Asperger’s and M&M’s

So last Thursday on Grey's Anatomy, the new cardiothoracic surgeon and Dr. Bailey have an exchange on the elevator that goes like this:

Dr. Bailey "Excellent job today, Dr. Dickson, excellent...rule-following."

Dr. Dickson "I only have one real area of interest; the human heart. I love it. I like it's regularity; I know everything there is to know about it. I like it's predictability; it has rules. Every chamber has a function, every function has a movement. i like the color; it's comforting.Are you familiar with Asperger's Syndrome, Dr. Bailey?"

Dr. Bailey "Of course, 'significant impairment during social situations'."

and for one whole week now i've been chewing on that and today, as i'm laying in the tanning bed for my 10 minutes of UV therapy to combat yet another of the myriad of disorders with which i am afflicted (SAD or seasonal affective disorder), i have an epiphany for the title of my first blog EVER!

Yes, folks, welcome to the scary world of "crazy" inside this noggin of mine. Mostly i've just gotten tired of carrying it around with me and figured i'd spread the wealth a little bit - but also because i'm realizing that if i don't get at least some of it out, i'll scream. No, seriously. But as i'm listening to Mary McConnell talk about why she loves the human heart (after I've gotten over how much she's aged since Dances with Wolves) I'm thinking to myself, "That's me! I can totally relate to the order and symmetry of that. I used to line up all my M&M's by color before I ate them and get very upset if there was an uneven number/color in a bag. I mean REALLY upset." It doesn't bother me QUITE so much now, but it's taken a LOT of therapy. I'm completely serious. Think lined-up cans in Sleeping with the Enemy and you'll be pretty close to how it can be with me. I've mellowed a lot but I'll just be honest; procedure, straight lines and black and white makes me VERY happy and secure.

So, like i said i've been chewing on this for about a week now until today when i'm fake-baking the "blues" out of myself and i receive my revelation about blogging and come straight home and start looking up asperger's online. Turns out, Dr. Bailey hit it pretty much on the head with 'significant impairment during social situations'. My first thought to that, however, was not "That's me!". But after a lot of thought, i'm rethinking that evaluation a little bit and considering taking up cardiothoracic surgery. ;)

No, but seriously, i've been looking at my life and my circle of friends and how they react to me and how i act around them and how i act in certain, scratch that, ALL situations and there's just something that i do or don't do that, around most people, just doesn't click. I know this because I'm seeing it in my son now so I know it's a genetic thing. I find I'm telling him a lot more lately to "lighten up!" But I can't even lighten up!

We (the 4 of us) went out to dinner for Veteran's Day on Monday nite and we were all in a great mood; laughing, cutting up. Then for no reason at all in the middle of the meal, i got stuck on a really serious subject that HAD to be discussed RIGHT THEN with Bucky! We weren't arguing or anything but I was like a dog worrying on a bone and i just couldn't seem to let it alone. Sometimes (and it seems the older i get the more times) my own INTENSITY drives me INSANE! It's like everything is a BIG DEAL! And i simply do not have the ability to see anything except in black and white, up or down, left or right. Things come across so critical and judgmental but it's just that i simply can't understand any other way. It's a hyperfocus, a hyper intensity and it pushes people away.

I see it in my son and it hurts me for him because he can't stand being alone...neither can I, but I learned to get used to it since i never could quite say or do the right things and keep friends long enough to be part of a crowd. Now the only place that I feel where they truly "get" me is with my youth. Somehow, my sarcasm and sharp tongue and intensity are not offensive to them and they aren't put off by me. Other than that, i think i embarrass or shock people and they're not quite sure what to do with me.

So i've found that, for the most part, i'm more content (at least less conflicted) if i stay away from situations that tend to cause me 'significant impairment' and line up my M&M's...problem is, they don't stay around very long in this house anyway!

Smoke & Mirrors

So i'm learning the hard way that people do not like it when you begin to find your "true" self; it scares them. I've come to this realization through a very abrupt collision with the reality that, in many ways, i've been in an emotional coma for 14 years and the very ground i thought i was standing on was in fact quicksand; it had no substance, no solidity, no security, unsound. My very identity has been called into question and i am unsure of the world itself and my place in it.

But I am the one who was fearless, audacious; nothing was too scary for me. Confidence was my middle name. Center-stage was made for me. Microphone? Hand it here. Every side was my best side, nobody could tell me "you can't" or "you shouldn't". Those words were just fuel for my engine...nothing could stop me.

But this...this is almost more than i can bear. I am afraid of my own shadow. This is weakness. And what i see on the faces and hear in the voices (and worst of all the silences) is pity. As my pain and frustration and rage have come pouring out they have been replaced by this need to rebuild my sense of self. The confidence that i once had looks to me now like a paper-mache sculpture, an illusion, all smoke and mirrors. I am hollowed out.

I am desperate to find what is real and true about myself and to do that i am venturing out of this cage i've awakened to find i put myself in. I peek out and am terrified but i take a step or two. I begin to say how i feel and the things that i wish i could do, might do if i had the chance and someone nearby says "Oh! Be careful! Don't be irrational! Don't do something you'll regret! You know how you are right now."

Don't treat me like a child! Don't talk about me as if i'm going through a phase and hopefully i'll come to my senses soon and then we can all go back to our "normal" lives! What if i really do want to get a tatoo? What if i did get my nose pierced? What if i did cut all my hair off and dye it blonde, or red, or whatever?! Irrational? Maybe. But who said i can't want things that are irrational? There are a thousand things i would do right this minute if i could but i can't (or won't) because it's "unacceptable" or "unseamly" or "sinful" or "hurtful". It doesn't change the fact that i still want them.

But people can't handle this. They get scared when you start talking about going "outside the lines", especially when you have a history of being "unbalanced". It might mean that you won't behave properly anymore, that you might embarrass them or switch roles on them. Emotions are ugly and messy and being your true self means dropping the mask and saying what's true for you.

There are some things that are true for me that i want to say, that i will say, and that i can never say. If it looks like a phase, so be it. But what you see is what you get. I'm scared to death but i'm going to find out what fits for me and how i really feel. I'm going to remember what it is that i love, do that, and learn to be brave again. No smoke, no mirrors, no hiding.

this is my penance

so this, then, is my penance...to come to the end of this delusion and find that i am totally defenseless; humiliated before you. i have no weapon, no shield, no means of escape. i am at your mercy. you can turn, now, onto me the very arsenal i wielded on you and you will be justified in it. i offer up myself knowing full well that you should turn and walk away. i cannot even cry out. if you should unleash your fury on me i will hang my head and sink to my knees and allow it to wash over me and i will be silent. i will accept this punishment and receive it; for from that anger would come also redemption and that is the thing that would heal me. but the thing that i fear is that you will say nothing and merely walk away and that will be the worst punishment of all. because for you to keep locked away the force of your anger towards me...

if you should withold that from me it will be my penance.

i must endure this torment now and say nothing. i must bear knowing that you cannot release me. i must accept that your peace is the price i have to pay for what i've done. i must live with the understanding that those doors must remain closed; my peace is what now has to be sacrificed. i had my chance. i have my answers but my answer has not brought peace.

this is my penance.

just for a little while

i have to go away from here. just for awhile. i will find somewhere close-by and take my dog and maybe look at the ocean and write and sing and cry. there is no peace for me here, not right now...i cannot breathe. i have a journey to take but i cannot take it while i'm pulled so many directions. i need quiet. i need air. i need room. i've got to take it all out and look at it...these ghosts. i don't want to do it at all but it is time. it is here. i cannot run from this anymore. i will find a quiet place away from all the things that 'need' me, that pull at my attention and my heart. My heart is raw and my mind is distracted. i cannot think or feel in any way that makes sense. Memories and images and terrors and realizations are shrieking and diving and clawing at me and all at one time i see that everything i thought was real, all the things i had built my reality and my security on, none of it is true. There is a different reality that i can hardly bring myself to believe...it cannot be true. It has always been true.

i see now that i had given a face to that terror...but it was the wrong face, the wrong name. it was my own mind that had turned on me, i know now the instant it happened...had the physical description laid out for me. and in that instant everything i had ever believed about the world, about love, about my own mind shifted...from that moment on i began creating a new reality, one in which i had not lost my grip on sanity. one in which nothing could possibly be wrong with me. i gave IT the wrong name. i sacrificed everything in that instant for the sake of the illusion of control, sacrificed decency, sacrificed character, sacrificed future, sacrificed heritage, sacrificed love.

these ghosts haunt me now...i cannot quiet them. i beg them to forgive me. i know they cannot. i want desperately to try to explain, to rewrite it, to make it make sense. i know i never will. i wonder if those ghosts will visit me in my quiet place. come to scream, to condemn, to listen, to crucify, to forgive. But maybe they will allow me to make it right, to give back what i stole; and, with me, to condemn the Thing that lives in my mind and destroyed everything i had ever wanted. that Thing that i sacrificed blood for. maybe that Thing will show up and i can rage and scream and curse and condemn and crucify IT. IT is the thief. IT is the liar. IT is the abuser. but then again, wasn't i?

but, no, i am not!

IT was not me. i will show them if they let me. i was wrong, IT was wrong. i've got to finish the story. This part was left unresolved. I must make peace with the Thing and the ghosts and the woman i am now. I am leaving with two hearts...i can only come back with one. I'm coming. i will write it again and it will be the truth. i will leave nothing out. i will bleed and i will cry and i will be terrified and i will be brave and i will scream and i will plead and i will take and i will give back and i will demand and i will ask for and i will hate and i will love. but perhaps when i am done, these ghosts and i can live in peace. for we will have been healed.

Excerpt from "An Unquiet Mind" by Kay Redfield Jamison (revised)

"Both my manias and depressions had violent sides to them. Violence, especially if you are a woman, is not something spoken about with ease. Being wildly out of control – physically assaultive, screaming insanely at the top of one’s lungs, running frenetically with no purpose or limit, or impulsively trying to leap from cars – is frightening to others and unspeakably terrifying to oneself. In blind manic rages I have done all of these things, at one time or another and some of them repeatedly; I remain acutely and painfully aware of how difficult it is to control or understand such behaviors, much less explain them to others. I have, in my psychotic, seizure-like attacks – my black, agitated manias – destroyed things I cherish, pushed to the utter edge people I love, and survived to think I could never recover from the shame. I have been physically restrained by terrible, brute force; kicked and pushed to the floor; thrown on my stomach with my hands pinned behind my back; and heavily medicated against my will.I do not know how I have recovered from having done the things that necessitated such actions, any more than I know how and why my relationships with friends and lovers have survived the grinding wear and tear of such dark, fierce, and damaging energy. The aftermath of such violence, like the aftermath of a suicide attempt, is deeply bruising to all concerned. And, as with a suicide attempt, living with the knowledge that one has been violent forces a difficult reconciliation of totally divergent notions of oneself. After my suicide attempt, I had to reconcile my image of myself as a young girl who had been filled with enthusiasm, high hopes, great expectations, enormous energy, and dreams and love of life, with that of a dreary, crabbed, pained woman who desperately wished only for death and took a lethal dose of lithium in order to accomplish it. After each of my violent psychotic episodes, I had to try and reconcile my notion of myself as a reasonably quiet-spoken and highly disciplined person, one at least generally sensitive to the moods and feelings of others with an enraged, utterly insane, and abusive woman who lost access to all control or reason.These discrepancies between what one is...brought up to believe is the right way of behaving toward others, and what actually happens during these [episodes] are…disturbing beyond description."

“Uncontrollable anger and violence are dreadfully, irreconcilably, far from a civilized and predictable world.”

I must now find a way to reconcile these discrepancies in my own life. I am ashamed to admit that this account is almost identical to my own though I cannot yet say that i have "recovered" from anything. While i have lived "happily" with my disorder and even cheerfully shared with many of my "illness", I am only now, after 14 years of full-blown Bipolar, coming face-to-face with the enormity of its impact on my life, my soul, those i love and have loved, and the two people who I am. I have been denying the existence of one...carefully crafting the illusion of the other. I must look into the face of this thing and see if i can find peace with it, myself and the casualties it has left behind.

The Abyss Walkers

"...by that time I knew about the abyss.
I had no name for it then, but I already knew the awful hollowness under my feet that meant bottomless emptiness, and I knew the smell of it. It was like the cold wet air that coils up from a dead black well. I could smell the breath from my own private pit and I could even smell it about others. There is a fraternity of us, the abyss walkers. In our eyes, the world is divided by it, made up of those who walk frail, careening rope bridges over the abysses and those who do not. We know each other. I do not think it is a conscious thing with us, this knowing, at least not most of the time, or we would flee from each other as from monsters. It is an animal thing. It is only on that wild old neck-prickling level that we meet. It is only in our eyes that we acknowledge that our twin exhalations have touched and mingles. Sometimes, though not often, one of the others, the non-abyss-people, will know us, too. You may even know the feeling yourself; you may have met someone about whom otherness clings like a miasma; you can feel it on your skin though you can't name it. When that happens, you have met one of us. You may even be one of us, down deep and in secret. As the old women in Kenmore say, it takes one to know one. Being able to feel it is not a good sign. The other half of the world, the solid golden half, the non-abyssers...they feel nothing under their feet but solidity.
…They inherit the earth. We inherit the wind."

Anne Rivers Siddons Outer Banks, pgs. 26-27