from somewhere lost, that I am no longer here. A part remembers that instead I be a flower in disguise, reformed and taken by another. Burst out of the darkness to reclaim the sky, yet in the same making hopelessly hidden.
While in solid form he stands in promise, searching the fields for what was once true, when all about lost memory dances with death.
And life, she gently laughs then, her voice cascading through twin-windowed souls, bringing forth the blistering wake of nevermore.
I am often depleted energetically in new environments with unfamiliar people. Part of the reason is because I am empathic and can innately pick up on others’ emotions and state of being. The other part of the reason I am energetically depleted seems to be entirely biological, at least in the way my brain senses the stimuli around me and in the way I process the input I am receiving as a result of the stimuli.
Sometimes, quite frankly and honestly, I would be a better listener and friend, if I didn’t have to look at you.
Because I am extremely analytical, acutely self-aware, and live in a heightened state of sensory awareness, I often forget that the majority of mainstream society does not process their environment the same as me.
I forget that the majority of people are not responding to me in the same way as I am inexplicably responding to them.
The first part of my energetic depletion is spawned from the belief system that I am being sliced and diced and dissected visually by another, only because when I spot another, I generally have to take each piece of person apart and put the features back together to make sense of what I am seeing. As a result, distinct markers of a face and body are found, categorized and reorganized.
I try to take apart another perosn and piece him or her back together without being judgmental. In other words, if a “big” nose is the first thing I see, I remind myself that “big” is a judgment and based on my limited perception and biased collective experiences, while understanding that societal norms determine the essence of beauty for most folks, norms which are indoctrinated onto a sub-culture by profiteering establishments.
Thusly, as I’m beholding another’s appearance, and trying to make sense of what I am seeing, in regards to features and taking in the whole picture, I am also simultaneous reminding myself that the individual’s features are not right or wrong, good or bad, or striking or dull, they just are.
And beneath this linear thinking of releasing judgment based on the indoctrination of societal norms, in the same juxtaposition, of me being with me, I am trying to remind myself, that according to many spiritual belief systems, that self and this other person in my line of vision do not even exist.
All of these thoughts pass through me, just as I am stepping into the line of vision of another: the release of judgment, the reminder of the limitless of the illusion of universe, and the fact that I am entirely analytical when it comes to viewing another.
And the added fact that I know way too much for my own good (and would apparently make a good sitcom character).
With all of my thought-processing, I become distracted and don’t realize that the other person I am analyzing is most likely not viewing me in the same manner as I am viewing him or her.
While my mind is shooting a million miles per second, the other person’s mind has probably just thought: nice red sweater or there’s a brunette middle-age woman; or, if it’s my husband: There’s my hot wife.
But I forget this.
Somewhere between wondering if my fly is open, my teeth are flossed, my nose is big, my hair is brushed, and if I matched the right color socks, and wondering what the other person is dissecting about me, and what this makes that person think, and how he or she has categorized and judged me and has fit me into his or her comfort-level of classification, I turn into a tailspin of panic, fearing that the other person is not only doing to me what I am doing to him or her, through dissection and examination of part, but also reaching conclusions based on the data received.
Ultimately, when all is said and done, in the midst of my boggling analysis of said other person, I am fearing the conclusion the other person has reached about me, whether it be red sweater or big-breasted tart; I am wanting to huddle into a corner and make myself entirely invisible and inaccessible to onlookers.
Wherein if I lived in a world where I was masked and cloaked, and perhaps entirely invisible, I think my anxiety, and resulting depletion of energy, would be drastically reduced.
But since I live in a world where I am seen, I am also faced with the fact that I am judged and categorized based on my appearance.(It’s no wonder my son with ASD refuses to wear anything other than plain clothes—no designs, no images, no nothing.)
And in so being keenly aware that I am looked upon with deciphering eyes, whether fleeting the observer’s glance be or not, I want to then explain to the observer as much about my true self as possible, fearing that the person has reached conclusions about me that are entirely false and inaccurate, because the gathered data is based solely on my exterior.
In the meanwhile, I am having a miniature debate in my mind about how the release of fear and the release of worrying about whatever people think of me is optimal for my state of well-being and reciting the random quote that says: what people think of me is none of my business, while holding back an entire dam of dialogue longing to be thrust upon the person returning my glance, so that I might attempt to accurately describes my spirit behind this cloak of humanness.
When all is said and done, all of these processed thoughts, (including the deductions of reasonings circling around the non-beneficial and detrimental effects a fear-based outlook to the collective of spirit, mind and body), have left me wiped out, and wondering how it is that up until this point in my life I have not become dependent on the port wine I savor some evenings, or at least a stiff shot of cough syrup.
For my brain is such a grand uniform of thought that even a sergeant general, marked with the stoic stars and stripes, could not maneuver his troops inside me to find the potential threat of enemy.
And then, with the coming of more and more rushing thoughts, I begin to laugh inside, realizing again that more than likely the stranger is not analyzing my distinct features; and then the sadness settles in, or at least what seems like sadness, but of late seems more akin to the knowing I am different and likely a different species of human all together.
In the meanwhile, with all of these aforementioned thoughts, my mind is continually involved in a game of connect–the-dots, bringing all the facial features together to make a collective whole.
And quite frankly sometimes I don’t like what I see. And then there is always the lingering notion, that this is all much-to-do about nothing, because if I was ever to see this person again, I wouldn’t recognize him anyways, because I cannot retain visual images of faces in my memory banks.
By this time, when my thoughts have run full course into a state of exhaustion, the person I was looking at has either moved on and out of my view or he or she has moved on in conversation. And where the person is left waiting for me to respond to something said, that she assumed I heard, just as she assumed I was ready to listen, I am still wondering, if in fact, if I look older or younger than this person, because I have wrinkles under my right eyes in the same way, and likely the same depth; and this person is still so pretty even with the marks of age; and I wonder if the wrinkles are appearing more engraved because of the lighting and what the person would look like in an alternative setting, with say a red scarf instead of green; and if her hair is naturally blonde, or now with her aging, recently dyed; and when I should stop dying my hair; and if I remembered to mark my hair appointment on the calendar, and why at times I seem so forgetful.
Through all the analysis piled upon rhetoric and philosophical jargon, added to the process of scaffolding current information with past information and connecting other to self, and the tangent of strings my mind travels to, I am left literally spent, my pockets of reserve penniless, and my wallet flung open for the taking.
And so it is I wonder, when the others, perhaps less aware of this process, say: “Look at me, while I’m talking to you.”
I wonder if a person realizes what one glance, what one look, what one simple demand, demands of me.
Pass me the port, please.
~~~~~~~~~~
(dang if I ain’t one prolific goofball and a half)
Someone once told me that there are three doors to self:
One door you willingly open and show the world. A second door you open to some. And a third door that usually remains closed, a place where you hold the deepest hurts, secrets that if exposed might make you crumble.
In February of 2012, I opened the third door.
Through a series of events, including the discovering of my Asperger’s Syndrome, my necessary exiting from a university counseling program, and my beloved dog’s death, I spiraled into a place of deep depression.
Having been told by a licensed mental health practitioner that indeed she had no doubts I had Aspergers, a massive vault of inner self was opened. It was as if I’d been carrying around a phantom secret my entire life, teetering on a finite point of self-knowledge, but never quite touching down to the answers.
And now I stood, feet firmly planted in the muck and guck of all the places I’d traveled, both externally and internally, faced with all the years of wondering and searching, from priest to psychiatrist, mountain after mountain climbed, in hopes of figuring out essentially “what was wrong with me.”
I knew from a young age that I viewed the world differently. I am an observer of sorts, always an observer, analyzing and picking apart the pieces that intermingle about me, in the spaces between thought and reason, in the middle point where the black and white merge to form something beyond grey.
I see in pictures, vivid images. As I write now, the words are first filtered, almost simultaneously with first thought, into a stream of expression, each word carrying its own color, rhythm and vibration. And the world, my world, is like this too: everything, everywhere, something moving and carrying its own awareness, as if screaming to be seen.
My world is a constant mystery, a present to be opened time and time again, each new day a new beginning. I cannot help this. This is who I am and whom I have always been.
I don’t understand rules and customs, not because I lack the ability to see what is happening, or to read between the lines, but because I see the infinite possibilities of other choices and options, of other paths, so to speak.
I don’t understand dogma and criticism and rights and wrongs, as it seems there is always another side, another way, and in this way, somewhere a victim struggling to be heard.
A passion so deep, runs through me, a river of sorts, that twists and turns and carries a truth I understand, even if no one else does. In a sense I need no confirmation or validation, it is as it is, and just who I be.
Yet, to live in this world, to walk where I walk, there is this way about me, this way I am supposed to be—some societal-imposed rules of conduct and expected behavior that confuses me; for since a child, I was left to wonder, who are the inventors of these rules, and why do they invent?
I was left to wonder why the others, who weren’t me, but seemed an extension of me, behaved in predictable patterns determined by some unknown structure, endowed with the gifts of evidentally knowing when there is nothing to be known, at least nothing to be feasibly discovered in the infiniteness of variables of truth.
I discovered early on that my only solace was in my faith, that being, by my choosing, and my choosing alone, a universal maker that I call God. In here, inside my faith, and only here, I found answers. I began to see the scope of the world as so narrow, at least when viewed through the eyes of so many lost travelers. I began to see that I too was lost with them, in this collective of nonsense recreating games in an attempt be seen.
I stepped out. I removed myself from the game, and was immediately ostracized and shunned, repeatedly corrected for not being as everyone else; even as I watched and knew that all about me was imaginary, people filling in the holes with their ways, when they weren’t really their ways at all.
For to be inside me, is to be inside complexity. Everything mixed and unmuted, painted and swirled with endless possibilities. But it appeared that to be inside of another, at least most of another, was limiting and restricted, honed in by self-inflicted leashes.
I was isolation.
I was what the experience of isolation encompasses: the observer knowing she is different, not knowing why, and forced without reason or cause to walk outside of the line.
I was a loner; though I stood alongside my peers, I was always alone.
I was alone in my creation of different selves in an attempt to move through a world that made no sense. I was alone in my attempt after attempt to be like that which I did not understand. I was alone in my compassion to want to touch another at a level they were uncomfortable touching. I was a traveler who knew not where she touched down and knew not with whom she was supposed to meet.
I was alone.
I was alone until I reached out, not to another, but into the deepest corridors of self. I was alone until I sat within the inner makings of what rested behind my door number three. Until I purged out all of the demons and hauntings and broken pieces of self, and set about to reform the being I truly was.
And then, as I began to see me, unleashed from the fear that had once buried me, others began to see me too; for it was in my true self that they recognized a part of their own true selves. It was in the opening of my third door that others were freed to open theirs.
Together, myself intertwined with others who knew of me and who understood the axe of isolation and disconnection, we began to emerge—one door upon the next, opening and reopening.
And with this opening, we began to see we were no longer alone.
We began to see beauty.
We began to heal.
For finally someone could see us.
Finally we were no longer invisible.
Finally we were understood.
And this is my door number three, these words I have shared, above and below, and out there, in the circling space of energy; not because I needed to find another, but because I needed to be free.
1. He tells you as he is making out with you, “Someday your future boyfriend will be really glad I taught you this.”
2. He corrects and critiques the way you break your bread, showing you how to separate the roll into four equal pieces.
3. He stays up all night scraping the black factory-painted pinstripe off of his truck because he can’t sleep until it’s entirely gone.
4. He stays up all night making cardboard hotels for cats, convinced he will be rich off of his invention.
5. He owns a limo, but it turns out he’s the driver, and he likes to tell you often what he watches the passengers doing in the backseat.
6. He explains that he likes you a lot, and will share a bed with you, but doesn’t feel comfortable sitting on the same couch as you.
7. He steals your expensive perfume bottle (again) and “secretly” gives it as a present to his other girlfriend.
8. He doesn’t have driving insurance and totals his truck while on a secret rendezvous to the mountains with his other lover, and then asks you to come get him at the hospital.
9. He says, after your first dinner date, which he planned to be out of town, that he is too drunk to drive home but has conveniently already booked a hotel room nearby.
10. He promises he just wants to cuddle.
11. He says he has a romantic surprise for you, and when you enter the room there is a “toy” and a video camera set up.
12. His father tells you, after your lover has gone missing for three days: “He is just like me, a player, and he ain’t changing.”
13. His mother takes you out to an intimate lunch and tells you, “You are so smart and lovely and kind, why are you with my son?”
14. He takes you to an antique store to teach you have to shoplift.
15. He sells you a stereo that he bought with his roommates “stolen” credit card.
16. He doesn’t come and find you when you run out of the house crying.
17. He calls his ex-girlfriend when you are still in bed together.
18. He has rearranged the photos of you as a couple each time you come over.
19. He lives with his sister, has no job, is addicted to pain-killers, and is a chain-smoker.
20. He makes you gag.
21. He makes you wish you lived on another planet.
22. He says, “I don’t love you, I’m certain.”
23. He is the roommate of the other really odd guy you dated.
24. He has an ex-wife that warns, “Watch out, he is trouble.”
25. He enters a room and every woman wants to give him his number, and he takes them.
26. He has deep dark brown bedroom eyes, and he knows it.
27. He shows up late all the time, and always has a very detailed excuse.
28. He says, “It depends, are you planning on losing weight,” when you ask him if you should cut your hair shorter.
29. He tells you how to dress.
30. He tells to wear long fake fingernails painted pink.
31. He is in therapy with you and seeing another therapist with his wife.
32. He enters the athletic gym, and the male employees look at you, raise a brow, and say in a derogatory tone, “That’s your boyfriend?”
33. He was the first man you saw after breaking up with your other boyfriend who was the first man you saw.
34. He claims he cannot tell you where he lives because it is a temporary situation and he can’t give you his phone number because he doesn’t have a phone.
35. He plans a party and not one person shows up.
36. He asks your father for your hand in marriage, shortly after his mistress, holding a baby, kicks down his apartment door in an attempt to kill you.
37. He does things with himself at stop signs you know are plain wrong, but he insists everyone does it.
38. He lies to his mother.
39. He yells at you because you packed the camping ice-chest wrong.
40. He tells you that your suspicions about his cheating on you means you are paranoid.
41. He likes beer with his breakfast.
42. He takes you out to drink “brain freeze” alcoholic shots for the first date.
43. He tells you all about his special adventures with his guy friend, with a twinkle of love in his eyes.
44. He takes you to a party and you find him half-naked in the bathroom with his ex-girlfriend, and he claims she is helping to adjust his Halloween costume.
45. He tells you how you could be prettier.
46. He asks you to buy something for his mother’s birthday because he can’t afford it.
47. He takes you on an out-of-state trip, via airplane, to his hometown and disappears in the early morning to meet up with a past lover.
48. He calls you from a phone booth, a few blocks away, claiming he is out-of-town working for a few days.
49. He doesn’t say, “You are beautiful.”
(He points out your mistakes often, like forgetting to add number 50 to this list.)
Please protect your aspie daughter. Teach her she is worthy. Love her unconditionally. Pay attention to her. She doesn’t know as much as you think she does. She thinks, like herself, that everyone is kind-hearted and filled with good intention. Teach her about red flags, about predators, about liars, about trickery, and about manipulation. Teach her about appropriate behavior and conduct. Consider her an angel on earth, uneducated about the ways of this world. Hold her and cherish her. And above all teach her how special she is.
This was my first album; I used to play this song over and over and over. I memorized all the lyrics. I was so awesome.
Random thought: What if the reason why my dog is so very happy to see me every morning is because in her reality one night is 100 years!
Everyday Asperger's 