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......
.
.
.
.
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.

============================================================
And then there are the times....when I get obsessed about people.....
============================================================

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......