Words

Words are all I have, especially at times like there when nothing else seems to make any sense. 26 letters strung together in endless combinations that paint a picture of who I am, and what I offer, and where I fit into this confusing world. My tone betrays me, my eyes lie, my face denies the truth, but my words never do. They march on across these pages with nary a care for the tears that might roll down my face or the furrowed brow that signals irritation. Here my words carry more weight than the way I say them. Here it all makes sense.

As unpredictable as I find the world, I know that I am the same. Taught through social conditioning to search for the hidden meaning behind the things people say, the delivery has come to mean more than the words themselves, and delivery is something I fall pathetically short at. In a society where body language and social cues are such an integral part of the way we interpret each other I’m like a fish out of water.

I have difficulties communicating nonverbally and using tone of voice and facial expression in context. I often frown during enjoying conversation because it occurs to me that I need to do something later. I’ll smile while someone is recounting their horrible day because I thought of something that might cheer them up later. Learning to ignore this in favor of the words I am choosing must be difficult when it’s so deeply ingrained right from the beginning that these are the things that tell the real story.

I do my best communicating in the dark, in the shadows where my words are all there are. In the middle of the night I can talk for hours and never skip a beat, the words just pour from my mind in endless waves of consistent thought. Stripped of the uncertainty, the dichotomy between what I say and how I say it, they flow like poetry. Sorted and ordered on paper they start to tell a story untainted by the lies told by my eyes and hands, the honesty of these carefully chosen letters shines through, no longer hidden beneath the grime of mixed signals that mars my every attempt to express myself face to face.

Poor Communication

Today was not a good day when it came to communication. Sometimes I do so well, and other times I fail so horribly. Today was one of those failing horribly days. I have stuff on my mind. Nothing new, I always have stuff on my mind, but today it was kind of stressful stuff and my schedule was throw off because my boyfriend was off work. I don’t blame him, but unfortunately he took the brunt of it as my aggravation shows no matter how hard I try to hide it.

It’s hard not to take it personally. It’s hard to ignore all of the social cues I am giving and just listen to my words, when the general perception I’m giving is irritation. It’s hard to explain that I understand it isn’t his fault, and that I’m not blaming him, when my face is saying I’m angry. Its hard to convince him I’m not upset when everything I’m not saying is telling him I am. So he ends up walking on glass around me which just irritates me more because I can’t explain the way I am really feeling. Round and round and round we go and where we stop no one knows.

Time to get some sleep, more on this tomorrow.

Altered Reality

I sit and wonder impossible things. Impossible questions with impossible answers that are impossible to find. It’s no wonder I feel like I’m running in circles, panting and heaving with each labored step to get where? Nowhere except right back here where I started, staring at my own bitter reflection, that warped perception with no face that I embrace and hold dear. It shatters under the pressure of so many hands tugging it this way and that towards their own definitions. No care for the not so fragile doll, suddenly porcelain under their scrutiny, searching for flaws in the already crackled veneer of what they taught her to be. I don’t understand how it can be easier to live on their side of the mirror.

Clarity they say, and common sense, naught but hurled remnants of ages long past that drift to the bottom of the muddy waters that surround them, social conditioning that has no basis in reality. Not clear, clarifying, but crimson with the tears of bleeding hearts and opaque to muddle and blind, if only they could see. I can’t save them from passionate denial, when all I have to offer is words, and to open my mouth I risk the flood pouring forth, to sear them where they stand for their damning accusations of reality and misguided fantasy. Even now I fail to understand the world beyond the glass, its perceptions seems so warped it overwhelms me. I’m a catalyst with no voice beyond a whisper trapped between here and there. Nothing but these groups of letters that fall from my fingertips.

I seem to exist in a world they can’t even imagine, at the edges of their reality, their existence, where they glide endlessly through life on magic carpets fueled by the dishonest truth, kept company by a golem in my likeness, though I long ago fled the safe womb of that chrysalis. I fight my way through rabid jungle that seems so calm and serene from their lofty perch, where the wind barely graces the tops of the trees with its gentle kiss. The reality of who I am exists only in their dreams, where they can cast hideous denials back in the face of my defiant screams, and find succor in their heated delusions that I am like them at all.

I am not who they expect, not who they see when they deign to cast enlightened eyes my way. The reality flows just beneath that brittle veneer, one that could not hold under the gaze of a closer look, a blessing then that they choose not to, their cool apathy the glue that holds its cracked and worn fragments as my disguise. Deaf eyes and blinded ears. Where, I wonder, did they learn not to trust their senses. Common sense in the face of the truth that it is neither common nor sensible at all. The intensity of their lives makes my head swim and no matter how strong you are, treading water is always a losing battle. Any wonder that I choose to exist in my world rather than theirs; they make the same choice every day.

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.