I'm so stupid over you. I don't blame you for being disgusted with me....I am disgusted with myself. :-/

I have no idea how or why this happened, but man, I've got it bad.

Random stuff:

• I don't think there's any hope for me. Not saying this because I'm sad....but because it's true.
  
• And I don't know what to do anymore. You told me to take care of myself and I've been trying as hard as I can to do that....although the dark side of me says that you didn't even mean it, it was just a polite, cliche thing to say. And I'll keep trying, but in all honesty, it seems pretty pointless sometimes...a lot of times.
  
• Mickinnick sucks during the summer. I would not have guessed that a trail that is so interesting in the middle of winter could be so terribly dull in the summer, but I hate it. It's hot and sunny and dry with very little variety in plant life. Sooo.....
  
• Gold Hill--->It doesn't take much imagination to see that it'd *suck* during the winter, but right now....the only way it could be better is if it were situated on the Pacific coast with mists, fogs, mushrooms, epiphytic ferns and so on...oh, and the sound of the ocean in the far background. I found saprophytic orchids...some other saprophyte....a lot of lichens to draw....and when I got to the top at last, I found what it felt like to really smile again. :-)
  
• There have got to be other trails right under my nose as well....in an area like this, there must be others that don't entail driving for an hour. Monday, get maps from Forest Service.
  
• And then there's my canoe. It's about time for me to learn the fine art of repairing fiberglass.....

And another thing: Monarch Mtn is LOUD on Saturday mornings. If I was looking for a place to wind down, this is not it. Unfortunately, my favored hide out, Common Knowledge, is closed on weekends. Ugh!

Not only am I all broken up over a man who doesn't like me as a person or want to associate with me in any way at all, the situation has degenerated to the point where I am afraid to look at him for fear of seeing....disgust? disdain? etc in his eyes. It is idiotic for me to get an anxiety attack from being in the same (LARGE) room he is in.

This is so fucked up it's surreal, and I hate it. I hate it. I never wanted things to be this way. This is the sort of bizarre stuff that does not happen to normal people. And I'm sorry to say it, but I hate the way my life is. Not just now, but as a whole, I hate it.

I do like fishing, as long as there's someone to take the hook out for me. It isn't that I'm unwilling, but that I'm afraid of hurting the fish. I remember my oldest son used to say that fish don't feel pain.....I don't believe that. Of course they feel pain, and I don't want my fumbling attempts at hook removal to rip something open.

They have such appealing faces.... I can never get their faces quite right.

Sorry.

I love this song.

I was ready to go to sleep, and then I watched an episode of House in which the 5 stages of grieving were mentioned repeatedly. Crap. Now my mind's awake and brooding again....ugh! I read about these stages in Mother Earth News when I was a teen....because Elizabeth Kubler Ross looked old to me then, I didn't pay a lot of attention to her article. I thought it was something old people had to deal with. I didn't know that life was about to smack me down hard within the next year or two, that I'd never be that innocent, happy and optimistic again or that grief may or may not involve people kicking the bucket. I never thought I'd become a cynic.

For reference, proper notation, avoidance of plagiarism, and general usefulness: Kubler Ross and the five stages of grief. I particularly like this quote:

"People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as wening flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one."

And that makes me feel better.....

I don't want to be a bitter, cynical thing...I want to be the happy, free bird that I used to be. I wish I knew how to get back to being that person again. But it was...what....almost 22 years ago? We grow, we change. Life changes us.

I sent the appeal letter in, feeling the need to at least try, and now await the verdict with a swimmy stomach and trembling nerves.....

I still don't know what to do. It's tempting to send in the petition and hope it goes through, take it philosophically if it doesn't. But:

If it doesn't go through, it's going to feel like another rejection. And that's going to crush me (more). I'll feel like a failure (more than I already do, I mean). I don't know if I can afford to risk being rejected as a student.

God, what a whiny ass I am. Ugh!!!!

On the other hand, if it does get accepted....I'll be scared to death all semester that I might fall apart and fail (again). Sometimes anxiety is a good thing. And jesus christ, how can I fail two classes that I already took 75% of (how did I manage to fail them in the first place?)? No way can I fail Abnormal Psych and Western Art History I again. God, the other students didn't even think about the course material! I didn't fail because I was unintelligent...my grades were fine until....until crap happened. I ran out of gas, and money. I ran out of the will to live. Crap could happen again.

Crap can always happen again. How do I find the courage to takes risks again, to plan ahead for more than a couple of days in advance? How do I learn to trust myself again, after failing so spectacularly?


And how...how.......how can I ever trust myself to be vulnerable, to take that chance, ever again? Is anyone, and I mean anyone, ever going to get closer to me than arm's length? I can't......even......imagine. No....I don't think so. No, it hurts too fucking much and I'm so tired of always being the fool.

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I'm not saying this to try to make you feel bad....I was messed up before and I'm still messed up now. It's just, I don't see any point in trying any longer. I used to believe, I used to hope. Those things are dead in me now. You did what you had to do and I'm sure you had your reasons. I knew the risks as soon as I fell for you....it's why I was such a terrified bundle of nerves...because I knew exactly what was coming down the pike. But....i love you. So I chose it anyway.

Now this is fascinating: Why the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome will disappear. This is as it should be and more accurately represents Asperger's as part of a continuum rather than a pigeonhole. I suspect that some aspies are going to be disenchanted with being in the same broad category as LFA and HFA people. To those people, I say get over yourself and do some serious introspection on self loathing of autistic traits and such. Hating on other auties isn't OK. What, are you going to divorce yourself from the entire human race while you're at it??

While I have and value a relatively high IQ, I don't for a minute think that I am a better person than the so called LFA who sits and rocks in the corner. How can we say that a person who is non verbal is retarded simply because they don't speak? That's a stupid assumption. How can we assume that someone who is preoccupied with coping with sensory overload and god only knows what sort of anxiety is retarded? People like this may be disinterested, unable to get past the panic/overload, thinking about much more interesting to them stuff, etc. I honestly believe that many autistics are inaccurately labeled as being of low intelligence simply because it is difficult to test them accurately. However....I also think that there is more, so much more, to life and personhood than raw intelligence, and that we do ourselves and all of life a disservice when we value people based on IQ.

Back to the subject at hand, I am especially intrigued by and interested in the new "Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive-Related, and Trauma-Related Disorders." See this link for more. I will be very relieved if they can somehow manage to partition war induced PTSD from other trauma types. There is a difference between the two and at present, finding books or info that will be helpful for me is difficult, because all the PTSD books I've found so far have been geared towards war veterans and their wives...which is worthy, but un-useful for me. I will be following these changes with interest...

I have to decide whether or not to go back into college this fall. I need to make the credits up and there are a ton of other very, very pressing reasons why I have to go back to school. Also, there are things such as self respect, dignity and pride...as well as having something to keep my mind off stuff. I should re-enroll, even if it's only for a couple of classes.

And then I think about today. I spent more than half nearly all of the day (I don't even want to talk about the night) trying to exist for another hour or two. And that scares me.... I cannot afford to fail a third semester. In so many ways, I cannot afford that.

I have less than a day to decide.

--> Link is fixed...sorry about that.

This is a useful, informative and very interesting site about rare breeds of livestock and poultry.

Fighting off the blues, I am trying to redirect my thoughts towards what kinds of poultry would be well suited to foraging under the apple orchard I would like to have someday. The breed(s) should be good foragers, hardy, calm/gentle/or at least not aggressive, dual purpose (produce both eggs and meat in meaningful quantities), and ideally, rare, endangered, or not very common. This last is because I intend to raise the chickens for more than one year and to hatch out chicks. I am concerned about breeds of animals going extinct...the Dorking chicken, for example, has been around since Roman times, and it is now listed as "threatened". The breed is noted for being calm, gentle, with delicious meat and laying eggs even in the winter. For those who haven't raised chickens before, eggs are a seasonal product unless you want to use light and timers and burn your chickens out at an early age. Winter farm eggs are a very worthwhile commodity, as is winter milk.

Or how about the Chantecler, a breed bred in Quebec to withstand extreme cold and to produce eggs in winter as well as meat? They have a "massive structure" as well as being "calm, gentle and personable". Preserving a rare genepool was never so practical! Eggs in winter from a pleasant bird that doesn't need extra care to survive in the cold, with nice, meaty roosters: what more could someone in my climate want from a chicken?

Also--->if the hens go broody, I might end up with more chicks than I can use. Having uncommon-rare breeds would make my chicks more salable. Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know....counting my eggs before they hatch and all that jazz......

There is no consolation. Life hurts. I hurt, and it keeps on hurting.

The memory of how you used to light up when you saw me passes unbidden through my mind and I ache...I try not to think of how it is now, not to compare, to push the why why whys into the background and stay busy, to run away from the pain.

I think of how gentle you were, are....how even though I never see you anymore, you are still alive somewhere, alive, not like him. And a part of me wonders for a moment if you are real, or if this is something I imagined, like a dream that only seems real but isn't. Maybe I am crazy. I think of the cell phone. If the number is real.....no. Don't call. I am not crazy, not crazy, not crazynotcrazy. I did not make this shit up. The fish...the fish is there, above my heart. Breathe....you're not crazy, it's real.

I'm too intense and it scares people. Probably moreso because of that expressionless aspie veneer, so seemingly dispassionate. To find such a boiling, writhing, often contradictory and explosive stew of emotion on what had seemed such a calm, safe place, is enough to cause people to flee screaming into the distance. It's too unexpected, too much to deal with.

I saw it today, in the eyes of a woman I've admired for some time...that look. Like yours. That quick flash of panic light in the eyes. I hadn't said anything to her today, but women are savvier than men, and she knows, has known, that I like her. She has a partner and I am content to let her alone, having wounds that still bleed me dry (though never dry enough, it seems).

I scare people and that hurts. I scare people despite having no ill will at all towards them. I look backwards in time and see...that it's always been this way, since I can remember anyhow...and years of subsequent pain have only deepened and expanded my intensity, so as to make human relations ever more hopeless.

What I have to accept is that I'm not going to able to express myself with people. Not in speech, not in touch, nor in love or in bed. I have to find other outlets: art...writing. Not in the context of a relationship with a person, because I either scare them away, or I find myself aching for the same kind of intensity.
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Pain, trauma, does things to the human psyche. It's as though every wound, every gash, opens up more surface area to ache, to hurt....to feel, to appreciate, to savor. And in this way, it can be a tremendous gift. How could I experience the kind of ecstasy I do at the simplest things, if I were able to take them for granted, if I had never been deprived of them? Surely the sky is bluer and the grass greener for a prisoner in solitary confinement than it's ever been for you and I, who see it every day.

===============================================
You see, you are still my muse even though we haven't spoken for months.....I cannot think without speaking to you in my mind....could I breathe if my every breath didn't sigh or whisper your name? I don't know. I don't know.

This is a reminder to myself, because I want to discuss the overpopulation minute which was presented at the Annual Session of PNYM. More later.

Need to start revising and filling in details on the other blog now, a little bit at a time.

Wow. I'm getting rusty on my HTML coding. That's so sad. :-/

This song speaks for me so well.

Sorry folks. I cannot bear to hear or even think about that song today.....

Early morning realization: I need a routine.

Why do I always pick shy, timid, half wild things that other people would rather not put the time and effort into?

Seriously: whether it's goats or dogs or cats or humans, I don't have a lot of use for something that loves and befriends everyone indiscriminately. Extreme friendliness and extroversion is a trait prized by a lot of people, but for some reason, it turns me off.

Sprite: one of my favorite does, she'd been abused, starved, and bred so young that it stunted her growth. She had a ugly face and the whites of her eyes showed and she was all but impossible to handle when I bought her. She also had a perfect udder and a stunning pedigree....but in all honesty, there were others who were similarly priced who might have been a better value with less hassle. Sprite was a problem child in spades. The seller was amazed that I was able to walk her to my vehicle without some kind of disastrous escapade- she was that wild and fearful. She couldn't be handled, milking was a complete nightmare and it was clear that something really bad had messed her up. She was probably predisposed to being nervous anyway, but....Sprite was very, very intelligent. Most goats don't ever forget abuse or aversive experiences and the smarter they are, the harder it is for them. Dumb animals just forget. Seriously, they do.

I had to invest a lot of time just to get her to come into the milking parlor, and she always, until the day she died, kicked like a bitch from hell when she was on the milking stand. I don't know what happened to her, but it must have happened on a milking stand. :-( Once she was finally tamed (to me anyway), she became my favorite doe. When I was blue or sad, she knew. She'd crook her head over my shoulder and give me a goat hug, or just lean into me as I cried on her furry neck. I was devoted to her...somehow her trust meant so much more to me than that of the does who'd been hand fed from birth. She was five times more trouble than any of the others and a lot less pretty but....I don't know. Nobody else could take her place.

I put so much time and effort into taming wild eyed goats....and in all honesty, I never felt that a second of that time was wasted. It always makes me sad to hear that someone has put an animal down because it had issues that they didn't want to work with, that they didn't even try to work with.

Wow. I think my devotion to k.d. has just been usurped.

Brandi Carlile is phenomenal. WOW.

A relatively productive day so far....

Cleaned.

Did laundry (more to do) but didn't fold it yet...

Met with service coordinator.

Got the phone working again and gave the approval stamp to White's boots to rebuild my ladies smokejumpers...

Shopped for dinner (didn't make it yet).

And----> Got my art desk cleaned off and supplies organized and all put in one place so that I can actually make stuff and find what I need. Hopefully my 5 yo goes to sleep at a reasonable hour so I can work, having made a tidy and pleasant workspace.
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I have way, way too much extraneous stuff that I don't use. Sometime this week, would like to get rid of a LOT of it, not just a token amount.

And it looks like I don't need to stress or worry, so....

Am now a little freaked and anxious.....breathe...calm...calm......

Wait: I am not ugly, it is just that I am not *pretty*. What's more, I don't want to be pretty...except that I wish I was pretty to you...and that's kind of stupid. People (myself included) have to be what they are and who they are. It's about integrity towards oneself.

I think about all the women I've been attracted to. Most of them haven't been pretty, and they'd look silly in a dress with makeup and foo-foo hair. Most of them didn't have barbie-doll figures, either, because I'm not attracted to barbie dolls.

The issue I am struggling with is the conflict between society's demands on me (be pretty, be feminine, be attractive to men) and who I really am (not very feminine, very outdoorsy and rustic). I have been coerced into "pretty" before...it was pure misery and I couldn't wait to wash that crap off of my face, to get back into jeans and brush those silly curls out of my hair. It sucked.

I can't base my self image on what other people want me to look like. When I wear my Carhartts and a button down shirt, tie and jacket....I might not be pretty, but somehow, it looks good. And more importantly, I feel comfortable and at home in my own skin...

How could anyone look as bad as I do and have such cute kids?

I was going to write about my hyperactive mind and how it runs negative feedback loops incessantly.....but after seeing a bunch of recent photos of myself...

I can't stand the way I look. I wish that I had a good chin. Guess we can't all be beautiful, but combined with social awkwardness and gawky, ungraceful movements...it's just painful. The only thing I have going for me is my body (which needs work but is not beyond redemption), but I get so tired of being seen as a body, as something to have sex with. It makes me nauseous to feel that way.

And my sister, who looks so much like me, only slightly different, is beautiful. It's so hard not to resent her for that. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
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The sad truth of it is that I'm a dyke who happens to be hopelessly in love with a man. This is not a situation that can end well. No happiness in sight. And yes, I am now depressed again.

OK, so bear with me here, because I know, dear readers, that you're probably sick and tired of k.d. lang by now....

But consider, please, after listening to what she says.....

What would happen, what could happen, if I gave that kind of care, attention and dedication to my art? To raising my children?

How about you? What gifts do you have that could be developed so much more, that could enrich the world, if you nurtured them more? How much potential gets lost in the fracas of day to day life because we let it slip through our fingers?

I have nothing to bitch about today. The yard is festooned with the large cones of Pinus monticola, which I have been collecting to draw and to have around simply because I like pine cones, lichens, sea shells, stones and similar objects...

Made a really nice soup last night that my kids are still raving over, telling me I could win a contest with it. It's nice to have fans ;-)

All of the gardens are doing fairly well, considering the kind of fitful on/off attention they've had from me.

And now I'm going to make summer rolls.

I still feel the same way about you, still miss you....but am starting to feel stronger, more grounded, less inclined to put up with bullshit from anyone, more centered and secure in my own identity as opposed to trying to please people and being what they want me to be. Maybe these six months of trauma and grief and angst and general falling apart were what I needed to feel and cry over and finally begin to grow past all the crap that's been smothering me for so long.

i feel fragile...like an anxiety attack is waiting to finish me off.

There isn't any solace to be found in this world. Unless I carve it out for myself, it simply doesn't exist otherwise, because other people can't be counted on to provide it. Oh, maybe temporarily....but sooner or later, the axe falls and it hurts. It hurts so much more than never having had it in the first place.

I write too much.

I guess one of the things that is hurting me now is the slow, growing realization that I am never going to get to talk to you again. It isn't a matter of being patient or waiting some length of time, it just is not going to happen at all. I have fucked things up too badly. There isn't a way to fix it anymore so that we can be relaxed and friendly around one another anymore, is there?

Maybe things are not the way I have been interpreting them.

I found pottery studio space at the Arts Alliance and within 15 minutes (or less!) was making a fish sculpture. I feel sane again, feel like myself for a change. :-) I wish that I could get your feedback while I'm working, but.....this cannot be. I wish I had been able to articulate what you meant to me, when I still had a chance to talk to you, when you still heard me. I just took all of that for granted. I was such a fool, such a coward.

Things are strange now. Now I think back on all the times you were near me, and I didn't breathe more deeply, when I heard your voice, and I could have listened more than I did...when I wasn't afraid to look into your eyes, but I simply didn't. Those are the things that pain me.

********************************************

Dinner....salad. Arugula, spinach, romaine, fennel...radicchio, olives, blue cheese cubes, and pear gorgonzola or huckleberry vinaigrette dressing. I should make something else. I have free range ground beef. But...it reminds me of you. Cooking reminds me of you. Of all the things that I would like to make....to eat with you. And then....then it is only my son and I. I am not hungry...will make him something to eat. I think about how, before things got this way....I was passionate about food and made so many good things. I loved it because I'd pretend I was cooking for you....it seems so long ago. So long ago.

I miss you so much...and am sorry for the things I said last week. I was upset.

I love you. Maybe someday, I will love you differently, with less intensity, in an as-a-person way. Today is not that day. And despite all the pain, I am thankful to have had the experience of feeling this way, of finding that my heart is able to open up fully, that it hadn't been scarred shut after all. It hurts. It does. But I am thankful.

Sometimes I feel that my every experience is painted or tinted with the color of pain.

I just planted a LOT of vegetable plants...mostly in your dreaded nightshade family...(I love eggplant)....and am now in so much pain that the idea of having an apple orchard seems as ludicrous as being able to talk easily with you again. What was I thinking???

On the bright side...bought my kids each a tuberous begonia plant. They were thrilled...the begonia flowers are huge and flamboyant, even the leaves are attractive. I showed them how to transplant them into bigger pots, and some leaves and tops broke off....so I showed them how to root those. This seems magical to them, as it did to me when I first learned about it. :-)I love my kids....and I think it is so cool that they like plants too.

Another side income to supplement orchard idea: raising chickens (they are cheapest when the chicks are straight run, i.e. both male and female without being checked for gender) that are of breeds whose feathers are desired for fly tying. A quick check online shows that a smallish bundle of feathers (not, for example, an entire hackle) goes for $5-6, and that at least one of the breeds is both an egg layer as well as a good forager, which is what I need for keeping on top of weeds and insects in an orchard floor. So I could grow the chicks out to butchering size, use the roosters for my own meat (sidestepping butchering and food handling regs required for outside sale), sell their feathers, and get eggs from the hens. I think this is the best poultry option so far.

More research: sweetgrass appears to be a very good crop. $80 K per acre, fairly easy to grow, steady market, no spoilage. It looks like an acre of intensively managed dwarf apple trees might be enough, with a transition to semi dwarf trees and possibly standards....if one also grew sweetgrass and strawberries. Probably grow garlic as well as crop failure insurance....garlic always makes it.

Still researching apple varieties for flavor, texture, storage qualities, historical interest, disease resistance, suitability for this climate, etc...just in case I somehow figure out a way to start a small organic apple orchard/farm. So far, it looks as though a person could live very comfortably on 2 acres of intensively managed apple trees. Of course, the earliest marketable crop would be produced within 3 years of planting, and it typically takes a little time to prepare the land before planting. The trees don't come into serious production until 5 years after planting. That means that I'd have to find something to produce income during the interim:

• Strawberries: a relatively high value crop (especially if organic since they're one of the most chemically sprayed fruits) that bears the same year it is planted and can continue to bear reliably during subsequent years with attention to weeding, etc. It's also labor intensive to harvest and weed, and the berries spoil rapidly if there isn't an immediate market. Probably the best choice of the things I've thought of so far.
  
  
• Eggs/chicken: a good supplement to the apple trees because the chickens eat codling moth larvae and also help weed around the trees. However, probably best treated as a supplement rather than as a main crop, because I don't want to mess with killing hundreds of chickens.
  
  
• Specialty birds??? Chukars? Partridges? Pheasants?
  
  
• Herbs: the beauty of this idea is that I'd planned on underplanting the orchard with herbs anyway. As far as providing income though.....lavender? Sweetgrass? Possibly an assortment of herbs marketed to the gourmet restaurants in the area.
  
  
• Winter squash and pumpkins: I have experience in this, the pumpkins sell out during Halloween and winter squash seems to be a trendy food right now...as well as a good way to age fresh manure so that it can be used for other crops.
  
  
• Garlic, onions: both pretty reliable, easy to grow crops which can be braided for higher value. I like the fact that as with winter squash, they don't spoil right away.
  
  
• Sheep? I don't know if I want to deal with sheep. On the other hand, they would now the grass under the trees, which would obviate the herbicides and mechanical mowing which are usually utilized in orchards. The market for organic lamb is probably limited. To sell the wool, I would have to keep the sheep in very clean conditions so that their fleeces wouldn't get matted and full of chaff and debris.
  
  
• Angora goats: Can be shorn, unlike cashmere goats, and there is a better market for mohair than for wool in my opinion as a handspinner. However, nothing can defoliate an orchard faster than a herd of goats!!! I would have to have a bombproof way to ensure that they never, ever got into the orchard. They would be a nice outlet for the prunings....If I had a way to mow between rows, I could cut the vegetation for hay....rather than having them (or sheep) graze it.
  

sigh...pipe dreams are fun. :-/

I miss you. I'm so ashamed of myself...for being so weak, for not having the strength to get back to my feet....for not knowing the right things to do, the right things to say. Maybe there weren't any right things to say or do.

I know that I've become the classic textbook case of a person with Asperger's in love, an easily visible and accessible example of why relationships just can't work for people like me. That should hurt me....but it doesn't. I'm so used to being a case study, and all my energy is focused on making it through the day...

I feel like...like the thing inside that makes me want to live, to see and breathe and eat and work and play....it's just died. I'm like a necklace that someone's pulled all the string out of.

I never thought I'd ever feel this way about anyone again. I thought it died and was buried with him when they closed the lid of the coffin. I don't say that for pity....that's not what I mean....what I mean is, I lived for so long without it, for almost 15 years. How did I live for so long like that? Knowing he was gone, not expecting anything but a lifetime of filling in hours and days and weeks and years until I might see him again....it seems like there were times when I was motivated and happy and satisfied with life.....

I don't know how to get there again. It seems a world away.

Caffeine induced enhanced panic attacks. Time to transition to decaf. :-/

It is unreasonable for this to hurt as much as it does. If anything's ever hurt like this before, I sure as hell don't remember it..... I've never held you, never touched you, and this shouldn't have hurt for more than a week or two at most. This is craziness.

I feel nauseous, like I can't breathe....I can't live like this. This is just nuts.

Would someone reputable in the psych field please, please, please discredit Maxine Aston? This bitch is a quack, and she has devoted her career to destroying the lives of people with Asperger's syndrome, probably after encountering one or two bad apples in the bunch. She needs to be very publicly denounced as the cunt with a vendetta that she is.

Note to Maxine: Generalizations are lame.

This is a link I want to look at later so I am storing it here until then: http://agsci.psu.edu/tfpg

Run away from the hurt, girl. Run fast, fill up the time with stuff and stress and people and things to see and places to go. Don't stop and don't rest, run....run. Fill your mind, your time up with things that you like, things to eat, things to do, things to watch and pay attention to, and try to fill your vision with a haze of happiness. Crowd it out like a child barricading a door with stuffed animals against the nameless horrors on the other side.

Because when you stop, when it finds you, it will gut you and leave you screaming in pain, pain that only you can see or feel. Pain that rends your soul and your heart in tatters and leaves your body an empty shell.

Don't look at him

don't see the way

that he looks right through you

right past you

as if you were the ghost

that you long to be.

Pretend with all your might.....

that you don't see him either.

Anything else is just superfluous. There's nothing else to say. There's nothing else. Life is pain.

i hurt.

I need to get shitfaced drunk...and I can't tonight. Damn.

A Case of You - k.d. lang - Hymms of the 49th Parallel

I meant to work on some kind of art today...either on paper or with clay...but....nothing matters.

I am constantly questioned and challenged to come up with some kind of a plan for the future. I want to farm....on a small scale (20 acres or less)...and sometimes I feel together enough to try to come up with plans or ideas for crops, marketing strategies, location, timing, etc....but you know, it's just a pipe dream. I don't have any land to plant on, any money to lease land or any ideas for how to make this actually happen.

I want to do art, pottery. Meh. My art's no good and I know it.

I feel so gutted and useless...so crippled by this state of inertia.

I try to look towards the future, and I see....nothing. It's like driving in a blinding snowstorm or in a fog so thick that you can barely see the tail lights in front of you...except that everyone else is driving safely at freeway speeds. It's just me who's creeping along at 25 miles an hour, just me with the poor visibility, and they're all honking their horns and cussing me out or at best, wondering what's wrong with me. Some days I can see a little farther than others, but always, the fog's there to some degree. Always, I can't drive very fast. It's so frustrating.

Trying to find the words.....

Every day that goes by in which I don't function well, every time I fall apart again...seems to validate your assessment of me...and I feel worth a little bit less each time. I worked so hard...and now I feel myself eroding away slowly, slowly, as this quiet voice behind me whispers silently.....he was right...he knew...yes...he was right.

Sometimes I really hate myself. And they always say that I'm a very special worthwhile person, that I have all these valuable qualities.....but they're just doing their job. It's their job to make me feel better...it isn't true. I'm a loser.

In Defense of Obsession

Throughout the course of my life, people have given me grief for my intense, admittedly obsessive interests, or perseverations as they're known in clinical-speak, particularly in the cure-autism circles. I hate that word, because it looks so much like something having to do with perversions and because these people tend to think that there is in fact something perverse about being intensely, singlemindedly interested in something. It's as though they advocate a level of interest that lacks commitment and depth, and anything else is pathological and unhealthy.

When I look at the world this way, when I think of what it would be like to be that way, something like panic starts fluttering about frantically inside of me...my chest tightens, my brain feels anxious, hyper....I cannot imagine what it would be like to live a life without the kind of passion and mental involvement that I experience....the thought is horrible beyond words. Frankly, I would not want to live in the sort of halfhearted mental world they describe to me. It would be like...almost like having a lobotomy. :shudder: Awful....so awful.

What can they live for? What gives their lives meaning? What on earth is the point, the motivation to keep slogging away?

Oh, that's right. Life is easier for them (maybe- I am skeptical about this, but many of them seem fairly placid, so I'll take their word for it for now). Does their world consist entirely of social connections, social games, social status competition and (sigh) social bonding? Does everything they do (or most of it?) revolve around social constructs, on the shaky, fragile world of human interaction?

It seems to me that shunning would be an even more severe punishment in that light....and frankly, it's impossible for me to be objective on this tangent right now, so I'll just skip it. I don't see how people could endure it if it were more painful, more weighty than what I'm already experiencing. Nobody would survive. Anyway...moving along here......
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I don't know how to describe the amount of mental pleasure- not in a sexual sense, although if I had to choose, it would be better than sex- that I derive from being intensely, profoundly interested in something. What it is doesn't matter particularly, but for me, obsessions in adulthood tend to be things which can be categorized, mentally mapped out, visualized and played with mentally in a visual mental world. They often involve living organisms- plants or animals....and those have more holding power since plants and animals calm and nurture me when humans do not, so that I am benefiting on more than one level.

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And then there are the times....when I get obsessed about people.....
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Nine times out of ten, maybe even 19 times out of 20, it's just a temporary infatuation thing, because frankly, most people aren't truly interesting enough to stay obsessed over for very long. I don't mean that in a bad way.....it's just that obsession is like a powerful machine that eats a lot of gas, or like a fire that needs a lot of fuel and oxygen. When the fuel or air runs out, the fire dies down. When a person is just a pretty face without very much depth, there isn't a lot of fuel. Some folks are good, decent people in an attractive package....from there, it mellows into a friendship or they become one of those people who are like a comfortable old T shirt. Sometimes a person seems more mysterious than they really are...they're like a puzzle that you can't put down until you've figured it out. And then....then they're not so intriguing anymore. Then they'd better have some other redeeming qualities to lend some staying power to the relationship..or maybe, if they're intelligent and have good intuition, they'll retain a little mystery, a little hard to get....just to keep the interest level up. Maybe, if it's to be a very long term kind of thing, they'll embark on some common interest or activity.

Rarely....like the title of this blog...very, very rarely.....someone comes along who's like...like a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into your soul. Like a pair of jeans that you put on for the first time, and they feel like they've always been in your closet. Like...like so much a part of your life that they feel as irreplaceable as one of your own hands. It's just right, in such a profound way that it's absolutely terrifying. And you want to run but no, you can't move away. And then...then you know that you're screwed....that this is deeper than any obsession will ever be, stronger, inescapable. Because unlike the others, this time, it isn't going to fade out into disinterest. This time, it grows into devotion, the sort of devotion that leaves you feeling like a faithful old dog, like a boulder embedded deep and immovable into the earth.

And that......that is not an obsession. I don't know what to call it, but it's awful and the only thing really worth living for...at the same time.

Let it go, Jen. Let. It. Go. Just let it drift away.

Don't analyze it anymore, don't pick it apart, berate and punish yourself any more. Just let go of it.....let go of the pain.

Been making pottery...and since I have no access to a pottery studio, nor kiln....and have been thinking about barrel firing....I haven't been making many fish. Have only made one since exiting the ceramics class. Without a wheel or a canvas covered table, I've been making pinched and coiled pots. When time permits, will post an image of one of them.

This is so humiliating....I hate being weak. I hate having to ask people to be patient with me, to understand that I'm not up to par, to hope that they don't see that my eyes are leaking or on the verge of it....

All my life's training has been towards being strong, towards surviving, enduring, finding the next handhold when people say there isn't one, hanging on when others say I should bail. I don't like the physical weakness that comes along with being small and female (which is why splitting wood gives me such a rush), but have consoled myself with the notion that others are bigger and stronger, but I'm tougher, can take more pain, can stick it out when they start whining......

And now...

now.........

now........after being hit and slapped and laughed at and insulted and shocked with a stun gun, seeing my animals killed before my eyes...after being half starved and exhausted and played out and hypothermic and going through the absolute hell of four childbirths, after almost bleeding out, being cheated on, raped, and everything else that I don't even want to ever think about again......and still coming up fighting......after all that...I've been subjugated and tamed by someone simply refusing to speak to me.

This is awful. I've been broken before....but never like this. No fist, no words, could ever hurt me as much as your silence. This, my not-friend, is very, very bitter.

These lyrics are so perfect....

I don't have much of anything worthwhile to say tonight. Maybe I never did. Maybe, like all of us, I only wanted to think that my voice, my perspective, was unique and worthwhile, even though there are so many of us that that can hardly be true...only, none of us want to face it, because otherwise, why bother?

I thought.....I thought things were different. I thought that I had value as a person, as a friend, that my voice meant something, that what I thought mattered. It doesn't. I thought....so many things. I was so wrong. So wrong about so much.

I only write here because I have no other place to scream and cry and struggle. People are tired of it and I am tired of trying to tell them the same old thing in new ways, to voice the pain in a way that will get some kind of a different answer that might help...but there's no help. I write here because I can't talk to you, because I mean so little that you don't ever want to hear the sound of my voice again. When I see you, I wish that I could shrink my presence into nothingness so that my existence would not affront you....that I could hide, hide from this pain, from this world, find a safe place silent and without this not-belonging, this not-welcome, not-fitting in. It hurts beyond words anyway...there are no words.

Things are shattered, and I can't fix them. The pieces don't fit together and I get so tired, so tired...they don't come together in any kind of coherent way....and I don't know why I can't give it up, why I have to try so hard to make sense of it, when it's driving me out of my mind....they all say I have to just accept that it won't make sense, but all my sense of security in life, of trust in other people, of my own ability to read them, to interpret what they say and do and mean, it's all been obliterated. It was all only an illusion. People are so dangerous, and yet we need them, so deadly, and yet we love them, when the ones we love the most possess the strongest venom.

It just doesn't stop hurting. No matter what I do, it doesn't really ever stop. I don't know what to do anymore.

My body rebels, screams out the pain that I will my mind not to feel, retches up the horror that I try so hard to deny, to push out of my conscious mind. I try to live, to move on....my body isn't having it....betrays me.

And I try to tell myself that in time, this will ease, that it'll end...that something somewhere will give, because this is too much for too long. But my body knows that I'm lying.

And the irony of it all....that just when I'd turned my back on the entire male population, when the thought of being mounted and having my body invaded by a penis made me cringe and shudder...I fell more hopelessly than ever for.....a man. For a man so gentle, so kind, so thoughtful, that I couldn't be afraid of him. Whose movements were so quiet and unobtrusive and non-threatening that I knew to the core of my being that I would never be afraid of him.

Just when I had worked up the courage to confront the unwelcome idea that maybe I hadn't ever fit the mold because I wasn't straight, when I'd come to terms with that idea. When I'd decided that maybe that was OK.

I feel like my soul has been ripped open and let to spill out on the ground.

Yesterday.....

Sigh....I really struggle with this....with feeling judged and defensive and misunderstood. Most of the people who interact with me in any sort of depth at all acknowledge that I'm depressed. What they don't seem to comprehend is that I cannot simply choose to snap out of it. I think they're confusing tripping over a crack in a sidewalk with falling into a smelly manhole that lacks a ladder to climb back out of. As though I would choose to be in this humiliating condition...what the hell are they thinking? Why does our society have such a pervasive tendency to view any sort of misfortune as being deserved or as evidence of character flaws and poor choices.

And, OK, so there we go: "poor choices". You know, I didn't expect to fall for you, and maybe it was a choice, maybe it wasn't...but I just can't bring myself to regret feeling the way I did and still do for you. The situation is unfortunate, painful, awkward, hopeless, yes....but love is never wrong, and love is never a poor choice. Yeah, there you have it- the diehard cynic is a hopeless romantic in disguise. :-/

Oh, and stubborn, too....

Coming Back to Life -Pink Floyd - Lyrics

Despair envelopes me
Recedes

I am adrift in a sea of nothingness
devoid of meaning
or purpose

Hope is only an idea
like the distant
far gone memory of land

Life flows around
above
and beneath me

That is another world.
Apart.

Man, this is the worst case I have ever had. :-( sigh......

JOHN CALE - Broken Bird 1982 (Allen Lanier keyboards BLUE OYSTER CULT)

Union Station And Alison Krauss - It Doesn't Matter

I am like a bird that flies into a window over and over again..... :-(

Regarding Asperger's and Disclosure: the dilemma

In support of disclosure:

• People will understand why you engage in certain odd behaviors and are less likely to take a "flat" emotional affect as a personal insult. They might even be more understanding of little quirks and cut you a little bit of slack.
  
• Also, honesty is crucial, and pretending to be something you aren't is an awful way to have to live. Spectrumites should not have to be closeted.
  
• Disclosure also allows one to provide information and examples such as Temple Grandin to educate people and to give insight into why you're so fucking weird.
  
• In the workplace, disclosure prevents people from being able to fire you for autistic behaviors...although many employers will make end runs around this and eventually fire you anyway or find ways to induce you to quit.
  
• Neurodiversity rocks! Don't live in shame! We're equal!

Against disclosure:

Most people, having little to no knowledge of or experience with Asperger's, will insist that you do not have it and that you are "normal", not realizing that most people on the autism spectrum really don't like or want to be "normal", because normal life seems incredibly boring to many of us. Therefore, they will tell you that it is all in your head (which it is, but not in the way they're saying) or that you have been misdiagnosed. As if the shrinks, physicians and other experts are far more fallible and uninformed than they are....
• Also, if they do believe that you have it, they may begin to discount your perspective, experiences, etc, because you don't think the way they do.
  
• Many mistake autism as a "mental illness" which it is not and our populace is still very prejudiced against any type of mental illness.
  
• Many people have this idea that all autistics are retarded
  
• or brilliant
  
• Or savants.
  
• Many people avoid interaction with those who are perceived as not being normal. This is part of the herd mentality. I always say that I don't care about those people anyway, because I don't wants to be friends with them to begin with if they're that way....but honestly, it still hurts. Sometimes it hurts a lot.

I've been cleaning and planting and transplanting and making important phone calls and all kinds of other responsible stuff... I should post pictures......

So Far Away (with lyrics) - Carole King

I miss you like a drowning man misses the sunshine, the air, the sky.

And yet....if I really love you, I have to leave you alone so I won't mess up your life, have to try to get to my feet and pick up some thread of life to work from.

This is so hard to do.

I think of you, see you, dream of you, hear someone say your name, see a car that looks like yours....and it's like being punched in the gut. Well, no. It lasts a lot longer than that. Something in me keens for you sharply, feels like I can't breathe in this vacuum, desperate to get out....but then I ask myself, do I want to make trouble for you, to hurt you, to be more of pain than I've already been? And always, the answer is no....No, I'd rather die than to do that. I think of my past offenses, and I can't undo those....but what I can do is not to raise any more hell than I already have. I close my eyes and see your face again...and the panic dies down and there's only a dull and hollow ache with the swirling grays of sadness.

But oh, how I miss the fleeting breeze of your scent, the kind, warm sound of your voice....

Got most of the rest of the herb garden planted yesterday, along with various seedlings. I had such high hopes for this years growing season, and then I just flopped, just couldn't pull it together, couldn't get much of anything done other than simply staying alive and keeping my kids safe. I sit here surrounded by several pounds of garden seeds that I searched out painstakingly, ordered online, collected and hoarded like a miser...Ah, the seeds reproach me.

And the people, the people reproach me, too. They're worried, they're upset, they expected more of me, and I've let them down. They don't understand why I can't pull it together. Why this should wound me so deeply. And neither do I, to be honest. Sometimes I look at you and I ask myself what on earth it was about you that hooked me. I realize with a bit of a shock that I am thoroughly broken up over a man who's fairly unremarkable. You aren't, objectively speaking, outstandly good looking or brilliant or charming. Why does my heart scream so insistently that you're absolutely irreplacable, that nobody else can ever take your place? Is it some magical combination of qualities? I mean, this thing is so irrational. I am left confused and bewildered, struggling to figure out exactly why this should hurt the way it does. I could land other men who'd be gentle, who like kids, who I could trust not to hurt me, who'd be just as good looking and who'd actually talk to me. Why the fuck does it have to be you?

This is so stupid.

Fever-k.d. lang

Trampled Rose- Alison Krauss & Robert Plant _ Raising Sand

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Killing the Blues

Elton John- Come And Get It (RARE!)

The peas are up and growing! Spring is here, the air is fresh, and things are pretty! :-)

Bird On A Wire - KD Lang Max Sessions 2005

I miss you with an ache like a stone in my stomach.....I miss you so, so much, but what can I do?

Maybe I'm clueless, but try as I might, I just can't figure things out....

KD Lang Save Me

The Beatles - With a Little Help from My Friends.

I should have known better than to write that...the truck broke down immediately afterwards.... :-/

The good news is that I was only a mile or two from home, had a bicycle in the truck, was able to pull over in a designated pull out area and it is currently being worked on. Which is going to inspire my next youtube selection....

Just when you think life can't possibly suck any worse, it does. Reliably. The question is, how much suckiness can a person endure?

I'm trying as hard as I can to move on with life, and things are starting to look up....

but....

I would do anything, anything, just to have a normal conversation with you again. To not be afraid anymore.

I don't even care about the "whys" anymore. Forget it. I don't care. I just want things to be better. Any kind of better, just better.

I just do not get why people seem to think that eating gluten free is so difficult. Are they terribly dependent on pre-made, processed foods, or is it the bread and starchy stuff? The only thing I ever really crave is pizza, and Winter Ridge makes great GF pizzas that even have pesto sauce on them! It has gotten to where I prefer the texture of the gluten free stuff.

Maybe it's because I love rice (having been raised on jasmine rice at grandma's house!). If I couldn't ever have rice, then I'd be pretty unhappy. Speaking of which: Common Knowledge (tea house/bookstore) has little bowls of brown rice, which is what I eat for breakfast when I'm there....but yesterday that asked me if I wanted "Skoosh" on it. I said, "what???", and they said something about sesame seeds, so I said, "sure, ok, whatever, I'll try it". I like the plain brown rice all by itself, but you know, why not? Well, that skoosh (pretty sure it's not spelled that way) is fantastic. It has sesame seeds, flaxseed, pumpkins seeds, sunflower seeds, and I don't know what else. It is so, so, good. I am now motivated to ferret out what is in it and to start blending my own. It has a rich, creamy taste and flavor, like cheese, only different and better...it's like a sauce that they put in /with the rice.

It has been a variable kind of day....started out OK, got sucky fast, and a slow climb back to feeling OK....but tomorrow I get the rest of my glazed stuff, so hopefully....there are going to be two nice fish that I'll have to post pictures of.

Sitting in the otherworldly, disorienting haze of the hot tub, I look up and could see "NO DYING" painted on the opposite wall. Look again, "NO DIVING".

Yeah, that's the kind of day I'm having. :-/

Ceramics teacher suggested that I start putting my fish sculptures in galleries. I need to post a pic of the one he was talking about, because it's nicer than the others here, but still....I am shocked!

Found the maul and split and stacked all the rest of the wood. Dang! no more wood to split! If only wood splitting were a competitive sport....sigh...

So now I suppose I will go fishing this afternoon. ;-)

I hurt. Even when I sleep, when I dream, you walk past me, talk past me, as though I don't exist. There's nowhere I can go to escape the pain.

Listening to Rihanna's "Stupid in love".

Anyway....I want to start some kind of a sketchbook project, like a thing where I have to sketch or draw or doodle something every day. I need to build some kind of a structure or routine to make time for art in my life, otherwise the rest of the stuff crowds in on me and by the time I get done wading through it all, I'm exhausted. If I don't make it a prioritized component of my life, I am not going to get time for it.

And an aside: That grass fed hamburger from Winter Ridge is THE BEST HAMBURGER that I have ever eaten in my entire life!!!!! I mean, it is orgasmically good. I wish I had tried it sooner instead of wasting time and money on the petite sirloin steaks from Super 1. I was happy with them before...now, never again. I never knew hamburger could taste like this. It is fantastic. It is so good, so so *good*. Man. Just thinking about it cheers me up....lol.

Clarity on previous post: I meant, "like" as a person....oh, whatever. Why am I doing this? Why am I bothering? The world is full of people who aren't all fucked up. People who don't have a ton of issues to work through. People who don't think everything to death and pick each and every piece of data to tiny bits and replay every memory over and over and over again. People who don't get that horrible short-of-breath-oh-my-god-i-can't-breathe feeling, who don't feel like running as fast as they can from the horror of this life until they have to walk reluctantly back. People who function, who have happy childhoods and supportive parents.

I mean, who the hell do I think I am? I mean, yes, I obviously feel the need to advocate for myself, but....when I look at it like this, I don't blame you at all. Not at all.

Groan...they're having the raku firing and I need to go back there. I can't stand being around all those people right now. But. I have to go...back. sigh....

Sometimes I feel like the trauma in my life has fucked me up so badly that there isn't any hope. I have been working on this stuff for years, and it doesn't seem like there's been any improvement at all. I hate feeling so defective. It crushes me. I wish that I were healthy and happy and innocent....I wish that I were someone you could at least like.

I don't know why I post this stuff here. sigh....

Trying hard to redirect....I made a cool rock garden today. I thought the hard labor would make me feel better (obviously a fail)...but at least I have the garden. Will post pics tomorrow if I get back before dark...or if I plant it before I leave for school.

Tomorrow is the raku firing. That will be so cool!

Their little faces had such an expression of pathos....they were so cute, so graceful. I should have sketched them so I could make some in clay.

Also---> have decided I like fishing. I like it a lot, in fact. My prior aversion to it had to do with feeling sorry for the worms being impaled on the hooks, then feeling sorry for the fish and also, not really liking to eat fish.
However:

Worms don't have brains...I know this because I dissected them in zoology class.

Brook trout, rainbow trout, and lake trout are all non-native species that are hard on the cutthroat trout population (crossing my fingers and hoping this is accurate!). So I am doing the ecology of the area a favor when I catch them.

Trout don't taste fishy, at all. I was afraid to try them before, but they are really, really good.

Also- if it is still being offered this year, Fish and Game has all kinds of cash incentives for catching rainbow and lake trout. I am not sure about the brook trout yet, but am planning to find out.

If I am going to eat meat, it makes an awful lot of sense to eat trout from this area as opposed to ocean fish caught under conditions which endanger sea turtles and dolphins and whales and sharks, etc etc....

Yep, fishing is definitely a worthwhile use of time. :-)

But----> I will fish only for non-native species...which won't be much of a burden at all, considering how incredibly tasty they are!

My idea of fun! (well, one of them, anyway...)

The obsessive edge has finally worn off....about freaking time. I still feel the way I feel though...still don't want anyone else. Which is probably for the best, since I am wholly unready for entering into a relationship.

I've been alone since last May now...closing in on a year and haven't had any kind of romance since September? early October? And I can't say that I miss it all that much. I don't want to be smothered and controlled ever again....I just want a companion.

And then there's this: the realization that my grades went to hell in a handbasket right about the time I became single. I haven't been been able to pull them up. Is it the stress? The drive? The overwhelmingness of it all? The baggage I've been working through? Or....am I just not up to it? Maybe I'm just weak.

And this----> the truth of knowing that one of the things I liked about you was that I felt safe to be vulnerable and open. I didn't feel like I had to have armor on. And even though I wear it now as heavily as any tortoise...how I long to shed it and to just be true, to be real. :sigh: I can only do that here.