I like to be with people; I am lonely without them.
People exhaust me.
I enjoy time alone, resting in peace and quiet.
I miss companionship.
I love who I am, my mind, my thoughts, my deep, deep depth.
I dislike the depth of my thoughts.
I want to share my story. I have to share my story.
I wish I’d kept more secrets to myself.
I long to pour all my love into the universe and to serve and give.
I often shove an excess of my love into a singular one.
I feel an increased sense of worth when I accomplish a lot of tasks. The simplest accomplishments satisfy me.
I am exhausted in my attempts to accomplish anything.
I love, love, love the moment. I am happy. I am content.
I dread, dread, dread the moment that the happy moment ends.
I understand the complexities of the universe, of philosophy, of love, of spirituality.
I cannot understand the various tides of my own being.
I am a giver. I give, give, give, unconditionally, without a trace of wanting to receive the same. I just live to give.
When I give, I become depleted and wonder why I have given so much.
I am honest. I am over honest.
I know how to be a very effective liar, and it scares me.
I am myself in completion.
My self changes every minute.
I want to be held and loved and protected.
I want to not want anything from anyone, and be self-sufficient.
I crave to be understood. I understand others.
I don’t understand myself.
I can see through the rules and games of society. The falsehoods and created truths and statements of how I should be.
I struggle with how to live without a playing board; where to move the pawn of me, if beneath there is no foundation, and beyond no playbook.
I hear from a source unknown, and trust in this truth and heart-mind wisdom.
I crumble into myself wondering why I am forsaken.
I embrace all aspects of myself, the good, the bad, the ugly. The powerful, the weak, the incredibly feisty and the incredibly shy.
I recognize none of these elements of self exist, once I dwell outside the realm of classification and judgment.
I respect the freedom for others to think and live their own thoughts and lives.
I get cluttered inside my own mind on whether or not I have the right to be the way I am.
I understand the process and action of letting go, releasing control, trusting and having faith.
I understand that I go to a place in which none of the tools previously gathered are effective or tolerated by an aspect of self that I know neither as shadow nor angel, but merely lost.
I am confident, empowered, worthy, and remarkably brilliant.
I am like everyone else; in truth, nothing about me is unique beyond the thoughts I gather as my accepted reality.
I love to release, stay in the present, be at peace in the moment, live in the space of now.
I find comfort in structured times of routine and order.
I am in a battle with myself in which I often win.
I wonder where the loser goes to cry.
I have been struggling with issues of the heart, both physical and spiritual. I have been to the emergency room five times and hospitalized for five days. I am still in a state of limbo, waiting to hear back about an appointment with the specialist. In time, I will collect my thoughts, and share more of this ordeal, one of the darkest nights of my soul. For now, I am leaking out bits of my own truisms. Here I have collected a few that have come through the echo of my heart ache. Much love to you. May you know I know your suffering and celebrate the life and light that is you.
I am tired of being misunderstood, seen and then unseen. I don’t know how to walk in this world. I don’t know how to be. Every effort is squashed. When I jump, I jump too far. When I reach, I reach too far. I don’t know how to stop, what I never knew how to start. It seems the only thing I know how to do in this crazy life is fall, to cry, to crumble, to be absolutely demolished despite my efforts, and to then pick myself back up and carry on. Nothing is simple anymore, and never was, and I long for that faraway place beyond complexity, where my mind is still, the ocean my very soul, carrying me in union cross the waters of tears.
*
Do you ever feel like your life is stuck in the second to the last chapter of a novel? You have reached the climax, emotions are on overdrive; you are about to unravel and discover all the truths that came before the foreshadowing, to behold your destiny, and at last reach your conclusion—the hero’s quest complete. When BANG, all the pages are torn out, the words blown away, and you are left hovelled in a puddle of nothing, wondering what happened to your story?
*
I am tired of people loving the parts of me they like, the parts that reflect them, the parts that bring them this self-created false comfort. I want to be loved in fullness, to a degree that has been lost in this world of dictated dangers and frailties. I want to be upheld for my goodness time and time again; not repeatedly told how I should mold and conform for another. I’m so busy trying to understand the complexities of bending for everyone into a shape they need in order to be recognized as worthy, that I get lost in my own self, searching for the light I was born with, a light I want to shine, at all costs, despite the blinding stares from the opposition. Cruel world, stop trying to make me into what suits you and criticizing me for what doesn’t. I have no limitations beyond the reflections pounced upon me.
*
I refuse to be happy when I am not. Covering up what we are in the moment is the cause of the destruction of this world. So much fear of being and feeling the uncomfortable. We have been taught to avoid with all cost the inevitable state of sadness. Sadness is okay. It isn’t scary. It isn’t wrong; and it’s not meant to be celebrated or snuffed out of existence. It just is. This place we call home could be marvelously better, if we each just embraced ourselves as is, in the illusion of flaws and failures; and like the emotion of sadness, if we just let ourselves be at a level state, beyond good and bad, right and wrong, then the whole of us would be free.
*
I love and respect myself in all my emotional states. None is better or worse than the other. All is a sea of me, intermingled and mixed; none is in and of itself, able to be extracted, labeled and classified. Each is a part of the magnificent whole of “We Are.” Each to be celebrated in their unity; reached in their effort; touched for being.
*
And she cried out, “Open your eyes and see, awake to the truth of you;” the only problem being that she no longer existed to convince them that their eyes were closed, no longer desired to point out the illusion of distraction, of trickery, of falsehood; all that she was in totality only wished to be free and wild and open; only the others, the ones with the imaginary views, they trapped her in their ways, making her believe she was the one forever asleep.
*
People aren’t blind. They are satisfied with the view. They forget what rests beyond the horizon. They forget that the eyes can’t cry for what the soul can’t see.
*
I loved you ’till the hollowed part of me emerged, and I saw myself emptied; in recognition of this absence, I wept for my return, only to find that you had filled the last of me; and all that remained was this broken shell of the girl I once was. I stand now, a woman formed in her dignity and gratitude, a woman thankful for whatever life was bled out of her; for in the weeping of red I was torn back into whom I had always been—the strength turned two-fold from what was lost and again found–a warrior rebirthed into existence.
*
Starvation and deprivation are two different things. One can be starved and not recognize the hunger, the pangs masked by preoccupation, but once one recognizes deprivation, a dying thirst erupts that cannot be quenched nor ignored. With starvation the soul slowly withers in unknown solitude. In deprivation the spirit calls out to be filled, to be watered, to have the life waters returned. I have often been starved for love but it was not until I awakened to my own deprivation that I knew what was missing.
I still have a problem with people who are cruel. I don’t mean people who are blunt or direct, or speak straight. I mean people who seem to not care about another human being; people who seem streaked with so much anger and self-righteousness that they reek of havoc and discourse. People who don’t see what harm they are doing.
And that is where my trouble begins, as I begin to examine my own self-made rules. For I have taught myself what I value and what I do not value. I have even gone so far as to untie what I value from the post of reason, as to not tether my own self to the exactness of how things should be.
I practice detachment: the absence of having to think, be or act a certain way.
This is freeing. And in releasing attachment, in the same way, I release others from their behaviors. I can discount my own judgment and evaluation, and mark my processing as discernment, gently releasing any assumptions and labeling I might be doing at a conscious or subconscious level. I can step back and observe myself observing life and its nuances.
In examining my process of being, I have come to the conclusion that I still am shattered at an energetic and psychic level by a certain type of abashment. I can’t say why or how, or even what it is that allows this uncomfortable feeling to slip into me. But it happens. Again and again it happens. Substantial is the effect, when I am in a vulnerable state; yet equal, it appears, is the effect even when I am strong and in a state of persevering confidence and love of self.
There is an emotion-like sensation that overcomes me, wherein I don’t want to preach or fix, or even explain anything; more so I want to shake a person without physically touching, and move her to another place in her reality—a place away from cruelty.
The problem follows when I attempt to sort out in my mind where this cruelty is found and in reasoning how it is demonstrated, as everyone displays their own sense of reality through their perceived and self-contracted truths. In so thinking another is cruel, I am ultimately deeming my reality more true and accurate than another’s. And this act of deeming another different and therefore wrong is not a practice I endorse.
And so the question remains as what qualifies as cruel, and particularly, what qualifies for downright cruel. Is it to be based upon repeated patterns of continual harsh words and/or actions? Is the cruelty to be justified by the individual’s past experiences or unjustified by the lack of qualifying disturbances in the past? And who is to be the judge and evaluator? How can I readily serve as the judge and jury of someone else, when that is the exact thing I wish others to not do to me?
It comes down to, again, asking myself, where is the line to be drawn? In this instance, where is the line to be drawn between cruelness and gentleness? And in addition, who gets to decide where the line is drawn? In accepting this way of living, this choice of idealism in myself, that of acknowledging a world in which I am neither captain or mate, neither leading or following, I am simultaneously accepting that another’s actions are neither here nor there, and like I am, another being is merely a player in a part of an illusion he or she has created.
Here is where the confusion begins: For when is enough enough? And is it ever enough?
Would I have listened to another’s advice or adhered to another’s heeding years ago, in my fumbling youth? Adamantly, I think not. Then what is it that I would accomplish by establishing my truth as the truth, whilst hammering into another my ways of moving in the world?
I can believe for a while my truth might persuade, or at minimum seduce; but even the thought of such beliefs feels burdensome upon my mind’s pallet. Therefore, I conclude, for myself, that it is better to say nothing, and to watch, to visualize and understand that all is as is, than to attempt to explain my way of existing. For it is my very silence which serves as the testimony of accepting another in completion.
Still, there is this lingering doubt in me, and inkling of self that believes there remains somewhat of an unspoken tribe of others whom set out to harm with intention. And in believing so, I sit with myself, and wonder what is it inside of me that causes me to think this? What is it inside of me that wants others to love unconditionally and accept unconditionally, yet also remains constant and steadfast in desire to extinguish parts of another?
In truth, I acknowledge that I must first surrender all battles, for good or for bad, and face my own self with outstretched arms of love. I recognize I can only overcome the shadows outside of myself, once I cast out the shadows within myself.
And so, I watch, as the outsider looking inward and outward, waiting for the signal, waiting and pondering when to move beyond the limitations of my own existence, of my own creation of reality, in order to assist in the greater good. And I can’t help but think, that in my silence and discreet opposition of opposing, I can create the exact love the others of cruel acts so desperately seek.
I have been living through a familiar dread—one that I have carried with me my entire life.
A major part of my predicament is in the stringing of my thoughts—in the way my mind instinctually expands off one concept onto another. At times I seem to be thinking, or at minimum existing, at multiple levels. Not in a psychedelic way; yet, in a very definite effectual state in which I am neither here nor there, but everywhere. There aren’t any lights or awakenings, but there exists this extremeness of a structure or building, as if I were a skyscraper itself expanding out in exponential infeasible directions beyond the view of the naked eye. And here, I slip simultaneously beyond what I am able to see and into the place of invisibility.
I recognize I am absent, with my faraway stare. I recognize I have lost my leash to the rest of self. I see from beyond that I am standing outside of where I am, holding a string to the other place of where the rest of me exists; my body in most ways remaining a shell.
In life as in fiction, I can be watching a scene play out, and at the same instant be analyzing the characters’ personalities, the actors’ personalities, the screen writer’s purpose, the landscape, the environment and feasible psychological ramifications of the spoken words and actions of the people. My mind seems spider-like in its ways, capable of reaching out in a potentially infinite array of directions, with its spindly legs sprouting and spurning in fanatical rupture. The rhythmic zeal moves from abstract to concrete, and I am swept up in the weaving of a thousand stitching legs—the legs themselves as streams pouring out of a waterfall, each spawning another waterfall. Picture after picture. Image after image dripping down in a thousand ways. All of this birthed into a whirlpool of thought that is neither disorganize or organized, but collected in the same manner in which one would forge food for the winter or build a nest for safety. Here is where everything is.
In sitting to do or think of anything, I am sitting as the aching spider, as the legs, as the fountains, as the streams, as the nest. Some large living machine pulsating with connections. I can sense this happening, as I am thinking about thinking about thinking. I take an elevator in thought or jump through the illusion of self that is in actuality the mirrors set upon mirrors—each image further, smaller, deeper, but just as real and just as exact.
I don’t actually see a spider and legs, and the rest, but I feel this movement as such; where if I had to describe the pulsating chains of me, this is as close as I could come. But in truth there isn’t anything I can follow or find, just this sense of substantial never ending depth akin to the collective pool of unconsciousness or perhaps liken to a life-size mold where self enters to be reinvented again and again.
Here in this space of no space, I meander through the chambers that hold the record of all experience, shifting through the files and bringing up into the light that which has yet to be discovered: a scaffolding mechanism reviewing what has been, what will be, and where I ought be.
The trouble begins, need I say trouble, when I open the files of ‘ought.’ There is where the stinging nettle comes, with the burning so distracting that all else falls down. The ‘ought’ files take over. For some reason or another, my essence absorbs the rules, regulations, how-tos, structure, system of being, and so on. I don’t know why, and it hurts to try to figure out the why of why I need to know the whys. I just do.
And in so being immersed in the ‘ought’ files, I get lost. I become over-expanded, swelled, and pressurized. A sponge in a pool expansive and foreboding, each movement of thought yet another burden onto self. Here in the pool of ‘oughts’ I become confused, primarily because there exists contradiction beyond contradiction. One school of thought against the other. One way of being beyond the other. Each standing in line shouting to be heard. Here is a room that has too many choices and too many directions. Too much depth. For a child as I be, I become mesmerized and trapped in the gooey notions of ‘ought.’ I begin deciphering each segment, each crumb, reaching the same conclusion continually: That all is an illusion and all is not.
I stand there ashamed of my own being for not being who I ‘ought’ to be. As I stand there, too, erect in self proclaiming who I am. I stand there crying in the confusion. And I sink there too, the strokes of my arms useless, as I wade through the muck of nonsense.
I become useless onto myself with so many options that lead to either dead ends or the opposite or the contradictory voice of a mass of many; the ‘oughts’ tie up the whole of the machine into a ball of inability. Motionless enters. I remain trapped, focusing and refocusing on what is evidentially lies or mistruths. I hear the echoes of the all. The ways in which the ‘wrongness’ hurts the masses. The ways in which we are each silently tormented in our minds by the rules established by the ones who are equally predispositioned to torment. It becomes a jumble of confusion and mayhem; something far beyond the enchantment of mystery and far closer to the bowels of a bleak twisted jail yard.
I am myself here, still. Uncorrupted, unmoved, but nonetheless made into something I don’t want to be. I am crying on the inside while strong on the outside. And then I am strong more so in the depths of self and made weak on the outer layers. I am bathed in this place of non-discrepancy, baptized in a sense by the very alive confusion. Drowned too, unable to breathe, and then spat out, left as naked and brought back to this place I am now. Here. Present. Aware. Alive.
I go through this in a way so swift and abstract, yet so expansive in distance and very real, that I cannot help but to be altered, existing as this being reborn and reborn again, through the loud shattering chaos that the world whispers as truth.
I understand the word. I feel the word. I live the word. I am hyper aware of impermanence. It is all around me. The constant changing elements of water, the river that is never the same once visited again. I understand all is in continuum. Nothing ever stops and nothing ever stays. I think I have understood this since I was a small child. I think that understanding such complex concepts at a young age added to my anxiety.
Perhaps this is when I began to cling to my imagination deeper and deeper, and began to learn how to survive. I was a fledgling set out to fly far too early. Someone unadjusted to the world at large made to be a part of something she did not understand and did not want to understand. I hid in my very own nightmares, determined to fight off demons in an arena I created, untouched by the outside.
I jumped fence after fence, leaping from robbers and ‘bad guys.’ I protected my mother from the giant waves coming at us as I clung to the ocean cliffs for life. I ward off monsters pulling me down the bed.
It was impossible to live in the present. Entirely impossible. To feel everything at once would have been liken to an internal combustion. I would have exploded, in one way or another. Instead I locked everything inside and I made promises. I promised to grow up to be a good person, to be a good mommy, and to make a difference in the world. I turned my terrible angst into hope. I set goals. I set conditions. And I made order out of the chaos.
Eventually my goals were reached. I’d done everything I’d ever wanted. My life was set. Every single one. And there I sat, not too long ago, lost. For what was I to do when everything I’d set to do had been reached?
I understood myself and the dynamics of my life. I understood the deepest of religious thoughts and philosophies. I understood my journey and all that had transpired. At least to the greatest degree possible for the person I was.
Had I been a different person years ago…oh so it seemed. Had I been made new week after week, waking up to a person I did not know or recognize? Indeed. I was transformed from the inside out. The dreams, prophetic and enriched with symbolism, came. The painting, the drawing, the poetry, the intense unbearable passion. I was wrapped up in this whirlwind I could not control. I was swept away by the beauty. I was floating. I was where I thought I would remain.
Only I was drowning. I was suffering in a rigidness and extremeness. I was stuck again. I lost myself in a way I didn’t know way possible. I flew up to the ceiling of my own life in a bubble of my own. Everything and everyone seemed a burden but my God. I was able to love, yes, unconditionally, but I wasn’t able to be. I wasn’t there. I was lost in yet another formed self.
I was reformed into something I was not. At least it seems that way through the eyes of retrospection. But what if that was who I am? What if at that moment that was me in completion: this lost heroine found to her own self. I do not know. I only know I was drifting. I was floating. I was no longer grounded. Nothing was that had been before, and all seemed lost and found at once.
It was my new escape. I know this in looking back. But I never would know it then. I’d transported into another place and into another state of being to survive. What was I surviving? This place.
I’d set new rules upon myself: to not fixate, to stay in the present, to be of service, to love unconditionally, to forgive everyone, to release anger. All beneficial rules. All effective measures. Except I wrapped myself in barbwire. I literally took the fencing that had always caged me in—the fence of rules, regulations, and must-do’s—and then made the fencing my very skin. I took my self and made myself the rigidness. I bleed for the world. Or so I thought.
But I was really bleeding for me. I was finally coming to the cuffing of self—to the last prison—the last restrictions of soul. I was making myself believe that through effort, sacrifice, and obeying I would at last be free. That through service, I would at last have found the answer.
I didn’t realize that I no longer need to suffer to be the light.
I didn’t realize that I no longer have to search to find who I already am.
I didn’t realize that the very impermanence that haunted me as a youth, was the same impermanence that would pull me through.
I went on my knees. I curled on the floor and I wept. For through everything, I believed I still hadn’t sacrificed enough. I believed I had to be tortured to heal the world. I believed if I wasn’t bled out I couldn’t survive. I thought, without reason, that to live was to die a thousand deaths.
I begged for reprieve, for change, for retreat. And it came.
The waves of trials. The turmoil of emotions. The constant moving of my foundation. Everything bubbled up and exploded as hot molten. Everything splattered and spilled and spat—hot liquid pain. And the landscape reformed burying me in the process. Momentarily, unable to breathe or float or be, I dug through the debris. I suffered then, but in a different way.
I suffered through finding where I’d last left myself. And I found me. Somewhat buried, too. But not as deep. Just set out as a shell beside the shadows where I moved; hidden beneath the very darkness I carried. An invisibleness that formed into shape with each of my worries and woes. I found me there then, or what remained of me, all withered and severed. And I remembered that I had this funny way of finding places to go while leaving the rest of me behind. I had to have been there, I supposed, in this place of no place, while the other slipped on my suit of being. I had to be there and rest, beyond the structure of the illusion of our world, so I could awaken to me again and behold the lands ruptured and renewed
Everyday Asperger's 