Here are the articles I wanted to include in my last post My Backwards Brain but, it was getting insanely LONG. So I thought I would separate it to its own page. Continue reading
My Backwards Brain
Here it is, almost one in the morning and I have done nothing. I’ve been floored by that Asperger’s pain today. I am exhausted. I just want to rest. I have mountains of work.
I’ve made no effort for the next day–I have not even showered yet or combed my hair.
Why do I fall into this pattern when I am like this?
Do I shoot myself in the foot?
Do I intentionally dig the hole deeper trying to make things worse since I am already down here? Continue reading
Back to the Blog
When myself and the world are too much, I find myself back here.
I’ve stayed away for a while. Diving in too deep made life too heavy. I’ve lived forever without a label and simply in “just existing.” It was nice to just exist again without the labels and without the over-thinking.
Slowly, getting back on track, the skills I lost seem to be returning. Continue reading
The Asperger’s Choice
I have an inner choice: I have the Asperger’s side silently pulsing through my veins, intermittently lurking, and I have the “normal” side. This is the truth of my head. Continue reading
The Traveler in the Dark
I am a chameleon. When placed against my surroundings, I absorb and change colors innately acquiring language, facial expressions, mannerisms, feelings. All seeps within. Continue reading
Throw a Lifeline
I started the post An Imperfect Science yesterday about a young girl I work with who has Asperger’s. My intent of posting was to share how challenging it is to do the right thing, respond the right way, and have all the right answers—no matter who you are and no matter how much perspective you have. It is hard.
But along the way in writing, I came across a crucial piece that I thought should entirely merit its own post. Throwing a lifeline. Continue reading
An Imperfect Science
For all that I’ve started writing, all the thousands of words I’ve already written, and all the attempts to dive deeper, I feel like I just need to say that I fail too. I struggle to reach out to children with Asperger’s, I struggle to support them in the way they need to be, and I know I make mistakes. Life and humans are an imperfect science.
I work with a young child with Asperger’s syndrome. In being able to understand much of what she’s going through, she clings to me. I am able to speak to her in a tone she appreciates and, most importantly, treat her gently with kindness where others would have shown frustration, impatience, and picked her apart. Continue reading
Exist
This year, I’ve often been feeling as though I wish I didn’t exist.
This is a tough one to explain to anyone who doesn’t have Asperger’s; the immediate assumption is that you are speaking of suicide. I don’t wish to die, even if sometimes I feel like I want to. Dying is scary and too final. I refuse to intentionally inflict upon my family a loss like that for the rest of their years on Earth. For all they’ve done for me and how much I love them, I couldn’t ever knowingly do something like that to them. I’m also not sure how that fits in with God and my relationship with Him. I know He made me. I know He put me on this Earth. He’s been right about so many things that I’ve been wrong about in the past, I’m not sure if it would be right to just opt out on my own accord.
So please don’t call a suicide hotline and other emergency-intervention-stuff for me, there is a difference. Continue reading
5 Reasons It May Take Years to Diagnose
This is a fantastic article from a fantastic website. Please take the time to read it first. The article brings about a lot of great points. The website where it is taken from, About Health, also has many other useful resources on autism as well. I suggest you check it out!
5 Reasons Why It May Take Years to Learn You Have High-Functioning Autism
Here is my take on the five reasons and how it fits into where I fall on the spectrum. Continue reading
Control
Control is perhaps the biggest reason I wish to remain anonymous. For as much as I was the most passive, easy-going child, happy to go along with anything, preferring to be a follower being led, I’m realizing how much control I need to have over everything. This is something no one would expect of me, something that took finding out I had Aspergers and re-examining myself to discover. Continue reading
An Aspie On Injustice and Suffering
I need to write, but I don’t know what. There’s so much in me, I wish it would just come out. When I was first looking up Aspergers, I read how most people’s brain can be compared to a chalkboard that is written on and then erased to make space for new writing. But the Aspergers’ brain isn’t able to be erased in the same way, rather there are words upon words written and every space on the board is filled. I just wish I could clear it.
I wish things didn’t upset me in the way they do. And most importantly, I wish they didn’t stick with me to the very core of my being. I want to just shake them out of me, clear that chalkboard, feel my muscles relax, and feel my chugging brain slow down to a normal rate. Continue reading
What it Can Feel Like With Aspergers
Sitting in class, at a meeting, with a church group, or at work, I’ve been amazed at how Sia’s performance on Ellen with Maddie Ziegler so encapsulates how I can sometimes feel having Aspergers in an organized group of people. It hits on so many levels. Continue reading
Glimpses
My world is right. The wheels spin, the rhythm continues, the world around me propels forward. Life progresses and I with it. No longer a helpless passenger struggling in vain against the tightly buckled strap as the vehicle of life hurdles ever forward, I release myself to the current. The steering wheel somehow becomes mine and I now drive myself onward. I yield, I navigate through tight spaces, I weave in and out. I become a player, a participator, in this choreographed dance. So seamless, so natural, it’s unknown to me that the transition has even taken place. I just know somehow it has. But not in whole. All but this faint, dark corner pushed to the back of my mind, hanging cautiously above me, has bought into this momentum, this way of life. But if I just ignore it… if I continue in this quickly flowing stream, life is fine.
Life doesn’t hurt. Stimuli doesn’t hurt. Memories are far from my mind. I am able to be in the now. I am able to participate in the now. This present world of life may not be my happiest or favorite, but it is bearable. And bearable is a tremendous gift. All but for the slight walking on glass from that dark corner, life is fine.
But then, everything comes to a sudden halt. Continue reading
“I Can’t” vs “I Won’t”
Shakespeare was right to create new words for the English language. Lacking adequate description, our words are hopelessly vague. One of our laziest representations is the word “can’t.” In the French language, there are two words to our one. Pouvoir is the direct translation you would receive from a dictionary for our word “can.” Conjugated, I can becomes je peux. I can’t becomes je ne peux pas.
However, live in France and you would find that this verb is rarely used. The direct translation of “I can’t” is reserved for things that are physically impossible, instances that truly cannot be. It is not watered down or weak, it is for direct situations where there is a physical impossibility. Continue reading
Escape
Sometimes I want nothing more than to escape this body I am trapped in. Like Superman ripping open his shirt revealing his costume underneath, I too want to rip my body open by the chest, step out, kick this exterior aside, and feel free and unencumbered. When the triggers are there and the meltdown is happening, I feel the emotional pain all over. My muscles tense and seize up within me. I feel like uncontained water and want nothing more than to feel held, compressed. My heart doesn’t just hurt, my entire chest hurts. My skin feels like it is crawling and there is this unbearable cry for relief. Continue reading
My Aspie Eyes 