Srsly, I try not to die a little inside every time I miss TWD and Flash live tweets now.
Ok, so I wasn't really done with my thought organizing in the last post, due to time constraints, but let's jump back into that, shall we?
I have finally titled a piece I'm working on about *entire brain stifles fingers and mouth*
Still 6 pounds down from August. I'm hungry. Oh, yeah, I haven't had nachos in a week. I know everyone in the Force just felt my starvation pain. Thank you. I felt you feel that.
Cut my coffee in half again this week. Officially down to exactly one measured cup. My big mugs look half empty now. The withdrawal headache is easing up a bit.
The size 7-8 slippers I finally caved to picking up from Walmart this week feel like size 6. The disappointment is real. The saddest part is me having the smallest feet, so I can't gift them to anyone.
Now that I've managed to establish a somewhat firm fuzzy boundary around my bedroom (extremely fuzzy), my entire brain of cells is chanting TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE TAKEBACKTHEHOUSE and I'm doing my best to plug my ears and go lalalalala.
I met a woman in therapy today who has nearly 20 years on me. She was there after reconstruction on thumb because arthritis ate up a bone in her wrist. Even with the usual 'growing old' rhetoric, which I heartily agree with, the context was still so lopsided that I was glad when she had to leave so our convo could be over. I'm still having difficulty empathizing with people way older than me who have less difficulty than I do and think something is so hard when clearly they've been enjoying more capability far longer than I ever dreamed, although yes, a thumb reconstruction sounds horrid. (She was literally able to do way more than I was with the exercise putty, and I'm 7 weeks out from carpal tunnel release, so clearly something is still wrong with my hand.) It's not so much feeling self pity as ok, I already dealt with that, is there anything more interesting to talk about kind of thing. I mean, so many other drops and mentions about a real life, I wouldn't have minded hearing about what she assumed was boring, right. When I'm with a therapist, I generally try to talk about something we both find interesting since they must hear pain junk every single day and they're probably sick of it, I know I am, and I'm not there to find new friends to whine about the cold snap with. She suddenly blurted all the interesting stuff as she was walking out and I felt so gypped. Really? You just leave me dangling full of questions now...
I looked up scleroderma, since my therapist thinks I have it. I have follow up with primary the day before my birthday. I'll likely get a flu shot and now possibly donate blood to see how much worse my life might have been all this time behind my back. Meh. It could certainly explain a few things, but I'm already beyond my personal life expectancy, so it's not really bothering me, aside from it also explaining a lot of how my mom went down. One of my sisters has sjogrens, the other has I think 3 kinds of arthritis all over her body, and other things abound as well, so I'm just not terribly surprised. What did you get for your birthday? Scleroderma. Oh, sounds nice. I am really appreciating the wicked sense of humor a friend of mine on my street had before she moved away, and I'm missing it lately. It didn't matter how badly something sucked, she lived her life the way she wanted and always presented as having it all together, and that humor was a sort of mockery I didn't understand back then. Totally getting it now.
I'm the sort that pulls back into a corner making sure other people are doing ok first. That's a tough challenge, especially since I'm not at all mousy about how I feel. I shut up because I love them. Well, poor @bonenado hears it, and I do regret that more often than not, but I have so many memories of what I thought of people around me as a kid, and I know how ugly grown ups can be even when they think they are being kind. I'd like to think I'm living up to this life challenge, being a natural narcissist and definitely being territorial in a matriarchal way, meaning that my challenge is about learning to be sweet. It's hard. I wasn't born sweet.
But yeah, I'm all swimming around in a head full of where are we now kind of month because here comes my birthday, and *bam*, Google pulls the G+ rug out from under me, and inside a very dark room I don't generally share even with my psychologist, the swears I can hear inside are making even me cringe.
Our world revolves around the whims of the uber wealthy, you know that right. I should have gotten slippers from my local sheepskin guy. I should have stayed my course instead of following people on wayward ventures over the many years, and there have been several. I should have branded by now. I should be merchandising already. *quietly rests head on table because banging my head on a wall would only make it worse...*
My best advice to anyone going into carpal release and/or arthroscopic surgeries is to clip your toenails before it all goes down, because that's going to be a regret for awhile if you don't. I'm 13 days out and still cannot simultaneously grasp, squeeze, and hang onto a clipper with my dominant hand, and even if I could, I can barely keep my knee bent enough to reach it long enough to conquer that without spiking some interesting pain.
On the positive note, though, the stitches are out of my hand now and I was able to get into a Walmart for big packs of paper plates and paper towels while I was out, since I forgot about that when bonenado drove us in over the weekend. I went slow but my knee is still a bit throbby, and my hand is definitely feeling the drive today. Was told it'll still be at least a month (or longer) on both hand and knee before I'm really capable of faking some kind of normal again, and to be patient and keep doing my commanded stretching, flexing, and resting. I'm still dropping things, but ahead of the game on most of the other healing. Overdoing will obviously be counterintuitive.
Things this month-
Switch out the Kaspersky before the 12th. Yes, still using it... But that's my last day and I need to be on it before auto renew.
Prepare for MS Office and Geek Squad protection renewal. This is my big money month.
Actually contact (nicely) the publishers back and don't let another 5 years slide by.
Check up on the Lexx stuff lightly piling up, but involves work.
Start leveling up my commands and responsibilities on the game server.
Review my money plan for the rest of the year before the holiday slide goes out of control.
Organize the material I already have into a format and fill in the holes.
Today I am airing out my house while the weather is finally nice again. Starting to sound a little like autumn out there. Thinking about trying a fried cheese sticks recipe tonight. Accidentally wound up with mozzarella sticks this summer. Catch up some chores around the house in between rest breaks. Need to keep using paper plates, plasticware, and plastic cups for another week or I won't be able to keep up, but I have started cooking a little again.
As small victories go, I have kept off 2 pounds from the start of last month to the start of this month, so I will continue my daily weight calendar logging and keep working on reigning in the calories. It was really challenging doing this with all the extra sitting around I've had to do, the extra meds and IV fluids, but I'm done with this ridiculous feeling stuck on this plateau thing and aiming to get at least 20 pounds off over the next year just by cutting out that one extra nibbly a day that I'd gotten used to doing since the kids moved in. It's really hard being surrounded by extra yummies that high energy people inhale without a problem, but at least I'm keeping it stable. I won't be able to get back on the regular routine I had a couple of years ago until my knee is ready, so no burning stuff off.
Since this month has been so challenging I splurged on some Halloween lounge pants for $10. This autumn is all about the lounge in my fashion wear. Comfort is key. Oh, almost forgot, my blood pressure is still fabulous after all that. Controlling that pain level is super key.
I've never had writer's block. I have life block. I envy people who have more than one hour a day (if that long) to sit and write without having to stop. Most of my blogging is done in bits and pieces, sentence here, paragraph there, and lots of stuff you don't see me doing in between. Today is the first wonderfully peaceful, quiet, and as close to pain-free as it gets after surgery day that I've had in a long time. I'm organizing my track.
I was told during a soliciting phone call today that the referrer did research on me and put me on a list. I'm easy to do research on, but I wanted to know how they got my phone number... Still blaming FB for that slip up.
I couldn't actually read that one without exploding my brain right now.
So this publisher is originally licensed in Wyoming, offices are in Delaware, packaging assembly something to do with being located in London, and the call center is in the Phillipines. By the time the pitch was over, the caller literally complained that the call took 30 minutes. Well, I was the one who called back after a voice mail was left, so...
clicks to cute memes
I just wanted to see why publishers are suddenly soliciting me over the phone again. Yes, it's a huge market looking for international content, and I totally qualify. It's just that I was told by the company that I already contracted with that they never solicit.
more memes...
She also kept mentioning how soft my voice was. I finally told her I'm recovering from airway during surgery only yesterday. Did that stop the pitch at all? Nope.
one day..
So I'm in demand. She didn't have a clue what I actually DO, but she assured me I'm very marketable.
This playing card is from the the board game 24: Countdown
which I have in my house
In 2008 I struggled with who I feel like I'm supposed to be being. I struggled with my belief system and what I inherently feel is right. I struggled to express myself against a mainstream grain that had me rigidly locked into formation to the point of self destruction. I struggled for my life, my soul, my sanity in a world full of locked rooms, rules about keeping secrets, and masks we were all supposed to be wearing. Colors suddenly seemed very important to me, and it was crucial that I find my color. I kept remembering blue, it permeated my dreams throughout my life, and I could feel it was time to migrate somehow.
Always dreaming, never sleeping, kind of seeming I'm ok,
Touching no one, having no fun, wishing to go out and play.
Hear me whisper, feel me passing, wonder what they think of me,
See me fading, I'm just shadows, tasting only what is free.
No commitment, no surrender, nothing to pretend to hide,
Live forever, slowly dying, falling out of either side.
Keep me running, flying nowhere, prancing round a misty dawn,
Racing stillness, moonlight standing, floating wreaths of breathy prawn.
Nothing matters, worldly guessing, logic hopeless reason chance,
Sculpted meaning, mindless treasure, my place is to sing and dance.
Ever since that spring I've felt like if I don't say what I'm supposed to say, what I'm here to say, I will fail. This is one of the first really honest pieces I ever wrote for public. Bluejacky (originally on xanga) is here to be honest. Going back now and rereading this after running into the Law of One is blowing me away. (That is a simplistic link for easy condensed thought, nothing else.)
(I'm struggling with the format moving this over from original since the coding went through a webkit grinder during server move years ago, and blogger won't let me preview correctly, so I'm winging this. I got it wrestled into a box on the laptop, no telling how it will look on mobile.)
Stars on a blue spectrum are moving toward us. Ever since I was born I have been fascinated by this kind of blue, blue light, blue in nature. I even wanted to be blue. Blue skin, blue hair. I sometimes dream in vivid blue.
Sometimes I feel like I have memories of something other than here as I am now. I have tried reading a few new age books and am a little disappointed at the consistent romanticism, although I long ago reached the conclusion in my childhood without anyone telling me this, that we are here to learn, and that if we fail to learn while we have the chance we get 'stuck' or something. Getting stuck is far worse suffering than any suffering we go through learning to sacrifice ourselves for love. Respect and courtesy for others in any shape or form is more important than any ideas we get in our heads that drive us apart with disdain and violence. Appreciation and contentment are more important than acquisition and pride. Truth is good, forgiveness is better. Our learning boils down to whether we pick being selfish or being selfless. Will we destroy others, or will we become wise and puzzle a way to get along?
If it is true that we travel around this universe (and others?) in all kinds of bodies while our spirits learn and grow wise, then I know I have been other places than here.
Time and distance have no meaning outside this box that contains time and distance.
As a child I looked up at the night sky and knew I came from out there. I felt this long before I ever encountered the idea. I feel like this place now, although I like it very much, is a place I am visiting. This feeling is congruent with many beliefs, including Christianity, Buddhism, and atheism.
When I first was, I was joy. I was energy- glorious, thrilling, exhilarating energy. I knew nothing else. I swam in an endless world of joyful energy, all of us bouncing and rebounding, racing, feeling nothing but joy.
That is what being alive starts out as, I am sure of it. I feel like I remember it. It's a very old memory, one I cherish, one I miss sometimes, without really knowing this or understanding it. But I want to feel that joy again. I want to feel that exhilaration and energy and swim in a sea of joy.
Was that the big bang? Was that the beginning of this universe? Will I ever know?
Over a great deal of time, I feel I became aware of a little bit going on around me. This is me, that is not me. I bump into that. That is what being alive starts teaching us. We are not alone. We interact. And over a great deal of time, we learn that we affect one another.
We start simply. Photons? Were we light? They say we come from the stars, but I'm sure that assumes our bodies are made of the elements created in the stars. What about our spirits, who we are? Is there more than this body? I feel like there is way, way more.
Over another great deal of time we learn concepts. Survive. Work to survive. Cooperate to survive. Absorb to survive. Kill to survive. Rocks don't do this. Algae, viruses, cells, organisms. Are cells self aware in some tiny way? Is that how a universe of cells in a body can communicate and cooperate so quickly? Can we become more than knee-jerk reaction, more than mindless consumption?
Over another great deal of time we learn feelings and the actions they inspire. Loyalty. Protect. Help. Give. Die to insure the survival of the whole. We become a society, aware of others. Tiny birds do this. Some insects do this. Some plants do this. Basic training for everything from the least of these to higher organisms like dogs and people.
Over more time we learn emotional pain. Loss. Anguish. The absence of others. The idea that we cherished others. The need for others. To learn from. To love. To share joy with.
And over more time we learn the strength to withstand all of this, to grow into a new kind of joy that transcends time and place, and who we are. We learn to see it all, appreciate it all, and become- what?
What is next? Please tell me it's not some inert heaven or nirvana where we stop growing. I think we have that concept all wrong.
Perhaps this universe is preparing us for the next one. Or perhaps one day we'll be outside the cauldron of universe bubbles in an completely new way of being, seeing, and feeling.
I love being here. I love learning geology, cosmology, anthropology- the histories of everything I can see. I feel like I am so lucky to be living right now, in this time and place. At no other time in human history has so much information been accessible with my fingertips while I sit in a chair. At no other time has so much knowledge been amassed. We almost know the entire history of the earth, the sun, how long they'll last, the history of our galaxy, it's probable future, and we even now know how old the universe itself is, and so many of its secrets. We were blind like salamanders in a cave only a handful of years ago, and now we can see what seems like everything.
This will never come again in human history. If anything happens to this earth, all this knowledge will be lost. If anyone survives over the next several thousand, or even a few hundred years, what's left of knowledge will become myth and legend. It will be as if we never really existed.
Blue is much more than a color to me. It is something I once was, a state of being, information I don't know how to access, a strong feeling I'm not able to verbalize. Somehow it is part of who I am, and for some reason, it feels important. I realize this could just be a manifestation of my weird aspie brain. But I also wonder if my weird aspie brain is able to feel more than this box world we live in. I have a feeling many more people can feel more than they are able to understand or willing to admit.
Enjoy learning on this earth while we have time. Enjoy that we are all precious.
I've spent years living a double life, tearing my head apart in one direction while I soak up entertainment in another. I love to think. Over the years it's become almost stupidly obvious that entertainment is a brain training medium that seems designed to stultify the actual thought process. I brought up the movie Equilibrium in an old Autisable submission called Psyching Up – Becoming Liberated. I've made a lot of progress since 2011, but even back then my dichotomies were glowing like neon.
I think it’s really bothering him that I can so easily skate around morals and ethics in noncommittal ways. I have a few opinions, but I’ve already realized a long time ago that opinions can change and that having opinions doesn’t necessarily affect the reality around my life. In fact, I believe opinions are rather useless in most instances unless they directly relate to the way I behave toward other people, and we all know I tend to believe the person in front of me is more important than any opinions I might have. I think I’ve lost him somewhere in all that.
I can see now that he was holding space for me as I navigated my way through my jungle. I know now that I learned to dissociate, that I passive aggressively displaced blame, and that I didn't live what I instinctively feel inside is right. I spent many years pinging around in my head like a pinball, defending things I actually don't even believe in. I was trained to do that. All the same, it bothered me, and I felt compelled to sift down meaning before I lost myself in wasted time.
This spring and summer I've been catching up on David Wilcock's stuff. I had always liked all the people on Ancient Aliens and often picked up books some of them wrote, but I had never chased David around the webs. Until this year. Wow, I missed a lot all this time, probably the most and the best, but like all the other synchronicity I talk about, I probably wasn't ready for it yet. As I've been listening to several years of talks, I was very surprised to hear thoughts I'd previously had coming right out of his mouth. I've run into this before, where I think something and then run into it somewhere, and have written about how ideas seem to hit a lot of people all over the world around the same time, and I joke about how all I have to do is relax and wait for someone else to do all the work developing the ideas that I feel compulsed to get into, and it's amazing how many times that has happened. It's like I just think something, I'd like to know more about this or that, and pretty quick, I run into it all over the place. Weirdly, though, quite a lot more poured out of David that I've been thinking about for years and had never run into before, because I've honestly just never looked that hard. It's been exhilarating.
But another very surprising thing showed up in David's talks. He brought up the Cabal... I've been going deep on that for awhile now, shows up on posts going back a few years, figuring out how I fit into the world picture and why I might know more than some others, but then David connected a whole buncha dots putting logic together with spirituality in a world going down a political sinkhole, tossed in Corey Goode (so fitting that his website is down right now, everyone mentioning the Cabal is being ripped out of spacetime) and everything just lit up. The whole point to being here is on the line. Our long line of evolutionary development is right on the edge of tipping over because a few super wealthy people think they own the planet. I already knew millions have been suffering for decades (millennia) for the rich and their games, but I had no idea the portent of now.
I love Jack Bauer. I love Kiefer. I'm sad Kiefer is a tool, but I'm glad I saw his existence. In spite of fails, seeds were planted.
And this was my song when I needed it most during the hardest parts of my life.
I checked out Farscape, there are 88 eps because 22 per season for 4 seasons. I might map out a schedule for that. That could easily take a year. I know, right, that's just funny, considering my seeming severe lack of focus and motivation for my own fandom. Honestly, I've been planning this rewatch for years, and I seem to just never have the time for some reason. How do whole years just slip away like that?
My other list is mapped out and ready to execute. I will have 5 1/2 days of me time, or 'go' time. I don't foresee leaving the house. There's every chance I could fall into a funk and stare at the ceiling for hours. I've already told myself that if I wind up reiterating my fail list to myself, I'm not going to listen. I refuse to listen to that stupid fail list again. I have several youtube channels on standby in case that happens.
I guess I've processed through another feeling I had put onto a shelf for awhile because I didn't know what else to do with it. It's weird that the relief I thought I'd feel is actually just numb, like there's nothing there, which I know can't really be true, but it's all I feel. I pick it up, look at it, feel numb, put it back down, walk off, don't miss it, wander back later, notice it, pick it up, feel numb, put it down, nothing. Somewhere in my head someone keeps suggesting maybe I'm not seeing a little red flag popping up with "FEELINGS HERE" on it, but I see absolutely nothing. Do feelings just stop like that?
I remember in grade school, I was one of the innovative kids on the playground that would reorganize all the kids into focus groups, and then we'd wind up in trouble. In third grade it was Red Rover. I showed them how easily we could flip each other if we locked our arms, and everyone wanted to be flipped. All it took was one kid not understanding how the flip worked to get us disbanded. You can't just grab everyone's hair in the middle of a flip and then scream to a teacher that we all tried to kill you without it all sucking for the rest of us, and that's basically the way I view life in general. You wanna do stuff, then do stuff. If you have a problem with it, don't do it. But don't crash the entire party being lame about half-assing your own life, right? Learn how to do something, or at least learn how to have fun trying.
Of course, real life isn't that simplistic, and it takes years learning to embrace our own selves, much less how to let other people off the hook and stuff.
I guess I just wanted to feel something. It's a bit novel realizing for the first time in one's entire life that reciprocation falling flat (after awkwardly stumbling into a full out launch of tripping the wrong way) doesn't have to feel bad. It's funny that all it took was one wrong word to set me free.
It's funny that I can see in my stats when my friends' browsers get updated. 😂
Just spent an hour on a massive stat combing session across 3 blogs so I could officially stalk someone, and if you don't know what that actually means, well, I know what your house looks like and how much it's worth. Thanks to Street View and realtors, I literally get a walk thru every room in the house after I see what it looks like coming up to your driveway. It's not real time or anything, don't actually see anyone's dog and probably have new cars by now kind of stuff, but I get the basics. It's nothing really personal, just getting a slight feel for your daily life, but it's in a distant sort of way, probably kind of like looking at a Sims map.
Yeah, you can tell hardly anyone reads that blog... I'm not sure what to really do with it, so it just dangles out there.
I'm actually currently sketching out a new writing schedule, kicked my inbox over and restacked the queue, reprioritized #allthethings kind of stuff. Guess it's hitting me how hard and fast the last 3 years have flown by, and I'm past the point of catching up and basically needing to do a reboot. It helps to step out once in awhile and then come back to myself and reorganize my head. I've been feeling for awhile like I lost my path or something, and the jungle grew back around me, but I'm seeing all I did was just stop. I'm still standing on the path, just not taking steps. Time to get the machete swinging again.
This is someone else's article. I bet loads of people read it. I looked it up because this song popped into my head and I had to listen to it, because I imagined people probably think I'm horrible to say I'm stalking someone like I'm a sociopath or something, and my dx is narcissism and how weird would it be if I were both, right. The Difference Between A Sociopath And Narcissistic Sociopath?
Anyway, I'm not jealous of that other blog being popular because that's not the kind of blogging I want to do. I'm not here to be an information content specialist, although, in case you're trying to find how people survive these kinds of diagnoses, you're in the right place. I seem to be doing pretty well, keeping in mind I've got ten years of voluntary supervision with a psychologist under my belt. I've stuck my toe into #transparency the last year and a half. Time to put my superpowers to work. I have special skills, I've spent years practicing, why not see what I can really do?
April was a daily rollout of the storyboard in videos on the recently retired pinkyguerrero.blogspot.com, May was a daily rollout of the words added. It has taken me years to figure out my 'problem' (as people say, what is your problem?), and now I feel done with that.
Since opening my blog brings up the entire rollout backward, I will transfer all of it here in one place forward for easier reading, since so many readers attempted to read post to post backward this last week, even though I never link shared any of those anywhere.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Every April is horrid for me, every year. For over 30 years I didn't understand why. Pinky blog started unraveling the mystery, filling in the holes, sorting out the misplaced feelings and nightmares, the secrets I kept from myself. Each day last month auto posted a pre-scheduled video, a sort of montage of placeholders for feelings I couldn't quite pin down for years, like memory cards. It helped to let my intuition choose the vids and order them without thinking or writing. After I completed that task, I realized I can see my own storyboard now.
April first always started with a buried memory that I couldn't see. She was blond. I subconsciously became bluejacky and pinky in public blogs starting in 2007, pinkybluejacky in some places, like pinterest. You can read in this article about the terrible day that I buried for 30 years. My head puts things like this together behind my back, connecting dots before I realize what's even happening, and then I go Ohhhh....
Something else happened around that time that made my memories very difficult to deal with. I'd been ejected from a violently flipping vehicle a few months before (I think? Was it the same year?) or the winter after (I srsly cannot keep that timeline straight in my head at all), and I may have suffered a concussion that was never properly addressed (ya think???), along with other very serious injuries (nearly bleeding to death internally, shredding soft tissue down to the bones all over my body). Between a difficult childhood (none of us yet knowing I am autism spectrum) with difficult parents (bless their hearts, I can't even, and one day I've gotta), and my friend being brutally murdered, my memories are still like hash through a wood chipper. Far too much trauma, so I simply shut down once I got the call. But I still vividly remember the accident, and I've never forgotten what happened during the NDE. I may be sharing that soon.
In retrospect, nearly my entire emotional support for about 10 years of my life had come from my friend ever since the 5th grade until April 1981. I never realized or understood anything about our relationship (aspienado) until this particular video woke me up many years later in 2010 (by then I had already separately been Bluejacky on a blog and Pinky in a chatroom), and I started trying to cobble that shattered part of myself back together. She was everything to me, but even then I didn't know this was about her, deeply confusing it with a more recent friendship that had dropped off. My public Bluejacky blog skipped the year 2010 after writhing with dealing with my mom's death right on top of my own legal disability hearing the year before. I went underground, and nearly disappeared from the internet.
I'll never forget running into this song. I watched it over and over, tears streaming. The part with the black apple tore through me like a little cannonball. It's like seeing the big picture, the before and after, the going on into the future. By the time I saw this I had already started dealing with remembering the murder, but I intuitively placed it in the queue last month onto the day before that horrible anniversary, like I was making a bridge for myself to be able to cross.
April 1, 2015 I started cracking open. The ugly memories started leaking out, or as I put it, all that colorful candy flying in slow motion out of a smashed pinata. Three months later all the subconscious stuff started spilling out and I was finally on my way to truly emotionally healing. But April 5th is still very, very hard. I had repressed that memory for 34 years.
And after April 5th passed, I always felt lost and floaty inside without knowing why, and I latched hard onto repetition and super focus so I wouldn't feel crazy, never understanding why I felt like that. This playlist is an example of a coping mechanism.
Looking back now, I can see that the night of the horrible phone call was the last time I closed the door on my mom, never really to open it again. After a difficult childhood through which I was very rarely asked personally if I was ok, I saw that question in her eyes and simply just shut all my emotion down, turning my back on her, and going back to bed, quietly tucking what I'd just heard into a very dark place and making it not exist. The next day I burned all the letters my friend had written me after we moved, and walked on as if she hadn't existed. From then on, any time my mom made a big deal about anything else that ever happened, I simply went deeper into the dark until my entire heart was swallowed up and I lost myself. My life turned into anger and hatred, and I really took it out on my poor mom. After a failed first marriage to a guy who turned out to be a mentally ill pedophile, I became a hardcore drinker and went places in my life most nice people don't even think exists except on TV. I know I would never have gone down that path if that murder hadn't happened.
And from there I just didn't care. I nearly drank myself to death. I hung out with a major underground drug distrubutor and his girlfriend, living a double life with a normal job and getting to know a few people in the seedy underbelly of a big city. I didn't feel anything, wasn't afraid of anything, and all I cared about was my job and alcohol, which was probably my salvation since I turned down a sweet offer managing my own interstate drug trafficking team from California to the midwest. I had left my child with my mom during this time, thank goodness, and in three short months passed up two amazing opportunities for really good jobs (local police and hospital administration, go figure) before I finally got so sick from the alcohol I had to quit and come home.
I recognized myself as Hatter in this movie. During my dark night of the soul, I was very capable of hurting and not caring. Even with a solid moral upbringing ground into me from birth, I was cold and ruthless inside. I didn't even pretend not to be, but since I didn't use foul language, dressed simply, and remained about as immaterial as it gets, most people didn't equate me with savagery, much less a shadowy manipulator of events. Fortunately, someone came along and woke me up to other possibilities.
Ideally, inside my mind, I wanted people dead. I wanted them in pain, and I wanted them out of my way. I walked a very fine line with my intellect, and it wouldn't have taken much to snap me into a veritable supervillain. In retrospect, I feel I can empathize with people who go to the dark side. I've felt the process, and I know how easy it is to cross that line and not be able to come back. I walked right on that line for years, but I never quite stepped off into that dark side.
Well, you know what happens to people who shut down and don't empathize. I grew so pathetic that even when I started straightening up and getting back on track, I couldn't keep friends. I stumbled around so awkwardly with social interaction once I let go of the hate as a way of life thing, I went through friend after friend, unable to understand what I was doing wrong, unable to slow the inevitable disaster. I still hadn't been diagnosed autism yet, and the world of caring felt treacherously slippery. I think I know how John feels in this series. Very few people really look at John.
And then there it was, that friendship that clicked. I didn't know it was even happening. I knew something felt different, but there was so much other stuff going on both in real life and online that I couldn't untangle any of it. I knew I needed a 'home', I knew I needed people, but I still didn't know yet how not to crash the world around me. And of course, the explosion was everything that beautiful tragedy should be, and naturally I was the catalyst for a powder keg of fun and chaos. The difference this time was my heart unexpectedly shattering.
As I felt the last of the party and another friendship slipping away, I jolted awake with a lightning bolt spearing a bigger picture vision into my brain that lasted only a heartbeat, the insight I was never born or gifted with, just out of my grasp. It was too late. My head and heart screamed as the last of all of it slipped through my fingers. I've been through several deaths and a divorce before and since this particular event, but never in my life did I feel such intensity in a heady grip of euphoria and then drowning in sorrow and sadness. I realized this is what I'd been looking for my whole life, and without a doubt, it was my fault I lost it.
For the first time since my best friend was murdered, I felt like I had found a friend I could click with. For the first time in my entire life, I was beginning to form my deepest autistic feelings into words, learning how my words were both my weapons and my tools, realizing how words flick other hearts and burn other souls, realizing I can't do this by myself, and I do need another person who will help me see myself, help me grow, help me find my potential. In all my other relationships I was still apart, merely partnering or caregiving, but not soul sharing. I couldn't imagine going through the rest of my life so empty, now that I had awakened to it.
Part of waking up to the pain of loss was also waking up to my autism getting in the way of playing the social game right, and that being the reason for my friendship history being so abysmal. I can't fake and pretend, I can't live lies, I can't ignore discrepancies and inconsistencies. I question everything, and I make social interaction so awkward for other people. I didn't realize for years how I affected people around me everywhere I went. I seem to have a charismatic personality, and people seem drawn to me, yet I can't keep deeper relationships, I can't seem to keep trust, and sooner or later, friends either slipped away and shut down contact or outright let me know we couldn't be friends any more without telling me why.
Years of never having proper closure doesn't mean much to someone who is emotionally shut down, but waking up to an abyss of not getting desperately needed answers during no closure nearly did me in. I begged my doctor to send me to a psychologist down the hall, and my very first statement walking in was I need help talking to people. Obviously I could talk heads off, and obviously I metaphorically eventually killed every contact, so obviously I wasn't doing something right. Honestly, I would never have sought out that help if I hadn't felt like I was desperate to know why I was hurting so badly from another loss. That had never happened before. I had been given leads in this friendship to follow and adapt, and even when I tried I just couldn't. The very thing I'd rebelled against my entire life had beaten me down, and from this loss event I surged into deeper writings about self, masks, social solutions- years of public blogging that have given me a deep lurker cult following. As I have agonized and learned, others have watched and kept pushing me out into my little spotlight.
The very first part of healing is honestly assessing and accepting one's self. I committed to years of work with my psychologist, learning all the hard stuff about myself that ripped my soul up. I peeled back the layers very slowly, almost methodically, learning how to see my naked soul. I am mean, cruel, colder than dry ice at my core. But was I really born like that? Is that autism, or is that the result of living with autism in the family I had? I have a sociology degree, and nature versus nurture was heavily debated for several years as we peeled back everything I'd ever learned about Maslow's heirarchy of needs, about Durkheim's social psychology theories, plunging into philosophies that included Nietzche, Sartre, Kierkegaard, shredding the tunnel visioned religion and politics I grew up with, really looking at my parents as children with their own parents.
And I cried.
For the first time in my life, I cried for other people. I felt so bad for my parents as children that I wanted to scoop them up and save them, so bad for my mom as a young mother that I wanted to go back in time and hug her and tell her everything would be ok. I had spent my life being enthralled with the sciences and science fiction, but never knew the passion behind it until I stripped myself down to my naked soul and found who I really am. I'm not cold at all. I learned to be cold to stop the pain. I'm not mean and cruel, in fact, I'm so soft inside that I cry very easily every single day now, but as a child I learned to be mean and cruel so I wouldn't cry, because some of the stories I share now are so sad, that even though I couldn't feel what I was saying when I first started writing them, I have been assured they bring tears to people's eyes. In the meantime, I learned that above all, I am a survivor where others crumble, and that I can not only still learn and adapt, but I can make decisions to become who others need me to be. With that in mind, my goal with my psychologist has been to never again feel that level of loss and pain out of my own ignorance.
Part of healing and accepting myself is embracing what I really love. I know I need other people, I know I love all that crazy scifi out there, surely I could find my way back out into a place I could fit in without blowing it all up... I started practicing. Everywhere I went, every day, I became mindful of interaction, how I present, how others might see and react to me. I practiced smiling and making eye contact even just buying toothpaste, I practiced seeming like a pleasant person in lines at the post office, I practiced summarizing my thoughts on the phone and in doctors' offices instead of rambling, stuff like that. It was very awkward, lol, but I kept at it till it got easier.
And I especially practiced online. I practiced making my paragraphs shorter. I practiced interacting on social medias. I practiced talking to my kids. You heard me. I actually practiced how to interact better with my own kids. I practiced all this with the intention of still retaining my own integrity, my own personality, my own ME without any masks. I learned to be an actor. It's not the same as lying, but it *is* learning how to pretend well. The goal is to increase satisfaction levels in all parties involved, kind of like a game. The better I play the interaction game, the better all of us feel about each other. Lol, yes, I turned social interaction into a game. 😁 Over time, I'm getting pretty good at it.
Over time, with help from my psychologist, I am learning that my childhood was much more difficult and painful than I initially thought I was realizing. The trauma was bad enough without my friend's murder complicating it, plus my alcoholism and new experiences on the edges of the underground. I had a lot to sift through, filter down, come back from. It became about much more than learning how to keep a friend. This has become about a childhood fantasy about revenge, or an adult fantasy about getting even somehow. This is about why the world is the way it is, and what can I do to change that.
And then I found them. My People. To say I was elated was an understatement. I hope I never ever lose them. They are my rock, and I need them every day. It's a lot of work balancing all the things I need and all the things other people need back, but I am delighted trying to keep up.
Once I was settled into the swing of being part of a group again, that old void started gnawing at me, and over time it chewed me up so much that one of my friends commanded me to go make contact again. It had been years. I practiced all this time, but my nerves were a mess. Should I? I put it off over and over. I sort of attempted. I pulled back and let it dangle. I had never felt afraid like this, never felt this kind of anxiety over another person like this. But I couldn't finish moving forward without that friendship, that one person who had somehow snuck past my unconscious defenses and clicked into a spot reserved for only one who could never come back, unintentionally ripping the old wound open and leaving me helpless like no one had ever done. I knew I couldn't finish healing until I had at least tried to heal that. It was very scary. I used to scoff at other people feeling embarrassed or nervous. My turn.
It wasn't as simple as getting a friend back, I found out. We did patch up, yes, but we grew in very different directions over the years, and we are both learning and adjusting and it's taking time. I have learned every bit as much from this entire friendship debacle and getting back together as I have learned from being married for more than two decades. I have certainly learned more than from any other friendship I've ever had, mostly about myself- my skewed or simplistic expectations, my misunderstandings, my lack of foresight even though I'm very good with foresight with my spouse and children. I'm not very good at intuiting what a friend really needs or wants from me. I'm not able to be the person I was hoping I'd be. Still, I don't want to let go, or simply settle. What do I want? Where is forward from here? And I think she may be feeling the same way. I have definitely grown much better as a person for the efforts, again, so much more than without her, in so many ways she'll probably never understand or comprehend. I am learning. That is phenomenal after a lifetime of social stagnation. In the meantime, I have surged into all new territory with my psychologist. Some of my buried childhood memories are surfacing, and I am more determined than ever to get my 'revenge' on a brutal world that teaches people all the wrong ways to 'love' their children. This world is so broken.
Planning revenge takes a bit of obsession, I'll admit. To properly pull off the kind of revenge I can find satisfaction in, especially the broad scope part, I had to do some pretty deep thinking. What will be required of me executing my strategies? For one thing, I'll have to climb out of my comfort zone into a very uncomfortable spotlight. If I'm going to discuss my personal history and feelings with the world at large, what will this do to the people I care about? Will they stop talking to me? Is stepping out worth the risk of losing family while I'm still learning to keep and grow friendships?
Believe it or not, the hardest part was believing I could do this, not because it felt so unreal, but because I had become so disabled I could barely even piece together a single sentence. This idea of a book felt like something I'm making up, creating a patchwork of truth from slippery memories I had locked away and had really never talked about before. I quietly watched other authors launch from near oblivion into fair bits of success, and realized the goal absolutely must be success or I might never have another chance to get past the sticky pull of my depression, much less the plethora of daily challenges. Every day through bitter tears of crippling pain, crushing depression, and most of all alone, I whispered "I can do this." And every day I have made some kind of progress, sometimes a millimeter at a time, sometimes feeling so fail I could barely imagine going on, but believed I must even if there was no hope and people might think I'm only making up a lie. Because it is my truth.
Through the never ending haze of overwhelming interruption, I learned to develop some very stimulating patterns of thinking, and repetition slowly honed my sword. This had the odd effect of surging me forward with a passion that felt like my soul exploding, and from there it got much easier.
Since then it's been about learning to own my truth. I don't have to apologize for being born on this earth, or for standing up for what I need. I am who I am who I am.
Along the way, I learned that one of my deepest needs to feel recognized and validated in any part of my life is something I'm supposed to get in healthy relationships. Learning to embrace that it's actually ok to own a skill set was one of the hardest healthy things I've ever done. This runs completely counterintuitive to the guilt I was raised to harbor over every little thought, word, or movement in my existence. The freedom to be is kind of like realizing you can stand there with the fridge open if you want to.
After the guilt part goes away, life gets more fun. I started asking myself- What do I really want? And then I'd ask- What am I willing to do to get that?
Basically more than anything, I want to write. I. Love. Words. Words are an endless game and thoughts never stop, and I happily thread and sculpt ideas into stories amusing myself, so why not do that out loud? Why not put those words into something I can hold in my hands? Why not make words that can be held in hands all over the world?
As for what I'd be willing to do... Going public as a real person was one of the biggest decisions I ever made in my life. I think I thought harder and deeper about that than I did about getting remarried, lol. Making myself available for people to contact, standing alone in scary spotlights at the height of depression spells, literally listing my flaws. I am willing to do these and more, despite a developing paranoia (that my psychologist kept insisting wasn't really social anxiety) and a solid history of public humiliation.
Fun? I said fun, didn't I? Well, I think deep down I long to go skydiving, so why not take the same level of risk writing? Why can't writing feel edgy? The best writing is the scary stuff, like confessing your soul and then wobbling away feeling sick after hitting 'publish'.
When I originally thought of writing as a full time hobby/art/possible living, I didn't envision the live blogging I do now. Well, these 'we' tagged posts are scheduled, but you know what I mean.
I never feel alone on the internet, and trackers show me I very rarely am. This blog gets hit so continually that it feels like a hangout, maybe on the exclusive side because lurkers come and go freely without other people knowing they're here. As reclusive as I've been in the past even with my internet history, I like feeling that I'm not alone. I guess like with any sport or challenge, you really don't want people seeing the fails, but knowing someone still shows up regularly even after the facepalms has been so inspiring that I have been able to surge far past my originally intended platform goals. Until I experienced this, I never even envisioned it. This was pure accident.
I'd love to propose the idea of 'lurker engagement' as a great assessment tool. I don't think this is utilized well in general analytics. I've had statistics classes in 3 different fields of study (math, geography, and sociology), and if there's anything I'm good at, it's trends over time. When you use engagement to assess blogging needs, include the silent returns. They may not 'engage', but they are definitely engaged. I have 600+ documented returning readers that clocked over 10 returns each, and a fifth of my readers spending 20 minutes to over an hour at a time reading and clicking through more posts while they are here.
You heard me. Yes, documented. Those of you throwing in the towel need to stop that. On the outside it looks like I average 30-40 hits a day and very rarely get comments. I'm not 'engaging' my audience. On the inside, people are keeping this window open and clicking 'next', and apparently quite a few have me bookmarked. It's about learning how to read your analytics. You are not alone. Don't stop just because you can't see people reading what you write.
But more than reaching out, I want to be part of. Every mind I touch becomes part of my existence, just as every mind that has touched me has incorporated me into theirs. Standing up and reaching out is a very big deal now in a world so saturated with repetition and lemming behavior modification. More than ever it's important not to be like everyone else, molded into easily herded sheeple. The dreams we see on screens don't have to belong to bank accounts. We don't have to break corporate ice to spread our dreams.
Someone told me once they could make my dreams come true. I was so floored that anyone could even say that, presuming to know what my dreams are without even asking me.
The only person who can make my dreams come true is me, and I know now that I will stand alone to get them. It's ok for real life to bump us around and we curl up and hide a little, but I cannot go back to sleep with the blue pill, and I will not be quiet. I refuse to be forgotten and not missed, just another autie who fell through all the cracks of society...
"This is ten percent luck Twenty percent skill Fifteen percent concentrated power of will Five percent pleasure Fifty percent pain And a hundred percent reason to remember the name" by Fort Minor
I nearly didn't put this song in the storyboard. This one holds the angst I need to finally just get over so I can finish what I need to get done. I embrace that hanging on to a wisp of a could have been is what motivated me and got me this far, but I must allow that it's time to grow up and move on. I can't help, in fact probably will always need, remembering that my spark was fanned into a driven flame by those who are very real and outside the complex world going on inside my mind, and I will always be thankful that I was able to wake up more to what I could be even under mountainous duress and through devastating fail. I will be ok, and I am ok, and all is right in my world.
I ended my storyboard with a new direction I'm going, away from introspection toward creation. I've cleaned my closets, purged my doubts, faced my sads, and now I just want what I want. I want to do what I came here to do. I, we, all my selves from all my survivals have come back together and we all see now why we are here and where we are going. I am looking forward to a more emotionally healthy future and a joie de vivre I haven't felt in a very long time. I don't have to feel strong to be strong or feel brave to be brave. All I have to do is be me, live my life, say my words, and love my people. I'm done with being angry and hating, and I never want to be like that again. Being born autism spectrum into a judgmental family history rife with rigidity and guilt is my superpower now, and I will never fall through all the cracks and be lost again. I'm here for everyone to find, and God or the heavens or the universe or whatever is bigger and better than us bless all the eyes that read my words. Thank you for finding me, and I hope it helped. I know the nights get pretty long.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
This is the first time I've been able to cobble together a coherent timeline of events in my story. I live with a shattered sense of time orientation, and writing in a decent enough format has never come easily for me. This is practice.
I'm very thankful to a world of fandoms teaching me how to put words to feelings that I wasn't in touch with via fanvid smashing, fanart smashing, and an occasional fanfic. Emotional healing can take years, even without added traumas causing multiple PTSDs and cognitive and social challenges like autism spectrum.
As I've mentioned time and again on the now retired Pinky blog, I blog for myself, but very grateful for lurkers showing up and sometimes latching on, and especially the ones who quietly keep pushing me back out here saying I'm on the right track.
