Sometimes it's easier to pretend I'm normal

Lately, with the decrease in energy due to illness and a dramatic uptick in necessary activity, I'm beginning to remember why I used to just go with the flow, push myself to do unpleasant things and keep my mouth shut.
Its proving that explaining myself as to why a relatively easy NT task, like going to this place or making this phone call or addressing this problem, is more work than the struggle and stress of meeting others expectations.
I'm barely functioning and bordering on overwhelm yet I'm tired of all the thought and words that go into my explanation of why simple tasks are so difficult. Sorry, the words don't flow smoothly at the moment.
I do remember why I spent years not saying anything about the discomfort and distress I endure on a regular basis.
Maybe it's just my current predicament that is coloring my thinking. Sigh.
I guess I'm just starting that knowing the reasons for my daily challenges, autism, DID, and CPTSD makes me more inclined to defend myself in verbal ways and its wearing me down.
I'm doing my best. I know that. I just need to believe it more.

Why am I here? Escaping hurt

It seems like most of life can be boiled down to living to avoid hurt, in essence, alive to seek love.
Avoid hurt by generating income so you can eat and have a decent place to live. Dating, coupling and marrying to avoid the pain of loneliness.
Busy drowning our hurts in drinks, pills, shoveling food in our face, drowning in trivial make believe dramas of reality tv and gossiping about the neighbor down the street.
Our bodies hurt because our hearts hurt and we don't know how to feed ourselves right and feel good about who we are.
I'm odd and strange, because my pains are understood by the small majority who suffered similar crimes. We all hurt, just in different degrees.
Life doesn't make sense in that there is no joy, or feelings of happiness that I can experience on a weekly basis. I live scarce, scant and acutely aware of this emptiness in my soul because I was unlovable...rephrase that. I was entrusted to adults, to caretakers that were unable to love me.
And the counseling choir screams "you just need to love yourself more" and "love is the answer" as if they expect me to suddenly conjure up exactly what this love thing is that I never experienced.
How can I feel something that was never given to me? I know not its parameters, its width, its depth, its feel.
Like a blind man walking in a cave told to open his eyes.
Its ludicrous really, this unending game of seeking something that was never given me.
I see, I fully understand the dilemma of being Autistic and unable to find a single friend, much less an intimate one. I believe that loneliness and having the capacity to know you need someone and not being able to attain it, is the single greatest, most depressing problem facing those of us on the spectrum.
Trapped within ourselves With the knowledge of what we need And knowing we cannot attain it....sigh. Life is about figuring out how to endure this great pain...in a trivial world where others have what they require.
The emptiness...the aloneness...Life is great sadness, nothing more. Pointless, yet, I persevere.
Words of wisdom, I scoff, apply only in the neurotypical world where people live on the surface, not for the depths of the autistics.
I used to think Aspergers was a step in furthering the evolutionary process. Now I realize I'm just a caveman seeking fire and I have no flint. And I can see the glow of many distant campfires.
Life is about avoiding hurt and trying to find enough to fill the void of being unable to connect to anyone else.

I'm exhausted, helpless

When I become exhausted, I become helpless, a word I do not use lightly.
My extended, necessary social interactions these past two weeks coupled with my current bout of physical illness, shingles, has left me temporarily incapacitated.
The simplest efforts, sitting up, brushing my teeth, speaking, etc, require herculean, pain effort.
I hate this.
Thus, I must be continually diligent in self monitoring my every day activities.
Did I mention I hate this?
Don't know when I'll be functional again.
Being autistic, in sensory overload and shutdown, f*cling sucks. No one can help me. I can't help my self.

Dissociation, Living in the Now

As a child, there wasn't a compelling reason for me to stay present, in my body, in the now.
I was miserable with being raped, tortured, sold, shared. My home life, outside of the sexual abuses consisted of hunger both physical and emotional, neglect, ridicule and lack of love. I couldnt find the pros of having a body at all, much less staying in it for hours at a time.
Happiness was a brief cloudburst, like when we would play on the swings at the playground far from home and untouchable. I always knew that positive feelings were fleeting little wisps. It would hurt to leave happy to go home. It was better to avoid the positive emotions all together as it would hurt worse returning to my reality of pain.
It hurt worse to visit and know the peace of paradise and then leave, than to deny all happiness exists. I stayed away from any feel good emotions as I saw them for what they were, freaky little cruel bits of cake in a world of moldy bread crusts.
I walked out, as much as possible, those erratic small feel goods.
I'd rather pretend that they didnt exist at all. It's like, you never miss candy if you've never tasted sugar kindof mentality.
So, somewhere locked away inside, I think, is my ability to feel happy and the thick wall that encloses it.
It's strange being me. Trust me

Safe is a pretty word

Safe is a pretty word; I've often admired it from afar. In all honest, I have no idea what it feels like. I'm longing to know it intimately; its breadth and depth. It's a feeling I've only dreamed of.
Yeah, therapy was one large emotionally cathartic event today.
To minimize, the first ten years of my life was one continuous danger zone. My psych split and fractured due to lack of any love, physical and emotional hunger and ongoing, unpredictable abuses. I've never really been a whole, singular being. Never.
I live a reactionary life whereby I continually react to the people and circumstances around me. This thing called "free will" is another pretty term that I have yet to experience. Mostly, I'm avoiding pain, stress, discomfort, unpredictability events and laying low. Like I'm in a batting cage, naked and without a bat and I move, twist, duck and jump to escape the onslaught on hurling projectiles.
I'm armor. I'm embedded behind walls and bunkers fighting my forever war.
PTSD makes me feel like everyone is a potential enemy. Autism makes me feel similar including environmental factors.
It's a constant onslaught. I spend considerable energy avoiding pain.
I have these inner rooms filled with boxes of memories, feelings and thoughts I was never allowed to share. I spend tons of energy just keeping my shit together so it doesn't all spill out at once, or in the wrong place or in front of the wrong person.
This is my war, Amy's war, aka, welcome to my life. I am fathoms from normal.
I'm often jealous and feel bad that others were and are loved. I can see it on their faces and it's in the spring of their walk. Can you imagine the first ten years of your life engrossed in pain and lacking any love?
It sucks. It hurts.
Thos first years have set the pattern I live and have lived, a reactionary, dark and gloomy life.
That I made it this far with being given such sparse external resources is nothing short of remarkable.
I'm different, ok. I'm just really, really different.

Aloneness the Depths of Sorrow

From cradle to grave, it's been an iron fist
I could not make or find anyone to love me for me, my greatest sorrow
I am the ink, in the pen, held within someone else's hand
Those who say they want to hear your pain, really don't, really can't fathom tho they may try
To be worlds away from the person sitting next to me
To feel more alone in a crowded room than at 3am
Who wants to hear despair, they cannot handle the moaning ferociously blasting tone.
My funeral will be a sparse affair, a blip on no ones radar, a single leaf blowing by in a storm.
Unmissed, unloved, just twas my life undone, unsung, and oh, so mighty unhappy for that I thank the cruelty of mom and dad for destroying me so thoroughly and well. Good job Sharon and Don, you done a very good job

One Snowflake Lost

I've always been one snowflake in a drift
Missing but never missed
Drowning, struggling with no rescuer round
A spinning top, unable to stop, violently thrusting out string with loop, unable to catch anyone, any thing to hold on to
I've always been;
Crossing the finish line with no one in the stands
Walking in the desert
A glass ornament within someone else's hand
Seeking that which I can never found
Could never find someone to love me
Unable to leave my shell far enough to try and catch a ray of dying sun
Born hungry, always to starve
Cruelty is cold empty arms that push you away
Getting trapped within for safety, blessed curse
I'm noone to anyone
Always and never