If I stuff earplugs too far in they hurt and at night they squish and press against my ear and the pillow but they allow me to stay in the same bed with my husband.
***
Supplements
I could have gone on several cruise ship vacations for the same price I paid for my supplements but they keep me moving.
***
Clean Clothes
There is always a pile of laundry staring at me from the corner of the living room but usually no one in my family stinks.
***
Waking up my Youngest
He is sleeping so soundly, so soft and warm and cuddly, but after he wakes up he says cool stuff like: “Mom, guess what? I just peed, burped, and sneezed all at the same time!”
***
Lab Tests
They induce panic attacks and sleepless nights, and often lead to more supplements, but they provide vital information.
***
My Dog (Spastic Colon)
I often wake up to surprises she has left me in all forms but I laugh when she eats my underwear and wags her tail so super fast her little butt shakes.
***
Documentaries
They make me over think and conjure up dread but knowledge is power.
***
Washington State
Yes, it rains and rains, and there are tons of spiders, but the greenery and scenery are pure heaven.
***
My China Doll
I have had her since I was twelve and I think she is haunted with my spirit, so I am afraid to move her, get rid of her, or hide her in a dark closet, but she makes for interesting conversation.
***
Dark Organic Chocolate with Espresso Coffee Chips
Need I say more?
***
Tiny Black Ants
They are overtaking my kitchen but they also carry away crumbs.
***
My Little Brain
My brain barks, begs, and beckons to be heard but I live in a state of constant entertainment and fascination.
I am fortunate to have married one of the most patient men on earth. I honestly do not think anyone else, besides my children and dog, whom all rely on me for food, could stand to live with me. I have a plethora of unique quirks and habits. Too many to list, and as many know, I’m a good lister. (Lister should be a word.)
Prepare for digression.
Today I almost wrote on death terror (always on my mind), then moved onto the funny things about aging, and then landed on exploring raw food diets. My heart palpitations started up with the thought of switching to a raw food diet. I’ve tried the diet before. Moving from vegetarian to vegan (no cheese, no eggs) lasted four days. Trying to go from vegetarian to raw-food-vegan lasted about the time I take to walk to the fridge, open the fridge, and devour a slice of veggie-combo pizza.
I sure would like to rid myself of aches and pains, have more energy, and look like I’m 50, when I’m 70, but I’m thinking the heart attack and situational depression from the removal of Italian food from my life and stomach, would certainly kill me. I’m all for people finding something that works for them, be it diet, exercise, love, or faith, as long as the solution doesn’t harm another. Me, going raw vegan, would harm all the people who loved me. The radical mood shifts alone would cause mass destruction.
Which leads me back to my marriage. I am a moody gal. And the fact that my husband sticks around is a miracle. I got over myself, and my ego, in relation to my place in our marriage, about ten years ago, when for the hundredth time, I heard, from yet another woman: “You are so lucky to have a man like Bob.”
Gag! No one ever once, not once, not anyone from school functions, the workplace, the family gatherings, friendly circles, not one person ever said: “Bob, you are so lucky to have a woman like Sam.” (Insert my real name there; for all you logical souls concluding: Well, of course not. Her name isn’t really Sam.)
Not a one! I’m not chopped liver. And my brain is keen. So it’s got to be that whole “high maintenance” attribute I’ve got going on.
Poor, poor Bob. If you believe in the Buddha’s way of a person coming back in a life position based on previous karmic dealings, then I certainly wonder about my husband. For him to end up being my breadwinner, dishwasher, back and neck massager, psychologist, best friend, and emotional punching bag, I figure he must have done me mighty wrong in a past life!
Which logically means I have an obligation to even out the karmic relationship, I suppose. Speaking of such, accordingly, I must have done a whole lot of people wrong in my previous incarnations. Although when I was much younger, I had that whole “pretty girl” thing going on. So I must have done something right eons ago.
I think the biggest karmic wrong doing I ever did in this life was the time I stole the yellow spelling book, with the illustrated cat on the cover, from a girl in pigtails named Alice. She was a straw-haired blonde girl in second grade that sat two seats up in front of me, and she always, I mean always, got the right answers. While I was in the back hooting and hollering to be called on, Alice glided up a smooth arm and remained calm. One day, I couldn’t stand Alice anymore, and I did a terrible, terrible thing. I took her spelling book when no one was about, and hid the book in the back of the room. When Alice’s turn came, she couldn’t answer, and I could. Only, the plan backfired, because we spent the next twenty-minutes calming Alice down and searching relentlessly for her book. Well, everyone but me. Worst part of the whole spelling book fiasco, is that I still feel guilty. I remember thinking right then and there, in the company of a bunch of eight year olds, that I’d never ever purposely do wrong by anyone ever again. And I’ve tried my best to uphold that rule. Though I still fear I’ll be coming back as Alice’s gerbil in another life.
I can go on and make excuses about my home life at that time, but I’m not going there. I’m sorry, Alice, wherever you are! Please keep my cage clean!
Karma is a funny thing. What goes around comes around, so they say. But it seems to me the clueless people always get a better life, at least this time around, and the smart folks end up with all the misery. Which makes me wonder if I want to have brains in my next life.
This post was supposed to be about the high-tolerance level and total awesomeness of my husband. But somehow ended up being about gerbils. This is what Bob has to live with. If you are religious, you may want to stop and say a silent prayer for Bob.
click to see where image was found
Just to make sure I don’t have to be anyone’s gerbil, here is a list of I’m sorry:
I’m sorry to that lady on the phone, whom I said this to: “Well, as long as you are more accepting of children with special needs. The last music instructor had zero tolerance of my son and her classes were boring.” Turns out I accidentally dialed the instructor I was speaking about.
I’m sorry to T for lecturing you on my thoughts on God after I’d had one to many caffeinated beverages.
I’m sorry to Mom for having a blog where I discussed everything horrible I thought you ever did to me.
I’m sorry to my mother-in-law. You were right, when you stood up at the rehearsal dinner and announced loudly: “Are you sure you want to marry her?” But I think karmic wise we are more than even.
I’m sorry to the university professor that I wrote about more than once, and called a “dumbass” to the world. (I’m sorry for the ass part.)
I’m sorry to that Swan chick because I posted a big sign on my blog that directed readers to your website, because you were stealing my stories.
I’m sorry to all the people who signed up to follow my posts, because you honestly had no idea what you were getting yourself into.
I’m sorry to all the perfect-looking, skinny women at the gym that I stick my tongue out at, and for the teasing about your flat chests.
I’m sorry to the drivers I yell at when I say: “Come on! Can you go any slower?”
I’m sorry to my husband Bob for making you fetch me cleaner drinking glasses, for kicking you when you snore, for singing Daddy can’t rhyme, for saying, “You smell,” for asking, “What’s on your face. Can you die from that?”, for telling you more than once: It looks like your gaining weight, for making you move seats five times in the movie theater, for freaking out over the smell of taco meat, for screaming frantically over your driving, for calling you ten times in a row over the possibility of my heart exploding, for making you edit my writing and then critiquing your editing skills, for calling you various names based on the time of the month and the planetary positions, and for all the annoying things I do and say.
Okay. That just about covers me karmic wise until tomorrow.
Side note: More evidence that Bob is a saint. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I made up stupid jokes in my head. Then I got out of bed, went into the bathroom, where my husband was, and told Bob the jokes. He told me I really needed to get some sleep.
Jokes:
Why did the Blue Jay cross the road? Because he was a jay-walker.
What did Jesus say when he looked in the toilet? Holy crap.
What do you call a slutty alcoholic living on the streets? A wine-hoe
I apologize to any jay-walking, Jesus-loving, homeless people. No offense intended.
At any given time, from the age of fifteen to twenty-seven, I tried to have a best friend and a boyfriend. This pair of people anchored me: the best girl and the best boy. In some ways, people would consider me lucky, as I seemed to attract the handsome boys. But some handsome boys, and boys in general, I later discovered, could be bad boys, too.
Many people with Asperger’s Syndrome have reported that they didn’t have a romantic relationship for a long time, if ever. Me? I instinctively clung to boys starting at the age of five. Probably as a result of the gap I needed to fill based on the absence of my father and the busyness of my single mother. Being an only child in a world of ghosts, precognitive dreams, and extreme sensitivities to people, places, things, while having an acute sense of sight, sound, hearing, and touch, left me longing to cling to something, if only for balance and retreat.
As I reached my teenage years, I became liken to a high-quality, food storage, plastic cling wrap. I’d seal a male over with my entire essence, and remain stuck there, in full-grip mode. I remember thinking I was experienced with relationships. Keen on how they worked, what to do, and how to keep a “man.” But I wasn’t. I was weathered for certain: rusted around the outside like a metal pole set out in the rain one too many winters. But I definitely wasn’t experienced. I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to take care of my needs and wants, beyond lassoing a male to do things for me. I was quite pathetic, in an unintentional, hadn’t-meant-to-be, way.
By my early twenties, after graduating from college with honors and starting my first teaching job, I was deeply ashamed of the woman I’d become. And more times than not, I didn’t know the part of ME that I played in life—didn’t know my lines or even where to find the script. From one moment to the next I was changing. In one scene I played the role of the dedicated soon-to-be school teacher, and in the next a desperate crazy fool clinging to whatever man she could get her hands on. A fisherman in the game of love, I’d learned to bait my hook and cast my pole, but hadn’t known to catch and release.
As time passed, each man I met, no matter where or when, who showed the slightest interest in me, soon became my new love interest. I was fortunate in high school to have had two boyfriends (at different times) that treated me tenderly and with respect. However, later, I dated men from all walks of life, most of whom were extremely damaged in someway or another. And all who were addicted to something or someone.
The worst of being with a man came in not what they ever did, but what I let myself do. I made men my bed, and I slept in them while walking through life. And I fooled myself repeatedly into thinking I was content. It didn’t matter if the bed was too small, or too big, or if it had lumps. It didn’t matter if the mattress was missing all together and I was made to sleep on the cold hard floor. It only mattered I was in the bed, or at least what I’d thought to be a bed. My mind fooled me. My heart fooled me. My logic fooled me. While all along my spirit wept.
There has never been such a horrible part in my life as the years I walked half-blind to my own wanting. In essence I was a prisoner, unable to move forward, sideways, or even backwards without pushing, dragging, or tricking myself in any given direction. Best to stand still in one spot—best not to move an inch—if that was possible. But it wasn’t. I had to keep going. I had to keep stepping somewhere.
The highlight of my dating career had to be the season I spent with the habitual lying, sexually addicted Don—a man five years my senior, who behaved ten years my junior. At first glance I’d fallen head-over-sandals in love with Don. The summer day he confidently strode through the Catholic daycare where I worked, I’d tucked myself halfway behind a shelf of books and drooled over his perpetually sun-kissed skin. He was everything I’d wanted, dark and handsome, and tall enough to look down at me with his bedroom eyes.
The times Don and I were together weaved in and out sporadically through a span of half a decade. When I first met Don he was separated from wife number one; when I last reunited with Don, he was struggling to patch it up with wife number two. I was the in-between, but one Don swore up and down he intended to marry.
The majority of our relationship played out like an ill-plotted soap opera, with me as the dimwitted, star-struck mistress, and Don as the notorious villain. I can laugh now, find many lessons in the journey with Don, even thank him for the crash-course in what-not-to-do ever again; but back then, having no other models for beneficial love relationships and no avenue for escape, I was stuck in the mire of pain and misery, a self-invented trap that I had no idea of how to release. I cried daily. I wrote dark or needy poetry. My focus from morning to-night was Don. My life was Don. My reason for living was Don.
There was the time I dialed his number obsessively, about twenty times, just to hear his voice on the machine; the time his lover called me and said: “Just so you know I’ve been sleeping with Don every morning after he leaves your house. I’m those ‘business trips’ he’s been on.”; the time he totaled his uninsured truck out-of-town, and called me to come get him from the hospital, even though he’d been secretly rendezvousing with another that day; the time Don and I threw a Halloween party (which I obsessed and over planned about) and no one came (except a few of my teaching program college mates), because all of Don’s “friends” didn’t respect him; the time I drank an entire bottle of wine and slammed my finger in the closet, because I’d yet again been waiting for Don to show up.
He had a habit of just not showing up. Just not being there. I’d come to expect it. To recognize the raw acid-burning pain in my chest that signified the abandonment soon to come. There was pain continually lurking behind the wall of my psyche. I’d be in bed, the only one awake, and ritually would cry up to the heavens, begging for a way out, for understanding, but mostly for a way to make him love me.
I didn’t know any better. No one had taught me. And Mother, though I love her, hadn’t prepared me. Everything I’d learned from romance came from Mother or movies, or maybe from watching soap operas or another person. I didn’t have standards. I didn’t know what standards were. And I didn’t know why someone wouldn’t or couldn’t love me. I thought everyone was good, everyone just, everyone honest, everyone sorry.
I have been selfish and blinded. I have hurt the most precious being on this earth, my very flesh and blood, my baby, my angel, my bear.
I am so very sorry. And you have every right to be mad at Mommy. You have a right to have emotions, to feel emotions, to have pain, to express the pain, to experience that pain, and to above all share that pain with whomever you choose to share that pain with. I love you so much that I am crying with joy. I am washing the tears from my cheek. And I am crying big tears of “I am sorry.”
This is the most important letter I have ever written. The most important words I have ever written. And Mommy has written thousands of pages of words. You are that important.
When I was little, I promised myself every night and every day, in the morning light and in the dark, how I would love my child with all my heart. How I would never cause him or her pain. How I would be there. How I would carry the pain.
I would die for you. Right now. I would die for you. I love you that much.
I am sorry I haven’t shown you lately how much I love you. I am sorry I have ignored you. I am sorry I haven’t been present. It is my fault. And I am heart-broken because of the choices I made. You are not to blame, one bit. You did nothing wrong. You are perfect.
If you could see me now, crying louder than our doggy howls, crying so hard, because I never want you to feel alone or unloved, unnoticed or forgotten, you would understand how much you mean to me.
You would know that you are not Forgotten. That you are loved beyond measure.
You are my beautiful, divine, and loving son. I am the luckiest mom on earth! You make me smile with delight. You tickle me inside with your jokes and puns. You are amazing. You are brilliant. You are the joy that fills my day and the reason I fall asleep proud. You are a bright star that brings the family an element of surprise, adventure, truth, and great passion.
Our family is complete because of YOU!
Your passion is so huge that it fills the whole of our house. Your creations, inventions, and experiments—as they explode in our bathrooms, across our kitchen, on the balcony, and all around the house—they announce to the world: I am brilliant! I am creative! I am GREAT!
Our family is whole because of you. Because of your brilliance and charm. Your directness. Your ability to see and feel at a deep, deep level. Your gift of knowing things beyond this world. Your gift of bringing a smile to our face, over and over. Your memory is fascinating. Your strong will and determination is amazing.
You will go far in life. You have so very much to offer the world.
And I am so very sorry that I have not been there for you. I am ashamed. I am saddened. I was wrong.
I’ve been lost in my own world and pain. I’ve been hiding from events in my life. I’ve been afraid. I haven’t been brave like you. I haven’t been courageous like you.
But you know what?
You have made me braver with your words today.
Know why?
Because I love you so much, that your very words pulled me out from where I was hiding, and motivated me to stop being selfish, and to see the beautiful gifts in my life. Gifts like you, and your smile, and your loving eyes—and your huge, huge heart!
I am so blessed!
Look at you. Look what God has giving Mommy! A beautiful, intelligent, healthy, loving, charming, courageous boy. Who could ask for more? Why have I been so blinded in my own worries and fears?
You are glorious beyond words.
So this is both my sorry letter to you, my loving son, and my thank you letter to God.
Thank you God for my boy. Thank you for his angel heart, for his angel hugs, and for his patience with his mom. I know how blessed I am. Please forgive me for not appreciating this marvel you have placed before me, for this gift you have trusted in my care, for this wise being at my side.
“Thank you!” I shout from the highest mountain. “Thank you for this greatest gift in the whole of the world. Thank you for my glorious boy. For my super, fabulous kid who makes my world marvelous.”
Today, my son, I honor your words and concerns. I honor you. I honor all of you. All parts of you. Everything about you is absolutely perfect. There is nothing I would change, nothing I would alter.
I can’t wait until you get home; I’m counting the minutes. I will get on my knees and say: “I’m sorry.”
Then I will wrap my arms around you, and say: “I love you farther than all the universes can reach. I have loved you for a thousand years. Darling, don’t be afraid. I will love you for a thousand more! I will love you forever and ever! I am here.”
Everyday Asperger's 
