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.