The other side of the glass

They can’t see me. They’ve never been able to see me where I sit on this side of the looking glass, so close to their reality I can reach out and brush it with my fingertips if I tried. I wont, it just leaves me lost and bewildered in the wake of confusion that rushes swiftly through my mind as I try to decipher a world that assaults every sense I have. I can walk beside them and what they see is a warped reflection of the truth, cast in the image they desire to perceive, but never do they open their eyes and see the extent of the fiction they have created. Heaped with a burden of expectations I always seem to fall behind, losing my companions to the crowd that surges around us and defines the edges between my world and theirs. Unable to keep up with the flow of socializing it’s easier to just fade away.

I’ve spent most of my life creeping around the edges. I’m a social voyeur living vicariously through those who do it with such ease. It fascinates me, the way people interact, and I view life like one big sociology study. Sitting quietly in the background taking mental notes on what people are saying and the way they are acting, no one would even notice I’m there unless I stood up to speak and although I have a lot to say I’m rarely sure how to say it.

I feel myself retreating, looking for the way out, disconnecting from their side of the veil a little more each day. The desire to meet them on their terms is an ebbing tide that shows no signs of returning. My pride insists on acceptance and there are only a few who can see past the smoke and mirrors to recognize the value of the real person that hides inside. Those who can respect me for my differences I’ll meet halfway, for their differences deserve to be respected in turn. Those who would continue to heap futile expectations on me should know that they heap them on a husk of what was once there to be burdened.

I still want that connection. It’s the biggest dichotomy in my life. My need to be left alone and my need to connect with the world at large tug me in opposite directions some times when I want to reach out and touch someone nearby. I’m lucky, now, that I have someone who chooses to exist beside me, grant me that human touch I desire so badly, to do it on my terms and see it for what its worth, to appreciate the things I have to offer. I’m lucky to have met someone whose needs run so parallel and yet opposite to my own that we find strength and satiation in the flash floods that consume us. Someone who can see the reality Through Glass.

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.