My youngest son is preparing to leave my home and go off to college. My mind cannot formulate all the words to accurately describe the plethora of intense emotions raging beneath my surface, thus, I am presented with visuals, pictures of how I am feeling.
Inside my head it looks like the sky is falling. I cry. I know that the pieces of sky will fall for sometime and that the sky will never ever be the same again. The Sky Is Falling.
I recall a similar visual phrase from when my older son was having some big difficulties. The phrase at that time was "All Fall Down". It meant just that. Everything has fallen, all my hopes, wishes and dreams that I had for my precious had suddenly came crashing down. Buildings crashing down, I remember that sound all the time in my head. All Fall Down. An extreme red alert for overwhelmingly sad and tragic emotions.
At night, as I explore how I am feeling, trying to put it into words, I see myself adrift in a massive ocean. I am standing in a boat with one small piece of oar and the sails are scattered at my feet. The wind has gone. I don't know which way to paddle so I stand in an empty boat, in the middle of a vast and windless ocean. Waiting. Waiting to figure out where to go next.
I think in pictures. Especially when I cannot find the words to explain how I am feeling.
Yes, the sky is still falling. But I am still standing.
I
Had To Teach Myself What “Good” Felt Like
I am unique and extremely bizarre. The way in which I
was raised could be categorized as sick, twisted, sadistic, and perverted. My
dad and grandmother taught me to be both their whore and whore to many other
strangers and men.
In a way, it was to my emotional wellbeing that I never
experienced happiness, excitement or joy because I felt my miserable existence
was perfectly normal. I did not miss out on my childhood, rather, it was just a
childhood with a different scale, an emotional measurement. I think most
unabused people have a wide range of emotions from a 1 which is very bad, awful
to 100 which is pure happiness and bliss. My scale simply measured bad, worse,
awful or agony. It was a very small, narrow scale of emotions that I had to
work with. In a nutshell, things that happened to be were on a scale of
badness. If it wasn’t bad, I did not know how to categorize it. The only
positive thing I can remember from my childhood is birthday cake. Birthday Cake
was great!!
I felt no love, only handling and use and care not to
cause me enough harm that I’d end up at the hospital or require medical care. I
could be used but not handled too roughly. There was no love there.
When I moved to Oregon, I started going for walks in
these big, beautiful and bountiful old growth forests lush with carpets of
ferns under foot and trees wearing blankets of hanging moss. As I walked, I felt
not bad. But I could describe it no further. So, I tried something. I started
repeating “this is good”, “this is what good feels like”, “this is what not
hurt feels like”, “I like how this feels; this feels good”. And I walked and
walked and repeated these new and strange thoughts. I was pretty sure that what
I was feeling was a positive emotion and I guessed that the feeling was “Good”.
Before that, I didn’t really have first-hand knowledge of what Good felt like.
I had to teach it to me. I discovered I could feel Good. And I let that feeling
grow.
My emotional growth had been stunted, stomped on and
eradicated to the point that I had only experience with negative physical feelings.
Growing up there was no one feeding me love, care or kindness. It was a devoid,
empty and flatline way to live but it was all I knew.
I’ve been expanding and growing. I’m becoming aware of
the telltale signs that what I am doing or where I am “feels good”. I’ll notice
a subtle or wide smile upon my face. I’ll notice a warmth in my heart and tears
of wonder and happiness falling on my face. No one taught me this. There was no
one demonstrating these emotions to me. I have had to teach myself what others innately
know or have most likely experienced.
God, I know I am bizarre and my upbringing, my days
have been filled with agony, torture, unbelievable perversion and crimes
committed against me by those called family.
I’m 59 years old and I am just finding the words to
explain an existence beyond outrageous.
I should mention that in addition to being Autistic I have Multiple Personality Disorder/ Dissociative Identity Disorder. I had no knowledge that other parts of me had already written some about our train journey.
Train- a series of
railroad cars moved as a unit by a locomotive or by integral motors.
Riding the train Autistic
I have always been intrigued
by the large, lumbering movements and the brilliant, ear-shrieking horns of moving
trains. The solid clanking of the wheels, metal-on-metal. The powerful bursts
from the heavy-duty engines and the loud roaring all combine to make trains a
fascination.
Recently, I found myself
brave enough to actually take a long, 3-hour ride on an Amtrak passenger train
from Albany Oregon to Centralia Washington. I wanted to find the route that
would give me the greatest amount of rail time whilst still getting me back
home in the same day. I had tried using the online scheduler to figure out
which train to take but my Aspie sense of misdirection and no tech skills
landed me nowhere. I had to inquire in-person at the train station. Having never
been to the train station, I was fraught with anxiety and spent hours figuring
out the predetermined the questions that I needed to ask to fulfill my
objective.
I arrived and the station
and found myself most fortunate to locate a train station worker that was both
pleasant and helpful. She stated that my longest route would be from Albany to
Centralia with a 5 hour layover before taking the return train back. This would
work! The price was fairly reasonable at 30 dollars each way, so I booked my
ticket for the following Tuesday. I was to arrive at the station before 6am to
board.
Then I spent the
following days determining what to bring with me. I knew I should travel light,
so I had to find which items were essential and which were not. My greatest
difficulty was in determining what to wear. The temperatures would be in the 50’s
and 60’s in the morning but by afternoon, they would travel into the 70’s. I
needed a heavy coat for morning but I’d have to be able to wear something
cooler in the afternoon and for the return trip. I did not know the internal
temperature of the train. Would it be too warm or on the cool side? That was a
huge unknown variable that I needed to wrestle with. I went back-and-forth
weighing different options and checking the weather forecast online. Finally, I
settled on wearing a light-weight sweatshirt with a T-shirt underneath, so that
if I was too hot I could simply remove the sweatshirt. I did utilize wearing of
my heavy coat just for the comfort and the feeling of security it offered as I was
to venture off into hostile, unknown territory. The coat was of a size that it
could fit into the backpack if no longer needed.
I only eat snacks and
foods that I have prepared myself, so I made sure to bake biscuits and
cornbread to partake of. Two bottles of water and two pops were the only other
things that I packed foodwise. Maps of Oregon and Washington along with
notebook and pens filled out all that was needed. My bag was packed. I teetered
between anxiety and excitement in the days proceeding the journey. I knew this
was a huge step for me, such a solo journey so far from home and from my trusty
car. I would be on my own completely.
The morning of my
adventure arrived. I scurried to the station, backpack and ticket in hand. It
was a peaceful anxiety I felt, sitting on the bench at the platform watching an
unusual site, the sun rising slowly bright yellow and spreading wide across the
sky. I was actually less nervous than I would have guessed I would be. Seeing
the other passengers reminded me that I was probably at the right place at the
right time.
The distant blare of a slow
sleepy horn called my attention to the rails. There she be. My train! People started
lining up. I figured with just a handful of people that it didn’t matter if I
was the first or last to board. Plus, I wasn’t sure of the boarding procedure,
so I stood back and observed the other passengers boarding. No one showed their
ticket yet all were welcome onboard. I found this quite strange. I had no ide
of what the interior of the train would look like or where the best seating
would be. I noticed the seats nearest the doors were marked for the handicapped
and disabled. That would work for me. No sooner did I take my seat and the
train started the slow roll out from the station.
It was an interesting and
exciting feel, suddenly being a part of a train in motion. I had observed many
a train speeding by at crosswalks and roadways, but I wasn’t a spectator anymore.
I was a participant! Here is me. On a moving train. Going on a grand adventure.
A number of things struck
me within those first few minutes. One, I was happy to see the train conductors
wearing uniforms. That was very cool. Two, the windows to look out were
extremely filthy. For a moment this gave me pause. It is more difficult to see
beauty through a dirty lens. I glanced around to see if any other windows were
in better condition. No luck. Okay, I’d have to deal with that. Try and ignore
the grime. One of the early items that surprised and perplexed me was that
there was no assigned seating. It was some sort of erratic “first come, first
served” where people sat wherever they wanted so those boarding first had first
pick. At that point, I had no idea what side of the train had the best view and
no idea which seats offered the best views. My primary motive to the train
travel was to see the scenery, so the windows and seating were a priority.
Third, the conductor
still did not check my ticket for another ten or fifteen minutes. Don’t people
ever “hop the train” like hobos and ride ticket free until they get caught?
Yeah, I’m a boomer. I remember talk of hobos and tramps that would hop rides on
open boxcars. But I digress.
The fourth biggest
immediate notice was that the train did not move as fast as I thought it would.
I imagined that it would reach high speeds and zip along the countryside. Ah,
no. It was traveling at about the same speed as a car on the freeway, no
faster. I found this disappointing as well.
As the train moved along
and peoples got up to go to the dining car or the restroom, I was dismayed to
notice that there is no set personal space as walking passengers and train personnel
can and frequently have to grab onto the top of the seats to keep steady and
not fall down. This was concerning. My seat was my seat yet others had free
reign to touch it if need be. There were even signs posted saying use the
handholds and these are the appropriate handholds and one of them was the tops
of seats. Well, I’d have to learn to be okay with that, too.
When I fly in airplanes,
it always bothers me that I cannot view what is directly in front of me. The
train was the same. I wanted to look straight ahead to see what I was headed
into but that was not possible. I had to trust invisible engineers and
invisible pilots to safely get me from point A to point B.
Trains are noisy from
multiple directions, again it reminded me of airplane travel in that way. There
is the loudest noise from the engines and the wheels on the track. Air
ventilation could be heard directly near the window, blowers I imagine. The new
weird sound was the train couplings, the place where one train car was hooked
up to the next. That made an interesting and sometimes concerning sound which
was much louder if someone had the car door open and was moving from one car to
the other.
The train car shimmies
from side-to-side which an airplane does not. The motions, the whole body
physical motions were not as smooth as with airplane travel. Airplanes are pretty
straight forward except for turbulence. Trains shimmy and move in erratic
multi-directions. The sounds, sometimes it sounded like the parts of a train
were fighting with themselves. You know, one passenger car struggling and
pulling against the one in front and the one behind. The engine straining to
try and get all the cars in alignment. The wheels, the huge, heavy metal wheels
grinding into the darn rails sometimes easily but mostly aggressively. A few
times, the tracks just seemed to be arguing and fighting with the train wheels.
It's like airplanes are
smooth and slick whereas trains are struggling and shimmying.
The positive about so
much noise from varying angles is that it drowned out any passenger
conversation. I liked that.
Some of the primary
positives I noticed right away: One, the seats were huge, soft, and
comfortable. There was more than enough leg room and space to put my backpack
in front of me. Plus, the seats were wide and not tight and stingy. Great
seating! Two, there were very few passengers so that everyone could have a
window seat and an empty seat next to them. As the train progressed northward,
it was unfortunate that more and more people boarded.
Three, there is a good
amount of personal space and others pretty much leave you alone. I could safely
withdraw into my own little world and enjoy the scenery without fear of intrusion.
It was a new and fantastic feeling to be able to kick back, comfy and cozy and
just see the sights without worrying about driving or traffic. In that way, it
was most relaxing, a relief. In an airplane, it is all close quarters and
possible intrusions from other passengers and stewardesses. The train affords an
almost luxurious way to travel, in many ways.
The ride to my destination
was a mixed bag of mostly positives. The train ride back proved to be more
arduous.
As I write this, I hear a
freight train horn in the distance. One of the oddities of my train trip was
that since my return, whenever I hear a train whistle, I get this weird, warm
feeling inside and I’m reminded of being on the train. It is a new and pleasant
memory that is triggered each day. Unexpected. Is a good thing, a positive
feeling of pride, accomplishment, fun and adventure.
Back to the return
journey. The train engine itself was smaller in appearance and most unfortunately,
all of the seats already had a passenger at the window. I picked a seat near my
previous one. I asked the passenger if she would mind change seats with me as
she was reading a book. She declined. I started melting down. Luckily, I had a
mask on so I heard myself start mumbling and repeating certain phrases over and
over and over again. I started to cry. I was so upset. I ride the train for the
window and this evil woman wouldn’t let me by the window.
Shortly thereafter, I moved
to the front disabled seating next to a clear undisabled business woman busy
conferencing on her phone. I could see out the window better from that seat. It
was such a blow, a negative, a downfall, that I hadn’t foreseen. No window seat
for Autistic me. So, I mildly melted and realized that to prevent a full-blown
melt that I should partake of my anti-anxiety meds. Half a pill and half an
hour later, I was still mad but on an even keel. The meltdown receded.
I contemplated asking the
conductor to tell him I was Autistic and required a window seat for my
emotional wellbeing which was 100% true but I didn’t want to feel like a simp.
I didn’t know if it truly was justification to kindly ask a non-disabled person
to change seats for a disabled person. There were signs posted specifically
stating that if you are not disabled you may be asked to move for a disabled
person. A window seat would have prevented a meltdown. Would that have been
appropriate and justified? In addition, I shot down that idea when I realized
that I would have been unable to ask the conductor my question without full
blown tears. The tears stopped me from receiving possible assistance. I don’t
know what the right thing would have been. I’ll have to find answers to that in
case I am in that situation again.
The ride home was
overstim. I was tired and had been up since 5am. I had walked in the heat of a
strange city for five hours and endured a four-hour train ride to get there. I
was purely overwhelmed. Everything seemed louder and more intense. The train
shook, shimmied and vibrated louder and more abruptly than before. I almost came
down with motion sickness due to the stronger, being thrown around feeling of wheels
on rails. Maybe it was the different engine or the car I was riding in but I was
highly nauseous and feeling quite unwell.
Many little things
bothered me on that ride. First off, I noticed that when the train drew close
to outside stationary objects like trees, buildings or cliffs, I recoiled and
freaked out a little bit on the inside. And when an opposing train passed by
within arms length of my window, I recoiled, shut my eyes tight and moved the
farthest I could away from the window while maintaining my seated position. I
did not like that at all. Likewise, the one brief tunnel we traveled through
seriously bothered me ten times as much as the first time we had passed through
it.
I was on edge and I could
feel it. I reached into my backpack for my ear plugs. When I inserted them, I felt
instant overwhelming relief. They were like spongy little tranquilizers in my
ears. They calmed me so. Reminds me of rocking a baby to sleep. That is how
good ear plugs felt. Life savers. The incessant roar of the train drowned out
and I calmed way, way, way down.
I started feeling
ambivalent about my return to my home station. Part of me wanted off the train
and away from the intense swaying and vibration whilst part of me wanted to
ride the train forever and never set foot on dry land again. (Another subtle
attempt at humor as I was always on land.)
Looking back, I was both saddened,
proud, and relieved to exit the train. I had accomplished a feat that I had oft
wondered about and long sought to experience. Part of me was still sulking
about the return trip being ruined by no window seat for the entire way back. I
was emotionally, physically and mentally overwhelmed. That day I summarized the
train trip as strange and a mixture of positives and negatives. It was only a
week a week later, when I had time to process parts of the trip that I realized
I want to ride the train again.
I want to go on the same
trip again but this time with knowledge and foresight. I will pack differently
and know where to sit. I want to experience actually walking in a moving train,
check out the dining car and see if I can actually walk from car to car. It
will be the same route but I am such a different, more knowledgeable rider.
Riding the rails
Autistic!
It's time to be honest with myself. After moving to a new state over six years ago, I have not made a consistent friendship that has lasted more than a few months. It is entirely possible and highly probable that I will never again have a close friendship. This is based on past experience.
Likewise, I had a brief intimate encounter but that was strictly carnal and of no intrinsic emotional value. Thus, my six years have shown me that my social skills have deteriorated to a new level of low. I have little faith that I will be nothing other than extremely alone for the remainder of my years.
The biological family was left willingly due to severe and extensive abuses, dysfunction, incest and secrets. The few long distance friendships that remain are shoestrings, thin and scrawny at best due to my dwindling ability to read my mail and write letters.
I have no one. I have no internal resources whereby to make and maintain a friendship or any type of relationship. This is just fact not fallacy or me not noting my options.
I am extremely alone and I have been for the majority of my life. I can see my future. There is only me.
On the positive, I am the most content and least harassed that I have ever been. My mental state is the calmest and clearest and the most stable that it has ever been in my entire life. I kid you not. 100% true. No one to answer to. No one to manipulate, trick and jump through hoops for. No one to cater to. No one to change my personality, likes and dislikes for. No trying to win someone's love by agreeing to do everything they want.
I am nobody, a phantom, a ghost that maybe someone once heard about a long time ago.
There is no one that knows me from my childhood anymore. If I fell unconscious, there is no one to speak for me about what I was like, what I like to do, what I need, and what would work best for me. No one knows me.
So, I write blogs and books and I paint because I have the time and because I do have so much to say about an extraordinarily cruel, traumatic and painful life. This stuff, this crap that I endured needs to be said so people know the epitome of cruelty that one man could do to one small, innocent and most beautiful child. Someone needs to know the extreme I survived.
Someone needs to know how extraordinarily strong, courageous and resourceful I have been to live through what I endured.
Someone needs to know the incredible depth of pain that a single child and adult can suffer through and still live.
I am the most extraordinary person few people will ever even hear about.
I deserved love but I got rape.
I deserved care but I got neglect.
I have been living on air and bread and water and some unseen treasure of strength.
Maybe I was born to walk this rough and dangerous road alone for some reason known only to God.
I don't know why I am here...except to tell my story from my hermitage of safety.
I am Multiple. I am Autistic. I was a child that was raped on a weekly basis until my teens. I am extremely alone and probably always will be. I have lost my social ability to engage or even attempt to engage with others on a meaningful level.
I do not resent or hate my life or where I am within this realm. I'm just stating the facts. I do not deceive myself into believing that the dreams, hopes and goals of neurotypical singletons could be mine. I am different. Removed. Set apart. Living within. It is just what I am. No falsehoods. No dreams.
I am nothing to anyone except my two adult children and my self. That is It. And that has to be good enough.
This is who I am. I need to learn to be okay with that.
No one knows me.
I am a mist that rises briefly and disperses.
You may have heard about me once. But then, I am so easily forgotten.
God, I have no idea how I have made it this far.
58 years old.
I adore traffic signs, for the grand majority of time, as I do get a certain thrill and sense of safety in knowing road conditions and what the local street rules are. Unfortunately, I have come across a sign that causes me nothing but consternation, confusion and grief.
SLOW
I am greatly confused when I see this sign. I have many questions without answers, such as:
At what speed should I then proceed? Five miles slower, ten, twenty, should I get out and crawl?
What hazard or condition has necessitated this sign? Are there potholes, stray farm animals, slow-moving trucks, hidden driveways, etc., etc., etc.? The possibilities are truly endless.
What is the repercussion of me not going at some undetermined lesser speed? Will I fall off the road? Is my car in danger of damage?
I feel nothing but overwhelming confusion, so much so that I have an insatiable urge to stop the car, get out and approach the sign, standing directly in front of it in the hopes that its meaning may become clear to me if I am close enough to study it. Maybe proximity would allow me to understand the sign and the why of why it exists and was specifically placed in its exact spot.
I mean, there must be a reason, right?
But the reason I know not.
Confusion is uncomfortable like picking at a loose thread of your favorite jacket and pulling and pulling and only making it worse in hopes of finding an answer.
It is like standing at the dock, in a storm and waiting for the storm to pass or your ship to arrive, but you don't know which.
Confusion is painful. I wish it would stop. I wish the Neurotypical world could make sense to me or at least put more thought into its actions and sign placement.
I will obey traffic signs that I can understand. I mean, isn't that the whole purpose behind them is to allow driver's to drive with less confusion and uncertainty?
I think my only recourse will be to stop and take photos or make notes of these ridiculous signs and write the local road commissions for explanations. I think that would be the only way out of this quandary. Maybe with the answer to one or two signs, I could gain some insight as to what they mean in general and when I run across them at different locations.
I really dislike the feeling of confusion.
I wake up strange. Some mornings, I awake and in those groggy, twilightish moments before I am fully awake, I inadvertently tap into the Universal Consciousness. At those times I may here Christmas carols if it is near that holiday. Around Easter, I rouse to the familiar Easter Catholic church hymns. When there has been a catastrophic weather event whether it be earthquake, tsunami, damaging tornados or floods, I will feel overwhelming dread and the need to check the news. Lately, with the Russian war, I have awaken to rebel chants, gunfire, feeling the need to run and flee, and a deep sense of danger.
Today, fortunately, it was on a happier note. As my eyelids struggled to open, my ears were delighted by the gentle drops of much anticipated rain. I pictured myself in the deep, mossy, richly green, vibrant and wet forest. I Need To Go and Get Close to Trees. Yes, get close to trees is an intense feeling, more of a need, that I must attend to and honor. It isn't a whim or a passing notion. This is something that my mind, my body, heart and soul doth require. Thus, I shall dress accordingly, fulfill my appointment obligation, and head off to my favorite deep, dark, lush woods!
Having no family or friends nearby, the simple act of going to someone else's home to chat or be entertained is highly anomalous. I think that in the five years that I have lived in this new home city, that I may have been inside the homes of maybe 5 or 6 acquaintances. Being a recluse and free from overwhelm and distress is my main goal in life. Attempting to make a friend is a secondary and worthwhile goal that I engage in sporadically when I am feeling strong, for lack of a better word. In that vein I have enlisted the aid of a social media site mainly geared towards dating and singles but I worded my intentions in my profile to state that i am seeking friends first.
I feel quite fortunate to have stumbled onto a most unique woman who was looing for the same, a companion and friend more than a sexual tryst. Lisa is the first person I have met and been able to easily get along with. We are of the same height, body build and we speak in the same tone. It is as if I have found one of those humans, those rare humans, that exists on the same vibrational frequency as me. If I were to readily recall the number of other humans with which I have felt and experienced this, I think that number would be three.
I'm not overly nervous or anxious around her. I do not fear for my safety which is especially positive. We started out by going on adventures together, traveling companions which I desperately sought. Our interests and backgrounds are freakishly similar as well. By our third get together, she invited me over to her house to do a project together. This was just last week, so quite a recent event. I was sitting in the living room of her house for no more than twenty minutes before I felt the familiar pangs of a foreboding panic attack. I have developed a number of coping methods to potentially utilize whenever such an occurrence may appear. Politely, I excused myself under the false pretense of "getting a necessary item" from my vehicle. Once there, I flipped open the glove compartment box and secured one of my anti-anxiety medications that I placed there. A swallow and a sip later, I knew that I was only twenty minutes away from feeling some relief.
I had to continually give myself positive, encouraging messages. Telling myself that i was perfectly safe, that I could leave whenever I wanted and that I would feel less nervous shortly. In the interim I made careful inspection of the room I was in distractably noting where each plant and bauble was placed. I marveled at my acquaintances ability to organize and keep such a tidy house. Mine own home is a creative nest filled with an array of projects, art supplies and erratic stacks of books and toy horses. The home itself felt, dare I say cozy and unpretentious with a spacious, open living area and dining room resplendent with an array of sunshine gathering windows.
I was able to hang out at my friends for more than an hour. To be honest, I failed to notice when my anxiety shut off completely. It was a natural, medication induced progression without hallmark.
I am grateful that I have such medication. And I am extremely proud of myself for riding out the anxiety storm that abruptly appeared like that. I never know if or when anxiety and panic will ensue. I am optimistic that the next time I get invited over, that I will be more acclimated to the environment and maybe I will not require medication intervention. The meds are always there though if necessary.
One more new thing successfully completed. My attempts at gaining a friend continue.
