No Amish Autistics!!!! It's a Conspiracy!!!
_________________________________________________________

At this point, I suppose I should link to the relevant articles:
here's one and here....is another.

Ok, here's my spiel on the matter: Dan Olmstead desperately needs to research animal breeding (heck, plant breeding would work too) before he starts jumping to conclusions. It is true that the Amish live a relatively simple and less industrialized lifestyle than most of us (although we tend to romanticize and exaggerate this fact: the Amish actually do have washing machines in many cases....just not your standard on the grid machine). I'm sure that quite a few of them also don't go to doctors unless absolutely necessary. Their life is far less inundated with the sort of noise and chaos that drives an aspie to their wit's end. The schools are smaller and less overwhelming. Among these facts: The Amish generally don't vaccinate their children. This is one of many aspects of the Amish culture.

Apparently there are far less reported cases of autism in the Amish community. I suspect that the aspies function better there than they do in our modern day life and probably go undetected....if they are there. Possibly a person would have to be pretty undeniably and noticeably autistic in order to be labeled among the Amish. At any rate, Mr Olmstead appears to suspect that there are fewer Amish auties because they don't vaccinate.

This is where a distinct knowledge of practical genetics would come in handy.

See, the Amish are very genetically limited. In a word: inbred. This isn't an insult; it's a simple fact. The Amish gene pool is very small with very little new incoming blood, and families often stay rooted in one area for long periods of time. They can't outcross with the "English", or non-Amish. Most people who do not breed livestock don't realize that inbreeding isn't necessarily a negative thing. It all hinges on *what* genes you are concentrating. Basically, you just get more of what's already there in the genes. It doesn't magically make horrid deformities or mutations unless those genes were there to begin with. It DOES increase the odds that you will see more of what's really there(genotype), genetically (as opposed to phenotype, i.e., what you SEE). If you have a wonderful animal with a solid background, the easiest way to fix the genes and get consistent offspring is to linebreed or inbreed with a relative (of varying degrees).

When you inbreed------>> You will see some traits, even if they're not that common in the general population, at a higher concentration. With continued inbreeding/linebreeding, the population becomes more and more consistent with less genetic variation. Some traits which may be common in the general populace may not show up at all in the inbred population: if the genes weren't there to begin with, or were not there in sufficient numbers, they didn't get concentrated.

And that's what I think happened with the Amish. They have an excessively high rate of some birth defects and genetic diseases (one of the dangers of inbreeding, and you can't ethically "cull" humans the way you do with livestock). But it stands to reason that other traits (possibly including autism) simply wouldn't be there at all. This is what anyone would expect to see....not a big surprise. No conspiracy there!

Victimhood: all too easy to fall into. You can spot a vicitm a mile away many times, because they tend to whine or moan a lot about their fate but frequently take very little action to change it.

Then there's martyrdom: martyrs expect you to see their suffering and to think highly of them for it. Suggesting that they should take steps to remedy their situation will be taken badly: who are you to rob them of their honor?!! Martyrs suffer in silence or stoicism, often when they don't really need to suffer at all.

Either way----> the problems don't get better, or if they do, the person finds something new to whine about and the success isn't mentioned. Solutions are not sought out, they are discounted.

I should know: I've definitely been a victim, especially in my younger years, when I felt powerless and that God would be displeased if I stood up for myself, that to do so would be selfish.

I think I'm pretty much over that, though: when I started work I realized, after several months, that if I didn't stand up for myself noone else would care, or listen. The work environment was just totally different...and while I'm not above whining occasionally, I'm more likely now to defend myself, to set things straight, to go to a boss if I need to, or to simply tell someone off if they need it.

I am tired of being a vicitm. I'm gonna pitch a fit and scream my bloody lungs off if anyone even attempts a tenth of what's already been doen to me, ever again.

Anyway, the question is this: does accepting and facing the challenges and joys of being autistic make me a victim? I don't think so. I am looking for solutions to life's adversities, for a niche in life, for ways in which I can succeed and fulfill at least some of my potential. That's not a victim.

More than simple envy......

Why, when males are endowed with something as nice as a penis, don't they put it to better use than they do?

Violence: a penis is like, the world's best sex toy, and almost every guy has one. Why would they want to use it as a weapon?

Foreplay: Men have a distinct advantage here in that their very sexy male organ is on external display. It can bounce! It can wiggle! It gets hard! It does all kind of entertaining things. Do they take advantage of this fact by taunting us into a frenzy until we practically beg for them?? Not often. But they could. I mean, they could tease us all day long, off and on, until the girl feels like dragging him into the bedroom. But most don't. Instead, they're like, "Time for bed!" (meaningful look or gesture), it gets hard, and then they're like, "Wow, it's hard! I could stick this somewhere!" and that's about it. :-/ I'm not complaining TOO much, but guys, are you seriously that lacking in creativity?? Or in patience?

In the Bathroom: Frankly, if I had such a handy urethra that could aim as well as theirs does, that's what I'd do with it: aim. My anatomy precludes this, unless I want to start the arduous task of learning how to pee standing for females. Still, I manage not to get it all over the seat, floor and walls. I have told my sons, time and again, that if they cannot aim and lifting the seat is just too strenuous for them, they should sit. They do not. I'm just about to the pont of removing the seat entirely...except that I would rather sit on it than squat above the bowl! I hate having to wash it off before using each and every time.

I still believe that love, whether or not it is returned or rejected, is never wasted.

So, for all the lonely souls in the world, who have loved in vain without return, let me say it again: love is its own reward. It doesn't have to be reciprocal to be genuine or worthwhile. Don't ever be ashamed of loving someone, whoever they are.

Love enriches the world, it opens our hearts, it causes us to see the good in life and to be the best people that we can be. It gives life strength and meaning and passion and drives us to acheive goals and surmount problems that would otherwise seem insurpassable.

The pain doesn't come from love. The pain comes from rejection and from the death of hope and yes, expectations. Don't ever be afraid to love or stingy about it.....just watch out for those expectations....the biggest reward has already been had.

I just got my second raise in about a month!!! I couldn't believe it! Wooohoo! The boss said, when I asked him why he did that, that he felt that people who work harder should get paid more even if they don't have as much seniority. I told him that I would work hard to deserve the raise (after thanking him profusely). I think I embarrassed him. :-P

I found something that helps my hips a little: to wear an insole in the leg that is shorter. When I wore insoles for both, they hurt like hell. Took the left one out, relief. I have not had SERIOUS pain since doing this.

Okay. I boiled water for chocolate malt-o-meal at least three times and had it all evaporate before I could add the cereal! Finally I used about half a pan's worth of water, let it boil, measured the boiling water, threw out the excess, and made the cereal. It is very hard to boil just a cup or two of water and have any of it left!

One of our nice neighbors gave us a whole bunch of oriental poppies that she was digging up, along with other plants. She did this on MOther's Day. And Tim had also bought me some stock starts and a strawberry plant (complete with green berries already fruiting), these, I am happy to say, were in pots. The poppies were more or less bareroot and not very happy about that. I planted them all ASAP and we watered the heck out of them. They recovered.

The medication, which cost $25, does not work! Lovely. I still alternate between that familiar burning sensation, times where they're only very faintly sore, and where the area feels numbed and I feel queasy and lightheaded and exhausted. It is, more or less, one of these three modes, almost all the time.

One of my legs is about 1/4" longer than the other, and this, incidentally, is also the leg with the foot that was turned inwards when I was a baby, the one I wore orthopedic shoes for. The left one. The same hip that hurts me. Hmmmm...... I forgot to mention to the doctor that my hips also dislocate during some activities...they haven't done so in a long time, but it hurts like hell when it occurs. The thing is, I wasn't in a LOT of pain when I went to see him. I'd had two days off work. And even with the hike, I was only mildly sore. So he'd ask, "does this hurt?" and I'd say..."Uhhh...yeah. I think so. Maybe." I have a high pain tolerance. I would have to be in agony in order to be able to tell him really well exactly what hurts and where, precisely. I would have to come in after working all day long.

---------------------------------------------------------------

We're considerign buyign the house of the assistant manager that I wouldn't speak to for a while. I'm still not sure how well I like her. OK as a person, maybe. I still don't want her to be my boss. It's a really neat home, an underground one. It's like a little hobbit house! Very unique! YOu would expect it to be dark, right? It is not. It has a big skylight. What it IS: very well insulated by all that earth, and it feels very holistic and nourishing. It has 5 acres and is all set up for g oats already!! It has woods! It has water, power, phone, internet, AND a generator setup for power outages. It needs more gardens, they haven't been kept up. Also, it has a lot of outbuildings, storage sheds, barns, woodsheds, etc etc. I want to get this place, but I can only get $50 K financed. The house needs some significant work done on it (which I can do) and no bank will loan on it, because it's an earth home. They won't take payments in any form, they have to be bought out. Today they're getting it appraised....and I'm betting that it will be in the 75-100K range. I wonder who they will sell it to? Soemone who will build another house and demolish that one? :-( I really want this place. It feels right.

I want to cry. I woke up feeling this way and it just hasn't gotten any better. But I won't/can't, anymore than a desert can flood on command. I just feel desolate and barren. We went for a walk though, and saw a lot of pretty plants and great rocks and boulders. Boulders with moss, shooting stars...hmm...I can'y decide which I like better.

Anyway, I took some St John's wort and should be feeling better sometime today. Hopefully before I go to work. He's been so nice to me, it isn't his fault. I just get into a bad mood now and then.

So I went to the doctor about my hips. He asked me where and how they hurt, but they didn't hurt enough to be able to tell him as well as I'd have liked to, as well as I could have had I worked all day before going there. Unfortunately my work hours don't really allow for that, nor do his. He took X rays. Bones are so beautiful, so graceful. The bony pelvis reminds me of a butterfly. The xrays show that the bones are fine, just fine!!! I don't know how they can hurt this much...how?! It is so frustrating.... He syas that it's probably soft tissue; ligaments, tendons, and so forth, that have gotten strained. Try not to lift heavy things (yeah, right). And he gave me a prescription for an anti-imflammatory, but that's not good since the insurance company won't acknowledge that I've been paying them a sizable chunk out of my check every two weeks. They haven't sent me the card yet, and they deny that I'm on it.

The pharmacy says that it's "only" $25.00. Over the counter anti-imflammatories don't even touch this pain, I seriously cannot even tell that I took them! OTOH, do I want to work in pain and be this crabby and irritable because of it? Maybe I'm just a hypochondriac, as a number of people seem to imply. All I know is that there are times when this hurts so freaking much that I feel nauseous.

When the goal is to turn an autistic person into a pale imitation of a neurotypical and to deny them any expression or manifestation or justification or legimacy of/for their autistic selves, isn't the true goal to squelch and suppress their self identity? This "therapy" leaves the autistic no place to turn inwards, where they can say, "this is me, this is good, I *like* me, this is who I am. Instead, it's all pretense and facade, something we're not all that good at, I think. One is left in unhappy introspection: is this me? Or it it what they wanted? I'm not happy with it. They liked it. I don't like this...they pick on me for it....it's bad because they don't like it...they say it's weird...Why do I have to pretend so hard...and who do I pretend to be?..." (I used to choose one model at a time, usually someone I admired and was fond of. If and when they rejected me, I then had to discard that persona and try to model after someone else.) I always had a slight nagging feeling about this...and what hurt the most was when the person encouraged me, actively assuming the role of role-model, and then abruptly abandoned or spurned me. I was unable to choose a generalized 'normal' mode, or to identify one. I *had* to imitate other people in order to act any semblance of normal.

Is this what you people want, to deny us our autistic self identity? To say that who we really and truly are deep inside, is wholly inadequate? We are supposed to live out an entire life this way?! And to be happier for it!!! My god, what have you been smoking? How could you even imagine that this would be successful or productive? (We won't even go into humane, auties apparently are too far gone to deserve humane treatment!)

A person's self-identity is the very germ and seed of their personality. To rob a person of this, and intentionally, yet, is a crime worse than rape. A body is only a shell, but without our real self, we would just as well be walking zombies acting to please the general populace. A person's selfhood is sacred, and noone: no parent, no teacher, no therapist, no expert, has the right to deprive anyone of that.

What better form of expressing one's inner self can there be but the arts?

You can ban me from your forums, you can shut me up, you can shout me down. You can fire me, threaten me, hurt me, and pretend I don't exist. You can tell me that since I'm autistic, my opinion doesn't count. You can claim that I'm not really autistic, the pschologist was dumb and I'm pretending and therefore I'm invalid. You can make up elaborate and bizarre theories to explain things away about me and why I'm so, in your opinion, fucked up. You can pray for me, plead with me, sigh over me, wring your hands, ply me with guilt trips, laugh at me, or swear at me. It doesn't matter.

I am tired of trying to be what I am not and I refuse to do it anymore. It's hard work to be what I am, but at least I know who I am. I am just as legitimate, being autistic, as you are, being neurotypical, and you aren't one iota better than me for it. You can't shut me up. I will paint, and even though I can't communicate well, my pictures will say it for me: this is me, this is who I am, this is the beauty that I see in the world around me, through my eyes!

A long desired wish....
__________________________________________________________________________
I've wanted a violin since I was 17 years old and a friend let me play out a tune or two on hers. I was enchanted with it, in love with the resonant tones. For years I would ask at thrift stores and pawn shops and pick up the thrifty nickel paper for used violins at a very affordable price. Whenever I found one, I didn't usually have the money. Once we saw one for only $20, and when I called the old man said he'd sold it already.

There is a girl who plays her violin in front of the grocery store regularly. I don't think she does it for pay, she does it because she likes to and maybe others will like to hear it. Maybe it's advertising. Her dad makes violins and buys other violins and refurbishes them. We got to talking one day at the store, and I confessed my long love affair with violins. Imagine my surprise to hear that I could get a newly improved model for as little as $100!!! Whee!!!!

My tax return came in today. I have my violin, at last. :-) And I'm a little afraid to play it, to shatter the veil of dreams and give birth to the reality. I will play it every day.

I really don't feel like going to work today. Yesterday my hips hurt, and I was stiff and limping for several hours, even after taking painkillers. They must have helped a little though...after that the stiffness went away and the pain dimmed down some. Then it flared back up to the point where I just wanted to go up in the break room and cry for a while, but no: we were swamped with customers. It's all the pivoting, stopping, starting, twisting, squatting, lifting, that does it. The faster it all has to be done, the more it hurts. There were only two of us, Sierra and I; we needed a third person desperately, especially since I was slower due to my hips, and her to her pregnancy. Then some fool needed to feed 50 people but called with less than an hour to spare, at the rushed hour, and wanted 20 breasts and 10 thighs!!!! Egads! They wouldn't all fit in one fryer load, the hot case was empty from cooking chicken (when we cook chicken, we have only one fryer, so we can't cook anything else. A batch of chicken -8 each breasts, thighs, legs, and wings- takes 15 minutes to cook) and there were *also* two orders for 12 pieces. So: 20 breasts, 10 thighs, plus 6 each breasts, thighs, legs, and wings. 54 pieces in all, and all within about an hour's time. The case just got emptier and emptier....meanwhile, other people saw the chicken cooking and wanted some, and we had to tell them it was all pre-ordered. Then they got pissy. One man all but yelled at us. There was so much chicken ordered that we had to bread more (we bread it ourselves) to fill the orders. Breading a box of chicken takes at least 15-20 minutes, and she had to do that while I waited on the ranting customers and reduced the doughnuts. A checker came back and helped us. At any rate, it was sort of hellish. I don't want it again tonight.

Today: Birthday shopping. Make a cake for my oldest son. It will be an ice cream cake, chocolate with mint chip ice cream. And, the library book sale, before work.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is it this hard for everyone? For normal people, do the bills and chores and deadlines and pressure of daily life lay this heavy on them? Do they constantly feel as I do, that they're at the very ends of their ropes? One problem solved only gives rise to another, it seems. One bill paid off gives birth to a different one. Every hour seems claimed and possessed by a task or some urgent matter. There is no time to think without the world intruding on me, I hate it.

I figured out how to effectively handle the conflicts with my (night) manager. Note: she is not my boss, or even my manager, only the assistant manager, who has a power trip going on. Anyway, I stopped talking to her. At all. It works amazingly well!!! Nearly all of her intimidation was verbal. When I stopped talking, she tried to get me to talk a few times (angrily hissing) but after that she stopped trying, and I've been so much happier! :-D It's not even a matter of my being upset with her anymore. I'm a lot calmer in my own headspace. I've also come to the realization that while 95% of her intimidation was verbal, 95% of my verbal communication with her was of an approval seeking or conciliatory nature. No wonder I felt bullied! And see, I was kind of my own fault in a way, wasn't it? At least to some extent?

I know she's peeved, but she's more or less avoiding me, and as it turned out, verbal communication wasn't actually even necessary. I don't think I'm going to resume speaking to me until I have come up with an adequate way to defend myself from her.
-----------------So that's handled...for now...-------------------------------
Another girl, who is deficient in comparison with me in terms of seniority on the job, experience, speed, quality work, work ethic, intelligence, * and* she is younger than me, insists on treatign me in a bossy way. It irritates me. If I confront her on an issue, she immediately backs down: "Oh, I didn't mean it that way, I just..." and makes it out as though I was overreacting. I may not be a gem, but I do conciously try to improve on my job peformance every single day. This girl is lazy. In fact, several of us,, including our well respected and loved manager, think she's a pothead and comes to work stoned. (Gee, thanks, doper, enjoy your buzz and just float along while we do your work!) It's all OK though. The big bosses seem to have their eye on her. She didn't get a raise, everyone else did. Hmmmm....

Getting a buzz on your off time at night is oen thing. Coming to work stoned or trying to function that way is something entirely different.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, my hips feel shot, I'm exhausted, I'm going to bed. Yes, before 9 P.M.!
(Like anyone cares).....

Ok, I made an appointment with the voc-rehab people. Please, please please, people, take me seriously. Don't tell me that I'm doing fine where I am and don't need voc rehab....

OK, let's get one thing straight from the start here: rejection is never nice. It never feels good. That having been said, I think it hurts more to be rejected by a guy than it does to be turned away by a girl.
Here's why:

• Women tend to be fickle. We all know that.
• They also tend to be emotional and to want love.
• Therefore, it may be that their heart hasn't connected yet. That's bearable, isn't it?
• Also, if they turn down a fling, woemn do have more at stake: possible pregnancy, their 'reputation' and even physical harm.
• When a woman turns down a guy, she's turning down the possibility of bearing his child. You have to feel pretty secure to want to do that.
• With a guy, bedding a lot of girls is proof he's a stud (among his peers, at least).
• He doesn't have to worry about getting pregnant, and he isn't as likely to be raped by a girl.
• With guys, they are hardwired for sex and lots of it.
• That's not to say that they don't feel love, they do....but they can easily enjoy it without the love.
• Besides, some guys will screw just about anything that has a hole. Old ladies get raped. They get off on *pictures* for godssake.
• So, I mean, if a guy doesn't want you, at all, something is seriously wrong with you.

Of course, it could also be that the males are evolving to be more conscientious. I suppose that's possible.
______________________________________________________________________________

I went to the store this evening, and I was in a good mood. Scattered, but Ok. I saw some people I know, and as always, it took me several seconds (him) and a tad longer (her) to recognize them. Actually, I wouldn't have noticed her without him. He's easier to tell apart from the general populace. Nothign personal at all, I'm just that way. I often walk right past people I know without even seeign them. When they say hello, alarms go off...I feel confused...who the hell is this? They look like they know and like me. Who are they?? So anyway, I see these people, and he's very, very friendly and extraverted. He smiles hugely, showing his gums and lots of teeth, his glasses flash...and he asks if I saw his picture in the paper. I have just processed who it is, context and all that, and then it takes me a moment to process what he just said. Paper...picture? Whose picture? His and hers! :-D Paper? Paper? :scratching head: Local paper! :-D Oh. I don't buy the paper. That's why I haven't seen it. Hmmm. I will look. Nonono!! The *free* paper, don't you get it? :-D Oh! yes, I get it. I didn't look at it yet. OK, I will look. :smiles:

Meanwhile, she looks very pissed, stares at my shirt and gives me a very dirty look, and if I can read a look, it's intense. It has to be. :Me, looks at shirt, looks back at her: My shirt is plain blue, comfortably snug so I know where it is. Nice blue, I like it. What's wrong? She says to him, "That's OK dear, don't bother her with it. She hasn't seen it.", in a very snippy, snotty voice. I say good bye to he and he waves bye in a rather naive but friendly fashion. Nice guy. Why's she such a bitch?

And I have absolutely NO idea what I did wrong. This kind of thing happens to me all the time. I try to tell myself that I don't care, and I don't....much.... But it niggles at me, anyway. Maybe someone told them something bad about me? :shrug: I just have no idea at all. Is it because I don't care much about people except when they're right in front of me, for the most part? I am friendly when they're there.....and isn't that what matters? :stumped:

*Bitterness* (Tim, don't worry about this)
_________________________________
Oh, this song says it so well...R.E.M. I can't always find words for what I want to say....but that says just about all of it, in one song. Heh. :-/

I drink down the bitterness of it as though it were some sort of evil tasting medicine.

Do you realize at all...that since all that, I don't take the word "friend" seriously anymore. I hear that word and it touches that nerve of bitterness...the cynic awakens and sneers....and I know that I'll never trust a "friend" in the same way as before. The word has lost any pleasant meaning for me, I almost hate it. Can I blame you for this, I don't know. Does that matter, not really.

I've never said this before, but I'll say it now and not again: if there had been one chance of my being "normal", if I had ever had the will for it, if there were a motivator, if there were an example, an interpreter, you were it, man. And it's gone. Fuck normality!!! Normalcy with all its two edged swords (both edges cut me) can go and take a flying leap.

The song is still playing...it couldn't be more real to me...

Mystified.........
------------------------------------------
I went back looking at the comments left on this blog. For some reason, a LOT of Tim's comments are flat out GONE! :-( I enjoyed going back and reading them....

There are other comments, by someone termed "friend", and this is what has me puzzled. Who is this 'friend'? I don't have very many friends, and this one feels male. There are even fewer male friends. I think it might be a Christian, which narrows it down further, but I don't think it's the father of my children....he would probably sign his name. :confused:

I went to a play/musical program at my daughter's school last night. It was, in two words, absolutely horrid, and I'm saying this aside from being surounded by some 200 people, lots of sounds from speakers, and people clapping, etc etc, all the usual sensory overload stuff. It was rampantly patriotic and Christian, and perfectly demonstrated the herd mentality. An excerpt: "We owe our freedom of speech not to the organzers of protests, but to the soldier. We owe our freedom of religion not to the (can't remember), but to the soldier" etc etc, ad nauseum. The gist was that, essentially, we owe every civil right we have to violence and to men who are willign to carry out violence. That the world just can't get along without people who are willing to commit violence! What an awful, misguided theme for a children's play!

Would it be so....unthought of...to have a children's play with some innocent, childish them, or something educational, or something such as peaceful efforts towards improving the world, or understanding different cultures, or saving the environment, or living conciously? They will grow up soon enough...do they have to be indoctrinated towards committing atrocities at such a young age?

(and then we wonder why we have school shootings and stabbings...)

Sometimes I wish that I could leave my body to its daily chores, to go around it's work as a sort of golem. And that my heart could soar in its own thoughts and be mindless of the troubles and pains of the world...

Everyday Eroticism

---

It's the theme of all my art (well, all my recent art from the past year or two). I see it everywhere, the thread of creation and reproduction, sexuality. Understand: by sexuality I don't mean merely a man and a woman having missionary intercourse. No, I refer here to sex in its far reaching sense, from hermaphrodite nudibranches to the kelp they cling to...waving sensuosly in the ocean currents...to the pine trees showering the air and earth with their grains of pollen...I could go on in this way for a long time.....

Now, consider this: the custom of a man giving a flower to the girl he wants or loves. What kind of a flower? A rose. What sort of a rose? Longstemmed...no thorns, and very few leaves, if any. Color? Red...dark, passionate, blood infused red. Lastly, the profile of the flower: full blown, fragrant, with the beautiful shape we associate with a rose bush? No sir...a tight, pert rosebud. The contours of it should be fairly clean. OK: now picture this, all these factors, in your mind. In hand: a flower, held upright, with a long stem, culminating in the most important part, the dark red bud. Think, think, think.....what else could this represent? Hmmmm.....is it any wonder that this is the symbol used as an emblem of acceptance or rejection? Could anything be more heartening to a man than to see his girl clasp his rose lovingly and bring it to her lips?

Now, don't go blaming this on me. I didn't come up with the custom. I don't even like red roses much. All I did was to observe what should have been obvious anyway!

Re: Standing up for oneself: I hate to do it. For one thign, it's very hard for me (at times) to deliniate the line between doing a favor for someone and being taken advantage of. For another, I simply dislike having to assert myself in order to obtain fair treatment. In a relationship of any kind (intimate, friend, aquaintance) if the problem becomes a recurring issue, I have a bad habit of simply dropping the relationship altogether, or at least dropping it to a less intimate level.

People very often assume that I'm a doormat. That isn't necessarily true... It's more along the lines of: If someone is willing to take advantage of me or to treat me badly unless I stand up for myself, I really don't know if I care to continue the relationship. I feel like I shouldn't have to assert myself in oder to be treated decently.

An analogy: You are playing a game with someone, a board or card game, perhaps. You catch them cheating. Perhaps you call them on it, perhpas not. At any rate, they continue to cheat, and to escalate the bahavior. Do you continue playing with them? No. Why not? They are not fun to play with.

Or, to put it another way, if a person is so inclined as to take advantage of or be mean to me, I don't really want to continue being as close to them. It isn't worth the hassle or confrontation and stress and adrenaline. Screw it! After all, doesn't their behavior say something about the value of the relationship to them?
__________________________________________________________________________
But, there is a problem. I don't know how to *confront* someone unless I'm so angry that I could scream. (By that time I don't much care how they react.) My co-workers are not treating me well, and I'm not mad enough to scream. What to do, what to do? One of them is a manager so I can really let loose with her.

Eeeek! Ok, it's my turn now to be a shallow, self absorbed female...the sort I don't like. I just got back from the thrift store. For some reason they had the bathroom mirror cruelly mounted directly opposite the toilet! Talk about tactless!!! I don't even much enjoy looking at myself clothed, thank you. Anyway, it was/is a little depressing. See, I *knew* that I had gone from 105# (my all time lowest as an adult, not bad after 5 kids!) back past my usual 120# to 125#. Five pounds over niggled me a little bit...but not too much. Many of my pants still fit...the size 1-3's, as a rule, did not. Oh well, wear something else. That was my attitude, until I was so rudely confronted by that mirror. Cellulite? On me??? I don't even care very much what I look like, but this bothers me. It's gross. Twenty pounds of fat! Ick, ick, ick. Sadly, I know what is doing it: the birth control. I'm not actually eating more or exercising less. I could probably cut back to one meal a day and not lose very much of it......:sigh:

I feel like such a pathetic piece of shit. He is so nice to me, and all I seem to do is to wait for some warning sign that yes, it's too good to be true and he doesn't actually like me the way I thought he did, That there's been some sort of a mistake, that something has changed or is changing. I am so used to it, it's all I've known. I feel like my hopes have been dashed so often that there just aren't any anymore, that the stuff faith is made of simply doesn't reside in me any longer. I feel so safe, so happy with him, but it's hard to enjoy it, because I'm always afriad that it's going to end. Because it always does.

One of these days he is going to get really tired of my worrying and insecurity, and he is going to say, "Fine! Have it your way! I give up! I don't want you if this is the way it's going to be!" and then he'll go. :-( :-( :-(

I really am a pain to deal with.

I am considering dropping out of the goat world as such. Oh, I'll still keep my girls (I am still looking for a place for us and them), and I'll keep breeding them for the same traits I've wanted (nothing foils a goatbreeding program, or any breeding program, as quickly as changing your mind constantly about the goals!!!). I'll renew my ADGA membership, even though I'm convinced by now that they're a bunch of back stabbing, membership bleeding crooks, because I need teh records and the registry. But as far as showing very much, or including it as an element in my goals or plans.....I dunno.

See, what I'm realizing is that the showring B.S. is all about social interaction, who you know, who likes you, and who you hate and will gossip about. And this, my friends, is soemthing that I am simply unable to do well at. I know, because I've tried. I've rubbed the right shoulders, talked to the right people, done my homework backward and forward,and made the mistake of showing it off. Soem of teh breeders have been nice. Others seem to have been nice to my face one day and ignore me the next (or even within a day, for no reason I could ferret out). I thought, at first, that mayeb people disliked the lady I bought my broodstock from, but others have her stock and seem to do alright. What I do see is that the showring itself is politics. It's about who you know, and whether the judge likes you. Occasionally you have a truly honest and fair judge. They're rare! For a very long time, I've wanted to be one of them, a fair and honest judge who could black out the faces and just look at the goats, and only the goats. But frankly, I really don't feel like having lots of people mad at me.

Could I forget the people surrounding me and see only the goats, keep my concentration and drive the anxiety away? Could I even speak? If I could, could I actually articulate exactly *why* one goat is better than the next. I often just know, intuitively, and it takes me time to figure out why. What will I do if some hot shot with their head in the clouds walks by disgruntled and insults me or threatens me? (I suppose I'd ignore them). Do I have what it takes? I know that I can do the goats justice. The social issues and their stupid games (and believe me, they whine about this even among themselves) are what worry me.

Frustrating: That I am not able to adequately communicate my thoughts through speech, so impatient people assume (unfairly) that I'm unintelligent. Yes, I'm articulate enough here, in writing. Get me on a phone or in person and I fumble and can't grasp the spoken words to my satisfaction. I have an excellent vocabulary, but I cannot...organize it to my liking in the time frame that most people expect in a typical conversation. If they pressure or criticize me, I quickly turn into the likes of an inarticulate idiot, sputtering vehemently. They say that it's very funny when I get mad. :-/
----------------------------------------

Carrying on from the previous thread: sometimes I have the wish to be an advocate for other autistics. I miss the autistic people I used to work with as a 'worker' (they were called 'consumers', how sick is that??? I called them clients instead, it sounded more dignified). I don't miss anyone else, just the other autists. I had a dream that I was working there again, only this time I was working with one of the ones they only let me work with once or twice (they quickly curtailed my interactions with my kin when they saw I was on their side). I was communicating with him, in non verbal ways, and we were interacting. I hesitiate to have written this. It isn't professional (fuck their professionalism!!!), and it feels weak somehow. But it bothers me deeply, the way our kind are treated. Frankly, I don't care where on the spectrum they are: they have a right to stim, a right to experience the things they do, and a right to be unique. They have THE SAME BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS that regular people take for granted. I get so upset, I feel so futile. We are autistic, NOT sub-human.

I was lucky; for all that I was smothered and abused, it would have been far, far worse had I been labeled. I am not against labeling per se, hell I like to label and categorize anythign that comes to my attention. If I see a plant, I want to know what it is, what it's related to, etc etc. But when a person becomes nothing more than a label, something to be dehumanized, to excuse inexcuseable behavior to them *because* they're autistic is WRONG.

As anyone with half an eye could tell, the tendrils of my mind have been searching out all the different branches of thought and perspectives on autism. I joined first Aspergia and then wrongplanet.net, tried in vain to jumpstart the local autism support group (mostly because I wnated to meet more of my own kind), tried-even more vainly- to be an advocate for the other autistics at S.L. Start, devoured books (some of which I threw across the room because they'd been written by an ignorant normal with no idea what he was speaking of), signed up for a research study on how autistics think, searched for and read blogs and websites by other aspies and people on the spectrum....the only thing that's been holding me back is that I don't have enough time to pursue it as much as I'd like. More than anything, I've introspected: focused on replaying my childhood in my mind's eye, watching myself, how I felt, what I did, the reasoning, when it was so much more pure and unsullied by the tyranny of the normal world.

Went back and read my old report cards annd school records: "We are working on getting her to speak up so others can hear"...."is well liked but often plays alone on the playground and in the room."....."seems to need a lot of teacher approval and encouragement"..."needs to keep her desk neater". What amazes me are the things that they did NOT write...but I suppose I don't have the time to get into that. All the signs were there.....for those with eyes to see them.

Anyway, I'm getting diverted. If there is one recurring idea that enrages me, it is that autistic people are, by definition, fucked up and need to be fixed, cured, and improved. The notion that any hope for our success in the world is entirely dependent upon our becomign just as nearly 'normal' and 'well adjusted' as we can be. Early diagnosis is pushed emphatically. QUICK!!! Save 'em while you still can! While there's still hope!!! Get therapy!!! I don't know if my son is aspie or not, but I do know this: no therapy. No "fixing". No "cures".

Why can't they see it another way: that an aspie has the potential for genius, more than your average Dick or Jane. That our talents and interests should be observed and encouraged, that these are our gifts and strengths. That our way of thought is valuable, unique, and should be given opportunity to develop. I'm not saying that autistic children should be coddled or babied- quite the reverse! We should be aware of the challenges facing them, but encourage independence as much as possible- REAL independence skills. Education: Waldorf schools, home school or perhaps schools for gifted children. Nearly every aspie I've met yet, online or not, has had huge challenges in school that shut them down or stressed them severely (and I could rant about stupid teachers for a long time, but instead, I have to go to my daughter's school now to deliver something to her).

Ick. I just ate a strawberry (storebought) and it was good until I detected something akin to bleach on it. It was the same with the food I ate this morning, which was boiled in water (city water). The chlorine flavor was positively nauseating. When I bite into pork, I taste/remember the smell of pigpens. I can smell cigarettes long after they've gone up in smoke...not only that they're a cigarette, but to some degree, the quality or type. I work in a deli. I can smell that the bathroom, which is upstairs from us, in a large grocery store, has been fouled. The scent of the new oil, after cleaning the fryer, drives me nuts. I won't even delve into the agony of customers walking by doused with perfume or scent, or worse, a coworker (worse because then I have to smell it all day long).
Okay, so it has reddeming points. I can get almost high off the pleasure of smelling or tasting something I LIKE, such as fruit, flowers, and so on. And I can smell flowers which other people claim are devoid of scent (impending rant....plant breeders are neglecting the scent in favor of flashier gaudier blooms).
____________________________________________________________

Due to three or more coworkers getting sick, I had to work 7 days in a row at the store. The effect was that I had a meltdown the day before yesterday, was a bundle of nerves yesterday, and today I'm beginning to feel more....controlled. Maybe. All five children are here today, and my 4th just stood next to me and asked "May I have some milk?" three or four times, with the cup stuck in my line of vision, before I was able to comprehend what he was saying. He has a habit of saying the same thing, over and over and over, with the same inflection each time.....eventually it gets through.

Geckos: We now have three leopard geckos, given to us by a guy Tim met at the laundromat. I am still getting used to them. There is something about that that is too strongly reminiscent of serpents for me to pick one up yet....but I sit by the tank and watch them undulate around the ample landscape. We planted a large bon-sai type tree in there, and they climb it or lay underneath it.

Goats: I let Reflex, the senior buck, into the main herd and penned up all the doelings who are too young or small to be bred. There is going to be some inbreeding and quite a bit of linebreeding going on....but in all honesty, the other buck, while he's of decent quality, just isn't what Reflex is. Reflex is strongly, heavily linebred on Sodium Oaks Sasin. See his pedigree and inbreeding data here. That pedigree contains Sodium Oaks or Shahena'ko (which is strongly based on Sodium Oaks) almost exclusively if you track it back far enough. He is 20.34% inbred, with 7% of that being Sasin, and next two top contributors are Sasin's sire and dam.

:gasp:!! Inbreeding!!!! Egads!!

Not at all. Careful, judicious inbreeding or linebreeding in animals can procure some of the best animals there are. It gives consistency. The caveats: you MUST cull aniamls that are substandard and you must be careful about mating two animals which exhibit the same negative traits (although this applies also with outcrossing).

What is interesting and makes Reflex so special: many Sasin daughters or progeny highly inbred on him are very hocky, as Sasin himself was. The daughters also tend to have overly large teats (a hazard to the doe- they're likelier to get caught on soemthing and torn or injured). But Reflex just happens to have a very wide, open rear leg set, and so do his daughters, and only one of them so far has had huge teats. Most of all, he's a very consistent buck- his daughters usally come out like peas in a pod. Did I mention that he's always had a very calm, gentle, non-aggressive disposition, and his daughters tend to as well?

I love that buck. I can't wait to have another crop of his daughters hit the ground.

A stinging thought occurs to me, unbidden: if he, who smiled at me, who talked for long hours into the night with me, who stood up for me, who helped me when I was too proud to ask, who I could go to with problems to be solved, who worked with me, played with me, who informed me when I was out of line and unreasonable, out of at least ten people to attempt the task, he was the only one who could teach me to drive....He says that he is not, was not, my friend. That we're only aquaintances. My mind still ponders and puzzles over this, agonizes over it, unwilling to digest it whole....but let's not get stuck on that. Here is what niggles at me now:

If I wasn't his friend, after all that, then what about all these other people who don't know me half as well (if that)??? My head swims with grief for a moment.... It seems to me, logically spekaing, that none of them can be friends. They are all aquaintances.

I am depressed. Working at the job I am doing is very hard. The multi-taskign is driving me crazy. Even worse are the coworkers, who insist on insulting me by saying that I am "normal". Shut up!!!! I'm NOT normal. I've never been normal. Tellign me that I am does NOTHING for me, other than to deprive me of any valid reason for being the way I am. When you believe I am normal, you are telling me that I can change the way I am, that I have been this way by choice my entire life....and that's a fucking lie. I can't change that I cringe at sounds and textures and the sudden appearance of people when I haven't been expecting them. That "teamwork" is nearly impossible for me, that what it means to me is to find some task that needs to be done and that I can do all by myself while they all do something else. Etc etc etc...

I don't understand why my diagnosis should be threatening to them. Why are THEY so invested in my being normal? I'm happy the way I am. Well, about as happy as I can be after being warped and castigated by the normal world for not fitting into their narrow little mindset. After everything the "normal" world has done to me, do I want to be one of them? I think NOT...

See, I think that there is a need for us and a place for us in the world. The problem is that they don't recognize that unless and until we do something impressive, and most of us get so battered down that we never even come close to realizing a frgament of our potential.

Regarding Mortality

---

From the July 2003 issue of Discover magazine:

• From birth- 44 years, accidents are the leading cause of death in the U.S.
• Included under the definition of accident:unintentional injuries, motor vehicle accidents, and medical errors.
• More people die due to medical errors than from breast cancer, car wrecks, or AIDS.
• Pretty scary thought, eh? We have pink ribbons and mammogram advisories, AIDS education, benefits, research, and so on, and mothers against drunk driving, but no (well, none to my knowledge) organized attempt by the [public at large to curb goof-ups on the part of our doctors.
• In fact, I think it's safe to say that most of us trust our doctors implicitly. If we DO dare to question our doctor's judgement, we can expect to be shot down with a cold stare or an arrogant answer.
• Yet, from reading non-fictional accounts written by interns, residents, and medical doctors, it's quite clear that they're all too aware of their own shortcomings. Therefore, it strikes me as a bit odd that some/many of them will hardly let you get a word in edgewise, even if it's information that they might need to take into consideration in order to make an educated decision.

---

Moving Along Here.....

• Congenital defects strike us down in a noticeable way until we hit, say 24 and older. Perhaps it actually makes a good bit of sense to marry late, thereby ensuring longevity for your offspring.
• The real MONSTER is heart disease, the leading cause of death of all Americans, 29.6% of us. One in four...almost one in three.
• In women aged 25 or older, heart disease kills more of us than breast cancer or stroke combined.
• Even in your youth, ages 15-24 (both genders) it's still the fifth leading cause of death.
• After 75, it's #1.
• Cancer's another ugly one, just second to heart disease at 23% of all deaths.

More on this later.......

Spring is coming. I feel it in the pores of my skin, I smell it, so faintly, in the air. I sense it strongly. Most of my goats aren't bred.... Time to plant... I have to find a place....and yet, I don't want to hurry that TOO much; after all, this is a place where I'll be for at least a good chunk of our life... At any rate, I hate contacting people...realtors, landowners, etc. I think the only time where I actively contacted total strangers and was happy about it was when I was calling everyone I could think of, or who was referred to me, about the Sodium Oaks herd (dairy goats). I can't believe that didn't bother me: "Hello, you don't know me, but I heard that you knew something about Sodium Oaks!"

This is one area of aspiness that has always handicapped me: my aversion to making phone calls could almost have been classified as phobic at times. I also actively avoid all sorts of paperwork: bills, even when I have plenty of money, paying rent, all sorts of trivial but important things that involve interacting with a person. I'll avoid them, and then it winds up hurting me.

Case in point: hospital bill- the hospital has called for me twice. I owe them. I can't pay it. I'm scared. What I should do is to call them back, tell them I can't afford it, and set up a payment plan. That is why they called. If I don't do th is, they're going send that bill to a collection agency. I've been telling myself this for the past week or so. I still haven't worked up the nerve to call them. I'm in absolute dread of it. There are a number of other similar medical bills like that.

Again: Paying rent- it's due today. I don't have the money. If I call the landlord, he won't charge me a late fee if I pay it on the 4th, when I get paid. IF my check covers it. I'm afraid to call him. I don't want to, I keep avoiding it.

What I need is to hire someone to handle all this stuff for me, all the bills, and the business phone calls, and....maybe other stuff too. This stuff stresses me so much that it's unreal...

From the QPB Dictionary of ideas: Friendship- mutual benelovence that is independent of sexual or fmaily love. Ancient Greek philospher Aristotle distinguishes three levels of friendship; the useful (friendship as a common enterprise), the pleasant (Friendship as entertaining companionship), and the good or virtuous (friendship as mutual esteem).
___________________________________________________________________
Yeah. Mutual esteem. Entertaining companionship. No matter how hard I try to wrap my brain around this, I still can't see a....a...uhmm...contraindication? contradiction? (something like that) here.

Human interactions leave me baffled, bewildered, and, too often, deeply hurt. I don't think I'll ever really understand the way 'normal people' "just get over it" and sever ties with friends (or aquaintances or whatever). And see, this is why, if I have an ounce of sense in my head, I won't even try to make a real friend with a 'normal person' again. They can't be deep and true and faithful as a friend. They can write a person off without a second thought and not even be faintly sorry for it. It's happened to me since I was a kid...I should start learning from now on. Whatever distance and alienation from people I don't really know might occur, whatever the loss of a potential for a true friendship (and I think that is remote), it can't possibly equal the pain of rejection from someone who's turned on you for either no reason at all, or they don't tell you, or they deny they ever were one(hey, that's a handy way to elude an explanation), or because they don't like your hair or religion or whatever. From now on, they can go find someone else to screw over. :-/

Ack, my hips are burning and just generally making me miserable lately. If I needed motivation to go out and buy some coral calcium, I now have it. :-P The girl I worked with tonight was lazy and left almost all the work to me (whilst I half limped around the deli wincing), and then to add insult to injury, she acted high and mighty and as though I'd ticked her off. :shrug: Yeah, I got irritable, but I do, when I'm in pain, and she did VERY little work.

What else: oh, yeah. I quit the other job. I got uhmmm, trying to think of a strong enough word here, so burned out that it wasn't funny. A series of events occrrued that brought me to my utmost limits of patience...but basically, my issue was that I wanted less stress, and to work with people I could related to: autistics. The stress continued, and I was assigned almost exclusively to clients with MR (mental retardation). Don't get me wrong, I liked my clients. I enjoyed working with them. I simply couldn't relate to them as I wanted to, and so working with them was stressful to me. Also-I hesitate to bring this up- I felt uncomfortable in that workplace, as though I didn't belong there, as though I were an outcast, unwelcome. And the thing is, it mostly began after I disclosed the results of my diagnosis. But it wasn't blatant enough for me to call them on the carpet about it. Or maybe they weren't that way at all, maybe I imagined it. I feel like I have failed my clients by quitting. :-(

The very bright side: I can see my children more. BUT, financial issues will come into play. I was comfortably making ends meet by working seven days a week, even if it did drive me out of my mind (or more deeply into it, actually). But my children come first. I have an obligation to them first. Yes. This is right.

Most Admired Men (a short list, which does _not_ include personal figures, for the sake of tact and diplomacy): Albert Einstein, Luther Burbank, Donald Smith.

And why:
________________________________________
Einstein- Obviously there are a lot of things to admire about Einstein, and I'm not suffieciently educated to go into it all. But, here is what the great mind had to say about religion and the concept of god: "The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events-provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causation really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A god who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object can be responsible fot the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."

Burbank- a dedicated plant breeder of exceptional honesty and integrity of character. A lifetime of his work has influenced our lives in more ways than we can even conceive of.

Smith- Alpine dairy goat breeder. I never had the privilege of meeting him, but his bloodlines are in virtually all my animals; I simply will not use a buck, except under exceptional circumstances, unless it has a strong Sodium Oaks background. The way I see it, this guy showed up the snobby straight wolrd of French Alpine breeders and showed them that yes, a gay man can beat them in the showring with grade and American animals. I love that.

I heard a blip on the radio a few days ago that really pissed me off: according to a recent poll of americans, the Most Admired Man in this country is George W.Bush. (23%). Now, that annoys me to no end.

• First of all, where the heck am I whenever they have these polls that supposedly are inclusive of all Americans?
• Secondly, I'd like to know a little more about this poll, because that doesn't sound objective to me at all. Was it multiple choice? (ala, check a. Sadaam Hussein, b.Bin Laden, or c. Good old W...)Or some similar collection of celebrities and political figures? How many choices were there, anyway? See, I am not a huge Bill Gates fan, but I'd vote him over George any day, especially if those were basically the only choices aside from a few other people I'd never heard of.
• Were the choices limited to men who were still alive? Otherwise, Jesus or Gandhi didn't make the cut? Hmmmm??? See, I would like to know what te criteria were if it was a multiple choice list.
• It *should* be fill in the blank. Then people could list: "my dad, the greatest, sure loved him" or, "Granpaw", or,"a teacher who mentored me and changed my life", etc etc. Then the choices could be _true_ and _meaningful_ , not mere public heads whom we see on a T.V. screen but whom have little direct personal impact on our lives (well, unless you're headed to Iraq.....or someone you love is...)
• Barring personal figures:our dads, uncles, lovers, teachers, and so forth, if the poll were a simple fill-in-the-blank, is that really what 23% of ostensibly thinking American adults woudl voluntarily choose?
• I mean, what about scientists, doctors who've made medical advances, humanitarian figures, etc? What about artists, musicians, writers, great minds, people who've beat the odds and managed to succeed in the face of adversity? OUt of all the great choices at our disposal, would 23% of us be mindless enough to select the current president? What about past presidents? Jimmy Carter, for example. Nice man.
• My whole point here is that I think the poll was far from objective. If they're gonna blurt it all over the radio, across the country, I'd much rather hear an honest answer. And my guess, at least if it were on a personal level, is that what we'd hear is "Dad".
• I can think of a lot of most admired men on a wider (as opposed to personal) range. Next time, I'll talk about that.

Well, I give up. This blankety blank machine has erased TWO of my posts. :furious: and both times, I was *almost* done. IRK!!!!!!

I see you.
I see you as you really are, under the mask, aside from the pretense, YOU, the real you.
YOU, stripped of the facades,
of politeness,
of the way you want to be seen.
(Yes, I see that too).
It may well be that I see more than you care to admit.
Perhaps you resent it?
I see yous that the rest of the world does not.
Dark, happy. Sparkling, stressed and dull. Faults and good things.
But at any rate, I do see you.
And I accept you for what you are, like you for what you are...
For I can see that it isn't as simplistic as black/white, good/bad...
It is only that you are what you are.
Yes.
The real you.
Accept it.....please, if you do nothing else....accept that.

Arrrgh....I can't feel anything. I still feel numb inside.

Sometimes, I feel like I don't know what I want anymore, and my life feels so gray, so blah. I could almost shake up the world or do something extreme, just to get a reaction, just to make me feel something....anything...anything not to feel like this. Isn't birth control great?? :-/ Where is the sense in being momentarily infertile if you also feel like some kind of an android with absolutely no interest in the world around you?

I get rude and witty and sarcastic when I'm like this....as if by being sharp and cutting, I could whittle away some of the shell from around me, or provoke someone else into breaking me out of it. Ack....maybe it is just that I've been stressed.....

For once, I'm not in a bad mood anymore. I was earlier, but that was before I got an Xmas gift certificate from my boss, AND my paycheck (woohoo!!)...enabling me to splurge on groceries. Now, understand: my idea of splurging is to buy a beef roast for $7.06. Yeah, I'm happy. :-) The boss is a cool guy. He wants us to work, but hey, that's what he hired us for, isn't it? I mean, when have you met a prospective employer who says, "I'm looking for a few motivated people to sit on their asses and shoot the bull all day long." ??

Recommended sites:
wrongplanet IMHO, this is THE aspie site.
triton (server for my websites...well...I like it...sort of...)

and reading: Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams. If I could afford this, I'd buy three copies: one for my my employer's library (they WORK with autistic people, they should have an insider's PERSPECTIVE of autism...it'd make all the difference in the world), one for the local library, and one for myself, which I'd loan out liberally.

Current mood: very sad. I feel very discouraged and disheartened by the number of friends who have either dumped me or were apparently not ever friends in the first place. (And at this point, I'm not sure which it is, and it really doesn't matter). It hurts, immensely, to think that some of the people that I thought were extremely trustworthy, that I would have trusted with my life, were phony, that they were only pretending to be my friends. I think mostly, it's that...well, I believed in them. I trusted them. And above all, I thought they were *different*. I wanted to believe that the world wasn't entirely made up of phonies....Are the only genuine people in the world autistic or otherwise very different? The thought troubles me. I want to think that the answer is "no".

:anxiety: The father of my 3 youngest children is threatening to take them all away from me and move across the country. Now, I may not be the most perfect mother on the face of this planet...I won't even begin to claim that I am. But what I can say is that I do love them....and I feel like I have bent over backwards to try and be as fair as possible, to them and to their father, to maintain a level of fairness throughout the parting of ways...and I don't feel like it's been returned.

What to do? Prisoner's dilemma? Be nicey-nice and hope it all works out and that he is only testing me for a reaction? Retaliate before he nails me first? :-( What?

I am very unhappy about this, and I am trying to remain level headed and not sink into a blame-game or a place where I demonize the other party.

All I can say is that I would never take them and move across the country with them where he couldn't see them, or couldn't afford to. I wouldn't even move an hour or two away. I have too much regard for what was good in our history and for the happiness and stability of the children to do that. I guess it was naive of me to think that this was a mutual thing. :-( :disillusioned:

observation: grey, silver, and to a lesser degree white or black cars are more difficult to see in foggy or rainy weather. Less safe, imho.

AND...I am really, REALLY, REALLY MAD. The guy that I dumped some time ago had five goats from me at his place (two of them were his). Once I dumped him, he quit feeding them and now he says they are starving to death and he will butcher them if I don't go up there and get them. As though I could magically materialize them to me....he lives wayyyy up on a mountain, up a road that is very dangerous in winter for my car....and the last thing I want is to get stuck in the snow or mud at his place (ack!!!!). This is the man, by the way, who claimed he "could not" butcher or kill something, yet he is threatening to do just that, who criticized their thinness (they were wormy) and gave my ex an earful about that....in fact, he cursed him. (May the curse return upon you, you fucking hypocrite!!!!) I *cannot* drive up there. I have been searching almost frantically for people to help me with this... At this point, I'm going to call either the animal rescue place or the cops. He has neighbors who come down to town several times a week, one of whom is a longtime friend of mine and knows ewhere my other goats are. There is simply no excuse for this except that he is punishing me for dumping him. God, what an *ASSHOLE*. (On second thought, no. That's a slight against the anus, a perfectly servicable organ.) There are not adequate words for my displeasure.......>:-X

I miss my children. I have to find a way to be with them more often....

Chess club tonight, I'm at the library waiting for other players (if any) to show.

I am trying hard to.....strike a balance. See, here is the issue: I'm already really weird/different. I know that. I go through cycles. Sometimes it's more pronounced. Since working 7 days a week, splitting up with my long-term partner after 7-8 years, and not having the restorative daily time with the goats, I have been a _lot_ more stressed. Heck...I don't like to admit it, but living independently is very, very difficult for me. The bills, the little thigns that have to be dealt with, the phone calls, juggling everything...and I don't really mean financially or emotionally. Just having to coordinate all that is not as easy for me as it would be for your average Jill. Throw being a single mother into the mix, plus two jobs...and it gets worse. I am proud of myself, that I've actually been able to do it alone, without state aid or handouts (well, except for the food bank occasionally).

However, there is a backlash: the stress comes to bite me in the butt. I've always stimmed, ever since I can remember. The difference is that I now stim constantly, at least one sort of stim and maybe two, and openly, in public. I *need* to stim. My social deficits are much more apparent since I am now forced to interact socially on a more or less perpetual basis (my idea of hell!!!). I am constantly on the line.... True, my social skills are better now than ever before, even though ironically the lack of them is more glaring than before. I'm also, in many ways, more blatantly weird than ever before, and NO!, I'm not doing it on purpose.

BUT I am tired of feeling defensive over who I am, tired of even trying to be normal (futile if anything ever was....I don't even know what normal is, how they think is a mystery to me...) tired of being ashamed of my self, of my identity, of the creative, wacky soul that I really am. I *like* who I am. I *accept* it. There is a beauty to autism, and I embrace it. For the first time in a very, very long time, I feel deeply happy and content; partly because I've finally found another soul that I understand, *one* soul in the world that I can connect to....and partly because I feel at peace- the answers have been found, and I'm OK. Ermmm...those two are interrelated.

I don't like the way normal people are. I *hate* their dishonesty, their sneakiness, their subtleties, their emphasis on phony ritual niceness and insincerities. I DON'T get on their case, even though wehat they do infects and permeates the entire world with their taint. WHY in the heck can't they return the favor and leave me alone, to be the way I am, without undue criticism?

After three days of my car not starting, *stranded* in the parkign lot of the store where I work, I finally fixed it, myself (thanks to Tim's input!). It was such an....empowerign feeling...to be able to do that alone, rather than takign it to a shop. I don't like having to depend on other people. You never know when they'll let you down. Anyway, I was soooo happyyyyy that I went back into the store ( i was able to fix it on my 15 minute break)...clicking like crazy. And all day long, my co-worker got on my case for clicking. "REBEKAH!!!!" "That's enough of the clicking now, Rebekah", "No more clicking...." etc etc. I tried to compensate with the metal tongs (used for picking up deli food). They made a pleasant metallic click. It's good for getting the attention of customers who just stand there idly and can't make up their minds. They snap out of it and order. :clickclickclickclick: Yes. A particularly cranky co-worker snatched the tongs out of my hand abruptly. :irk!!!:

I tried really really hard not to click too much. It wasn't very easy.When I feel good, I want to click. Or spin, or wiggle, or bounce. Or tap. Or spin. Something. I want my body to reflect my mood: happy, energetic. Spoilsports. I resorted to wiggling my fingertips joyfully, but it wasn't as satisfying as hearign the clicking. So I tried to click out of earshot, mostly. Everyonce in a whiole I'd forget and see soemone's back start to stiffen..before I stopped.

See, I am not one of those people who can contain themselves. If I'm happy, I express it. If I'm miserable, likewise. I have been berated OFTEN for this. Throughout my life, people have been on my case, wanting me to be dishonest this way. :sticks out tongue and waggles fingers:

I won't do it anymore. I won't. If the way I am is not good enough, I don't know what to say...I will spend my time and life with people who can accept me as I am, and who will be as honest with me as I am with them. Yes.

Rock, rock rock. Stim stim stim...... It is hard to type when you have to quit rocking to do so..... :embarrassed:

The thought of being hurt or rejected is just....a terror of such magnitude... :shudder:......I have been known to reject people *first* simply to escape the possibility of being hurt myself. Often. Hell, isn't that what I do on almost a daily basis? I reject the whole goldanged world because I _do_not_trust_ the people in it.

But when I can't do that (or someone gets me first) I ache and hurt and rock with pain...it is so scary...how many times have people I trusted shattered and broken me into little bitty pieces, powder even, and not even been sorry, or done it flippantly? Left me there, to slowly regroup, to gather all the little pieces of myself back together one by one, sobbing all the while that I just don't have it in me to do it again, that I'll give up...but I did, and I didn't. Stubborness can be an asset.

Believe it or not, my being scared like this is actually a good sign. It means that I've had the strength, the nerve...and most of all, the need...to make myself vulnerable once again, that I've actually let soemone get close enough to me to do that. My chest has strange, streaking sensations that ache high pitched when I feel this way.....:squirm:

Four of my five children are here, talking, laughing, making noise, getting into things. It's nice. It's a bit overwhelming though, not only the noise and activity; I find it very hard to focus on more than one person at a time and even harder to choose which child to focus on- they are all special. The effect can be one of spinning mentally and physically from one thing to the other, focusing on whatever is the most urgent, interesting, demanding, etc... and in all honesty, that exhausts me quickly. That's what I usually do. After an hour or two of it, I'm feeling pretty depleted... So today I'm trying a proactive approach, to spend time with each of them one at a time.
--------------------
Otherwise....I am feeling compelled to tell/inform people about Asperger's and that I have it...and then questioning whether this is really such a hot idea? A LOT of people seem to equate autism with *mental illness*. It is _not_ a mental illness. It is a difference in thought style and patterns, it is a developmental disability at worst.
-----------------------
And sighing over the nastiness life dishes out to us. Not because we deserve it, but because we are different, because we are a little more defenseless than other people, because it can be hard to sort it all out or to tell that it's coming before it's too damned late, or simply because we look gentle and quiet and like they can get away with it. >:-( God I hate people with that mentality.....WTF is the matter with them?! THEY are the normal/healthy ones?!!! Puhhlease!!!!!

Also, I have a lifelong habit of not knowing how to defend myself, of not knowing under which circumstances it would be appropriate, of not being able to do so unless I get really MAD...and it takes a lot to make me mad. And then there is the whole adrenaline-fear-anger sensation that for me is very hard to deal with...my heart pounds so hard I can hardly hear anything else, let alone think or retaliate...the words flee and leave me speechless...the emotions flood my system and I shake and tremble....if i say anything at all it is soemwhat incoherent, irate, and I say it in a tone of voice that doesn't even sound like my own, I hear my voice as though watching it...often I cry from the overload of it, from sheer rage...and that is even worse...to sit there trembling and crying when what you want to do is to scream at them. Afterwards, I don't even remember most of what I said. I'm just filled with resentment and loathing that they made me lose control of myself, that I lost control, that they got the better of me. If I end up crying an dbreakign down in front of them and they acted like they were gloating over it?...I never forget that. Even if things get repaired eventually, it will never be the same...becuase they made me cry and were *happy* about it..and I will never trust that person again.

God, what a negative post. I guess what I am getting at...oh, heck, I don't know. I am just sitting here now with bits and pieces of such scenes playing through my mind...the pain and betrayal of it poisoning me if I'll let it.

My hips are killing me today...and they hurt more sitting down...Oh well. That's life, we all have little aches and pains I suppose. I can deal with it. What used to really suck was when I was stressed out, broken up inside, AND in pain. Then it was like, the hips hurting was just the last straw... Eh, this is boring.

So, I finally have a functioning computer again. (But I'm still at the library right now. I couldn't wait until tonight, and I was stressed out and needed to unwind for half an hour before going to the next client).

So, I don't know if I mentioned this already: I have been formally and officially diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. The missing puzzle pieces and blanks of my life are being filled in, the failures are making sense, and I am not taking them as personally as I did before. I feel *whole*, I am OK. It is just that I am an aspie living in a 'normal' world. But I am different, and I am valid, just as valid as they are, with all the same rights to be myself that they have. Yes!

So, having this settled, I am printing out articles about AS for family, close friends, interested parties. That way, when they ask, "what IS Asperger's?" I won't be standing tongue-tied by the enormity and...how to tell them, how to explain it....

Yes. I feel better, much better. My life has meaning, purpose, I am not a freak, I am not alone. :-)

Current mood: Depressed, of the variety that I think is labeled 'despondant'. When you've gone through life alone, feeling like a freak, like an outcast, like nobody in the world understands you, there's nothing to equal, to even come close to *finally* finding out that you're _not_ alone, that there _is_ someone else out there who feels and thinks the way you do. There's just nothing to compare....the giddiness and delight of it....of finding a soul that you can truly and actually *communicate* with. I have found my counterpart, at a time when I'd given up, when I had given up on the idea of such a person existing. And...well, I'm speechless. It's so nice, I feel FREE, finally. Like flying after living in a cage your entire life.

Alas, he went home. And I'm beating my thick head against the normal world again, I fit in less than ever, and I don't even really care, they can have their fucking world to themselves...but I do want at least one ally with me, and that's enough. I never know, I can never tell, if they're mean to me on purpose, or is it my imagination? :-(

God, I am actually sitting here crying...I _never_ do that in public...but it hurts so much to feel excluded and alone.

Well, I don't have a lot to say today...I have been cleaning the house..once I actually *started* it, I hated to have to stop and go to work! Irks me to stop a job before I'm ready to....The accumulation of goods that I do not use or need is a problem....and oddly, I am sitting here scratching my head wondering where in the heck they all came from?!

I think the deal here is that I am so focused on Tim coming to meet me that there aren't many mental faculties left over...heh...heh...

Scared/happy/excited/anticipatory/wondering/waiting.......

"Create for yourself a new indomitable perception of faithfulness. What is usually called faithfulness passes so quickly. Let this be your faithfulness:you willl experience moments, fleeting moments, with the other person. The human being will appear to you then as if irradiated, with the archetype of his/her spirit. And then there may be, indeed will be, other moments, long periods of time when human beings are darkened. At such times, you will learn say to yourself, "The spirit makes me strong. I remember the archetype. I saw it once. No illusion, no deception shall rob me of it." Always struggle for the image that you saw. This struggle is faithfulness. Striving thus for faithfulness you shall be close to one another as if endowed with the protactive powers of angels." -Rudolf Steiner

That's what love is all about. The initial thrill, the surge of feeling, the exhiliration....is....elating. But love is about seeing who the other person really is, fighting to keep seeing them for who they truly are, in spite of circumstances, in spite of their faults.

This doesn't mean that one should be foolish, that one should allow abuse, or put oneself in a harmful environment....I do think it is entirely possible to move on with life and still love the other person in *that* way....but still....this is what love means to me.

:-) I am happyyyyyyy........

Except, I wish my mail program would function. I have been here at the library for almost an hour now and still can't access it. Frustrating!!!! Well, I should start up my yahoo account again, I guess. I just hate having to check two different places for mail. BUt see, this sort of thign happens too often, and I'm getting really sick of it.

Otherwise: bills are piling up mainly because I hate to deal with them. I have the money, I just dislike interacting with the outside world any more than I absolutely have to. Now is that STUPID or what??? See, that just isn't sustainable. If I don't pay my bills, I WILL have problems. What I should do it to mount a clip board by the door with bills to be paid, in a place where it will bother me to see them. When they are paid, I shoudl tuck the receipt into the billing statement and put that into a file.

It is the same way with rentals. I didn't have a lot of success b/c I hated to call around. I am no longer phone-phobic, just phone averse, (well, for the most part!!!! heh. :-P ) JObs, same thing. I have to force myself to do these thigns, and it rubs me the wrong way the entire time I do it. I soemhow have this feeling that it isn't that way for normal folks. Again: post office box. I sometimes don't check it for well over a week, even thoguh I drive right past it almost every day. I hate to do it. I don't like opening that box and being flooded with input and announcements and expectations of bills to be paid and so forth. So I simply ignore it until I realize that I really should do it...and teh thing is crammed full (mostly advertisements). And people see this stuff, and they don't understand. They think I am lazy or irresponsible. They do not comprehend that it requires EFFORT.

Anyway, enough of all that. I have to leave for work soon and here I am ranting about a world that has been desgined by sociable people in such a way as to make social interaction necessary and almost unavoidable...so that there is not a choice, so that you cannot preserve your precious bits of social energy to lavish on someone that you really care about. See, that is what I want: to spend the time with soemone who will understand me, and I them, and to whom it will matter as opposed to countless trite, shallow exchanges.

All my life, all I have ever wanted (other than to be an artist, and I knew in my heart that I already was one) is to find someone like myself, who speaks the same language, who understands the 'weird' stuff that is wonderful and priceless to me...to enjoy the companyof someone who would be *interesting*. And man, I sure have been banged up along the way, looking, searching...but I would still give it my all to find someone, just ONE person, that I could relate to and be truly close to. And now, I have to pause, because I ask myself (to self): Do you have anythign to give?? (me back to self);Well, yeah, I think so. Yeah. Sure I do. I have LOT to give...but it would be in my own way. Normal people have always been disgruntled b/c they did not want the expressions that were my truest...what they wanted was for me to fake and simulate THEIR kind of expressions. And then, when I went dead and feelingless on them, they blamed me. :-( But yeah, I do think, under the right circumstances, that I have everythign still there. It's just, at this point, there is a part of me that really begrudges all the wastedness of my life, I wish I could gather it all back up again and give it to the right person...if...as I hope...there is a right person.....

Just trimmed hooves. The goats are so soothing and restorative. I feel all calm inside.

Anyway, the rental fell through. Turns out I couldn't have goats there, and a friend badmouthed me to the potential landlords. So fuck it. I'll just stay where I am for the winter, and work on making things workable for the goats where they are. That makes more sense anyway, and I'll be closer to the little kids. I didn't like the thought of being so far away from them. See, I had a gut-level feelign of uneasiness...in there, somewhere, I KNEW it didn't resonate, but I was forging right on ahead anyway. :-( That wasn't smart. Next time, I'll wiat until I feel right about it.

So now I'm thinking that what I'll do is save (ha!ha!) and try to buy a place in the spring, maybe. I don't like renting anyways.

What grabbed my eye today: willow leaves floating on the pond, golden and gray, they were all gathered by the current of the water, which was a pondy dark green. The contrast was wonderful. Oh, the colors of fall! NOw, that is another thing; I am going to set things up so that I can PAINT. Not painting is killing my soul.

Damn....I smell like a goat....and I don't have time to shower before work....ack! Actually, I think it is just my hands....should have worn gloves.

I am moving. I have _finally_ found a place where I can have the goats. I will have to put up fencing. I will have to build a small barn or shed. BUT, I can have them there. I have been looking for this for months, and now that I've found it and put the rent money down on it, I'm not happy. I hate moving. The change is scary.

I do think thoughk, that once I get used to it, I am going to like it a whole lot better. It's out in the country, with big tall trees near it, wide open field, mountains, fresh air, only one neighbor next door...it is just the trasition and the stress of adjusting that kills me.

My car seems to have died, and at what a time! I was VERRRY sick yesterday, stayed in bed all day. Then I couldn't sleep well at night, because I had slept most of the day. My mind raced with all kinds of thoughts, and I couldn't post them or go online because the computer I have isn't, at present, operational. The night dragged on....

So today, I still felt like shit, cancelled work (and I can't afford to) and decided to go pay my P.O.Box fee (I'd remembered in the middle of the nightthat it was due at end of last month, ACK!!!) and then go to the library. The car sounded bad. At the Post Office, I looked under the hood, it all looked fine, pretty much...given that I don't have a clue what I'm looking for...so after settling business there I tried to go to the library. WELL... the car died right in the middle of the street, and wouldn't start again. A friend (the real kind) helped me to enlist help to push it into a parking spot and then go talk to a mechanic about getting it looked at (I *really* cannot afford this). Now I am sitting here at the library wondering how in the hell I'll get home without walking 6-7 blocks in a somewhat feverish state, and worrying about losing the job in Sandpoint for lack of transportation.

It's not been a very nice day; I should have stayed home. BUT, would it have been any better to break down on the way to work tommorrow? Not really....

Current mood: fragile. I just broke up with my boyfriend, and i'm not happy about having to have done that. The guy I loved more than just about anything told me that I was naught but an aquaintance to him...but I think I am finally getting some closure and slowly but surely recovering from that...and I am sick and have to go to work. Bleah. Here's to the beautiful thigns in life that make it all seem worthwhile. :-)

Wow this blog has boring. Anyone reading it would think that I think only about one thing, and believe it or not, that isn't exactly the truth.

Sitting on the smooth black leathery surface of my purse here at the library is a willow leaf, long, slender, yellow speckled with gentle brown, like a banana. It also reminds me of a gondola, the way its tip curls up.

On the wall to my right is a big (3.5 X 4') painting of local type scenery. It is a little trite and tiresome.... I'd like to be able to say that I find it inspiring..alas I do not. The only thing about it that I really like are the hills, which are rising from the water (Lake Pend Oreille?? Priest Lake?? The river? Soemthign like that). They are just as earthily sensuous in their rounded bulk as the real thing is to me, and the artists treatment sort of obliterates or blends the trees in, so that the rounded, drowsy voloptousness is even more apparent than it would be in 'real life'. (Whatever the hell that is...)

Yeah, what is real life, anyway? Working life? Is this life, to slave away, hardly concious of my own body or mind, feeling lost....living only in my thoughts and silent conversations with you, conversations that you will never hear.....To struggle...throughout the day...how to tell you, how to explain...that....it wasn't like that, not exactly...and to sit helplessly and mutely before the moniter at night...still unable to express it...knowing it doesn't really matter anyway.....

To look at my children, my goats, my former life, the parts of it that I loved, and wonder how to integrate that into the present and not entirely agreeable reality I've found myself in? I have to have them. They are not a burden, they are the only things I can communicate with, they are my sanity. I have to get the goats back, and I have to work out something more feasible for the children.

No, that isn't true. I communicated with you....somehow......how can I tell you that that was enough, that I didn't *expect* more....that....That I know I'll be alone...and it's OK, it's tolerable, I think....oh, whatever.....my life is a mess.

Here is the thing: I have this agreement, that when I fuck thigns up really badly, I'm mad at myself, yes. But what gi9ves me the strength to go on, to keep living, is that I determine not to make that particular mistake again.

For example: not to marry or sleep with someone out of pity or because I don't know how to refuse them.

Not to fool around with soemone I don't evem *like*.

Or with someone married; I inadvertently repeated this one, and I'm really ticked about that....I don't have time to repeat mistakes.

Or with someone who'll be unhappy....however much I love them, I never, ever want to do that again.

I have been bored.....really broed and depressed today. Boredom isn't a very common phenomenon for me, but when you're stuck for several hours in a sleepy, smelly house with uncooperative clients and nothing to do.....so I resumed Crime and Punishment. I let it slide for a while because it was disturbing my sleep when I read it at night.

I am so tired of being alone. And I mean alone in the sense of having someone I can relate to and mentally connect to as an equal. I am *tired* of people who act as though I'm a weird child to be humored or shown the right or normal way to do something or to think. I want someone to argue with, as an equal, who will understand that it isn't at all personal, that it's a dueling of the minds, who'll get as much fun out of it as I do. I want to be myself and not have to act nicey-nice all the time......to not have to feign submission in order to avoid messy emotional clashes that I frankly don't know how to deal with.....see, when I act meek and mild, it isn't *real* most of the time. It's an avoidance mechanism: act that way and they'll retire and leave me to my peace and quiet sooner. The problem is that they get the idea that that's me, and before I knwo it, I come out of my solitude and realize that I've, avoided myself into a veritable cage of expectations.....arrrgh!

So what I really need is to be able to be honest. Possibly, if I'm bitchy enough, they'll leave me alone just as fast, or potential conflicts will be less messy or arise less often.... Perhaps?

I think I may have begun to unravel *why* I sometimes get obsessed with people. Here (drumroll) is my theory:

• I used to be perfectly contentwed with myself and with who I was. At that time, I did not get obsessed over people (I should say, a person, it's only ever one person at a time).
• Then, the world began to beat the livign shit out of me. It told me, in a million and one ways, that I, as myself, was fucked up and inadequate. I was a dork. I looked stupid. I talked about weird things. I was interested in weird things. I had odd habits and mannerisms.
• About the same tiume that I began to shut down and close in on myself, almost completely withdrawing from any close interactions with people, I also started this thing of falling for people, getting obsessed with them, pursuing them, and getting rejected, which in turn would make me more miserable than ever.
• One peculiarity of my obsessions is that I tend to try to integrate something of the 'LO' (limerant object, or love object) into myself. I may start dressing like them, acting like them, using the same accent or figures of speech, standing or posing like them, etc etc. This is _not_ purposeful or concious, in fact I am often somewwhat surprised and bemused when I realize that I am doing it.
• So, to tie it all together: there was a huge price to denying myself. I didn't really feel like I could be my own person, I wasn't good enough. Instead, I adored someone else and tried to 'wear' some of that person, tried to become them, because i wasn't good enough.
• Or, to put it another way: getting tied up in knots over someone else was a very good way to overlook the fact that I was denying and squelching my own identity.

Hmmm. I am thinking about this. It seems a little odd, b/c I've always been weird and distinctive enough to be myself. Maybe I haven't phrased it the right way, or have left something out. However, I do think that there isn't any way for me to be happy out of such a relationship, even if, for *once* the other party did accept me. I would always feel a bit cheated and resentful, unless I were loved and accepted as I am, and I can't have or even accept that from someone else unless I can feel it myself. But I also don't think that such an obsession rules out the possibility of there having been real, genuine feelings for the other person.

:thinking:thinking:thinking:thinking:

I am crying because I do want closeness but I do not know how to accept it; in fact, I actively work against it. The more a person means to me, the more likely I am to behave in an indifferent, ambivalent, or even hostile manner towards them. Love is scary to me, and I do mean TERRIFYING. The threat of it and the pain it brings is such that I almost automatically push people away when I want them the most.
----------------------------------------------------
Brief synopsis of my history:

1. Fell for and became engaged to someone that I really, really loved. But somehow, I couldn't seem to tell him so, even though he did, incessantly. He poured out his heart to me in his letters. Mine were impersonal and informative.The intimacy was there, but it wasn't blatant by any stretch of the imagination. He wondered if I still cared: my heart was breaking. And because it was breaking, I laughed and pretended that I didn't really care at all. He was dying: I was afraid. I never said goodbye. I didn't even go to see him. He died without my ever telling him how I really felt.
2. Married a guy that I *knew* was nuts, that I knew I couldn't love. It was safer.
3. Some guys aren't available. That makes them low-risk. Sort of.
4. LTR with a guy, knowing that he didn't love or want me, that he wanted his ex. As long as he was distant, I pursued him madly. I fell for him *because* he was unavailable. But I began to pine for closeness, and it just wasn't happening, man. Towards the end, he began to pursue me, and I ran like hell. God forbid I should be vulnerable and get hurt again!
5. This was doomed from the start and I knew it. I knew better, but I couldn't help it, because I'm so obtuse that by the time I figured out why I was feeling uneasy and scared, it was too damned late. I honestly don't think I've ever fallen so hard for anyone before; maybe because I had my defenses up all the other times. Or maybe it was because he understood me, and never threatened me with more closeness than I was comfortable with. Well, I *thought* he understood me, at least. It felt that way. And if there was one thing I wanted in the whole world, it was that- just to be understood and accepted as myself.
6. Now I've taken up again with someone unavailable, but he's affectionate and sweet. I become remote and bitchy for no good reason. I shy away. And I don't know why, except that I'm afraid.

-----------------------------------------------
Another thing I've realized is that I think my kind of closeness might be different from the norm. My idea of intimacy isn't two people gazing into each other's eyes- I only seek this out with people I love, and even then, I have to force myself to it; it's painful. For me, it's more like, two people standing together, side by side, maybe not touching, or touching slightly, and looking at the same thing, seeing it together. It is less blatant and more...subtle and delicate, almost magical. Discussing a topic as though it were an object, with each party describing the side that they see until the two sides merge. Working on a task together with very little speech going on, yet synchronizing their efforts. *THAT* is intimacy. This other closeness thing- well, it kind of makes me squirm. I don't know how to take it.

But there's hope....because if it happened once, it can happen again. And maybe I will have to wait ten or twelve years (or not). So what? It'd be worth it, wouldn't it? Yeah.

Stomach flu- bleh.

I really need to get over him. I guess the thing is, he was like a lifeline into the world, at least to me. Things made sense when he explained them. A world that seemed to be teeming with nonsense, confusion, catch 22's and no-win situations, suddenly aligned itself into a logical, workable set of problems that *could* be solved. I don't think anybody's ever done that before for me. I mean, to me, to world is a whirling mess and it is loud and noisy and very frustraing to deal with. Just writing this is making me miss him. :-( I mean, nobody else has really ever gotten_through_ to me, not like this. I've waited my whole life to find someone who could *connect*, and now I just have to walk away and pretend like it never happened.