Mind Retrofit

Archive for the ‘Finding My Quirks’ Category

Driving: I get in my car and try not to think about it. If I do I will think about every single person that will be driving as well and wondering if they are going to follow all of the defensive driving rules for the state. I then wonder whether there are people under the influence of alcohol or some other substance, illegal or over the counter, anything that can alter the brain in some capacity that would require me to be an even more defensive driver than usual. I then decide to drown out these thoughts by turning my radio up very loud and focus on the road.

Parking: I have made it safely to the store and now I must decide where to park. Since I already have the lay out of the parking lot in my head I already know where I would like to park, the question is, “is the space available?”. I pull into the parking lot and “yea!” the space is open right next to the cart return and now I can rest assured that I will not have to walk far to put my cart away. I am glad when this happens for me because otherwise I get obsessed with gathering all of the carts in the parking that other people have not put in the cart return. I find that rude and feel the need to get them in their proper place. Sometimes, if they are busy I will even bring in rounds of carts because the cart people are unable to get to them. I know, I know David has to stop me sometimes, I even clean up stores, I pick up items and put them where they belong and I straighten them. I can’t help myself.

Preparing to go into the store: Walking up I recheck my purse or pockets to see if I indeed have my card, which I know I have because I checked three times before I left the house and I checked in the car before I got out. I get my cart, wipe it down with hand sanitizer and off I go. I have my list made out according to the store layout so I will be sure not to miss anything and I follow a flow that is proficient. The doors open I walk in and swoosh! I am hit with the smells of every product in the entire store all at once, but the one that is consuming my brain is the deli. Too much! I thought I prepared myself but no I have not so I need to get focused on my list so the smells will begin to fade. At the same time as I walk in the doors the lights hammer me with flickering jolts that make me kind of dizzy. I already hear the beeping of the registers, people talking, the meat slicer going, and the cold air rushing my body.

But I can do this, focus on my list.

If I have a task I do much better with my sensory issues. Now, I have a couple seconds and quickly move to the bread isle out-of-the-way. It is always quiet and no one is ever there so I go to gather myself and then on to the produce. Ah, there is the music. Thankfully they always play songs that I know and are not annoying to me so I use them to stim. As I go around the entire store I am singing and dancing and having a jolly time. I notice the people looking at me, I don’t care, still singing “where are the beans that are on sale?” I stand my eyes are scanning the shelves, they should be here I know these shelves. People just passed in front of me and I lost focus. I am scanning again, now I notice I have been scanning with my hands and they are moving oddly. “Oh, that’s why that lady gave me a strange look”. Then ah-ha I found them, they were pushed back, hiding from me. All around the store I gather our food to nourish our family. BAM! Seafood smell, almost made me gag. I had to hold my breath and get away from there, I smell the meat is making me sick, I have to hurry up and get out of the meat department.

So I am making my rounds.

ARRGG,  now to the worst part of them all, the one I save for the very end, the cold and frozen items. I am already freezing, the store is always so cold, I have on long sleeves and a jacket and I am still so cold I hurt. I grab the items as quickly as possible but it is too late, my hands are so cold I can barely move them. The sound of the frozen boxes moving past each other is hurting the inside of my body and brain. The cold plastic yogurt container is giving me the chills. I hear the frozen veggies moving in the bag and it so loud. I need to focus, I am almost out of here.

The Register: Social interaction, gulp. Cashier: Hi, how are you? Me: (She doesn’t really want to know how you are, just say hi) “Hi, I am good”. There is no one there to bag, I bag for her otherwise it is going to get out of control, I want the items in certain bags anyway because it will help when we unload them at home. This is a good thing. Then an employee comes and takes over “darn”. Oh, well it is fine we are almost done. Now comes the anxiety about how much I spent. Today I did very well. I leave happy and anxiety free.

Drive Home: Since all went well at the store I was able to drive home pretty free of ODA, “”Other Driver Anxiety”. I get home and open the door (no matter how many times I try to prepare myself I am always hit with surprise) “MOM! MOM! MOMMY’S HOME!” The three children attack, there are toys and chaos. Things running a muck! But it is ok, however, I need quiet because I need to put the items away.

Put the items away: They all have a particular place where they need to go, David tries to help but most times it does not work. He does not remember those kinds of things. So I put them all away, while the children try to help and are asking for everything in the bags. Finally, it is all done the food put away, bags put away, kids have some food, David is back to work and I am sitting on the couch needing to stim for the rest of the day. It was an hour and half and I need at least five hours to stim.

Interesting.

Though this was a description of today’s shopping experience, this is normally what happens every time during a good shopping experience. That is when I do not get surprised by someone I know, they have all of the food on my list, I don’t have to wait in line, the music was music that doesn’t bother me, I was by myself when I went, I ate something before I went so my blood sugar didn’t drop, and numerous other things that plays into me being able to go to the grocery store or any other store and having a pretty good experience.

I cannot just up and go to the store without consequences.

If I up and go to the store unexpectedly then when I get back I usually need the whole day to recuperate. I don’t think it is a bad thing there is just too much surrounding us in the store environment, I think a lot of people get effected by going to the store but don’t realize it. I did this to observe my behavior as I went out, I am hoping it can help me in the future and possibly others think about their experiences as they go out to stores or other places. Maybe, if people read this they will be more considerate of others like myself, while they are shopping.

Who knows it is worth a try.

The shopping experience is a full five senses experience and for people who do not have sensory issues this is most likely not a problem, though I do think it plays a factor in people and their stress levels. Now imagine all of your senses, being hit with the effects of sound, sight, taste, smell, and touch when you are a child these are developing. In a child who doesn’t have sensory issues it is a lot and it is no wonder there are so many children who have melt downs in the middle of stores. We as parents don’t seem to consider any of this as we take our children into places and expect them to not be effected in any way. And let us imagine being a child with sensory processing disorder, a Wal-Mart store is pure hell, it is for me as an adult.

I try not to go.

I didn’t even go into people getting into my space, acting rude, or the many other things that play into going shopping. Those are for another day, maybe. The good thing about all of this is that I now understand why I get so exhausted going to a store, I have an awareness when my children are starting to show signs of overload and I am able to do something about it, and I have also become more compassionate toward the children who seem to be throwing fits in the store, though the fit itself is too much for me I am sympathetic to the child and the parents. When I see a parent embarrassed and trying to run out I try to give them an encouraging smile because every one else is giving them dirty looks.

I know that feeling too well and I wish someone would give me a smile instead of the “If that was my kid, I would beat them” look.

Do not worry I will not bore you with the details of how Valentine’s Day came about, though it is quite a restraint for me and all I will do is this,Valentine\’s Day. Wikipedia will give the just of it. I had to do that, I had to have something on here about the history. Alright, so me and Valentine’s Day, well I have to say it is another tradition that has not been one of my favorites. However, making it into a positive with my kids has been really great.

When I was in school it was mandatory that we bring Valentine’s Day cards for everyone.

All through elementary school I had anxiety about this event. My mother didn’t get it and she would buy me the cheapest cards and not think of any of the consequences I would face with my peers. Later as I expressed my humiliation she let me choose my cards but she complained about having to pay for them the whole time which brought about a whole other anxiety issue. Every year I would sit on the floor pouring over the words that were on each card, with my list of names for each student. I would think of each individual and try to match the right wording to the feelings I felt for that person. My mother would get so aggravated with me, “just write their names and be done, its not that big of deal”. It was for me. Each person in my classes had treated me a certain way, they said things to me, they looked at me, they hurt me, they were nice to me, each one needed the correct card.

I thought everyone did this.

When I received my cards, I thought all of the other children did the same thing as I did. I thought they meant the words written on the cards. I was wrong and it brought about a lot of confusion for me and a lot of rude remarks from my peers. I still have a hard time comprehending this, when I found out that even some of the children’s mother’s were the ones who signed the names on the cards I couldn’t understand. How could she pick out the right card for each child, she didn’t even know any of us. I was thankful that in middle school and high school we didn’t have to do any of that but there was the whole buzz with the girls receiving items from admirers or their boyfriends.

I felt left out and longed to receive things like flowers so I wouldn’t feel like such an outcast.

Although when I had boyfriends and they gave me stuff like that, I was happy and angry at the same time. I was happy because they thought of me, so I thought, but that is another story, but angry because they got me crap! What was I going to do with flowers after they died? Why would I eat a box of chocolate when I don’t normally eat it? Why would I like cheap jewelry that was usually cheap gold and that looked green on my skin? And everyone who knows me knows that I only wear silver or platinum .Why would I want a big elephant stuffed animal when I never showed any interest in elephants? Why not get me some music, a book, take me to the library, watch one of my favorite movies, sit with me and watch an entire day of history channel or real life murder mystery stories? The problem was they were not into that and they didn’t really know me at all.

My ex-husband made me so incredibly angry with one of his Valentine’s Day gifts.

I will never forget it. I came home to my apartment and the hallway had rose peddles all over the floor leading to my door. I walked in and there were rose peddles leading from the door to the bedroom. I was freaking out because of the mess, the hallway had to be cleaned up. I didn’t want other people to slip and fall, it was a mess. So I came in saying that and he had to go clean it up before I could even go into the room. Finally, it was cleaned up in the hallway and I had cleaned up the floor in the apartment. I went into the bedroom and on the bed was  huge bouquet of roses, box wrapped in red, some sort of stuffed animal and a little box.  I didn’t like any of this it made me very uncomfortable.

One of the reasons was that I had already made it very clear that I am not that into Valentine’s Day.

I opened the box, my heart sank. Are you kidding me? I pulled out the most repulsive dress, a dress that I would never wear. It was red spandex, there were two single spaghetti strap, elastic things to hold this thing up. One over the neck the other across my back, the back was completely opened to the top of my butt, the trim at the bottom had red sequence beads. He wanted me to wear this out in public to a restaurant/dance place. There were so many things wrong with this but the one thing that continued to go through my mind, which I also kept saying out loud over and over, “it’s freezing outside why would you get this for me?” I could not wear that outside or in a restaurant. I am always cold and I would be even colder if I wore that, even if I wore a coat.

I asked him why did you get me this?

He tried to make it into a positive and get my mind off of the dress so he suggested I open the other small gift. I did, which proved to be even worse. He got me a gold necklace with a gold heart pendent! WTF? I looked at him in complete disbelief, “why would you get me gold and a heart?” “I don’t wear this, you know I don’t wear hearts or gold?” Why would he get me these things? I was so upset. He was pretty upset too, what an ungrateful mean person I was. Well I thought it was quite mean of him to waste money on such thoughtless gifts. I found out that he had taken his brothers girlfriend with him to go shopping to pick out things and she reassured him that any girl would love what she had picked out. Any girl but me! They were the complete opposite of me and the thing that made me so angry was that he was supposed to know this.

He was with me everyday, he saw what I liked and didn’t like, how could he be so insensitive.

Though if you ask him, I was insensitive and I am sure I did not say the correct words and they were most likely hurtful. I couldn’t even take the stuff back, he had purchased them in another city so I was stuck with these god awful gifts. I ended up giving them away to people I think could enjoy them. He knew I had an obsession with reading, there were so many books that I had on a list to get, why didn’t he get those? He told me that he didn’t think it was romantic and that I would get upset. I don’t think so, to be honest I think he wanted to dress me up like his little Barbie doll and parade me around town to make himself feel better, I could be wrong but from the way the marriage ended I am pretty sure I am correct.

I have never been one for flowers, candy, and jewelry unless they are very unique or I specifically request something.

I feel that the flowers, candy, jewelry, and even perfumes are quite useless and a waste of money on me. I understand other people like those things and I am fine with that, I actually enjoy getting them for others if I know that is what they like. I may not understand it but I enjoy them being happy about receiving such gifts. For me a token of love is taking out the trash, giving me books, finding a song that I have never heard before, changing a diaper, and letting me have uninterrupted internet time to gather all the information my little heart desires. Things like that are great gifts.

Jewelry bothers me, gold bothers me and I am not a fan of any kind of bling.

I do wear my wedding ring which is engraved in Hebrew that says “My Lover is Mine and I am His”. I stopped wearing earrings about 7 years ago, before that I had worn the same earrings for about 4-5 years straight. I wore a silver cross necklace for 9 years straight. I like it simple and easy to wear. Flowers will die and their smell really gets to me, along with perfumes and such it has to be just the right scent or else it can cause my head to go into a whirlwind and I get sick. I am very sensitive to smells. Candy of any sorts is not a good gift for me because I am very particular about the kinds I eat since chocolates have various textures and some of them are too gross for me. I could go on about this but I will stop myself. When it comes to cards I like giving cards but I really mean the words, so when I pick out a card I have read many and I chose the one that expresses my words the best. Since I am not very good at remembering to say things like how much I love a person or what they mean to mean I find cards to be good for me, however, some people don’t seem to think the same way about cards as I do.

I am grateful for having such an understanding  husband.

David gets it. He is right there with me. We don’t do any of those kinds of things for each other. We tell each other what we want and we don’t save it for a token social holiday. If we want to express our love for one another we just do it and it is in ways that other people would find quite boring or even odd. It works for us. That is all that matters expressing your love the way you feel comfortable. Is it a poem, a song, creating a painting, a quilt, making dolls, sharing your fan? However, you express love is great and should be encouraged. That was my biggest problem with my ex and other people in my life, he didn’t think about how he could express his love for me. He went to someone who didn’t know me at all. Many people do that, they see what is on tv or other media venues and believe that is the way they should express their love.

People have bought into it and reduced themselves down to these simple trinkets to make them feel loved.

You are loved when the people around you accept you just as you are and are willing to find the things that you enjoy to let you know that you are appreciated and deeply wanted. It may be flowers, jewelry or candy that makes you happy but isn’t there more? Isn’t their value in what you think or who you are more than these things and shouldn’t it be acknowledged a lot more than on a holiday that bears no real significance to your self-worth?

It’s not the gift, it’s the thought that goes into the gift. Happy Valentine’s Day.

A spectrum of colors flowing around red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet encircle you now.

They don’t stop there, there’s much more to see, red-violet, purple-gold, white-silver threading from me.

Entering in your imagination, your mind, opening up your thoughts, here there is no place, no time.

Circles and swirling, spheres all around in marvelous colors, you begin to escape the ground.

Lifting higher and higher, you soar, all around in my world of color and sound.

Smelling a sound, tasting a touch, hearing a color my world offers so much.

All of the numbers dance around, I see them alive and breathing, do you hear their sound?

Lights’ flashing, like glorious rain, music has now just entered your brain.

Feeling the rhythm, the chords, the beat, now filling your body the voice, oh so sweet.

Tracers are racing in a mystical sense, consuming your body take it all in.

This is what’s natural, this is what’s real, my world full of color, smell, sound, taste so intense.

Can you taste the red? It tastes like flutter.

Can you taste the blue? Sometimes I shudder.

Can you feel the light entering in? It brings peace and calm deep within.

Can you hear the black? The sound is a hush.

Can you feel the green? It’s an amazing rush.

Covering, a blanket that shadows you in, bringing you happiness, oh here comes the number 10!

Laughter fills your belly, a nice surprise the dancing numbers bring joy to your eyes.

Marching in rows count them 1, 2, 3, making this spectrum of chaos not be.

There is a reason, a perfect world full of numbers, color, and senses to explore.

Embrace my world, come with me, stay a while maybe you’ll see.

Your mind is filled with visions, pictures come alive, yellow is more vibrant and splashes you inside.

Speckles and drips of flinging colors spreading out from different places, people and things.

You don’t even notice now, it is all sane.

A world so fantastic, amazing and full, rich with intensity but warm and cool.

Shrouded in colors too deep to reveal, you finally understand some of what I feel.

Several years ago there was a guy who I deeply cared for, I still wonder about him and hope he is doing well. He opened my eyes to a lot of things and he hurt me. He hurt me to the depths of my soul. Why so deep, because I don’t know what I did wrong. He just all of the sudden cut me off from his world and never told me why. I still do not know, I felt we had a really great friendship. I felt that we really connected. There were times when I just looked at him and felt that we just got each other, there was no need to speak. Then there were times when I felt derailed, confused, misunderstood, and shut out.

What was this, what were we?

I really do not know, but now I can see a lot of my Asperger’s shining through, in hind sight. I didn’t know how to read the cues. I remember one time he said to me “you are one of those girls” and I said what do you mean? He said “a girl who always has a guy waiting”. I was very hurt, why would he think such a thing. Then I got angry, how dare he say such a thing! It wasn’t true and I told him so. I was fully capable of taking care of myself and I did not need any man to help me! I have taken care of myself my whole life, who was he to say that? I quickly forgave him and moved on but as you can tell I still remember the words, I remember that I was driving my car, where we were going and what we were talking about. (cleaning my cats litter box started it, just saying)

There are several things that he did to try to fit me in a box with, one being my Christian point of view.

I was not  a typical Christian and I still am not. I do not hold the point of view of the masses, though I am finding many more like myself, we do not have the loudest voices. The other folks do, those who make it out to be in a very negative light. There were differences in our beliefs and at the time I was hard-core fixated on, I guess you would call it an evangelical point of view, I was constantly studying so of course there would come a time when I would no longer hold such a black and white point of view. I actually didn’t then but it was what my church or the people I associated with represented and he had taken that view of me. He thought he knew me. He did not. He was unwilling to get to know my true views or where my beliefs took me. If only he would have discussed these things with me he would have realized that all I was saying is that Jesus loves you wherever you are at, find your journey. But he didn’t, though we seemed to share a deep friendship he was not willing to find out my thoughts or feelings.

I do have to thank him because if it wasn’t for him I would not have stepped back into reality.

Because of him I really began to question the very scriptures the church used to force me to be “obedient”. I started praying to God and asking for clarity. Then I began to re-read the gospels with a different perspective, seriously what was Jesus about? Well, He was busy running with people who the “church” people wouldn’t run around with and I felt the Lord told me I was wrong. I had been isolating myself from non-church goers and that was not being very loving. Even though I did love people I was not being loving. I was not accepting them where they were at, because that was the script I was given.

My script was changing, I was now released from a bondage that had me for several years.

It was a bondage that fits right into my AS, it gave me right and wrong, it told me that since I did not hold a degree in the area of say, Biblical Foundations, I was completely unqualified to question or doubt anything a leader who did hold some sort of degree. Well that seems about right? ( Though that didn’t last long and I have been in a little bit of trouble for questioning authority, I never try to defy authority, I just seem to state the obvious too often.) It obviously took a while for me to get my mind back and to come to terms with the grey areas. I remember one day my friend had asked me if I had ever seen the movie The Big Kahuna, well of course I had not because I had stopped watching R-rated movies for several years. When things started changing in my thoughts, my heart, my eyes were opening that was one of the first movies I watched. As I watched the movie, I cried, I felt sick, I was changed, and I knew and know today, I NEVER want to have an agenda. Great clip from the movie, I got it! The Big Kahuna Clip

I hope he was not implying that I was not honest!

I don’t think that is what he meant, but I know that I do not want to be known for marketing Jesus. I never meant to do that, all I have ever hoped was that I was loving people the way Jesus expressed it. I have this longing for people to know that they are loved, they are worth something, they do have purpose and they are not alone. I guess it could be because that is what I have longed for all my life. I found that through my beliefs, not because I am weak but because it made sense to me. It helped me feel ok for not fitting in, I found that God created me to be different, though that is said throughout church they do not really mean it, but God does. I am free because of my beliefs if I didn’t have these beliefs I would have never questioned them.

If I just went about thinking I had the answers, I would not have gained all of the great information and new found fixations I have now.

Sorry I went off track, what am I trying to say? He did what every other person has done to me, he made an image of me and kept me there. I was no longer a person, but an object. I wish he would have talked to me a bit more, I wish he would have hung in there a bit longer, but he didn’t and so I had to do something to get him out of my life, um…out of my mind. He had already cut me off I was the one that kept trying to contact him, so to help myself I wrote him an email and said what I felt God said at the time, and I never spoke to him again. I needed closure, though I did not get it and I have been fixated on him through out the years. Not a weird obsession but wondering about him, wanting to write him, wanting to know why he would no longer have anything to do with me, but I never did.

He made such a huge impact on my life that I just wanted to tell him somehow.

So I wrote this for me and for him. I believe my Asperger’s has caused me to not be able to let this go, I feel that the confusion has left me in a constant circle where I can find my peace about it, but then in my brain cycle the whole thing comes back up again and I cannot let it go. It doesn’t make sense, everything seemed very sudden, random, and there was no communication. Why? I may never know but at least I can go back to this and remind myself that indeed I may never know.

The place that we worked at was one of the best places I ever worked.

I met a great bunch of people, I learned so much from all of the people there. They helped mold me into where I am at now. Every person that has come across in my life has meant something to me, they have taught me, whether good or bad, or showing me love or hate, they made an impact and helped to open my eyes a little bit more every time. My mind is different, I am effected in different ways than other people, just like any Apsie can attest to, I do not understand the world in the same way. I can feel so incredibly naive at times, sometimes I feel like I have so much information that I am going to explode. Information is not the same as knowing, some things I know better than others, somethings I just have more information, somethings I am completely clueless until someone brings it to my attention.

This happens to be one of those moments, I am completely clueless.

This friend of mine reminded me of how much I love all kinds of music. How I love movies and the impact they have on me, which led me back into art and how much it makes me feel alive, leading me into dance once again and cultivating the passion I have for writing. Granted he didn’t single-handedly do this, there were many impacts from people and God revealing to me His presence in everything, my husband who has taken the time to build into to me and help me find myself and of course my children, just to name a few. Although thanks to this long-lost friend my life changed and went down a course I never imagined because I had limited my imagination.

Thank you my dear friend, ok, bye.

There are some days where I feel I must, I MUST, write down all that is going through my mind and I MUST, get it up on my blog for everyone to read. The invisible persons out there who may or may not be reading my blog have got to know all the goings on in my mind. They NEED this information, if I do not get it up then, then…what?

What exactly is going to happen?

I don’t know. I am having one of those days. I have written several posts, they are waiting in my que, all of them are over 500 words, most of them are close to over 1500 words. The other day I wrote one over 4000 words, in an hour. I have not posted them yet because I want to go over them and re-read what I have written. My mind has been in a frenzy, information pouring out, stories of how I feel, what I find interesting, and what is important to me.  All of this MUST be shared and given freely to the world for them to know, understand, hear me, feel me, get what my world is like, find out what I am all about.

I then feel like I am a narcissist.

Who am I to think anyone reads my blog or is even interested in what I have to say or how I feel for that matter. I quickly come back to my senses and remember that the main reason I am writing this, is for me. It’s my therapy, to share what I am feeling, what I am going through, how I felt during a certain situation, what was going on with our family, the changes that Daniel has made and other reasons that will benefit us in the future. I do have this thing inside of me that wants so much for my writings to be helpful, to let others know that they are not alone, for me to think of my issues, write them and then be inspired to check out other AS blogs and writings so that I know I am not alone.

I guess that the main thing is, when I write I become me.

As I write the words are in my mind, I hear a voice and it is connected to my hands. When I have a thought, a poem or a story come to mind and I feel that I just HAVE to get it out, I do. I do have to get it out, it is the only time that I actually feel connected to my body. The only time I feel whole. All other times I feel awkward, my hands feel a million miles away and they seem to be doing their own thing. My arms have always felt as if they were doll parts that could be popped off and at night while in bed, as a child and even at times now, I would have visions of popping my arms off so I could finally lay comfortably and go to sleep. Just yesterday I noticed how I was getting overloaded with sound, my children were just playing and asking me for things but I couldn’t take it, my head was just shaking back and forth. It just did it, I wasn’t thinking “stop it”, I was just shaking my head and then I would notice and try to stop but it would do it again. Yes, I had to put my hands over my ears for a little while.

The kids were not doing anything wrong it just seemed to be a lot louder and more traumatic than usual for me.

As I am writing this I am realizing that when I have that intensity and I am overloaded that is when I tend to jump on the “urgency train”. Am I escaping? Well I guess I am, especially if when I am writing, that is the only time I feel in control and like myself. It must be my stim and I didn’t realize it. Duh! Maybe I did I can’t remember, all I know is that I am starting to feel much better and my hands are doing exactly what my brain is telling them to do without great effort and I am not stumbling around. Maybe there is something to this sense of urgency thing, maybe it is the way my brain tells me to get back to my “normal”. Just maybe.

I still wonder why I feel it is so important for me to share with others.

Everything I find, all new information, any details I may have left out or suddenly noticed, I cannot rest until I get it out there or share it with another person. During times like this when David is swamped with work and I am unable to share all of my thoughts I tend to feel a sense of urgency also. Is this an AS thing? Do other Aspie’s do this? I am going to research this, my mind will not stop. I have been stuck on another subject and it has made me a little paranoid, I have been reading about narcissism lately. Maybe that has triggered something, I don’t know what, but maybe something. My mind is stirring with questions and seeking out information, I can’t stop.

I am terribly afraid that I am a narcissist, David swears I am not but his exact words were “trying to figure out if you are a narcissist, is being a narcissist”. So I stopped.

It has been over a year that I have been on facebook. I enjoyed being part of a virtual world with people from my past and seeing what they are up to now. I enjoyed being connected with family and current friends. I enjoyed seeing pictures and sharing mine. I was a bit apprehensive in confirming friends with certain people but I went ahead, second guessing my gut feeling. I have limited my friends and purposefully not requested to be friends with a large amount of people from my past even though I have looked them up to see if they were on facebook. There are several reasons for me not requesting friend status with these people and even blocking a few.

I will make a short list so I can try to stay focused, direct and try to limit myself from getting into side stories.

1. I do not know how they are going to respond to my friend request.

2. I am not sure I really want them to know anything about me.

3. They have confused me, hurt me, caused me a great deal of stress and caused me to question myself in the past.

4. I don’t really think that we are friends.

5. If they did confirm, I really wouldn’t know why.  Were we ever really friends?

6. I use Face Book as a means to have virtual relationships with people to make me more comfortable.

Those are some of the reasons I have come up.

I have those issues and now what has happened is my anxiety level has risen with facebook. In the last few months I have become obsessive about checking everyone’s status. I have started thinking in terms of “I can post that on facebook”. My life turned into a constant thinking process of FB status updates. Whatever I learned, felt, saw, did, what the kids were doing, what David was doing and what the cat was doing started to become status updates in my head and I felt I had to post them because of course everyone else wants to read what I have to say. Wrong!

I have another factor for my anxiety that has hit an all time high, confusion.

Yes, I have become extremely confused by the behavior of other people, the way they respond to my status updates and the fact that family members seem to care less about anything going on with my family. Those things confuse me. I would go into detail about family members but it is really pointless, I may sound like a complete fool so I will just say that their actions, non-responses, constant self centeredness, and lack of caring leave me hurt and confused. This brings about anxiety because I begin to go over in my head what I could have done wrong.

What in the world did I do to them?

Why, do they ignore my emails, my comments on their page, my pictures and the goings on in our life? Then I come full circle and remember it has always been this way and that is one of the reasons I had nothing to do with them for so long. After I go through everything and I am very sure there is absolutely nothing that I did wrong, I get angry. I came to the conclusion almost two weeks ago that I needed to do a personal intervention and detox from facebook. I find it very appropriate timing with the devastation in Haiti, I would most likely be offended at posts that may be incredibly shallow or if they said something like God allowed this for such and such reason, those things really get me angry.

I am feeling very good.

I am finding that I indeed was fixated on facebook, looking at the photos, searching for people who popped in my head, going to people’s pages and seeing what they were up to. I also realized I was doing this to escape. Since the holidays I have been fixated on FB, I believe I was using this to try to stem. I needed something to fixate on because I was having a hard time dealing with Daniel having a hard time. He couldn’t find his peace and I was seeking mine. I do find peace in researching people.

The intelligent people who I respect on FB tend to join really good groups or they put up interesting status updates that I can research.

That is what I found myself doing for the past two months, researching information, people, and anything else I could find to feed my brain the constant information input it needed to stay calm. I wasn’t able to focus on the normal blogs or other sites I frequent for some reason. I am not staying away from FB forever, just until I am in my routine again and able to just go on and not worry about what I write, try to figure out what others mean, or why they would post a photo of themselves doing that for the whole world to see. If I can go back to using it as a helpful resource for me to interact with people comfortably than I think it will be fine.

Is it wrong to de-friend family members? Just curious.

I have written about some of the things I can’t do so on this one I thought maybe I should write some things that I am good at. True I am not the type who is good with her hands or creative with materials, but I can come up with ideas for crafts or suggestions of paintings for my mom. I see visions of paintings and I describe them to her, I see the colors and it seems to come alive. The great thing is that my mom can see it too and has been able to paint them on occasion. I see craft ideas for the kids but I don’t know how to implement them so once again I go to my mom for help and she is able to tell me what I need and the best way to do it. We are a pretty good team.

I have always seen in pictures, I have vibrant, detailed, and intriguing dreams.

I write stories, I see them play out like a movie in my head and there are tiny details that give the story a bit more intrigue. I have had dreams that have come alive in stories that I write. I haven’t really shared a lot of my stories though. Some of them I get to a certain point and I am just unable to finish. The reason for me not finishing them is that I get engrossed, I go into that world and it is hard for me to come out into my real world. I feel that is an injustice to my kids, I need to be focused on them right now, as they get older I will have more freedom to write. I get enough down so when I go back and re-read them I can step right back into that world and write away.

The computer has been my hand saver.

My whole life I have written, I have written poems, songs, stories, prayers and journals. I have notebooks full of my writings, tons of them. Though I would write often it came with a price because my hands would hurt so bad. When I get in a writing mode I can’t stop and I wouldn’t really notice the pain until after I was finished. So now having a computer to be able to type has been great. I can type away and have no problems. I requested a computer when I was about 10 yrs old and to my surprise my mother did get it for me. It was a Texas Instrument but my main use for it was writing. I did enjoy figuring out the computer and playing some of the games but most of the time you could find me writing on it.

I wrote stories and journals on my computer.

My computer understood me and it stayed with me for a long time until I upgraded to a new nicer PC. However the PC belonged to my mom so when I moved out at 18 yrs old I couldn’t take it with me so I had to turn to the good old pen and paper. The computer, that brings me to another thing I am really good at, research. I love to study and research. I really enjoy reading other peoples books or blogs about things I have never heard of before and gaining new information that I can share with the world. I say world because anything I learn I tend to tell everyone I know about all of this new found info and expect them to be as excited and interested in it as myself. I have found that is not the case.

Except for David, he is always interested in my new findings just as I am in his new findings.

I have a great love for music, all kinds of music. Music is something that wraps around me, it spreads into my very being, it feeds something in my brain that has the ability to bring me peace and comfort. I can find this feeling in almost any music, there are certain types that I cannot listen to, if the music has no real depth, it seems to be violent or shallow I really can’t get into that and it will even make me angry. I find that a great waste of talent in some people and I find music to be something we should respect just like any art. If I feel like it is not respecting the art of music it upsets me. I don’t really know how to explain that so I hope that makes sense.

One reason why I love music so much is because I am a dancer.

Music just flows through my body and I dance. Dancing makes me so happy, it is a joy that has no words. Dancing has helped me throughout my whole life. I feel that dancing is like telling a story with your body so I guess that is why it fits me. I write and I dance I tell a story with my mind and I tell a story through movement of body. I am not a professional by any means but I have studied on my own, the movements of the body. As a child I did want to be a ballerina but not for the same reasons as other little girls, I wanted to so I could learn how to express my story in another way. I am probably not the only one who feels that way but when I was in class with the little girls who were  not taking it as seriously as I was, that was the conclusion I came to.

Unfortunately, my mother being a single mother was not able to continue my classes because of lack of funds and she didn’t think it was a big deal.

She did not understand what it meant to me, if I would have been able to explain to her that dancing for me, was like art to her, I think she would have gotten it. My dream stopped there but I have kept on dancing and I am moved to tears to watch people dance when they are telling a story.  I encourage my children to dance, sing, write, tell stories, and listen to music. I write a lot of poetry and that seems to be another avenue in which I feel I can express myself and my stories. I love poetry, as I read it I see in my mind a dance play out or a story. I feel the words,  they jump into me and I feel alive. When I am able to write a poem that flows like a song and dance to me revealing my feelings, I am completely satisfied, I am in a place of perfect peace and contentment. I feel like I am good at these things because they come naturally. I feel like they are a part of me being shared with others and it feels as though some of me is gone.

I don’t mean that in a bad way, it is good. I am sharing me despite my whole life being told not to, I still am and it feels scary but good and satisfying.

As a child I can remember walking into people’s home and spotting their photo albums. I would scan the home and sometimes even ask where they were, once I found them I would ask to look at them. At my relative’s house I would pull them out and start asking all kinds of questions. I would ask who the people were that I didn’t know, what they were doing that day, how long ago was it, on and on I would ask until finally they would tire of my constant badgering and would say why don’t you put them away.

I learned to keep my mouth shut as I looked at their photos.

I would look at our photo albums at home for hours. I still do this, only now I have all of our photos on my computer and I can go through all the million and one photos I have taken. There have been times when I have sat down to do something and the next thing I know I have pulled up our photos or gone on my Face Book and gone through all of my photo albums online. I then look at the time and realize I have managed to waste a huge amount of time looking at our photos and my friends albums. If I find people I haven’t seen in years and they have their photos open to public I look at them, I can’t help myself.

I am not really looking at them for any purpose other than looking at what they are doing and their facial expressions.

I am pretty positive that I have done this my whole life to try to figure out what faces mean and how to mimic the correct behavior in the correct social situation. I never thought of it before until now, I just thought I was weird. I enjoy seeing people happy and usually people are happy in photos. I enjoy looking at the places they go, the people they know, the houses they used to live in, their homes now and the homes of others.  Now thinking about it I am pretty sure that I was preparing myself if ever the chance came that I would visit the houses of family members or friends of the family.

I say that because I am not looking at the photos to see what people are wearing or if they look good.

I am looking at them out of interest of their surroundings, how they respond to their surroundings, what is in their surroundings, and their faces. What are they smiling about? Why are they making a goofy face? Why are they laughing? Those are some of the questions that pop in my head. I like looking at animal photos too. However, when it comes to animals I look at them not so much their surroundings or what they are doing. Well I guess I am weird and that’s alright. I am ok with it.

I have always taken tons of photos as well.

I am out of control with the camera. When I was little I always wanted to take pictures and I wanted people to take pictures of me. I thought it was so much fun. As I child I loved the Polaroid because we could get it in an instant. I would get very anxious waiting for the other photos to develope and would drive my mom crazy asking when we would get them. She was and is not the best with the camera, she doesn’t like having her picture taken and she forgets to take pictures all the time. I had to take the responsibility for them so we would have some during the holidays or else all the memories would be lost.

Digital cameras have been the greatest thing in the world for me.

I take pictures of everything, the kids, the places we go, things that intrigue me anything and so many other things. I did the same thing all through out my life. Ariel has taken up this taking picture obsession also and I will find some pretty interesting photos on our camera that I had no idea were taken. She also loves to look at photos. Joshua and Daniel are not too into the photos but they love to watch all the home movies I have made. (I make a lot of home movies as well) (My dad was a home movie freak, I have a Super 8 that he made of me and some family members through out some of my childhood.) Daniel and Joshua  will ask me to watch to them, and they will begin to mimic what they are doing on the video. It has actually been quite good for Daniel. He has watched them and has mimicked Ariel and Joshua in real life but in the video he may not be responding to them at all.

I really don’t know the answers to my photo fixation it is just a theory but I do think it helped me and still does and I know that watching home videos has helped Daniel gain confidence in speaking and trying new things.

I am so obsessive about grammar and no matter how hard I try I cannot remember all of the rules. I get sick to my stomach when I go back read over my posts and see spelling errors and other grammatical errors. It drives me crazy. My issue with this almost stopped me from writing a blog in the first place. I was so terrified that if I messed up then no one would take me seriously.

If I spell a word wrong, I get this lump in my throat and feel nauseous.

I use spell check, sometimes I have David go over my stuff and edit for those things but he misses them too. When I have posted after trusting David to have found all of my mistakes and then find one I get very upset. It really affects me to the point of me thinking I need to just take my blog down because I cannot possibly find all of the mistakes and everyone is going to think I am a moron.

I know my reaction is a bit dramatic but it is truly how I feel.

So to let myself off the hook and be able to continue to write with a limited amount of anxiety in this area, I ask you to forgive all of my errors that you may find. I have come to the point of using my blog to just write what is on my mind and letting it go. I need that freedom but if I continue to beat myself up over  this issue I know I will either spend hours upon hours combing over my every word or I will stop completely because I will feel that it is hopeless.

I do feel a bit of the anxiety lifting from writing this.

Thank you for your understanding and compassion on my inability to be completely grammatically perfect. Now I just need to find a way to forgive myself when I find the errors. :>/

I never even thought about numbers being apart of my life. I didn’t realize how much of an obsession they are for me. Well if you want to call it an obsession, I am not sure what to call it. I never even thought of it really until I watched a movie recommended by a friend. It is called “Mozart and the Whale” and it is about people with Asperger’s. A bit more than that but I will write my take on the movie on another post. I wanted to show an example of the main character with numbers because that is exactly what David does. Here is the trailer:http://video.filestube.com/video,c34ca9210081df6203ea.html

I on the other hand, have a different thing with numbers.

David likes odd numbers but I like even numbers. I want everything to even out. As I watched the movie it hit me that I too have a number thing. In all honesty I thought the number thing was a stereotype and found it offensive sometimes but now I realize there may be something to it and it is not all the same. I like to count by multiples of 2 or 5 and I find myself counting all the time. I try not to but I will catch myself counting as I am cooking dinner, putting lessons together, at a grocery store I will count the cans or boxes in the isles as I straighten them or take mental note of how many they have on the shelf and try to figure out if I will need to buy them all because they may be out next time I come.

If I hear an odd number I will divide it in my head until I get it to be even such as 17, I will think 8.5 and then I can move on.

If I cannot get it to even out I try to focus on something else and try to let it go. When I was a child I played with cards by myself a lot. I didn’t know how to play solitaire so I made up my own games. I would match the numbers, divide them, sort them by number, shape, or color. I would mess them up and see how quickly I could put them back in order from smallest to greatest and vice verse. I would flip them over and then add together whatever numbers would pop up and keep going until I got to the end of the deck. I like addition most and steer away from subtraction, though that is virtually impossible.  Weird?

I count stairs when I walk up or down them.

I count the squares in the tiles of my home, stores, and side walks. I will count the lines in sidewalks. I find shapes anywhere and try to see how many different shapes I can find. When I worked at a retail store, I would count the reflection of the lights on the floor and see how fast I could count them down an aisle. I still do this sometimes when I am in a store. When I worked in the retail store, I memorized the sku’s of all the departments that I worked. I was promoted to the receiving department, which involved all of the departments, so I memorized the storage rooms for back stock, the lay out and the sku’s that each isle began with. I worked in a check cashing store and was surrounded by numbers and counting. I had to have everything in numerical order, I loved it. Although when I am under stress I tend to transpose numbers which caused some issues.

I see numbers in color.

When I think of numbers some of them have colors and some of them don’t. When I think of 0 I see clear or white, the number 2 is yellow, the number 5 is red, the number 6 is blue, the number 9 is black , the number 23 is green. Some of them are in difficult colors to explain, like the number 7 is something like a shining gold and the number 8 is like indigo. I don’t really know how to explain it. Some numbers have nothing like the number 4 I don’t really see anything. I also like to say certain numbers, I like the way they feel in mouth as they come out, like 16 and 18. No reason that I know of.

I never even thought of other people thinking about numbers or not thinking about them.

It is just what my brain does and I don’t think about it. I do tend to stare at license plates and add the numbers together or figure out if they say something. The funny thing is I can’t memorize those, I can’t memorize phone numbers, I can’t remember birthdays and that is why I have them all written down in my calendar so I won’t forget. David and I both forget our anniversary and it’s ok. I find that so strange that I can remember the sku’s of a huge retail store but not even my anniversary. Huh?

I see this awareness of myself as a good thing.

Now I can be more sympathetic toward our children if I notice it in them and help them to use it for their benefit like I did at work. Those kinds of things got me promoted and it helped me to be a very good employee. I have used it to teach the kids about shapes and counting. David uses his gift as well to teach the kids to see how math is in everything and it is nothing to be afraid of but to embrace. A lot of people say “I am not good at math” but we all use it everyday. I never noticed how math was such a huge part of our life, until I met David and what’s even funnier is I used to say “I am not good at math”. I am not good at school math I am good with using and living math, embracing the numbers and shapes.