Whispers in the dark

That’s what I’m doing right now isn’t it? Whispering into the dark? No one can see me, and you can only hear me if you pay attention. It’s a defense mechanism. 100%. Its an effective one at that.

I purposely share of myself in a way that only those who really want to hear what I have to say have to listen. I’m constantly worried that I’m boring people, or upsetting people, or keeping people from things they would rather be doing. To compensate for and hide that little anomaly about myself I take a back seat in life, waiting for people to come to me, to let me know they are interested in what I have to say, and only then do I open my mouth.

Even this. No one asked me to write this blog, but it’s like talking in an empty room with the door wide open. If someone walks by and is interested in what I am saying they are free to enter and even join in if they like. I love comments, even the negative ones. They show me people are reading, and give me an insight into what people might enjoy.

This is a struggle for me, and I’m treating this like my diary from day to day, discussing what’s on my mind and trying to organize the way I feel about things. I put it on the web because knowing I’m not alone helps me drastically and I’d like to think I provide the same for at least a few other people. I have gotten an email or two thanking me, so I must be doing something right. For those who aren’t comfortable with that, that’s alright too. I’m glad you are reading anyway.

My mind is running in circles, this is a lot to process in a short amount of time. That mental disorganization sometimes comes across here and if I seem a little inconsistent I apologize, if there is a particular aspect of the blog or type of entry you enjoy let me know and I’ll see what I can do. Otherwise I’m sure the topic or genre will come back around if you watch for it. I express myself constantly and in many ways, but I can be a little spotty about the application. Keeping up with my brain is a full time job that keeps creating backlog.

Cheers.

Stone

I sit at the edge of the night
Watching the frayed bottoms of the curtain rise
Searching for all the missing pieces
That I seem to have left scattered in the wake
Of my tumultuous flight
To reach this precipice

Curled in upon myself I seek warmth
Protection from the cruel winds
That taunt back and forth across my flesh
Screaming in agony for release
Into this, the twilight of my former existence.
I shiver, and I wait, and I watch.

I was beckoned here by the taunts of a childhood best forgotten, these seeds of dismay took hold early and the thorny brambles they grew are too thick for the fragile to pass. I hold them deep inside, protect the hearts of those I love from the true depths of my own depravity, and lie fetal in wonderment as my own imagination threatens to tear my very essence to shreds. But these times I need as well, for the tears I cry are the tears of the Gray of Matha, born of portent and tragedy, and they doom the messenger, my own unrealistic despair. They are the tears of Frigga, and as they pass the portents change, and resurrection can begin. They cleanse my soul of its own poison, and cure my blindness, that I might resume my stolid vigil.

What I watch for has never been clear
A glimpse might peek from the sheltered sky
But lost in the fog of my own solitary confinement
I wait, but not in silence,
Questions echo across the empty span of darkness
Fall back down to shift and swirl about my huddled frame
The scratching of talons on the earths own crust
It calls, and I scream defiance

I lived in this place of denial for many years. Even after I discovered this world I drifted in the unrealistic expectation that I had to be a certain type of person to qualify. I strove for years to mold my personality, convinced early on that my fantasies where just extreme versions of what I really wanted. I have vacant memories that float around my brain, snippets of conversations that once danced circles around my understanding of who I was. Voices that spoke calmly, in deepened tones, as they told me what and who I was. What I needed, what I wanted. They bore a hint of truth and conscious reality, so they never sounded hollow on deafened ears to my own screaming desires. Submit they whispered softly into the cracks of my foundation, and I felt I had no choice but to listen, my own regard so eroded in the swollen waters of their power.

Creeping up from behind they sat
Sharing my space for but the passing of a moment
Eternity in my tiny world, where dark dreams held sway.
The stony façade, the marble iciness of my gaze
Though tempted never strayed
Oaken wisdom, thorny roses, petulant weeds
All tossed and broken in the storm

So I sat alone. Still lost in wonderment at my inability to find my own definition. Each eternity that passed just waking further the demons that danced along the edges of the curtain on the horizon. The one that hinted of wonders, and horrors, and screamed truth loud enough to ring bells in my ears. Their talons crept forward, to rent deep into my flesh, valleys for tears to find passage to the parched and dusty earth that settled where I sat. Alone was far better than the flaccid reminders of what I should be, I should be waiting, and watching, and searching for answers.

When the curtain starts to rise
The edges start to crumble,
Open eyes clenching shut as the light of what has been hidden sears forth
It flashes and falters, for the truth cannot be so clear
Gone again, tears form at the corners of steel blue eyes
Melting stone in their path, fragile flesh exposed
To the twining thorns that twist and flourish around me.

There is no path through me, that was the mistake of lost souls that tried to chip at my base and alter my perceptions. But these thorns did not seek to alter, they twisted and twined and snared me in their embrace, taking nourishment from exposed flesh as it was offered in turn. Each sapping strike bleeds my soul of the doubts and worries that plagued my ideals, and in these thorny brambles I find comfort and solace. Given life in that brief flash of understanding and truth, he continues to grow around me, entwining my soul and making my cry out to feed him the blood of my own pain to sustain the growth of his power.

Stone cannot be bent; it must be chipped away, shed in the light of destiny and the scope of self knowledge that the mind can grasp. The demons still dance at the edge of my awareness, but the raging inferno that tips every thrusting thorn that drives through parchment flesh, tender and weak as it flares and burns in its wake, lends translation to the voices they cast across the opaque distance between fantasy and reality. With the solid wall of his own beasts, reverberating whispers that speak of depth of character and are mortared by protective nature, to bounce from they take on tones of meaning and understanding.

With prodding claws he drags forth my tears
Each searing drop of agony a question lost to wings
They form wider with each strike leading further into the recesses
Twisted realities that lead to a path labeled destruction
By those who care not to heed the warnings
These thoughts are not placid
These raging waters of destruction that persuade me to drown
In seductive images, and terrifying nightmares
Knowing that those thorns that drain me, leaving me helpless in his embrace
Bear also the fundamental ambrosia that grants me life
The vigil continues, but I sit not alone.

To the music in her mind..

She dances alone in a clearing full of eyes all alight with wisdom and understanding if only they could see her. They cant, she covers her own eyes to keep it inside thinking that if she cant see them they cant see her, and she’s right. What they see isn’t here, its nothing but a shallow veneer wrought of lilacs and ivy woven tight with thorns to prick the unwary and keep a million tiny pieces trapped inside. Pieces that she has painstakingly collected through time untold and clutched in the tiny fists that beat against the chest of humanity.

Its not a simple as they think nor as hard as they imagine to dance beside her, but the vision they behold blends and wavers between this world and another baffling their concept of reality and truth. Frightened by what they can’t understand they watch on and the whispered songs they should have heard from the dawn of this act vanish beneath the din of observation and judgment. Still she dances, uncaring that lines are blurring and unmindful of the storms that are brewing overhead. This is her time, and her place, and they cannot really see her after all. They could dance beside her but the very nature of their world holds them back.

She falls exhausted to the dirt at her feet and carelessly they rush to her side, words of solace and pity that grate through her veins, burning her with the intensity of their desperate advice. Clenched fists that they would see this fall as weakness, this need to stop and catch her breath as impairment, did they not see her dance? Surely if they had they would know she deserves this moment in the dust, the sweat that glistens on her skin, the pounding heart that threatens to burst from her chest. They didn’t, they saw nothing but the tears and anguish of a child too afraid to reach out and take their hand, too lost in her own dreams to even see that they only want to help her understand. They cannot see that its not she that needs to understand.

Why can they only see her here she wonders, when she lies in the ashes of her own humanity too weak to rise and greet the song that plays endlessly through her mind, and her tears begin to soak the fallow earth that cradles her prone body. Mired in a net of judgment and evaluation she could drown in her own thoughts as they try to surge past her lips in a torrent of explanation, only to be lost in the stream of labels and opinions that pour from their mouths. Careless definitions cast forth in an attempt to find a way to keep her here, in this world, where they can see her. She rises to her feet and though she still cries she smiles and turns away, shrugging off those hands that seek to bind her to this reality. There is nothing for her here but dust and ashes, and so she starts to dance again, hoping against hope but knowing better, that this time they will finally open their eyes and witness the peace this dance brings her.

Perception

Some will seek the tangles in the depths, only to be trapped and lost in a cage of their own interpretations. They close the doors to their own minds, slamming them shut one after another in an attempt to hold together their fragile and shattering sense of self. The cracks that mar the surface ebb land flow like the tides, for sometimes these feeble attempts at enlightenment form mud that seeps into the cracks and fills them. But the reality of truth flows past these shallow dams, they loosen the bits of debris that tries to lock itself into feeble wisdom.

If only these eyes could see, if only the walls that contain this all could be torn down one brick at a time. If only progression could force time back in its wheel, then the voices of things once uttered in distress could be trampled under the heavy tread of common sense. But alas, time marches on and the voices that once echoed so soundlessly from wall to wall, fade in the distance between then and now. Who remembers the whispered tales so forgotten in their own past they cannot see the light of the present shining bright into their imagination, beckoning and tempting of things that could lead the soul to peace and the mind to clarity?

Feeble winds and feeble tales spread slow and tend to whimper with dying breaths, for without progress the wings could not unfurl, and the butterfly would never soar, forever doomed to the path of the earth, chained by the bonds of altered evolution. Stagnancies breeds disease, and this disease that burns fierce along the pillars of the bridges casts its shadows long across the path that leads onward, forward, one step at a time.

The arms of comrades fallen by the wayside, point the way through the mires that try to grasp and claw, draw them into its heart where it feeds on those who call themselves the truth. Gaping rents in the understanding of those too blinded by base achievement to grasp the difficulties within their twisted hands. Psychic vampires who sneak unwary through the triumphs of others, seeking to pick and prod at the delicate fibers that hold the sleeping eyes of dreamers as they wander from room to room.

My spirit sings at the cusp of the deepest pit, obsidian darkness and an echo that fans out forever, like a stone dropped from far too high to ever pierce the delicate skin of the oceans that abound. Laughter fills the emptiness of the blackened rooms behind the closed doors. For those without eyes to see, or bridges to traverse the severity of the landscape, shall trip and stumble to the knees of a child when faced with the certainty of their own mistakes. Someday the slap shall send them reeling, and the crystal palaces built so carefully, brick after brick, in careful progression, will shatter and fall before the eyes of the disbelieving.

Progression relies on the imperfections of humanity, for with nothing to improve on how could we progress. And yet there will always be some who can refuse to see even the plainest of colors as they pass before their eyes. Some who will always see the calming blue that descends from above as the crimson red that surrounds their defenses. My song mourns these lost souls, who have forgotten how to forgive themselves all transgressions that they might learn and grow and seek the metamorphosis that allows them to soar.

Indigo blood sinks deep into the soil that holds captured the feet of those who wander too far down the path of self righteousness, those who would dare scratch insults in the dust in vain attempts to be granted company in the face of their own denied misery. Grant them succor, and their claws rend and tear at the pages that hold the destiny of truth before their very sight. Grant them solace and they cry foul and dismay, that one would dare offer sanctuary in the depths of their own endless drive towards totality.

Let the angels be warned, that the demons that hide within the hearts of those too important to care for the opinions of others exist in the closets and under the beds. Intolerance is the nightmare that lurks in the shadows and causes fear in the night. Each time the evening descends, another voice fades from the echoes, another is added to the chaos, another twists itself into knots with its own failed logic. In all cases, at the end of all tales, reality and truth will prevail, for that is the path of progression, and there is no denying that.

Keys

Dreamers whisper back and forth across star strewn skies
Their voices crisp and clear on the breeze
Parading their hearts for the world to answer
With echoes of immortality
Amongst the marked

Those who bear the brand, who dance attendance
To the dark that lives and breathes eternity in their souls
Seek the light in the darkest of places
Seek the recesses of their own fragile motives
And find the truth hidden in the caskets of confidence

Deny the honesty that screams defiance at the masks
At the peril of long forgotten deceptions
Rising to devour what remains of the will to be whole
The stone that hides the true image from prying eyes
Also blinds eyes that seek fulfillment
In a world that doesn’t belong to them.

The never ending pursuit of happiness
Foiled at every turn by the fragile’s inability
To take ownership of the weakness that bleeds for acknowledgement
With laid blame they hide their scars
Laying bare their own chances

Acceptance marks the beginning
And the path grows longer with each step
Twisting and turning past ethical lessons
Taught in fear of the unknown.

Shed the scattered teachings that the truth is what they speak
Cast the muttered discontent aside in the face of bitter reality
We are the nightmares that lurk in the abyss of our own subconscious
We are the light at the end of our own tunnel
We are the keys to our own success
We simply need to unlock the door.

Normal vs Sane

What is normal but a figment of their warped imaginations? It doesn’t exist in my world, never has, despite the endless times it’s been thrown at my feet. They tried to throw it at me but it never stuck, how could I be something that doesn’t exist. I may as well try to be a unicorn or a dragon for all the good it would do me. I can’t be anything other than what I am, and try as I might I will never master the magic of transformation. I tried and I failed before I learned how to mimic their cries and let them come flocking to what they wanted to see, I’ve forgotten now how to do even that. Not that I care.

I refuse to pretend, I’ve spent my life pretending and I don’t think it’s too much to ask for my loved ones to accept me for who I am. I know it isn’t for most, the ones who already knew about my world and love me and would never ask me to change, but I worry about the rest. Will the social stigma Autism get the best of them? Will they crumble beneath the pressure of the media to find a cure? Will they stop seeing me for the person I am in the face of what they see as a disease? Or will they open their minds and their hearts and see the truth about the girl standing in front of them and all she has to offer? I don’t know, I can’t predict how they will react, I don’t understand them at all. It seems so easy to me. Stop trying to change the things you have no control over and just accept reality into your life.

I’m not hurting anyone, hiding away in my little world. I don’t pose any threat by remaining peripheral from all those but the few who will meet me half way. I could wish for the ability to expand this close circle, I could visualize it in my mind, but still I would open my eyes to find that the power is not mine to make their choices and all that remains are my whispers and the hope that they will hear them. One little voice saying that trying to be normal is counterproductive to remaining sane. You may as well try being a unicorn, or a dragon, for all the good it will do you.

Opening Minds

I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to whimper, I’m not ever going to let a lone tear roll tracks down my dusty cheeks. I won’t let the world know the pain they cause, the scars that cut through my soul, marring the edges of my very spirit, and leaving me crying in agony on the inside. A cold face is all they will receive in return. Their cruel taunts will pass my ears with the speed of a wave, crashing against the rocks, and yet will not wear me down. My strength is moored in the lines of the earth, and the energy that sustains it runs through my bones as well. Laughter may echo across the lands of my mind, but my own can join it in harmony, and soon the mocking shall fade, no power without consent. I won’t let them see the shattered webbing of the core that is created, when laughing minds refuse to see the truth, when the sheep inside their hearts follow blind along paths of destruction.

The fear that rocks my being is one for them alone, and yet they will never understand this, for the weight of the world rests in their hands, and the power of it makes them gluttonous. Wrapped deep within layers and layers of gauzing, cushioned from the damage they cause themselves, and everyone else in the process, my heart still weeps but I won’t let them see. If they opened their eyes, saw the lines in between, walked the tunnels with lamps instead of blindly floundering on, then the world might last forever. Takes but a moment to ask the questions that provide illumination for this journey of ours, and the light a single one may cast can light the way for countless others who follow in their wake. But no, some people fear the light, and the knowledge it may bring, that in the glare of the truth they might find they their perspectives a little warped. So they hide behind Ire, and claim to have a greater understanding of the world at large, when all they can really see is the walls they have created in their own little reality.

True bravery takes a step outside that door, those walls of safety and comfort, to see the world from the eyes of another. Why won’t I cry? Whimper? Because it would make no difference, cruel eyes would just flash and call it weakness. They would jump to conclusions, assuming they hurt me, that the wounds that appear across the flesh of my soul are theirs. But they belong to humanity, romantic as it is, for these people will mean the end of the earth, Armageddon, Ragnorak, if they don’t learn to listen to the greater songs that are the energy of us all. Why embrace anger, when acceptance comes easier, why embrace hate when the heart wants to learn. Why claim understanding before even listening. Open your mind and embrace clarity.

State of Mind

I have to be honest; I can’t do this any other way. I have to admit that I’m frightened of the shadows that lurk at the edges of understanding and acceptance where it was once my solace to hide and wait and watch. Now I’ve hurled myself from the darkness and into the blinding light of the fire where all the weaknesses I fought to smother for so long can be picked apart and scrutinized in the hopes that reassembled these tiny fragments can be stronger as a whole. I feel like a blind man who has learned to see, still fearful of stumbling and falling over the stone blocks that are scattered here and there that I now know are simply features in my garden and not the traps I once thought them to be. I can see them, I know what they are, and yet I can’t help but be wary that another will spring up that I have never seen. There are so many things I couldn’t see before now.

I am at a crossroads, and yet there are no other roads but for the direction I am already traveling. I started on this path a long time ago, and I have gone too far to retrace my steps now to become something other than what I am, a frustrated little girl who is locked in a struggle between wanting her turn for show and tell and fearing the class will laugh when she shares what she has found. Pockets full of sparkling pebbles and bits of beach glass, marbles and pennies, pinecones and buttons; she sits quietly at the back of the class endlessly moving them between her fingertips, hoping against hope that her name isn’t called. Hoping against hope that it is so that maybe she can think about other things and find the rest of the pieces she needs to put herself back together.


My desire to share of myself runs deep and contrary to my inability to take part in this sharing with others. Locked behind this screen of thorns there is a measure of safety, and yet what am I really sharing of myself without that human connection, I may as well be talking to a mirror. I wander through this amazing garden of ideas and thoughts that has always existed in my mind attempting to plot its twists and turns in the hopes that someday I can make the world understand, and yet somehow I know they never will. I can’t shake it, this desire to communicate; it’s the bane of my existence. Few and far between are the people who understand enough to spend time in my world and yet that driving need compels me to throw open the doors to one part or another of my soul and invite the world in, for better or worse. Most end up lost and bewildered in a very short time. Some few understand and respond, and for these I am truly grateful because every single person who understands makes me feel a little less alone.

I have accepted this into my life, but one detail remains, and there it sits again at one detail that locks my mind and my heart into this eternal struggle to define what matters. One person’s opinion and faith in my ability to see inside my own mind in a way that no other could fathom. One heartstring stretched to its limit and the rise and fall of unconditional love left hanging in the balance. One person, what matters their opinion in the grand scheme of things. Nothing, and yet everything when their acceptance is all you have ever wanted. Without it I have no idea how to move on from here.

Out of the darkness

I’ve been struggling for as long as I can remember to explain the world the way I see it. It’s not as easy as it might sound. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why no one understood the things I was trying to explain and so I learned to hide it for fear of being told it was all in my imagination. I would write on scraps of paper, tiny tidbits about the way things looked and felt to me, and hide them inside books and up inside my closet. When I did venture to speak of the way I was feeling I generally found that people did not understand. The frustration of trying to put the pieces together in a way that they could fathom would overwhelm me, and before too long I would be bawling my eyes out. This made me seem over emotional, and granted I was at that exact moment, but it was always a symptom and never the problem. I knew this, but I didn’t know how to explain it to them.

I’m not bitter any more. I was for a long time, but with the knowledge I now possess I can’t have expected them to have any idea what they were dealing with. Aspergers had barely even hit any ones radar and by the time I started exhibiting signs I had learned how to fake it in most situations. The focus has always been on diagnosing the young, and less care was taken with adults; because we have good language skills, and are often highly intelligent it can be difficult to spot. I’m very good at faking it when I have to, I just prefer not to because of the amount of stress it causes me.

There is a common misconception that because people with Aspergers don’t process social cues on an instinctual level that we are not good at reading people. I am sure there are people with Aspergers who struggle with this, but when I am outside of the situation I am exceptionally good at it. I’ve spent my whole life studying people and the way they interact in an effort to be more like them. I have a huge mental database of people I know, situations, and reactions that I can cross reference with relative ease when I am calm and relaxed. There is no pressure when I am a bystander and if my perception is wrong, no risk of reacting in the wrong way. Put me in a situation where I have to take part and all of a sudden it’s a race against the clock to interpret the social cues, and missing just one can spell disaster. The stress of trying to keep up can overwhelm me and cause a short circuit in my database and then I may as well be a fish out of water. The more aggravated the other person gets about my inability to communicate, the worse this gets, until I am in full meltdown mode. I worry about this all the time, its easier to just stay home.

So I do. I stay home and I fixate and I try not to explain myself to too many people. Well at least I used too. With the addition of one new word to my personal dictionary I have discovered the ability to share myself, all of myself. I have found a way to put into words my different perspective of this world we all share. I have found a place where the child in me can roam free in my garden of thoughts, and where the adult can sit and ponder the mysteries of life. I have found a way to throw open the gates and let others pass through the thorny vines that have grown so long and so fierce about this gilded cage. I have found the freedom to be me. Out of the darkness I created for myself, the perceived safety of my imagination, and into the light. The fires have been stoked; all that’s left to do is explore the shadows in the safety of its glow.