I Want To Go Back

I want to go back.

I want to go back and find the little girl I once was, the one who would spend long hours on the swing, going higher and higher, then leaning back to watch the sky, because it felt like she was flying, like she was free. The little girl who loved to roll down the hill, dizzy with sensation, or whirl around and around till she fell over laughing. Who could be transported by the scent of that same grass freshly-cut, and the smell of bacon on Sunday mornings, and the smell of hot tar on a summer’s day when it had just been raining. The little girl who loved ballet, and who would put on a record and throw herself around the room, leaping and pirouetting, even though she wasn’t very good at it. The little girl who devoured adult encyclopaedias, because the kid ones were just too limited, and who first learnt to draw from copying the illustration on a book cover. The little girl who would stand in the wind and feel cold go over her skinny little body, and shiver with a kind of thrilling aliveness, so that she wanted to laugh and laugh, and just move in her body like it belonged to her.

I want to go back and find the teenager who would draw endlessly, read endlessly, but somehow never get around to doing her homework. Who would lie in bed at night and look out the window at the stars, and think about God and life and love and The Universe, and wonder who or what was Out There, and what it might be like to go up in a spaceship, and a thousand and one other things. Who would stim, sometimes, though she had no idea, yet, what she was doing, or even, yet, fully grasp that others didn’t pace or rock or jiggle their bodies like this. Who could make silly jokes and laugh till she just about cried, giving herself over to the laugh completely. And who still sometimes danced, when she could, if no-one looked, if no-one laughed. But mostly, she just dreamed, and drew, and wrote the occasional poem, and felt at odds with the world, without really knowing why. Who didn’t know herself yet, but managed to be that self anyway.

I want to go back.

I want to go back and find the young woman, who, when her child was in school, would wander the streets of Auckland, solitary and content, following an internal flow no-one else could understand. Who would drink in bright colours like they were her lifeblood and feel a thrill throughout her whole body when she found some old, neglected, quaint corner of city architecture. Who would climb Mount Eden and find a quiet spot away from all the tourists, lie down in the grass and watch the clouds go by. Who wrote a lot of fervid poems, because she was trying to grasp something, trying to understand the crazy world she found herself in. Who immersed herself in studying all manner of things, in pursuit of this same objective, following one special interest or another, for as long as it fascinated her. The young woman who would sometimes put on music and draw the curtains so no-one could see, then dance and dance, just because she felt like it, just because it made her feel free.

I want to go back and find the older woman, who, in recovery from an emotionally abusive relationship, immured herself in the countryside and wrote and painted and hardly spoke to anyone for days at a time. Who didn’t even have a TV, let alone a computer or the Internet. I want to feel how she felt, the rhythm of her days, the naturalness of how she moved from one thing to another, learning again how to hear the song within. Because she was freeing herself of a dark shadow that had blighted her life, and re-discovering her true feelings, her true needs, once again. And who still sometimes danced, late at night with the music up loud and the curtains closed, even though she had known for a long time that she was a lousy dancer. 

I want more, even. I want to let her speak out, as she hardly ever allowed herself to, to reject those who would use and abuse her, to not get sucked in by other people’s games or agendas, to not give the manipulators and the time-wasters and the emotional leeches one minute of her time, or one ounce of her essence. I want to let her do and say all the things she once thought of doing and saying, but was too scared to, or didn’t think she had a right to, or was told she mustn’t, or got yelled at for saying or doing, so she stopped. I want her to walk away from anything and anyone that doesn’t nourish her, as she should have done all along, to have the courage to go her own way and choose her own path.

Because in spite of all the angst, anger, confusion, terror, anxiety, and raw aching sadness she felt, and a self-loathing deep as the ocean, in spite of all that she went through, she harboured within her a pearl beyond price.

So I want to go back.

But I don’t need to. Because she’s already here, inside me. 

And I just have to let her dance.

A Restless Spirit

This is going to be a more personal blog post than I usually do, and I’m uncertain how many others on the spectrum, if anyone, would identify with some of this.

Anyway, what’s been happening for me lately is the return of a perennial problem – a kind of deep-down restlessness. It’s afflicted me many times in the past, from childhood on, but I’ve never figured what it is I really want. I’ve tried assuaging it with this and that, speculated on what it might be from – winter blues, needing to be more creative, meditate more and better, go for a trip somewhere? - but with never any real answers.

I do know, or at least think, that it arises out of a kind of split or duality in my nature, two forces pulling me in totally different directions – and that have also been there my whole life.

On the one hand, is the side of me that likes order, tidiness, regularity, routine, everything fixed in its place, my life lined up like centimetres on a ruler. This side of me, as you might guess, is intrinsically linked to my autism. It’s the force that sees me religiously keep to my daily rituals, tidy my drawers so neatly that my mother once joked “are you sure you’re my daughter?”, and clean so hard it’s a wonder I don’t rub the pattern off things.

It’s also the part that gets flustered if things don’t go according to plan, or if something is out of place, the part that gets upset, or even panicky and close to meltdown, if there are serious disruptions to my routines and order. In recent decades, it’s the force that has driven me towards a semi-reclusive lifestyle, shying away from the world and curling in on my order like a wounded creature crawling into shelter. And in a sense, I was, and am. The world is messy, chaotic and unpredictable, and not nice to autistics. I’ve been damaged, as many autistics have been.

I’d be willing to bet many autistics, by this point, are nodding their heads and going “uh-huh, yep, I so know what you mean!”

But there’s another side to me.

It’s the side that craves stimulation, excitement, variety and yes, even change. That, every now and again, longs to break out of the box I’ve created for myself, this half-life that isn’t really a life at all, grab a few essentials, jump in my car and drive somewhere I’ve never been before, visit towns or even countries I’ve never been to, see sights I’ve always longed to see (Eiffel Tower, anyone? Stonehenge? No?), and do things the orderly side of me would look at in horror.

It’s the side of me that even remotely contemplates a relationship, even if it’s at some distant time in the future – something my other side shies away from like a nervous horse. It’s certainly the side of me that wants to see more of my aspie friends, be more ‘sociable’, have more of a life, in short.

It’s also the force that compels me to write, the side of me that, more and more, wants to grab the world by the throat, yell “listen to me!”, and tell them what it’s really like, being autistic. That wants to shout from the rooftops the truth of my life, and that of others on the spectrum. That wants to go back out into the world as a strong, independent and authentic aspie, and tell the world to Deal With It. Whereas my other side would prefer to stay cowering in my little cocoon of safety, hoping no-one will even notice I’m here.

The tension between these two forces within me is powerful. My orderly side would be quite happy living a near-monastic existence on some remote hilltop or plateau. My excitement-seeking side, however, would prefer the beating heart of a city. Tugged this way and that, by this need and that, I lurch from isolation to interaction and back again. I go away for a few days, enjoy myself, but then gratefully flee back home into my orderly little shelter. (Or should I say shell?) I go to an event, and then come home and crawl into bed for a couple of days. And so on.

At different times in my life, one side or the other has ruled. In my younger years, for example, my more adventurous side pushed me into social movements like feminism and anti-racism, fighting for the principles I believed in. I waved placards, chanted slogans, marched and demonstrated to stop the Springbok tour, defeat sexism, deny nuclear ships a welcome on our shores, return Maori land, and generally demand a better, fairer world. I was an ‘angry young woman’.

But then I started getting sick, and disillusioned, and heartbroken. So the ‘order’ side of me began to assert itself in a slow withdrawal from the world. And since exiting a very toxic relationship nearly twenty years ago, it’s been winning hands down. But now I feel like I’m stagnating… so the other side of me is breaking into flower again.

Overall, it’s definitely time for a weather change in my life. My autism and my CFS do pose limitations, it’s true, as does my sheer lack of funds. (Guess Stonehenge will have to wait a while.) But I do want, somehow, to have more of a life, live more authentically and more vibrantly. Somehow, I have to find a way to do this.

Watch this space.

My Love-Hate Relationship with the World

I have become aware lately of how much I both love and hate the world. Actually I think I've always known this, but I recently seem to have become way more conscious of it.

When I say "the world", I mean "everything that we know exists", and by "love", I mean love in its broadest, spiritual sense.

I love the Universe, in all its infinite variety and splendour, the amazing beauty of the stars and galaxies and so on. I find pictures of space totally awesome, and mind-blowing, when you think about the immense distances of space. They're saying now those vast distances aren't so empty after all, which to me makes it even more awesome.

I love our planet, because it's home, and utterly beautiful too, on the whole, still. I love wild sandy beaches, heaving oceans, thundering waterfalls, soaring mountains, rolling hills and the ever-changing skies. I do what I can to take care of it all. I love the environment.

I love animals too, not in any cutesy-Bambi kind of way, but because they are what they are, and worth caring about. Pets bring pleasure to many, working and farm animals are valuable, while wild animals play their part in the ecology. They're all our responsibility.

I even love human beings, most especially my family and friends of course, but also humanity in general. There are good people in the world, many of them doing good things, things that will help the world. Even knowing that there's also a lot of people doing harm to each other, doesn't change my concern for everybody's welfare. I want the world to be a better place, not only for autistics, but for everyone.

I even feel compassion, or at least pity, for those I have the least in common with - the blandly ordinary folk whose lives seem so boring you wonder how they stand it; the mega-rich whose wealth doesn't seem to guarantee them personal happiness; the hate-filled religious fanatics and "loony right" types; and even the abusers, rapists, murderers, etc, the last two groups of whom are so far from the Light I don't know how they'll ever find their way back. Yes, even them. (I avoid them like the plague of course, but I still pity them from afar.)

So I love the world.

But I also hate it.

And a lot of that hate, or at least loathing, dislike, exasperation, anger, rejection, etc, is connected to the reasons I love it.

I hate the idea of humans stuffing that beautiful Universe up. Even though, as an avid sci-fi and fantasy fan, I've enjoyed many stories of space travel, I kind of hope it never happens in reality. After all, colonising different parts of our own planet didn't really improve things all that much, did it? It simply created a whole new raft of problems.

I hate how so many people, especially those in Big Business, seem to be racing each other to pollute and generally stuff up our planet, would it really be so hard to be environmentally responsible? We've only got one planet, people!

I hate how some people treat animals. I'm not sentimental, I'm not even a vegetarian, and I know you have to assert mastery over animals (think of dog attacks, or a 500-pound bull trampling a human into the ground, and you'll understand why), but it doesn't need to be done with cruelty. Mistreatment of animals upsets me deeply. And I don't like either the whole 'performing seal' thing, or dogs on cushions with bows in their hair, and so on. The forcing of animals against their true nature seems to me a travesty of dignity for the animals concerned.

I hate the sensory barrage of the world. The whole blaring, glaring, flashing, whirring, humming, roaring, reeking, heaving, seething, frantic, chaotic mess of it. I hate how bloody overwhelming it is, and how pervasive it is. Sometimes I wish it would just STOP. Even just for a little while.

I hate how difficult social contact is in general. It feels like a minefield I have to tiptoe through, for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, and getting people mad at me. I hate feeling I have to choose between pretending to be NT or offending people with my bluntness or 'weirdness'. And sometimes I end up offending them anyway, or they sort of withdraw from me, or give me funny looks. I hate how tired I am at the end of any day spent having to 'make nice', and how distant I feel from, and how jaundiced I feel about, humanity in general by then, especially when I know that most of them are really not bad people, and that it's me, not them. I hate how shitty that makes me feel.

I hate the emotional games some people play. They seem to love to spin emotional webs and jerk others around. Why can't they be honest? Why do they have to screw with people's heads? What on earth do they get from it? It leaves me feeling confused, lost and like the ground is shaky beneath my feet. And then there's all those so-called 'nearest and dearest', with their silent demands and unspoken expectations, which you can't possibly know, not being bloody psychic, and yet they feel perfectly entitled to punish or pressure you when you don't meet those expectations. I hate how in relating to such people, I used to feel like I was lost in a swamp.

I hate how some people never say what they really mean, using various kinds of roundabout talk, clichéd rubbish or New-Speak instead. This seems particularly prevalent among politicians, bureaucrats and similar authority figures. An offshoot of this insanity is when these same people put in place policies designed to make them popular, but which actually harm those most in need. You can usually spot these policies by the weasel words used to justify them.

I hate how hard it is to navigate through the world, and how little help many people will give you, especially if you are in any way different. Dress differently, look differently, behave differently, be obviously homeless, poor, an immigrant, disabled, or anything else outside the norm, and most will simply look away, or dump on you for being whatever you are. I hate how judgemental of difference many are.

Most of all, I hate how so many are so cruel to each other, the damage they do, the wars they start, the oppressions they perpetuate, the 'isms' they create and keep going. I especially hate the jeering, sneering, sniggering, name-calling, derision, bullying, beating, abuse, spirit-crushing, cold-shouldering, forced normalisation and so on that is perpetrated on autistics, but I also hate how anyone else who is 'not normal' is treated. I hate that people think that it's okay to do these things to people, especially those who are most vulnerable.

I hate how if you don't or can't or won't "fit in", then you're cold-shouldered, excluded, and if you finally withdraw from it all in overloaded confusion, your absence probably won't even be noticed. The world is a cruel place, and I hate it for that.

So I hate the world. And I don't know what to do with that hate, or how to reconcile it with that love.

How do you feel about the world?

The World As A Puzzle

When I was young, I thought of the world as being like a giant jigsaw puzzle - the sort with about ten thousand pieces, which seems like just a jumble of fragments at first, hundreds of bits of blue, and lots of blurry brown and grey, and where on earth does that red bit go? But then you find this bit links up and then that bit, and then suddenly a whole part of the puzzle becomes clear, and you go, Oh! I see what it is now! I thought the world was like that, and if I could figure out enough of the 'pieces', suddenly I would understand the world, it would make sense at long last. Because it certainly didn't make sense to me at the time, in fact it seemed like a vast, swirling, chaotic mess, with rules that I could never figure out, and which I was constantly tripping over. I was terrified someone would realise how ignorant I was, and how much I was 'faking it', and so I thought if I could just figure the world out, I wouldn't have to anymore, I'd 'just know' all the things everyone else did.

It never did make sense, the puzzle remained a puzzle. These days, though I know a lot more about the world, and have put some small parts of the 'puzzle' together, the world still overall seems, well, puzzling. Only now I've realised it's actually a ginormous three-dimensional puzzle, crossed with a vicious game of snakes-and-ladders and a really, really, really complicated Rubik's cube. And the thing about the Rubik's cube, is that if you think you've nearly got it, you've in fact got it all wrong. Plus, the whole thing completely switches itself around every now and again, and introduces new pieces. Just to confuse you even more! Or so it seems anyway.

So in short, I've given up trying to figure it out. And I've realised that NTs don't necessarily understand the world as a whole better than I do. Once when I said to my mother something about "figuring out the world", she asked in astonishment, "can anyone figure it out?!" Even to her, it seemed, with her long experience of life and far greater understanding of people, it could still seem a very confusing place. And I wonder if that's so to other NTs as well - they know their 'pieces' of the world, their little corner or corners, but how much do they really understand of the bigger picture? They've probably never thought about it much, never had the urge I did, to try and make sense of it all.

The difference being, I suppose, that they do understand their corner of it, its social rules and so on, and have a general understanding of the rest, and of people in general, and that's enough for them to get along in the world. We aspies don't. We don't really have any corner that we understand, any milieu where we know the rules and so can relax; or for that matter much of an understanding of the broader social world. The result being that we stumble and bumble our way through life, trying to make sense of what doesn't actually make sense, not knowing or understanding what others consider so basic as to be not worth mentioning. And so perhaps we have a greater need or impetus to figure it out. I suspect that it's why so many aspies (the ones that aren't science/maths/tech geeks that is) go into the social sciences, to figure out both themselves and the strange creatures that share the planet with them.

How do you view the world?

Life Is Like A Game Of Solitaire

I realised something recently about the computer game Solitaire, which I play quite often, how it's in many ways a reflection of life, or my life to be exact, as I've lived it to date.

For instance, there are the 'games' I just couldn't win, and was foolish even to try. I was always doomed to fail them. But I didn't know that to start with, and so I crashed over and over again, until I learnt, painfully, the hard way - because I had no-one to guide me, no-one to point out that I couldn't possibly win them - which games to never even start.

Then there are the games I thought, even after learning about the first sort, that I could still win at, they seemed hopeful, until by about halfway through the game, I realised that they were just as unwinnable as the first, at which point I had a choice to either go on to certain defeat, or to cut my losses and walk away. "This counts as another loss in your statistics..."

Oh yes, the little message that pops up when you've lost a game - "do you want to start a new game? ...To redo this game? ...To continue playing this game? ...This counts as a loss in your statistics", etc. Whatever your choice, the message is clear - "Loser, loser!" The world has told me that too, in a complex variety of ways, over and over again. I don't need reminding.

There are also games I think I'm finally winning, yes, yes, nearly there, I've got it, my God I've actually got it... and then... BANG. I haven't. Chalk up yet another loss, and walk away. Try again with a new game, a new day, a new life...

 Sometimes, I think I know what I did wrong, and I'm all "oh, if only I'd done this, or that, chosen this or that 'card' instead of the other", going over and over the 'game', but I never know for sure, except by going back and repeating everything, and that's a loser choice in itself, and often not possible anyway. And sometimes I couldn't spot my mistakes at all. Sometimes, it only seemed like the harder I tried, the worse things got, and the more I lost. And I felt stupid, for 'doing it all wrong', for not being able to see the 'right' choices to make, like 'everybody else' did automatically, or so it seemed to me.

 Often, I would eventually stop caring, and then it didn't hurt so much, only I would then find I was just going through the motions, and not really engaged with the game at all, and my 'win rate' went down even lower.

And sometimes, finally, eventually, after much time and effort and concentration, I even win a game - only to realise, after a temporary exultation or relief, that I've been so caught up in the damn thing, trying to 'get it right', that I've actually ended up wasting huge chunks of my time and energy on something that wasn't really worth it, and that I would have been far better off employing said energy etc to some more beneficial goal.

With Solitaire, my losses rank far higher than my winning games - I'm slightly embarrassed to admit I only win about 6%, which is probably about my winning average in life as well. Sometimes life just sucks, or is it me...

Someone once said to me that 'theoretically' it's possible to win every game of Solitaire. I immediately forgot the 'theoretical' part, and took this as meaning that somehow "everybody else" "just knew" the rules, and how to win at the 'game', and only I was too stupid to figure it out. Once again, too like my life for comfort. I now realise that wasn't what was meant, but still, it's hard to shake off. It's hard to be positive about life, oops I meant Solitaire.

I think I need to try a new game.