I am

My travels on the Asperger path have shifted. I’m still travelling but I have left some baggage somewhere. My diagnosis has disappeared from my mind.

I started this journey because of it. That label was hung, albatross style, so the world could see my pain, my shame and my hurt. The diagnosis became my symbol. It was never the problem, nor was the syndrome. I was running away from the hurt that was caused in the process.

My hurt is healed. I forgive those who probed and delved into the private spaces of my psyche. Forgiveness too for those who made me doubt myself and left me second guessing every situation. My career was taken but my skills were not. I am in a different place. I am a different person.

In fact, I am almost the person I was before all this diagnosis thing happened. Happy and able to be lost in my own thoughts, I had forgotten the joy of being me. I allowed my differences to medicalised and categorised. I am too magnificent to be captured by one word. The landscape of my interior is stunning, bleak and beautiful. I have reclaimed it because I am not Asperger’s, I am my own special creation.

I am different

When I was younger, I was plagued with doubt. I did not seem to fit the mould and I thought that I ought to. I was different in so many ways.

The doubts started just before the end of primary school. I could sense that I was not as popular and it hurt. The happy carefree child that had laughed and danced through the early years started to feel self conscious. Things were about to get worse.

Big school started at eleven and so did the systematic bullying. The daily humiliation of the school playground took its toll. I stopped being me but the bullying continued. At sixteen I was suicidal and anxious and by eighteen I had surrendered my dreams and dropped out.

I often refer to my twenties as the lost years. I battled depression and failed. I bought a house and tried to fit into a suburban life that didn’t fit. As I approached thirty I lost my job and I felt worthless.

I met a woman on a plane. She was an English teacher and she reached out to me. The conversation with her didn’t change my life but it did help me turn a corner. Her positivity helped me see the hurdles I saw could be overcome.

I trained to be a teacher. I taught. I perfected my craft. I took risks in the classroom. I took risks outside of the classroom. I grew. I worked. I became less self conscious and more self aware.

Now I’m fifty one. I do not fit the mould and I ought not too. I am different in so many ways. In becoming me I have learnt that surviving is not living but it is important. I survived and now my life is on my terms.

So, if you are struggling, hurt, bullied or victimised please do not give up. We all have a place in life. The more unique your place is, the harder your struggle may be to get there. Breaking the mould isn’t easy but when you do, life can be anything you want it to be.

Clowns

The circus is coming to town. Life cannot be planned because things happen that are unexpected, uninvited or even unwelcome. Those of us who try to control our lives end up running around like crazy clowns. So success is never about controlling what we have, it is about managing the unexpected.

Thus life needs flexibility. So what happens to those of us who are rigid and don’t have the social malleability that most of society is born with. We change. We learn. We study the patterns and we analyse the results. It’s learnt behaviour and it’s not intuitive, but it is what we do.

We are the cognitively different, the spectrum reordered, the walkers of the Asperger Path. We bring a new perspective and a different view to life. At our best, we are breathtaking and we must learn to fit in the world and take our proper place. Being born different is my gift from the universe and I intend to make my difference make a difference.

You can be a tightrope walking trapeze artist in the circus of life or a straitjacket wearing lunatic locked in the control asylum.

Me? I’m running away to join the circus.

Loose

I walk differently. I like to think I have swagger but perhaps I just have swing. Equally loose hipped and loose lipped, I make my way through life and I’m never found short of a retort for those who think there’s only one way to win the human race.

As we walk through life, we face many challenges. Some are ones we set for ourselves, but most are imposed on us from without. The walk may seem like a hurdle race but sometimes we need to stop and look more closely at what is in our path.

The path can seem full of barriers. In fact, it can feel like fate decided to add a few hoops to jump through in between each hurdle. However hurdles do not have to leapt over and I am not a performing seal. If a barrier has been placed there by someone else, you could just walk around it or even knock over and leave it on the ground.

I pick. I choose. I say “No,” to problems and “Bring it on!” to others. My favourite battles are the ones I set myself. The internal challenges to be a better person, a better teacher, or a better writer. The external gets less of my energy, less of my drive and far less of my emotion. Some problems are just side stepped.

I just don’t have time for prejudice or energy for isms, so I choose to ignore them. I have redesigned my life. A little thought and a new outlook and the uphill hurdle marathon can easily become an effortless down-hill slalom. Don’t be afraid to loosen your hips and put a little swing in your step.

La Cage Aux Folles

He says he loves me. He says it when no one can hear. I know he loves me. He shows me when no one can see. Love should be so simple but life is so complex. 

He wants to keep me away from the public eye so that my very existence cannot taint him. Yet the thing he is afraid of isn’t me. It it inside of him. It goes where he goes and he cannot escape himself. These feelings he wants to suppress overflow like lava and each eruption confirms that he is not who he wants to be. So he has placed our love in a cage. A well defined place with limits and boundaries. He puts me  in purdah behind a rainbow screen and, because he can’t deny himself, he denies me. 

At the moment he hates himself and by seeing all that he hates in himself reflected in me, he hates me. He could start down the long road to self acceptance. If he could learn to love himself as he is, our love would be so different.  I cannot tell him what to do. He needs to make these decisions for himself. 

I am what I am. I am my own special creation. But so is he.