Steps

The steps are slippery. Wet season has drenched the mossy brick and the heat has not yet steam dried the path. The man’s caution is palpable as he slowly descends from the summit.

He has seen many things and his eyes are grateful for each step taken and each wonder tasted. Don’t mistake his caution for fear, he is a man who merely wishes not to slip on the path.

His smile is generous to those who pass him by. The younger fitter men who bounce through life with a confidence his body has never allowed, cause his emotions to mix. Every now and then a conversation stops him in his tracks and he pauses for a while.

Like his smile, his advice and opinions are freely given. He knows joy and is keen to share that knowledge. For some he is a gift, for others an irrelevance and for a few, an irritation. As a transmitter he has learnt his messages are received differently and after a while he will move on.

Knowing his limits, he chooses to test them gently and ensure the path moves forward with positivity and love. Every now then he slips but caution ensures the falls are few. The Asperger path isn’t easy but the beauty he has found along it has made the journey a life worth living.

AYLI

You only live once they say. YOLO says a generation who have not lived much as yet. I feel I have had many lives before this one. Each different, and each separated, so that my life is more like the different scenes of a play than a novel.

Mummy’s boy

Dancing round the garden with a hole in my sock and my 99p sunglasses, I was a happy child who loved his mum. Bright yet wilful, I found it hard to settle at school and as I started to mature I realised that boys like me loved their mums because the world outside didn’t like fairies in the garden.

Teen uncool

With my bleached hair covering half my face I declared to the no one that was listening my theory on music. The B52s were great and obviously Talking Heads were seminal. Grace was thrown in as reference to the cool indie gay I thought I was. He bore no resemblance to the plain fat boy staring at me in the mirror who dreamt of dance floors

In Suburbia

Once I had a house with a gate and a privet hedge that required more attention than it got. I worked for the council and let out my spare room to meet the mortgage. I hated life and it seemed life hated me back. I was bored and realised, once again, that if you don’t fit you shouldn’t force it. I stopped going out and just stayed in.

Running away

Slovakia was an unexpected move. The grief of my early departed mother was set aside and I tried on some wings. I was no angel but sometimes I felt like a benevolent god in the classroom. I accepted life and being a foreigner, allowed myself to stand out from the crowd in so many ways.

Tired of London…

A decade in the capital was squandered in never ending round of parties and nightclubs. My career soared and so did my anxiety. Each promotion fuelling an ever more chaotic social life and an ever darker horizon. When I left London I moved to the quiet gravelled beaches of the east and walked myself into sanity. I found a sobriety and a calm in the flat landscape with large skies. I thought I’d never leave.

Packing up

I sold it all. Everything I own can fit in a suitcase. I have nothing. I have no one. I have a freedom that makes me dizzy. My past is gone and here I am living in the moment. Inner calm has been hard won and I exercise my mind to exorcise its demons. The fairy has left the garden behind and dances on the world’s stage. Have I reincarnated myself until I have found nirvana or are there more short stories still to come.

As you like it

I run away from who I am or perhaps run towards the who I want to be. I have only had one life but my goodness I have played all the parts. All the world’s a stage, and even in Shakespeare’s day we were allowed to live multiple lives. So to the YOLO generation I say this – you just don’t know what’s coming next and that, for me is the greatest gift. Live life as you like it and if you don’t like it, change it until you do.

Fat cat

It’s quite a feat. I have been in the same job for 6 months. Three months from now I will have completed my contract. Then, finally, it will be time to move on.

When I arrived in Cambodia I ricocheted like a pinball. I had lost any faith in myself to settle. Even in the ever changing world of English teaching in Asia, I was a wild card. I changed towns three times in two months and had three jobs in the first six months.

Here I am now. Hitting society’s success criteria with my steady job and home in the heart of chaotic Cambodia. Externally it’s all great.

I sold my freedom for the price of the filthy dollar. My job means long hours in the sedentary prison of the staff room. My blood pressure is up because the nine hour days make healthy choices more difficult. I exercise little and, once home, I have no will to head back into the hot crowded streets to forage for what’s left at the closing markets. This cat is getting too fat.

Success is a double edge sword. Society’s approval has come at the cost of my health and, more sadly, my inner contentment. I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of depression. I look at my escape which is a pinhole at the end of a long and dark tunnel.

June can’t come to soon. My feet are itching to roam. So I will say goodbye to success and achievement and return to the Asperger path. Seemingly purposeless, it will meander until I find a place to rest and recuperate.

It’s been quite a feat, but these feet long for some walking boots and a distant horizon. I am the wild card and taming my game has come at quite a price.

Me Reeling

He was a nice man, though I met him only once. He took my breath and left me reeling. I guess I will never forget him or the weaving of his stories.

Living alone in a foreign land can be somewhat up and down. When you factor in the chaos of being teacher there is the potential for high drama. I may not have chosen Aspergers but I have chosen my path. The decisions I make are made based on judgment and a logic that defies the understanding of others. I can survive life and whatever it tosses my way though even I am occasionally thrown off kilter.

When we first spoke, he was depressed. He wallowed in his melancholia and could see nothing but loneliness in his future. He was frozen in the trap of not being able to do things alone. He got several large spoonfuls of my good but unsolicited advice and a friendship rockily started.

He wanted to meet me but we lived in different countries. Eventually I decided he was worth six hours by bus and off I set with no expectations and free page in my passport . We were going to meet and it was all going to be so easy.

Twenty four hours later we part with tender promises and sore lips. I returned, assured that I am no longer alone and that he will soon be crossing the same border. I let down every guard. Logic was cast aside and vulnerability suited me. I wrote poems that ached with longing and were woven with trust.

Ten days passed on cloud nine. Then a message that didn’t make sense was quickly followed by a hundred more, each contradicting its predecessor. Everything I thought I knew, was not. Still, he was the victim, for I had plunged him into the sad confusion of choice. If only he had met me at a different time. If only we hadn’t spent those hours in that way. If only he could keep us both. He can’t because ifs are not part of my life. My syndrome deals in certainty. Within hours, my vulnerability disappeared. I am back behind the armour of my logical judgment.

This man I met once is not so nice but I am breathing and standing firm. I guess he will never forget me or the cutting of myself so cleanly from the lies he had woven to keep me reeling.

In Splendid Isolation

Imagine standing in the middle of the desert. Nothing as far as the eye can see. Imagine looking at the ocean. Only the horizon disrupts waves. There is a majesty and splendour in that frightening isolation.

Here I sit in a café. The cars pass by, horns sounding warnings to the market shoppers. The street vendor’s bell jangles above the humming drum of the city. All of the chaos of Asian life is crammed into the narrow streets of Phnom Penh and in the February heat it feels as if there is no space for air.

Here I sit in a café. I shift my focus. The heat cools and the sounds silence. In the glaciers of my psyche I create a shimmering isolation. The lone man lost in his mental landscape and divided from the jarring reality of life.

Once I found the world as an overload on my senses. It attacked and assaulted me with unwelcome sights and smells that left me aching and disoriented. Now I can disappear. I have made my Aspergers a rabbit hole and with a little focus I can fall into the detached wonderland of mind.

I can imagine standing in the middle of the desert for I do not fear the majesty and splendour of my own isolation.

Existence

We are born alone, live alone, die alone. My existential existence might be an excuse. I am really an individual or just too scared to trust other people.

I met this man. Just once. Just six and twenty crazy hours of being with someone who accepted me. He didn’t just accept me for being me, though that in itself would be awesome, he accepted me into his life. He moved over and made some space for me and without words he said walk with me a while.

I love words but he showed me in his deeds who he thinks I am. He sees a me I haven’t seen. He knows a someone I had forgotten I once wanted to be. When he left me, he didn’t leave because he lingers in my mind.

I met this man. Just once. I was born alone and I might die alone but I think I might want to walk with him a while. I won’t throw caution to the wind but I might put it away along with my fears and live life. I will meet this man again but he has already changed my existence.

Ways

I wake about thirty minutes before the alarm. A cup of tea is made and my bed is returned to. By the time the alarm decides to start my day, I am showered and towelled and a second tea is already half empty. Soon the sun rises and I walk to my workplace.

The banalities of work pass and do not bear mention.

After a swim I return to my house, stopping at the market to purchase a few odds and ends on my way. The setting sun marks the end of my dealings with the outside world. My sofa is comfortable and by nine my head droops.

It is a simple life lived plainly. Routines are set and they are adhered to. I’m comfortable in my ways and my ways are set. Set more like jelly than stone, but the Asperger path likes the known and the familiar.

I am the traveller who travels slowly enough to create routines but far enough for home to be a memory. The autist who fears the routines he craves and rebuilds the life he constantly tries to leave behind.

I wake about thirty minutes before the alarm…

Move

I am a traveller of sorts. A meanderer who has no set path or clear destination. After a year in one country you might argue I am settled, but my journey is more than merely physical.

I see the collectors of experience. They meticulously checklist their way through tomorrow’s memories without even stopping to whistle. Cultures are sipped and palates rarely cleansed before the next new taste is up for consumption.

I am no different. Instead of travelling through countries, I travel through people. Life is kept fresh by keeping the door to my mind wide open to passing souls who come, and sometimes go, with ease. Rapport is something that can build in a moment, especially with those rare few who resonate with the deepest vibrations of my soul.

This weekend I met man, so earnest and passionate and we talked. Stories of youth were shared and the depressingly universal experiences of growing up gay were bemoaned. My new friend was interested in self esteem and bullying, and the role educators can play in breaking the cycle of depression and self harm for young gay men. Bad histories were being turned into better tomorrows by his actions. It was talk that went somewhere.

We may not meet again but we are connected. A good conversation can change the course of life. I may not be the fastest traveller but he has moved me and shown me places I never expected to see.

Capital P P

Living in Phnom Penh has made a capitalist of this small town boy. Happier of late on my funny little path because I have realised that life in the big, bad city can be managed. I have put in a few kerb stones and carved out routes to make a personal village within the metropolis.

Limitations, like safety barriers, protect me from the harsher realities of the twenty-first century. What you might see as a padded cell I simply regard as well upholstered space. Cambodia can be chaotic and Phnom Penh is a city of violent change, where the extremities of life are laid bare. Wealth drives roughshod over the bones of the poor. I am both outsider and part of the status quo. I sip my iced coffee and observe the dirtiness of the everyday being transacted from my bespoke, gilded cage.

I am already supposed to be elsewhere and yet here I remain. Sane within the craziness and standing still in the constant traffic the Asperger Path is on a detour. The rolling stone is mossed. I have a home, a job and a somebody else to soften the urban loneliness of this brutal capitalisation.

The Way

The way I do things not my fault. Or is it? I should know by now, surely, that when they ask me what I think, they don’t mean it.

So I have given my view bluntly and with the full force of my honesty. Tomorrow I must revisit the scene of the criminal faux pas, because another day another dollar is my mantra. My manager may or may not hate me. My colleagues might not think I’m weird. However, previous experience tells me that, after three months, the Asperger is beginning to crack through the thin normality I have endeavoured to veneer on myself.

It doesn’t matter if I fit or not, really. I feel like a misfit and I can create an awkwardness from thin air. Once it’s there I wrap myself in it like a safety blanket of bee stings. Being stung I retreat and my cycle pedals furiously into its inevitable descent.

Soon, I will pack my bags. The runner who can’t face the unsure and yet dives headfirst into the unknown will lurch into another incarnation. A new me, contrite and certain that I can hold back, will set forth with an all too temporary trepidation.

If only I could say nothing, how different my life would be. How few opportunities I would have needed. How few avenues I would have ventured down. How few mes I would have needed to create.

My life is my fault. My faults are my life. I should know by now, surely, that the Asperger Path is just the way I do things.