Tag Archives: confusion

04/11/12

My Wordi(less) Wednesday

The things that we love tell us what we are. ~ Thomas Aquinas

I never thought about that quote before, interesting I saw it on fb today. I do not do well at being wordless, but today I cannot get out what I would like to get out. My brain is frazzled. Happy yellow day, ended in a cloud of grey, but rose to semi-indigo working into a nice burgundy. That is my color forecast for the day. I did have a strange visual as I lay in bed last night (actually 1:38 am) it involved a dragon, a puff of purple, and some mountains. Strange, but still a pretty image…maybe I can write out the scene. I wish I could draw it the dragon was SUPER COOL! Maybe I shouldn’t share that. Oh, well I did. Today I went on fb and Inner Aspie had posted a Pearl Jam song. I am not going to go into detail, but the song means a lot to me on many levels and I had not heard it in a very long time. I will share the video I found below. The music is soothing to me, the lyrics penetrate my heart, and it brings back memories.

It triggered the memory of the first time I heard Pearl Jam.

It was 1992 way down in South Florida — I had been working for months and made no friends, until a few weeks earlier. This group ended up being the best group of friends I had. They taught me a lot. The group gradually broke up and went separate ways, moving away, going off to school, transferring to other stores etc… Sorry sidetracked. My boyfriend at the time went home to visit for a wedding. I was invited to a party, for the first time with my new friends. I was nervous, anxious, and in order to help ease my worries I made plans to stay the night with the girl who lived in the apartment. When I walked into the apartment, I was struck with the song Jeremy. I was gone — literally, I stood stuck in the music. I do not know why, but the lyrics soared through me and stirred something I could not explain. Once I woke from my other world, I realized people had been talking to me and were looking at me in a strange way. I responded with: “Who is this?” Thankfully, they enjoyed my quirks, and one of the guys was a fanatical Pearl Jam fan. He was happy to oblige all of my questions.

I studied the CD case, and fished through reading everything I could.

They played it several times for me before other people arrived, but then told me gently that we could not listen to this one album all night. I was already excited to discover the album title being “Ten”. Love the number ten. The night went well, and my first social event seemed to be a positive…until a certain guy showed up. I didn’t like him from the get go. His behaviors and actions triggered my past experience with my abusive ex. He was a next-door neighbor, not invited, and loud and rude. He made me swell with rage, and I wanted this bully to “Get Out!” I could not understand why no one was doing anything. I will shorten the version of what happened, he was a complete jerk, he was being degrading to women, especially his girlfriend. I had enough of him and told him to leave. It was not my apartment so he refused, my friend was afraid of him. Eventually I ended up in his face telling him what I thought of him and demanding he leave or I was calling the cops. (I forgot the reason why they freaked out about the cop threat some of us were under age and drinking. Yeah, I would have gone to jail too.) The guys at the party were pulling me away from him, and another group was blocking him from hitting me. My cutting words caused him to punch a hole in the wall instead of me.

That sent me and I was ready for a death match.

Now he damaged my friends apartment! He was going down! Needless to say, I was pulled out of the apartment until they got him out. It was all a blur at this point and his girlfriend was terrified, she and several others came outside begging me to stop. I did not realize that he was an abuser, and I was making things worse for her. I just wanted him out of the apartment, he had such a horrible presence and I could not take his vileness. He left, things settled, and my friends learned rather quickly that I loved music and did not care how big, or bad someone was if they were not invited and were rude I would go in a blind rage to get them to leave. Yes, I have several stories of me doing this with people — for some reason I have never been able, to sit back and allow monsters force people to endure ridicule, and meanness. Some of my life stories scare me to death in hindsight. I cannot believe some of the ways I behaved, and dangers I put myself in. I wish I would have had the same passion to protect myself at times. Oh, let me add this whole episode would be another reason why I should not drink alcohol!

Other things on facebook today, randomly chosen for my whatever reasons…

 

www.facebook.com/AutisticPeople

Hmm…I was happy to see this because I am having some problems with cognitive distortions today, sometimes they are so hard to see as distortions.

www.facebook.com/autismdiscussionpage

 

www.facebook.com/Hahahalaughitout

And now some random pictures! If you scroll on the picture you can see my titles. Whoop!

 

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04/10/12

Speaking Of Self-Awareness…

According to the wiki page, (I am not going to search very hard today because I do not have the time.) Self-Awareness is defined:

“Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. Self-awareness, though similar to sentience in concept, includes the experience of the self, and has been argued as implicit to the hard problem of consciousness.”

Before this last summer, I had lost virtually any self-awareness I had. I know that I had a small amount of understanding, but I was unable to detach who I was from the people in my life or my environment. They were my mirrors — they reflected and scripted for me how to act, how to respond, whom to be friends with, how I should live my life. I absorbed them trying to discover who I was. Social confusion, a faulty executive system, and no authority throughout my childhood able to guide me left me to wander around observing social dynamics in my circle of relationships. I had several women who were obsessed with weight, looks, approval seekers, and constantly hiding their intelligence surrounding me. I found my mother so confusing in this area because she would be freaked out about whether she was attractive or not one day and the next she didn’t care at all. I can pinpoint some of these events now to social confusion and anxiety.

She would only think about her outward appearance if someone mentioned it.

Same here, I normally do not think about whether I am attractive or not, unless someone makes me feel a certain way. I have additional issues because of my birthmark. (Those of you who do not know about my birthmark can read this post if you like.) Both my mother and I were ridiculed in school about the way we looked. My mom had additional abuse at home (though she will not call it that) she was abused physically, and emotionally. She was called names and made fun of by her father. From an early age for some reason, I did not put up with grandfathers hooey, I got in trouble a lot, but I was too fast and I was a good hider. :-) He made fun of my name often, when my mom told him my name in the hospital the day after I arrived he said, “What did you name that kid? Angel-leaky? What kind of name is that?” However, with all of the ugliness there were great qualities about him too. I speak of him because unfortunately he helped pave the way to my mother’s dysfunctional view of herself — stripping her of self-awareness and self-acceptance along with his family and my grandmother’s lack of attention. My grandfather was abused as well, and since his behavior was not as horrible as what he had been raised with he did not see himself as an abuser.

It can trickle down, generation after generation.

My mom loved fashion, and being made up, she was a model for some time and loved it. No thanks! She learned how to dress and keep herself up through modeling classes. Later as I was a child, she started aiming for more managerial roles in her company. An assistant store manager who was a very confident woman took my mom under her wing, and taught her what she needed to do to work in a “man’s world”. She also had a great kind man who was her store manager who helped her. He and his family were very good to us and thanks to him; my mom was able to pave the way to her career. My mom still did not have self-awareness in an embodying sense — she now took on the identity of her workplace. That became her for over 23 years when she left she had a nervous breakdown, alone and shared with no one what she was going through. She is still seeking to discover who she is. I rejected what she was — I knew that it was not my mother.

I resented the fact that she constantly tried to make me into that mold.

Especially when I started working at the same company, for a season I became just like my mother. The day I realized what I had become I decided to quit and changed the course of my life. (It was not the only deciding factor, but I have written about that elsewhere.) I wish I would not have done it in such haste — I seem to do so many things in haste. It does not go with my character though, I am very systematic, I like to plan, and think before I do anything. There are certain instances for some reason I lose that part of me and go off in what seems like a whim. Only later left staring at the mess that I have made, and I have to pick up the pieces. I believe had I been instilled with some understanding of self-awareness many of my decisions would not have been so destructive. Many times, I was doing it because I was searching for me. What was I about? What did I like? What kind of people did I want to hang out with? My interests did not seem to mesh with most people so I felt as if I could not connect to people.

It did not occur to me to seek out like-minded people.

I managed to fall into situations with people, and then thought “Well we must be friends, or in a relationship.” It seems to “just happen”. I cannot explain it very well. If only I would have known that I was good with numbers, that I am an excellent researcher. I can dance, I have the ability to write, and I have a knack for picking trends music or otherwise. I can understand and teach science, I do not have to pretend that I am not smart, and I am fully capable of being self-sufficient in all areas….had I known! I did not. I knew nothing of this about myself. I wish I could explain it better, it sounds kind of strange to say these things. I have been so disconnected from myself — I knew these things about me. I did not know that I was allowed to do them. Even though I was the closet to me, I somehow took on the rule that someone needed to tell me that it was ok for me to do it. My reliance on others to tell me who I was distorted even more of my self-awareness. Most children do look to their parents to help them discern who they are. This is a normal part of development — they mimic and try on their parents for size until they start to discover themselves. I did not learn the “capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.” Since I could not see myself I could not reconcile self without others informing me.  Does that make sense?

My parents never knew who they were.

Their parents had some great qualities, but they also did not equip them to discover how to be the person that is inside of them. Both of my parents were severely abused, and I am not sure how that plays into all of this. They were not allowed to be themselves, which is multiple posts that I am not going into…at least not yet, maybe next year. :-) They did not place many aspirations on me. Their aspirations however, did frequently involve appearance and morality. When I failed to discover myself on my own, I took to religion to tell me who I was. I had been using boyfriends as my guide without realizing it — I mixed my identity with work, friends, and boyfriends. I did not know how to pull from within and continue in that self-strength. I never trusted it because everyone in my life had told me that I was wrong in some form. Now there is a mix of my own distorted perceptions and actual events when people continued to tell me what was wrong with me. It really doesn’t matter the fact is it caused me to question myself, feel rejected, reject myself, and adopt whoever I thought knew what the heck they were talking about.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

This is one reason why it is so important to teach children how to have self-awareness, and it is never too late! (It seems that I am clashing self-awareness and self-identity together — to me they feel the same. This post is a processing post anyway.) Some folks may consider me going through a mid-life crisis, or being pre-menopausal. It is possible, but the funny thing is as I have been combing over my thoughts and where my thinking is at right now, I am entering my teenage phase of true rebellion! Lol! I am stripping off all of the ideals of the generation that raised me, and I am determining my own thoughts, beliefs, and self based on how I define it. I have read that this type of development normally starts from teens onto the end of people’s twenties at times. I am being kind of cheeky here, but it does seem spot on. A few months ago, I made list of goals that I wanted to achieve this year, my number one goal “To become self-sufficient in all areas.” I want my own identity, I want to be able to trust and rely on myself. (Not in a narcissistic way, we all need people.) I want my own income again. I hate being so dependent financially. I have always had this fire inside of me to be independent, but everyone told me how incapable and dependent I was.

I didn’t realize that many of those people were projecting their own self-talk onto me.

I didn’t know that I could reject those words, and trust what I felt about myself. It is so strange how I was raised to be so dependent in one sense, yet so independent in another. I have been thinking about this stuff for a while, I would like to go into greater detail. I am not sure that I will, but this morning I was triggered to get this out because I read this article by Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her ‘Puffy’ Appearance. While at first when I read it I was trying to weed through whether it was her insecurities speaking, or if it was a good article. It turns out that I found many, many excellent things in what she wrote. She is tackling our perceptions of women in society, as a woman this is very close to me. As an autistic woman, I have additional factors that play into this. My lack of self-awareness and confidence in my own “gut feelings” has led me into the hands of predators that have used and hurt me.

I speak of male and females alike.

I not only have had the confusion of men reading me the wrong way, which quite frankly if my heart is set on someone they will know exactly how I feel. I normally do not stay quiet about my feelings toward people I care deeply for. I have never played games, in romantic relationships or any other relationships. However, I normally stay quiet until I know how they feel — I never like to show affections for people first EVER! My interactions with women and the “appearance” issue have been just as confusing as it has been with men. People can read wrong signals — they are their own perceived signals, whether through desires or insecurities. I don’t understand that. If you like me tell me, if you don’t tell me it saves everyone from grief. Had some of those girls asked me if I was flirting with their boyfriends, I would have told them directly…I did not want their man. (Believe me!) Instead of asking, they would attack my appearance, or me. With this type of banter that other women have done, or how men have treated me it makes me aware of my looks. At times, it made me feel inadequate in my appearance. I do not like people to see me because I have been attacked either way.

My self-esteem was damaged because of others lack of self-esteem.

It makes me filled with questions. Why does it matter what I look like? Who am I to you? Why do you feel the need to point out what you deem as flaws, or give backhanded compliments to confuse me? I now have questions for myself as well. Why didn’t I tell that jerk off when he told me that I was fat? Why did I listen when the guys in my life compared me to other girls and constantly told me what I needed to fix? Why did I stay with them when they clearly found other’s much more attractive, enough to cheat? How did I manage to end up with guys who were always fantasizing about blondes when I am a brunette? Why didn’t I shrug off anyone who did not value me? Why did I allow my mom’s own negative self-talk conform my own image — when I knew how damaging and wrong it was? Why is our culture so confusing sexualizing everything, but condemning us for being sexually active? Oh, I have so many questions! I have to stop myself, or I will keep going.

I am going to leave with the last paragraph of Ashley Judd’s article and say thank you to her as well.

“If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in—and help change—the Conversation.”


 

 

 

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04/7/12

About Lonely III (The Novella-I kid!)

Continued from About Lonely II…

I feel happy surrounded by my objects they do not replace people, but they sure are more accepting and less confusing. :-)   I want to interact and have more friendships. I am not sure how to keep long lasting relationships… maybe I can as long as they accept my ways and me. Honestly, I have not had very many people accept me. They have a preconceived idea about me. It is partly do to how I behave in situations with new people. I have had many people see me as a snob at first. It depends on the environment, but normally I try to stay out of sight, and quiet. One of the reasons for this is that people have misunderstood my personality for being an “attention seeker”. The truth is I am very animated; I get excited in good and bad ways. People have assumed that I am trying to be in the limelight when in reality I do not like being the star of the show. I like everyone to be seen, but many times, it does not work that way.

I like to share the stage — I admit the stage is fun, but not alone.

When I feel safe enough to let my guard down a bit people get to see that I am not a snob at all. I am a very accepting, and open person at times to my detriment. The good thing about me is that I never need much. I am always good with small gestures. Extravagance can make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. It is a lonely place to feel the need to stay on guard, know that people think you are stuck up, but do not know how to change it. It is a lonesome feeling to have to weed through social dynamics along with learning a new environment. I find it lonesome because others do not seem to have these same issues, so I have had to go through it alone.

I have observed others, and they know what a “look” means.

They understand a smile, or comment, someone’s tone does not confuse them. They laugh at things that can take me days to get. They remember to say “good morning” everyday. It can make me feel lonely when I do not understand what is going on. It makes me feel lonely when I am surrounded by people who seem to get everything that is going on and I haven’t clue. It seems many of my lonely feelings have to do with other people’s perceptions, their inability to read me, and/or my inability to read them. I am not alone; I do not feel lonely until it is brought to my attention how “different” I am. I find it interesting that my mom does not have the same feelings. She does not experience the same emotions that I do when confronted with being different.

If you have not guessed, I have been doing a parallel study.

Yes, I have been studying the differences between my mom and me. I have done this my whole life – the difference now is that my mom is answering my questions! She would not talk to me about this stuff before, now that she has an understanding of autism she is willing to discuss things she would not have in the past. She does not feel lonely when surrounded with a group of people who do not get her. She is aware of it, but it does not concern her. She has many rigid scripts though. They trump certain feelings — much like my “help trump” thing, my mom has mind trump cards that deal with social situations. I think hers is different because she is not as social as I am. She also does not put the same kind of importance on a relationship. I don’t know why I do this – I do have to accept it though.

 I have friends, but I do not talk to them often.

I do interact through facebook sometimes. In my defense, (Not that I need to defend myself.) I am rather busy, and my priorities go to my children. I have taken to giving myself time to write, and blog because without that time I am no good to anyone. I email one friend on a semi-regular basis she does not get upset with me thankfully she understands. I have not been with or talked to my friend here since the last Bible study at my mom’s house, but we could not talk much then anyway. I enjoy reading, and commenting on the blogs I do. I am trying to be more social online, but I also know my limits. I also have to feel safe. When I feel safe my silliness comes out.

I can be quite the goofy lizard!

I do want to take a moment and talk about how I get taken aback in friendships. I have times when I shut down. My shut downs (or meltdowns) have been known to come on unexpectedly. In the last few months I have learned to watch for my triggers, and either start my own shut down, or prepare myself for what is about to happen. In the past, they seemed to come on suddenly and I would cut myself off from people completely. When I returned, the relationship seemed to change. It would cause me to be filled with anxiety and confusion because I didn’t understand what had happened. I tend to think everything is fine even with limited contact. I expected everything to be the same as it was the last time we had contact. This is where I can get sideswiped with confusion and hurt. I have encountered this on several occasions when I thought everything was fine, but the person had moved on and replaced me, or had no interest in me.

I perceived them as being finished with me, but not telling me.

These types of interactions caused overwhelming bouts of loneliness. It led to major negative looping because it didn’t make any sense. It was a rejection that seemed without cause. I have experienced this type of thing my entire life with numerous types of relationships. The worst ones were when my two live-in boyfriends (Not at the same time!) both planned to leave me, but did not tell me until the last minute. One I actually discovered that he was moving to another country because his new employer called and talked to me. If I had not gotten that phone call I am not sure when he would have told me. We did end up staying together while he lived there, but trust had been broken. My father did the same type of thing when I was around 11 or 12 I cannot remember now when he moved to another state. He told me the weekend before he was moving.

He didn’t understand why I was so upset.

It was a huge change; I had been going to his house practically every weekend since I was little. He was leaving, and I did not know when I would see him. I also felt like he didn’t much care that he was leaving me. The feeling I always had was that I should be happy for him. It was the same way by boyfriend responded when I discovered that he was going to work in another country. The first boyfriend to spring this “side swipe break up” on me acted as if I should have known. However, he hid it from me for over a month. He put in a transfer and the people at work (We worked at the same place at the time.) knew before I did. When he continued to keep contact with me and shared his life again, it was an attitude of “You should be happy for me.” Every time I encountered this, I experienced the other traumas on top of it. I didn’t want to, my mind seemed to attack me, my thoughts were uncontrollable, and I felt the emotions over and over again. These experiences made me feel exceptionally lonely. I had no one to talk to, and since all of them acted as if it was ok, I thought I had no reason to be upset.

My mom was not much comfort in this area.

She does not have much sympathy when she considers people to be jerks. She had empathy, but her way of handling it was different. She felt badly for me, but to her they were replaceable. When I think of lonely those were lonely times. I was terribly alone in my feelings, and hurt. Still I entertained myself, I talked to trees, birds, bugs, animals, the sky, and I went on adventures during the wee hours of the night. (Not too smart – no sense of danger.) I spent many days at the pool, and many nights spent with the moon and stars on my balcony. I also poured myself into work. During those times, I had my cherished books, movies, and music. They were my best friends and the only ones who understood me. Some people thought I was so strange. They thought something was wrong with me because I enjoyed riding my bike by myself, or during breaks instead of talking about people I was busy examining lizards or I would change the subject to vampires!

I may have felt lonely, but I was never alone.

Lonely sounds like such an awful thing. Sometimes I think it is good to feel that deep lonely feeling. If we didn’t feel that, how could we find our self? How can we ever discover our true inner strength, if we do not see what it is like to have no one? I am not speaking of long periods of depressed isolation, which is definitely not a good thing. I have gone through that it normally does not bring about healing. I am referring to what I felt at the symposium. I sat surrounded by people who look at my kind as studies, enigmas, puzzles to figure out, preconceived ideas about how people like me think. I was an alien in a room full of medical professionals. It freaked me out for a moment, but then I realized nothing had changed.

I was alone, but I wasn’t truly lonely.

I understood that the only reason why I was feeling lonely was that they were saying how much I needed people. I needed to adapt in order to be in this world if I do not want to be lonely. All of it was based on their perception of what lonely means and as I have been thinking about it, here I am once again debunking someone else’s idea of whom I am. They had great resources and ideas to help integrate people on the autism spectrum. They could explain how my brain works in the area of social confusion in so much detail; they gave me great understanding and clarity that helped me. They had very positive things to say about people on the autism spectrum, but they also were generalizing and making assumptions based on their own personal feelings.

I want friends.

I want to experience people. I want to share with people, and enjoy people. I want to be able to share myself without fears of rejection. It is happening. I am very much a social Aspie, but I also cannot be too social. I have to have limits. I get over-stimulated. I can get obsessive if I am confused by a relationship. I do not feel like I am missing anything though because I do not have a bunch of people in my life, or because I do not go out all the time. Those things made me feel very lonely. It does not make me a lonely person. All of these years my feelings of loneliness have been stemmed from being misunderstood, and having people in my life who were constantly telling me how I needed to be. Discovering more about whom I am, and how I see and process my world takes away a lot of my loneliness.

The feelings of isolation and deep despair have dwindled.

I understand that I can have that type of negative loop, but my looping is not the same as actually feeling that way. My loops are usually my brain trying to help me understand something. I think the saying is true you have to love yourself before you can know how to love others. It never made sense to me until I started actually liking myself for the first time in my life. I have spent a large amount of time trying to love others with all of my heart because I did not know how to love myself. (I do not mean to sound all cheesy here, but I have to confess this stuff.) My coming to terms and accepting more of me has given me the ability to step out more and comment on other blogs.

It has given me the ability to share more of me with others.

It has revealed how there are people who know what I am talking about. They have felt similar things — we truly are not alone. Though we may feel lonely out in the “real” world, the internet world seems to bring me much comfort, even if I do not have “normal” relationships with people.  I am still very hard on myself, and question at times, why anyone would want anything to do with me. This is not out of insecurity it is out of the inability to see who I am. It is my “self mind-blindness.” My self-awareness has been lacking, and I have been looking to others to help me all of these years. I do not see what others see in me. I do not understand what attracts people to me. I do not know why anyone would want to be my friend, or love me. I am a little teary eyed at this point and I do not know why. I partially think it is because I am seeing some good things about myself. I am accepting that I am good at things. I believe that I am a person of worth, and I matter. I cannot tell you how incredibly painful it is for me to write those words. I felt like nothing for so long.

I felt invisible many times.

The feelings like no one would notice if I just left this world, feeling completely unlovable and rejected for so many years stripped me of self. My mom felt all of those things her entire life as well, but she never shared that until our weekend together. Again hers is in a different way, it has to do more so with talent than self. However, her self-image does stem her feelings, but I will not go into that. Discovering why we do things the way we do, and that there are others who share and understand has given us a new perspective on life. We have also had many things cleared up gaining the understanding that no two autistics are alike. We are not a simple label, you cannot fit us into a box, and we are our own unique vessel. I do not understand why people have to be categorized. That is a sure fire way to make someone feel lonely. I am wondering what others think about the word lonely. I wonder why people write so many things about it, but never really tackle the subject. Lonely…there is so much packed into that word.

If you are feeling lonely, remember you are not alone.

The end!


 

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04/6/12

About Lonely II

Continued from About Lonely I…

I didn’t understand why a person like me who wanted friends, and liked people had no friends, while my mom who seemed to care less always had people swarming. She says that it is just like cats, she is not a cat fan (WHAT?), yet they always want to be around her. Cats love her and she doesn’t want anything to do with them. It seems similar with people. She has always had people in her life who continue to keep up the relationship. She has had a “take me or leave me” attitude and she really is not affected much when someone leaves her life. She moves on rather quickly, and has something of a shoulder shrug response. (There is a lot more detail to her relationship stories that does not apply to the rest of this, maybe another post. :-) )

I am nothing like this.

This line of thinking that my mother was able to have people care about her so much started at an early age. It consumed me throughout my life, but I now understand that it was childhood perception that never transpired into an adult understanding. Apparently, at some point between ages 12-14, social understanding of degrees of relationships really kicks in, and the adult thinking is starting to pave its way. My brain did not transition with my peers, and I continually become unaware, or confused to the social dynamics going on around me. It is not that I cannot understand it; it is that I need someone to explain things to me in a rational, direct, and kind way. It hurts deeply when people talk to me as if I am a child, or get frustrated with me because they assume I should already know things.

In reality however, I had friends throughout my life.

I have had many friends. I have said it before though, I am good at making friends — I am not good at keeping them. When I lose friends that makes me feel lonely because I do not understand why I lose them. I know that sometimes it is my own doing many times in those cases I was trying to protect myself. I admit that being alone, and entertaining myself can be very fun and can lead me to drift away from a relationship. I have noticed that I do a much better job at keeping up relationships via internet. I am devastated when someone leaves my life that I have put energy into, and shared parts of myself into the relationship. Let me clarify I become devastated if I do not know the reason why. If they were to tell me clearly, such as telling me “I found a new friend who better suits my interests and we click far better”, I can handle that. It would hurt, sure, but at least I know and I can understand that. I would obviously have to work through the pain. If I am left to guess at what is happening I turn inward and attack myself, if it is made clear that I did nothing wrong I do not attack myself.

I may have questions — I always have questions.

Although, I do not know how to transition from good friend, to acquaintance I have always cut people off. I did not understand transitioning relationships. To be honest it still makes me confused, I am not sure how to handle any of that, and it seems too complicated. My feelings of devastation were even prevalent when I was in an abusive relationship, and I knew that I had to end it. I felt guilt, I felt sorry for him, and I ached for months at the separation. I know that part of that had to do with other factors that happen with abuse, but I still felt it. (I didn’t know I was being abused at the time.) It was an incredibly lonely time for me. My mom could not understand and continued to tell me to get over it. She could not understand why I would feel sad when it was such a horrible relationship.

I wondered why my mom would even have tried to have romantic relationships.

I asked her if she continued dating and getting into relationships because that was her script. She seemed favorable with that hypothesis. She made it clear that she liked having someone around to help her. She also made it clear that she does not have the same emotions and never has when someone describes love. It does not feel the same for her. It does not look the same, though she tried to make it like movies because she thought that is what it was supposed to be. At one time she did connect to one person in a deep way, and she described him as being the closest thing to “movie type” love she has ever encountered. She does not feel like she has missed anything, and she is perfectly happy being alone. She has very few friends, but a ton of acquaintances. If you asked her, her good friends could go under the acquaintance category. It does not mean she does not care deeply about them.

It does not mean she is hard and cold.

She is not, she is very loving, but it can look very different. Her expression of love is not an emotional type of love. She crochets blankets, gives flowers, (Blah! She said she learned to do that from church.) she cleans things as acts of love. We both are not sure if she is this way to protect herself because she does feel so deeply, or if she is just like this. She is able to cut people off and not think twice about it. Once someone hurts her, they get three strikes then, they are out. Not with her children obviously otherwise my sisters and I would have been cut off a long time ago. Hee hee

She and I differ in this area in some ways.

It takes a lot for me to cut someone out of my life. They have to devastate me beyond recovery, or I finally conclude they must want nothing to do with me. At that point, I cut myself off from them normally in a looping haste, and it will be some random act with me saying, “I’m gone. Good Bye”. I have done this several times in my life where I cut people off and devastated myself so I would not have to wait any longer for them to do it to me. Trying to read their signs, or figure out if they cared about me was too stressful and the anticipation killed me inside. Therefore, I ended it.

However, it never ends.

It always leaves me wondering, and feeling abandoned ultimately leaving me feeling lonely. I know that I am the one who did the final abandonment. I have been working through this, and trying to create healthier patterns in this area. I remember my mind racing with questions every time I have cut someone out of my life. Why not just do it themselves? Why would they continue to act as if I meant something when I did not? Why didn’t they consider me? Why didn’t they think about my feelings? Why wouldn’t they be honest? I realize that I made up scenarios in my head that may or may not be true because the not knowing was far worse. The people I have done this to have returned in my life at certain times and I am always surprised that they have fond memories of me.

They genuinely like me, but it confuses me.

The questions arise. If they cared about me, why did they treat me the way they did? I have one friend in my hometown that I am not sure I can have contact with her. She hurt me several times, and I cut her off several times. Amazingly, she always finds me. She thinks about me. She loves me, but it is so hard for me to reconcile this with her actions. I similarly have a hard time with family, and have removed myself from certain family members throughout my life. Sometimes these decisions have been good and healthy for me, sometimes not so much. I try so hard to keep my emotions in check. I have tried not to let me feel anything because the pain is too much. That is not who I am though. When I try to cap my emotions, or parts of me that are intense that makes me feel lonely. It stirs the emotions of being misunderstood, and not “normal”. I know that normal is a myth, but it is more the feeling of no one reaching out to me as I have seen people do for my mom. Maybe I miss the cues?? I feel lonely when I realize people have absolutely no clue what I am feeling. I feel lonely when someone tells me I have no emotions.

I feel lonely when someone tells me I have a poker face.

I feel lonely when people look at me and cannot tell my heart is broken. I feel lonely when I am overjoyed bouncing around, singing, and dancing and people look at me as if I am a freak. I feel lonely when my body cannot bear a hug, or my eyes cannot look at someone’s face, and people make me feel bad for it. I feel lonely when I have no one to share with my similar interests. I especially felt lonely the day I was told, “No one will ever understand you. You need to accept that you are all alone in the world, and no one will fully know, or understand you.” Yeah…that made me feel exceptionally lonely. It has been swimming through my mind since the day they said it. When the person said this to me they thought it would bring me comfort, and help me to see that I have no one, but myself to rely on and once I understood that I am all alone I could feel good about it. Um…no. That worked for them, it did not work for me.

I feel connections to everything — that statement made me feel connected to nothing.

I need to feel connected, not surrounded by tons of people, but connected otherwise I lose all hope. I become faithless in humanity and myself. I crumble at the thought that I am having no one to share things with, or link to. So a statement like that does not benefit me in any way. I am not lonely in the same way that people describe it. Lori from A Quiet Week In The House left this comment on my last post “I prefer being alone. I feel more connected to actual loneliness when I am with others.” That is it. I do enjoy people, and being social, (I will go into that a little more in the next post.), but being alone can be great fun for me. My issue is I do not like feeling ALL alone in the world. I do not like the feeling as if I am an alien dropped off here on planet earth, unless of course my alien beings gave me a clear and direct task while I was here! I want to be with people and have meaningful relationships.

BUT I am happy by myself too.

 

Up Next About Lonely III…


 

 

 

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04/5/12

About Lonely I

I have been thinking about the word lonely. What does it mean? Why do so many people feel lonely and hide it? Why do some people consider those who are perfectly fine alone as lonely? Why do people not believe it when someone says: “I like being alone.” What is lonely? What does it mean to me? What makes me feel lonely? What makes others feel lonely? How many times can I write the word lonely in a paragraph? Does the word lonely feel lonely? Ok, Ok I’ll stop. The word lonely got me thinking about alone, to me the word lonely and alone or two different things. They can coexist, but being alone for me is not a bad thing sometimes and it does not mean that I am lonely. I was perfectly fine with being alone (I still am), but the feeling of loneliness has overwhelmed me many times in my life.

As I have tried to write this post, it has spun into over 4000 words. (Currently.)

I have several posts that I am sharing on the topic. I have tried to capture and articulate what I am feeling on the topic, but I cannot. Instead, this has turned into ramblings of situations that have made me feel lonely. I can be consumed with the feeling of isolation. When I want to share my thoughts, or talk about things that make me happy, or sad. When I want to tell someone my pain without interruption, or analytical prose. When I look around and realize that no matter what I still have to keep up some form of mask in order to survive, or adapt. I feel lonely when I am faced with the reality of how different I am, or when I feel completely misunderstood. I read the wiki page on loneliness and thought that this statement was appropriate “the physical absence of meaningful people around a person”. It isn’t about large numbers of friends, or relationships it is about the physical absence of meaningful people. If we do not have one single person in our life that we feel understands us, or at least accepts everything about us that can lead to feeling lonely. I have been consumed with despair and loneliness at times when I am surrounded by people. I can be overwhelmed with this feeling the more people there are.

It’s the feeling of not understanding others, and them not understanding me.

The etymology dictionary had this to say about lonely: “dejected for want of company”. The dictionary shared words like lonesome, destitute of sympathetic or friendly companionship, desolate, and isolated. Yes, I have felt all of these things. I still do many times, but I also find comfort in being alone. The feelings of loneliness can rift through me suddenly and unexpectedly. It is usually triggered by an incident. When I sat in a room of over 300 hundred people and by their statistics there was only one other person…possibly two who may understand what I was feeling at that moment it flooded me with feeling all alone in the world. I mean seriously alone. They spoke about individuals like myself in ways that made me realize in a drastic way that indeed my thoughts are my own. I was unaware of how much I believed that others were thinking exactly what I was. It put it into perspective that I do this in a real tangible way. On the surface, I understand this, but on a daily basis, I am not thinking about it and I assume that others are reading my mind, or mean the same thing as I do on a subconscious level.

Logically I know this is not true…I do not know how to articulate it.

They did say at the time that the statistics for autism could be going to 1 in 100. Not because there was an epidemic, but because according to Ami Klin, PhD (I am paraphrasing because I did not bring a recorder and could not write fast enough, but I did get key words and statements.) it is not an epidemic the medical field is finally getting things right. They are gaining more understanding, perspective, and with new resources for early diagnosis, it changes the numbers to be more accurate. He did not dismiss the fact that environment and/or genetic factors can (do) play a role as well. However, he mentioned that if it truly were an epidemic, the statistics would not be the same between children and adults. The stats were 1 in 110 for both child diagnosis and adult diagnosis. Now we have the stats at 1 in 88 according to the CDC. This number should apply to adults as well. Personally, I have stayed away from reading any more about the new number release. I can’t do it right now. In a way, those numbers made me think quite a bit more about the meaning of lonely. It brought me back to a few weeks ago.

I sat in the conference room looking around wanting to find my kind.

Not because I was scared or insecure, but I felt outnumbered. I felt on guard, and as if I needed to protect myself. I do not know why. I felt like I had been thrown into a foreign country where I vaguely understood their language. They did not know my language because their words did not mean the same thing. When I said something was loud that meant it was hurting my body, it was stinging my flesh, it sent jolts into my ears, it made me dizzy and off balance. When they said something was loud, they only meant the volume was up. I know the differences between my brain and others. I do understand this, but to have it so clear, and directly spoken, shown, and explained — felt lonely. It felt isolating and real for the first time. I saw myself being described in clinical terms, these people understood me based on research, studies, interactions doing therapies with people like me, but they still did not “get” me. It made me see with clarity how confused I am a lot of the times. My confusion makes me feel lonely. It made me ponder on many other things as well. My mind has been soaring with events in my life. This experience made me doubt anything and everything I have known.

It made me question all kinds of social interactions.

I already do this — I have to be cautious with people because I have been hurt so deeply. Even when I have kept walls up, and defense mechanisms, I would still be hurt by confusing actions and words. The inability to discern what the relationship was about, how I was supposed to interact in the relationship, along with trusting the wrong people, being manipulated, and confused caused me to be hurt. I see now in my constant confusion I attacked myself and caused myself more harm than the other person did at times. When I rushed things through my head, I didn’t know how to process it. That led me to ask my mom “Are you lonely?” She said: “No, not at all. You know I like to be alone.” She then shared that my sister who moved back in with her has been connecting a lot of similarities between the three of us. Funny the other day the topic of being lonely came up with them as well.

My mom asked her:”Do you ever feel lonely?” 

She replied with: “Not really, only when I see couples together maybe.” I then asked my mom if she felt that she no longer feels lonely because she has gotten used to it. I wondered if she felt lonely when she was my age or my sister’s age. Her answer: “Well, maybe, but I don’t think so. You know I have always liked being alone. Even as a child, I preferred to be in my room. I didn’t really want to play with other kids.” She then went into how she was kind of like Liz Taylor, always having a man when she was our age. She is reading a biography on Liz right now. :-) I recalled my accounts of the men in her life. She seemed more annoyed and bothered when they were around. I did not much care for them either…some of them I liked, but they did not stay around very long.

Why?

Because my mom couldn’t do it. She couldn’t keep up a relationship. It was too much work. The only reason why she has long lasting friendships is because they contact her, they keep the relationship going, and they call and set up plans to do things. She has an ex-boyfriend who lives out of state (they dated when I was a teenager) we still have not figured out the relationship… friends? More than friends? We do not know, but he keeps regular contact with her. He and his kids stay at mom’s house for vacation every year. However, if he did not call or email her on a regular basis she would not think to contact him unless something new happens in her life. He continues to tell her that people are supposed to keep contact and call each other. Although, he has finally accepted that she will not remember to do so. I am different in this area, when I care about someone, they can consume my thoughts. I want to interact with them all the time. I want to share everything, and I want to know all they are doing, thinking, achieving, their likes, dislikes…I want to know them as much as I am sharing myself. I have discovered that people do not do this. It makes me feel rejected, and confused. I now know that it has nothing to do with me, but throughout the years, it has hurt me terribly.

When I was younger, my mom had a group of girlfriends.

They hung out at our home all the time. They would sit around talking, drinking Stroh’s beer, listening to music, smoking cigarettes, and eating chips or some sort of snacks. I sat watching them, observing their behaviors, cleaning up after them, entertaining them with my dances or silliness, and telling them “I am never going to smoke, or drink.” I wish I would have stuck to my little self rules, it could have saved me from some hard times. I recall in detail many similar nights, I am on the living room floor, I have my books laid out or some sort of game I am playing by myself — listening to every word they say, and I feel desperately alone. I did not understand anything they were talking about, and I felt invisible unless they wanted a beer, or I could make them laugh somehow. My mom confused me as well because she was different. She was acting different and I did not understand why. My mom has since shared with me that she was the one who held the parties, and drank to help with her social anxiety. She didn’t know what it was at the time. The one thing that confused me very much and was a contributing factor to a distorted self-image was seeing my mom surrounded by friends.

She always has people who surround her, yet she seeks to be alone.

Coming Soon About Lonely II…

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

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04/3/12

Fragmented Thoughts

I have had to take a break from blog reading. There are so many wonderful posts that are being written, and other ones…I am not in the mood to write a post about autism. My brain reflects my different way of thinking, and truth be told several posts from people have caused me social confusion. I want to keep it light today, but I am hoping to focus on autism and self-awareness in the weeks to come. I am torn this year about all of this “awareness” going on. I am frustrated and excited at the same time. I see so many new bloggers, and people on the spectrum sharing their stories. I find that to be so great! I am also enthusiastic to see many more parents writing about autism acceptance. However, I am still faced with the reality that others feel this is a disease that needs a cure. In recent days this has happened several times in my own person life.

We are constantly balancing between spectrums.

At times it feels very much like we are given a “one or the other” choice. Still I will focus on all of the positives that I see. However, because of all of these wonderful posts, “other” posts, and personal experiences with negative spins my brain is racing and soaring in all directions. I have so many things that I want to share, but cannot find my words. Instead, I will share some pictures, and the three little ones that fill me with joy along with coercing me into a freezing ocean today. Oh, Oh! I got a picture of my $5.00 Macy’s coat too. :-) Please, please brain get yourself together!

Alright, alright I cannot leave without sharing some resources.

Stigma and the “Othering” of Autism

Autism Awareness is Not Enough: Here’s How to Change the World

How Asperger’s syndrome affects creativity

Monkey and Autism Acceptance Month

Autism Understanding and Acceptance

Autism and Empathy

Zoey ~ My Autism Greeting

Video by stark.raving.mad.mommy


 

 

 

 

 

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04/2/12

I’m Baaaaccckkkk!

On Friday, I was a complete spaz! Actually, all week I was off and on again with being calm, excited, sad, or plain goofy. My anxiety was tiptop! I soared with good and bad anxiety it was fueled by anticipation. All kinds of anticipation. You name it I probably thought of it and tried to prepare for it. Anyone ever see Doomsday Preppers I could have been placed in that category until the last hour before my mom came to pick me up. However, it was only mentally, I had not prepared for anything in the physical realm. I finally was able to pack, get showered, gather snacks, and water for the two and half hour trip an hour before mom got here. After about thirty hugs from the kids, mom and I were off to Savannah. When we got into the car both of us were calm and excited. (Before you go any further, I did get sidetracked and seem to be bouncing in different directions in this post. It also contains a numerous amount of smiley faces. You have been warned.  :-) )

The road trip was awesome.

It was the first time my mom and I have had solid hours of uninterrupted conversation since…I think my sister was born! :-) Many things were discussed — I am not sure how we ended up on one particular conversation, but we did.  Most likely, it was me because it was about relationships and I have a special interest when it comes to relationships. This led to our discussion about her ex-husband. It transpired into how he ended up leaving. I am not sure if I have shared the story before, but I am not going to share all of the details today. During this particular discussion, my mom triggered a key event that I had blocked completely. I did not realize the trauma I went through, or that I completely blocked it. My mom was out of town for a week for work when the event happened. While she was gone, I found my stepfather with another woman. A woman that I had already caught him on the phone with overhearing him tell her that he loved her. I had also already busted him with bags of marijuana.

I told my mom previously about the phone situation and the marijuana.

When I walked in on them, I freaked out and called my mom. She shut down and could not do anything about it because she was three states away. She had to stay for her job, and she said that she would take care of it when she got home. The short story was I lied to my stepfather and told him that mom said he had to leave. I took care of my two baby sisters for that week. I ended up skipping school the entire time and got expelled. (I got back in, but that is another long story.) I cannot recall everything that was going on, but I was in an abusive relationship myself. I believe I was around 15 years old. I am not able to think of the dates at this time. It is all a blur, but what freaked me out was that I completely blocked the incident. It made me wonder about other things that I have completely blocked. I am not planning on recalling any blocked memories at this point. This was enough thank you very much! I share this story though because what I did to myself caused me serious damage all of these years.

I took on the guilt, and felt like a horrible person for lying to get him out of the house.

I somehow twisted the events, and turned the trauma onto myself. I blamed myself for thinking badly about him because I did not remember what I had seen. I felt somehow I was to blame even though the only thing I did wrong was get a lying, cheating, pothead jerk away from me, and my sisters! (Even if it was their father) He also stole money from my mom, who happened to be making substantially more, he got her in serious debt taking checks out of sequence, and hiding it from her. She did not find that out until the bank called her telling her what her overdraft was. She was 6 months pregnant with my younger sister when that happened. She felt stuck, and didn’t know how or what to do. The stigma of being a single mom and getting another divorce was weighing on her, she was pregnant, now in horrible debt, working 50 or more hours a week — just to share a few things going on in our life. She didn’t know what to do with me catching him with the other things I discovered as well. I would have made an awesome private detective!

I took the reins and got rid of him.

Mom thought he left on his own and he thought mom told him to leave. I have felt so horrible all of these years, and even convinced myself that maybe I did the wrong thing. After mom reminded me of what I saw, it was as if I was standing in the room and I relived the entire moment. I remember details of the curtains, the couch, the lighting in the room, everything! Now that I remember, I have had all of that guilt wash off of me. Sure maybe I should have let mom handle it, but to be honest I could not live in that house with him one more second. I didn’t even want to share the same air with him. I HAD to get him out. I knew that mom and I would be fine. We did fine without him — he had already disconnected from my sisters. It was a mess. So the Savannah trip turned out to be much more healing than I thought it would be. In many ways, not only for me, but for mom too. She has held on to guilt about divorcing the #@@!@@#$# that’s all I will say.

Our trip was awesome!

We did not get to go to all of the museums, and houses that we would have liked to because it rained. We did get stuck in the rain, got lost in circles because we got disoriented, and almost had a meltdown on each other. In the past, the whole indecent would have ended with us yelling at each other. Instead, here is what happened, we had to catch the shuttle by 2:30pm it was 2:05pm pouring down rain, she kept confusing me because she had the map backwards, we finally figured it out. We had been walking under huge trees that kept the rain semi-tolerable, but in order to get to the shuttle we had to walk out in wide open spaces, when we did the rain started coming down harder. I said: Oh, it’s getting worse” (referring to the rain) my mom snaps: “How can it be any worse than this?”

Immediately my brain starts thinking of all of the worst possible situations.

Being stuck in the rain, walking in circles, in Savannah, GA was not that bad at all. We could ask someone to help us, we could get a cab, we could go find a place to buy an umbrella, and on and on my brain went. It was not bad at all even though it was very frustrating, and I hate getting wet. The rain did hurt my skin and I was having a lot of issues, but for me it was not as bad as it could be. For my mom it was the absolute worst thing in the entire world ever! This is where the fights would start — I would take her quite literally and tell her how it could be much worse. She would take me quite literally and start telling me how horrible it actually was back and forth until finally one of would blow. This time I looked up at the sky when she said it and said: “I meant the rain is coming down harder, I was talking about the rain.”

We almost lost it on each other too when we could not find a place to eat.

We do not do well when we are both hungry. I am not going in sequence, sorry. The day before the wonderful drive ended up with us stopping at two La Quinta’s asking where ours was because I thought mom printed out Google map directions, but NO! She had an actual map from 2005 for Savannah! I cannot read regular maps in a car. I get dizzy, I cannot make sense of them, and they get all blurry, and cause me to panic. I NEED PICTURES! I need tons of landmarks to look for. I need exit numbers. I need approximate distance of time. I need anything to help me know that I am not lost. I like regular maps at home when I am not traveling. If I am traveling, I need every detail possible. I told her to pull off and ask someone and she did. We found it and it was not hard at all. We seemed to be running a pattern during the weekend though, “If only we would have a gone a little bit farther.”

Still we had a ball.

We laughed, got on each other’s nerves, I danced all over the place she ignored me, (It was just like when I was a kid…good times.) we ate some great food; she talked me into going to Macy’s. We each got $90 coats from Macy’s for $5.00! WHAT? Yes, we did! Quadruple awesome clearance sale!  My mom’s favorite stores are Macy’s, Dillard’s, some other fancy schmancy stores. She used to shop there all the time….when she had money and a reason to buy that attire. :-)   Me? I got excited about all of the lampposts, trees, and birds that were around! I got a little obsessive with taking pictures of doors, as well as the others I mentioned. I tried to get ghosts to talk to me, but none would. I had all kinds of birds talk to me though. I managed to make one frustrated and he went after mom, he flew right past her head within inches! My bad! Good thing she is not afraid of them. My sister on the other hand would have attacked me had that happened. I don’t understand it her name is Athena I would think she would love birds. :-)

We plan on going back because I did not get to see Bonaventure Cemetery.

I have to go back and see it. We did see Forrest Gump — he hopped onto our trolley for a moment. :-)   I did not see any feathers, but there was a plastic bag floating that made me think of this scene from American Beauty. I think that sums up what I was feeling sometimes while walking around Savannah. All of the tragedy that fills the history of the town is too much to take in. BUT the beauty that fills the place was too much to take in as well. As I listened to the facts and information, I wanted more. I wanted to know more. I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and study the bricks in the roads. I wanted to run my fingers along the train tracks. I wanted to look into every door, but I got sidetracked by the beauty of the cracks and lines, and crookedness of the sidewalks from trees deep old roots that reveal history and life. The roots carry the memories of the people who walked those streets good and bad. The shutters that were crooked gave buildings character. It was too much to take in for a short weekend.

That morning we went to get on our shuttle mom and I were both a little anxious.

We walked into to the lobby and it was full of college age baseball players and their coaches. Good Lord! I was surrounded by giants! I got overwhelmed and had to sneak off to the corridor. Mom and I both waited and the shuttle was late. Anxiety rising, an older woman came over and spilled her coffee, I immediately ran over to get napkins to clean it up. Mom said the woman was making negative comments about herself and she was trying to comfort her, I did not hear a thing I needed to clean up the mess. When I looked down, I saw that coffee was on her toes. Awww!!!! Toes!!! I took a deep breath and cleaned her toes for her. It was painful. I share that story because that was a moment of my “help trump” card taking over my complete freak out over toes. Lol! Also, because it leads into the next event. The toes almost sent me over until I heard the loveliest and most calming thing ever. A family speaking in German sat down right in front of us. I felt the calm rush over me and a big smile across my face.

Mom did the same thing.

We then realized that both of us are calmed by hearing the German language. On the shuttle, we talked about our time in Germany. I get confused as to how long we lived there mom said it was three and half years. I think I thought it was two — anyway she shared how she loved it there. The only things she missed while living there was her parent’s and American food. I said: “WHAT? American food! Blah!” Lol! She does love German food, but for some reason she likes “American food” whatever that is. :-)   As she shared more details about Germany and our life there, we started to get a little anxious again about getting on the trolley. We sat down and lo’ and behold, the couple in front of us and next to them spoke German. Anxiety melted and we were both calm and happy. I have no idea why that is the case and I had no idea mom felt the same way I do about the German language. I do like listening to all languages they fascinate me, but for some reason the German language feels right to me. I have no other way to explain it. I have nothing but positive connections to Germany. Mom said she wanted to go back to Germany one day, sigh….I wish we could.

Oh, yeah I was in Savannah!

I made this much longer than I had planned. Geez! There was a lot that happened this weekend and that was only the tip of the iceberg. The kids did great. They played games, watched movies, ate junk, and are now going all wild and not listening to a single word I say. That seems about right. I am going to take them to the beach and let them run some of this out of their system. I wish it would tire them out, but it won’t. They were funny when I called them; all they talked about were Pokémon, and the games that they were playing. They didn’t seem to miss me at all, but they did. I am not too worried about that it doesn’t hurt my feelings, it is much better for me to know that they are having fun and doing well without me. We wrote stories about their weekend with Daddy, and this is what they said it felt like with me being gone. Ariel: “It felt like mommy was on the computer, but invisible for a longtime.” Daniel: “It felt like mommy was upstairs, and she was not coming down, forever.” Joshua: “It felt like she was in the bathroom for a very long time.” LOL! I had other things that I was going to share, but I got sidetracked and now I have to stop.

Picture time!

(I have a couple of pictures with my face in this batch and I am freaking out! Just so everyone knows.)


 

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03/29/12

Sharing Some Details

This morning Joshua came stumbling out, eyes still closed, hair a mess, leading straight to his Lego rug as he does every morning: “Happy Birthday Mom!” He couldn’t even look at me because his eyes still were halfway shut from sleep goo. (Kidding no goo!) I did see his little smile as he walked by. He places great importance on wishing happy birthdays, and happy holidays. His feelings get hurt for others if the celebration of their day or holidays is not expressed with great importance. After Daniel woke up, he came over got in my face with a huge smile and said: “It’s your birthday Mom.” Ariel stayed in her room drawing when she woke up, Joshua went in to remind her and she said: “Joshua, I know it’s mommy’s birthday. Mom Happy Birthday!” She came out to give a quick hug and went back to her room. Lol!

They got me a Pokémon card, and little stuffed animals.

David picked them out for them, so I could take them with me on my trip. In hopes of soothing me and making me feel like the kids are with me. They told him what to get, but he could not find the Pokémon figures they requested. (Though I am sure those figures would have been snatched from my grip within seconds.) Present for Mom or the kids? Hmm…. After finishing school today, I went into a cleaning bliss. :-) I had to get all of their school stuff prepared for their evaluation next week — I have been doing that for a couple of days. The house has escaped me and it causes me to feel so chaotic. The cleaning has helped my brain get back in order and it makes me feel good. Not all the time, but at the moment it is good. I received an unexpected email from my dad. I loved reading every word and I laughed so hard. It is one of the best presents he has ever given me. He gave me words.

There are some significant ways to show me that you care about me.

One is sharing music, another way is sharing words. It especially means a lot when people are sharing with me how they feel. It is so difficult for me to remember how people feel me about including family. I have such a hard time knowing that I matter. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t. It is not based on insecurity, it is stemmed from getting confused about the relationship. I try to think of solid ways to help me grasp what others feel about me — it seems to escape my mind at times. It happens mostly when I am under stress or filled with anxiety, those times I need reassurance that people are still my friends, they love me, or care about me. When I am feeling balanced I am fine and do not feel this. That has its own problems because when I feel like everything is fine, I have ended up sideswiped and surprised by people suddenly disconnecting from me, or no longer wanting to be in my life.

I have several posts that I have worked through dealing with my dad.

There has been a lot of confusion, and hurt with that relationship. However, my mom has cleared up many things for me. The bottom line is my dad loves me, I know this, but he does not understand how damaging his words/actions have been to me throughout my life. I do not feel the need to talk to him about this. I do not think it will be beneficial, at least not now. Maybe sometime in the future when I can articulate exactly what I want to and I am in a place to hear him. Despite any of the things from our relationship, my dad is a wonderful person and has been a great father in many other ways. He is just as caring and loves people with an outpouring that is as extreme as his faults in communication.

He is giving and kind.

I do not believe he reads my blog, I did not ask him if I could share this, but I have to because (I am kind of tearing up here) for me his email meant the world. I am not sure others will understand this. He took the time and gave me wonderful details of my birth. Some I already knew, others I did not. It shares both of my parents’ personality and I loved every bit of it. I wrote a story the other day about details. It seemed like a very sad story — I was working out thoughts in my head and remembering things that I had encountered in my life. After writing the story, to have my dad recall these details about me and share them touched me deeply. These type of stories help me connect to myself, and people in my life. I tend to forget so many details about myself, and can fall into a line of thinking that people have forgotten all about me. Possibly because I forget things about myself I feel that other people will forget me too.

I don’t know I am only guessing.

I do have a problem remembering certain things about me. I have tried to block so much of me during my life that it became customary to stuff it down and force myself to forget. (It is ironic that I can remember so many details about other people.) The reason this is such a treasure is my father not only shared some of my details, he shared some of his as well. I find that to be one of the greatest gifts. I really don’t care if his last paragraph is chock-full of my poo art, I did that frequently as a child. Apparently, I took great pleasure in being creative with my poo….multiple times. My boys have taken after me as well. Nice. Another irony I can barely discuss my boys poo issues! Strange indeed.  Thankfully they have not adorned the walls or filled Lego’s in at least a year. :-)   After I share my dad’s email I have pictures. My birthday pie has Pi all over it! Ha ha ha (Tasty homemade gluten free cherry pie. Anyone remember Warrant? Goodness! I thought that song was about cherry pies, and it made no sense to me at all. I am not explaining it! I may not understand it still! Lol!)

Maybe I shouldn’t have poo and pie so closely together in a paragraph?

Email from my Dad, I edited some things for privacy sake. :-)

Dear Angel,

I am reminiscing about that special day 39 years ago….WOW…where’d the time go???? The events leading up to your birth….I have a short leave before having to report to Fort Dix, NJ to out process to go to Germany….We’re at my Mom’s house, I’m playing Strat-O-Matic Football and your Mom’s water breaks while at the kitchen table…the exclamation, “Oh, my God! My water broke!”…the ensuing excitement (actually panic I think is a better word) from everyone except your cool, calm Dad who replies, “It’s your first, we have plenty of time” (translated, “I should have plenty of time to finish this game”)(actually I really did believe we had quite a few hours of labor to go)….

I remember posing the question, “Would you rather spend hours waiting in the hospital or here?” It worked for a little while but I was finally double-teamed by Mom & your Mom….so we head to the hospital….I still remember some key phrases from your Mom while in intense labor, “YOU DID THIS TO ME!!!!” and “I’ve changed my mind”….the first comment I mentioned was done in a manner that prompted me to make sure there weren’t any sharp instruments within your Mom’s reach…then there was that spinal block and your Mom saying, “I can still feel everything” & the response from the staff, “Oh, it’s just pressure you feel” and of course that glorious moment @ 11:59 PM, out pops Angelique (my middle name)!!!!!!

I mentioned to the doctor that he had projected you would be born on the 30th….he said had he remembered that he would have washed his hands for another minute…of course we can’t leave out that post birth moment when your Mom lifts her legs out of the stirrups and the nurse says, “You’re not supposed to be able to do that”, (she was supposed to be “paralyzed” from waist down), and your Mom’s response, “I told you I could feel it”!

Ah, the memories….Later on when you both had joined me in Germany and I had your Mom convinced that since I was experienced at changing messy diapers (my uncle and aunts), that she should take care of changing yours to gain the same valuable experience I had….of course later on Mom spoiled that by saying, “He told you what???, don’t let him get by with that just because he’s changed messy diapers before.” (It was nice while it lasted)….Oh, and who could forget the day I left your diaper off because you had a bad case of diaper rash….I left the room for 20 seconds and when I got back you had distributed diarrhea all over yourself, the furniture, the floor and had you been taller, probably the ceiling…..oh, the good ol’ days……


 

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03/28/12

I Can’t Stop Myself…I Can’t!

Alright, alright! I am so excited, and I am sure those who I left comments on their blogs earlier noticed that I am a bit hyper at the moment. Settle down! I can’t settle down, I have tried so I am going to write out my silly-loopiness. Let me tell you why I am so excited…I love birthdays! AND tomorrow is my birthday AND I cannot keep it quiet because I love my birthday. I know, I know I shouldn’t be acting like this I am a grown woman who should be all mature and such. Maybe if you knew why my birthday was so important to me you would understand why I want to shout it off the rooftops that it is going to be my birthday. I almost didn’t make it to the human existence stage of living starting from conception. Then, later there was my attempt to take my own life.

The only reason I never tried to do me in again was that I made a promise to my mom.

When I make a promise as I did with my mom, it is a knot knitted into the universe and I cannot break it. Other people do not think of promises as that significant, but I do. I remember years ago when I learned this hard lesson. My mind created a poem immediately so I would never forget. It may sound harsh, but I needed it to sink in that people do not mean the same thing that I do when it comes to the word promise. I have to remind myself of this otherwise I can end up very hurt. It is a quick and easy poem.

A promise is meant to be broken,
A promise is untrue,
A promise means nothing,
When it is coming from you.

You can read about why my birthdays are important to me here “What’s In A Birthday?“

I have not reread it or edited it since last year and I am not going to because I am still fragile from having a shut sown from my last post. I didn’t realize how much watching that video affected me and triggered a lot of emotional things from my past. I am fine right now I got overwhelmed that’s all. I felt his pain and emotions, and to have my own experience in addition was too much. I will be completely honest, I got so overwhelmed that I ended up lying on the floor sobbing, curled up like a baby, begging God to please tell me why I was given a brain like I have. I did not ask to be fixed, but I did question what was the purpose in causing such episodes of feeling such devastation.

Why would I have to have a brain that loves and cares so deeply, but does not feel the love back?

Why does my mind get consumed with unstoppable anxiety, fear of humiliation, confusion, and utter worthlessness? Why? I will not go on about what I was feeling. It had been going on for days, but here are some of the answers 1) sensory overload – my senses have been taxed for nearly two weeks now. My brain is still trying to recover and the anticipation of them continuing to be taxed the rest of this week weighs on me. 2) Social anxiety – I do enjoy being with people, I am a social Aspie, but I also need alone time. I have been doing pretty well with this, but I have been influenced by David’s social anxieties. He has gone full-time into a position that is requiring him to be a lot more social than he has been in about 5 years now. I feel his stress levels they are pouring down from the upstairs — even if I am not around him, I feel it. 3) Daniel has regressed in some areas and it has caused a series of meltdowns, and stress. This is what happens when he is having a major change in his language/emotional development.

He does gain his other skills back after the progress is reached.

However, it is always confusing and unexpected. I get worried that he is losing what he has already worked so hard for, but he won’t this is a pattern. I think that his motor skills, and what body awareness he has is blocked somehow while the language/emotional skills make rapid connections. It seems to be what is happening (has happened in the past). He is asking things like: “Joshua why are you talking to me like that?” and “What does that word mean?” and saying to Ariel or Joshua: “Stop yelling at me, I don’t like it.” This is all new and great to hear. Ariel and Joshua are not actually yelling we all have problems with the tone/pitch of our voices, and our directness around here can sound pretty harsh sometimes. It is never meant that way…mostly, I cannot actually say “never”. The emotions I have been processing for two weeks now have kept me fragile. It felt like my heart was sitting on my chest with air pounding it, the second it felt covered again…BAM! Exposed.

The reason for that is reading other blogs. Empathy people!

I would start to gain my footing then, I would read a blog that had paralleling situations to my life, and I was exposed again. I felt their emotions and mine all mixed together. It is a good thing, and a bad thing. It is good because it helps me deal with my hurts and properly place them, but it is a bad thing when I feel so vulnerable and unable to place my feelings away quickly. There have been situations this month that have forced me to look at death. I do not do well with death, and I do not do well with people being in the hospital being very ill. I get filled with anxiety because I do not know what to say, or how to act. I cannot pull words out, and if I do, they end up sounding very insensitive or they are silly and goofy. That never goes well! Still with all of the adventures going on around here, I am giddy about my birthday. Ariel has been such a dear making me laugh so hard this week. Daniel and Joshua have too, but they have not noticed that I was out of sorts. Ariel did and gave me hugs, and told me she loved me. HUGE for Ariel, she is not a hugger, and normally she will hum a “Love you” sound, but not say the words.

We spent some time painting and hanging with sock monkeys last night.

I have pictures of us and monkeys! I am going to make a birthday pie tomorrow instead of cake because the kids have not had cherry pie before. You know that I will be posting some pictures. OH! Tonight I am going to a quiet opening for my sister’s new store so I may be quite socially/sensory taxed again tonight, but I am too excited about my weekend to care. My birthday always reminds me of how much life means to me, and how there is so much joy to feel and look to instead of the dreaded “Why” loop that can consume my mind. I am very thankful that I was able to let the emotions out, get up, and find my “Happy” loop. Pretty much any happy loop will involve cats, monkeys, frogs, and lizards. :-)   I am done. La la la la Wait, I forgot to mention that I haven’t been able to sleep either. I think my loopiness may be due to lack of sleep. Zoinks! I have gotten a lot written though…that is good. :-)

The Monkey Song

“The Bright Field” by R S Thomas   (I just liked this poem and decided to share.)

R.S. Thomas

 


 

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03/26/12

Sharing A Video

There are many things I can relate to in the video below that I am sharing. Thankfully, my only run in with law enforcement was not as bad. I did end up in jail for about 15 minutes (I think) and it felt like hours. I was pulled over for a break light being out, it turned out there was a warrant out for my arrest for a $1.00 seat-belt violation. When they first passed the seat belt law in my state it was only $1.00. I did pay that fine, but somehow they messed up the records. They also messed up again after my arrest and I ended up with an invalid driver license. It was such a mix up. I didn’t find out until I went to get my license in another state I had moved to. And guess what? It took them three days to find my records because they “had to go down in the basement” to look it up. It turned out to be all clerical errors in the mean time; this Aspie was having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep for days.

It all got squared away, but was a very bad experience.

The officer who arrested me felt so bad for me because I was hyperventilating, sobbing, wailing, and couldn’t stop. The shock of hearing I had a warrant out for my arrest sent panic through my body. I cannot remember what I said, but I was hysterical. I am so thankful that he was a nice person. He allowed certain things that he should not have. He handcuffed me from behind, but it sent me into even more of a panic having my arms like that. I almost passed out. I couldn’t talk very well but through my heaves, I begged him to please move my arms to the front, it hurt too badly from behind. I felt trapped. I also lost it again when he said I had to sit in the back. The thought of it made me feel trapped and I begged and pleaded with him to please not make me sit back there. When he sat me down in the back, I lost it again and he couldn’t get me in. Again, I am thankful that he was a nice officer because I am sure another one may not have been so kind and felt like I was being difficult.

He told me that he was not supposed to do any of that.

I thanked him repeatedly and continued to ask him how long everything was going to take. I had closed my bank account only moments earlier because we were moving to another state the next day. I had the cash to bail myself out. When we got there, nothing was routine. At that time in my life, I had an odd habit of collecting change in my purse. LARGE amounts of change. Crazy amounts of change. My purse was filled with pennies — tons of them! The woman looked at it, looked at the officer, and said: “You have got to be kidding. I am not counting all of that.” I gave her permission not to count them; she didn’t take count of any of the content in my purse. I did not get finger prints taken either. The officer took care of my paperwork personally, allowed me to make a call to get home and I was released. I had my court date the next morning only hours before we took off to our new home. I was 18 years old. This is one of those times that I am forever grateful and feel like someone was watching over me for sure.

I know that the officer did not have to do that.

I know that he could have gotten into a lot of trouble. I still do not know why he was so kind. Maybe he just wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible. Either way it could have been a lot worse. I was still traumatized with the emotions of being blamed for something I didn’t do, and going through all of stress of the situation. I do not know if others would have felt the same trauma, but I still feel it today and it really wasn’t bad at all. All of this to lead into a video that I watched a few minutes ago created by John Scott Holman sharing his experience with law enforcement. After watching it, it triggered me reliving my experience. There are many things that he shares in the video that struck me with my own similar experiences. I think the video is a great resource to share with others to help bring awareness, and hopefully some insight to others. I have been asked on many occasions throughout life if I was on some sort of mind-altering substance. I was not. I did use alcohol as my source to help me cope socially and get away with some of my quirkiness and oddities. Most people let things slight if you are drunk. I don’t drink anymore. Now I have ballet…kidding, sort of :-) .

There is language in some areas so be prepared.

I’M NOT ON PCP: Educating Law Enforcement about Autism


 

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