Wine Drunk

I've had about six very large glasses of wine this evening, in addition to the beer, of course. I also happened to have a brief yet intimate trans-related conversation with a room full of fairly straight/heteronormative people tonight. Along with all of this, I've been thinking about the Asperger's blog I've started following. And since I'm drunk, I'm probably more inclined to write about that particular part of my life. It's funny how that is more uncomfortable for me to discuss than being trans. I think this is because I came from a subculture that more easily understood transgender issues than autism issues. I do very well at "hiding" my differences. So most people don't think there is anything wrong with me, to use their words. To use my own...I don't think there is either. But there are just some things I cannot do. I have my limits, and I have learned more about them in the last five or six years (since my first "official" yet second actual diagnosis). But that can be good and bad.

When I used to have meltdowns as a child and then a teenager, I never knew why. It felt like they just happened out of nowhere. The remedies were always lying down in the car, letting the motion calm me and chugging water till I was about to explode. My mom would hold me and get me away from what was happening if she were around. If not, I would just freeze. I would not speak. I would not move a muscle. I felt like I was watching everything happen to me, and no matter what I could tell myself to say or do, my body would not listen to my head. It just couldn't. It was then that all sights, sounds, and physical sensations started to become so intense that I could not tolerate them. I wanted to explode out of my body, and I would try to squeeze myself as tightly into myself as possibly because it felt like every molecule of my physical being was being pulled in a different direction.

My whole childhood consisted of this and of not knowing how to talk to people at all. I could talk to family members and maybe find one kid who would tolerate my seemingly incessant monologues, but I just didn't associate much with other children. I didn't really have a friend that I could truly relate to until I was thirteen or fourteen. And I screwed up those relationships horribly. This continued throughout high school and my first year or two of college. I just didn't understand why I always had to feel so disconnected from the rest of the world. I didn't get why I couldn't just learn the way other people did or see things the way they did. Why were things so easy for them? Why did I always get lost when more than one person was involved in a conversation?

The first time I heard the diagnosis was in high school. But I rejected it, thinking that it couldn't possibly fit me. I only knew of severe cases of autism, and for some reason my therapist just went with whatever I said, and she said I had panic disorder. So I was heavily drugged, and I really didn't show much improvement. And I remained mostly alone until my nephew was diagnosed with Asperger's around age two or three. I revisited the idea.

Suddenly things made sense. Aware of my situation, I was able to piece together how I had learned to cope in a neurotypical world. I thought that everyone had to learn the way I did. It didn't hit me that my view of the world was so fundamentally different from that of most people until maybe five years ago. College was a very serious game of catch up for me. But I was funny, and my acting ability got me through a lot of situations. I could pretend to be normal. I could pretend to understand what was going on. I could just fake it until I made it.

But it's so hard to do that. And I guess what I want to convey is that most people don't understand what it is like to have to deal with that almost every minute of every day. Let's just say you are bad at test taking. Imagine a near-24-hour rendition of the SAT or MCAT or whatever...every day of your life. You can do it, of course. But you're slower than other people. You don't intuitively understand it, but you have learned enough about it through practice. You may even like the subjects you're being tested upon. But at the end of the day, you just want it to be over so you can recover. You need time for your brain to rest. People do to my brain what games of chess and logic puzzles do to the brains of others. It's not that I am not interested in being a social person. I am very much interested, and I am now extraordinarily aware of how much I desire companionship. But it's hard. And I need a break.

A lot of this is for my new friends. And I wish I weren't bombed while writing this because I'll probably miss a few important things. When I am okay, you might not know that I'm that much different. But when the bucket is full and I can't quite take anymore, I lose every coping strategy I've ever learned. I become a non-functional human being. And people are scared of this. I try to run away from everyone when I know this is about to happen because I'm afraid of letting people see me get this way. I don't want to be judged, and I don't want people to believe that I can't manage my own life, even if I feel that same way at times. I am so afraid of people seeing this version of me that I am super polite around everyone. I laugh at almost any joke. I sometimes have to fill in gaps with jokes or think heavily about what's going on in a conversation. I've learned to be pretty quick with this. I'm fortunate that I'm as smart as I am. I'd never get away with this otherwise. But sometimes, that's the problem. I take in way too much information for my brain to handle at any one time. And then all the lights on the switchboard are on at the same time, and I just crash.

So I'm drunk. I can see less of the picture this way. But I also am less inhibited, obviously. I say exactly what is coming to my mind as it comes--the parts that can be translated into words at least. Weed is much better at making me "less autistic". I'm not sure it works that way for everyone.

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I'm just tired of having to keep up pretenses all the time. I almost cried the other day because I think my parents are starting to finally acknowledge this fact about me. My brain is different. Sometimes I just need to be left alone. Sometimes, I need to be talked to in a certain way. My mother is learning to avoid styles of conversation that make me more and more anxious or overload me. She told me to not go to this new job if it was going to put that much stress on my mind and body. And she has never done that with anything before. I wanted to cry. But at the same time, it made me want to be able to push through or at least make the effort because someone was making that kind of effort for me.

Yes. Sometimes I am terrified to admit that I don't understand things, especially things that other people seem to get instantaneously. I wish I could also explain my relationship with touch, but that's challenging. If I am not comfortable with you on the deepest level, I cannot be touched by you for any extended period of time. I get ridiculously uncomfortable in situations that involve hugs, complex handshakes, even sitting next to people touching me. It makes my skin crawl. I start to develop blinders and hide inside of myself. But I'm trying so hard to open up to the people who care about me. And it's even hard to believe that people here do care. I always get scared that if people really knew me, they'd never like me. It seems to always work that way. Or they just realize I'm not worth it.

Tonight was a huge step forward in a lot of ways. I still always ask. But I am getting more comfortable being touched. And it felt comforting in a way. Maybe I was able to lift even the tiniest amount of weight off my chest. But I still felt a difference. But it was unusual for me, so it scared me. And then I knew I needed to come home. I was going to just sleep there, but too much change in one night can mess with me, and after a weekend of hiding from the world and wishing I could hide from myself, I knew I couldn't take it. Learning my own limits is the most difficult part of this journey.

I don't know what the point of my writing this was, and I doubt I will remember much of this tomorrow. I just wish it were easier to talk about for me. I wish I weren't so ashamed of talking about why I switched to front lanes. I wish I could bring up that I would probably be alright going back on the floor now that the environment is not so new to me. But I have such a difficult time starting, ending, and even sometimes maintaining conversations. That's when I turn on actor mode. I have to place myself in a role. I have to define the character. You get used to that after a while, and then you realize that you start doing it when you don't have to. And that overloads you as well.

Tastes, certain types of touch, certain sounds, certain things that people say.

I FUCKING HATE WHEN PEOPLE COMMENT ABOUT MY SIZE TO SUGGEST THAT SOMEONE MY SIZE IS EASILY OVERTAKEN IN A PHYSICAL SENSE. HATE IT. IT LITERALLY MAKES ME WANT TO HIT PEOPLE RIGHT THEN AND THERE. YOU HAVE NO IDEA. SIZE MEANS VERY LITTLE WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. THAT IS ALL.

Sorry. But I get pretty ticked off at out-of-shape people who think they can take me. People who've never fought, run, or worked out a day in their lives. It is worse than people making small penis jokes, which have actually become funny to me in recent days. I feel that people making comments like that about me is equivalent to making comments about the weakness of women because they are women. The weakness of small people because they are small. You don't know what people are capable of by looking at them. I've seen 300 pound drag queens that can jump nearly three feet in the air in heels and break dance and do splits, etc. Bodies can and will surprise you. This is one of the few things I actually still take personally. I am trying not to. But fuck you if you're going to try to make me feel inferior.

I realize that I've been writing for about forty minutes now. This is going to be fun tomorrow. But I rarely write when I'm drunk, so it will at least be entertaining.

Shifting gears again...
I read a few of those blog posts last night. About face blindness, reading comprehension, pain tolerance, etc. All of them seem like they could have been written by me. I identify with so much of what this person says. I cried once because I felt like I had found someone who understands. I only have had one other very good friend diagnosed with Asperger's, and that was when I was in high school. I really need to give him a call sometime. He also came out not too long ago. Surprise, surprise.

Crushes on straight people are hard. I don't know how to deal with it. I want to ask her. But I'm terrified. I don't want to deal with that sort of rejection. I've dealt with it from gay men before, but our conversations were just about one night stands and things like that. But...fuck. This is new territory for me.

I legitimately forgot what I wanted to talk about. Oh yeah.
I know what my first tattoo will be. I just need to find the perfect spot. I know because it is the one thing I have kept coming back to through every difficult part of my life.
NOTHING WORTH HAVING IS EVER EASY.
And those are the colors I want.
This will happen before I leave the valley.
I wish you could be here for that.

Also, damn, now that I have more piercings, I feel like I want even more. Welcome to that rebellious phase that everyone already went through ten years ago.

I'm getting excited about my future again. It comes in cycles. But this time, I feel more confident. I know it's going to be okay no matter what I do, but I need to DO SOMETHING.

Ummm also...please buy election shirts from me. They are awesome. yay.

New job in about six or seven hours. New people. New job isn't scary. New people = very scary. My brain starts to go in so many places that words don't happen anymore. This is why things are very fragmented near the end.

Another thing. I am literally ALWAYS anxious. I wake up, and I am terrified of the day, and I go to sleep this way. It is a constant fight against this, against confusion, against overstimulation, against managing more than one emotion at a time, and against navigating a social world.

Thanks to everyone. And I hope I don't scare you away too.

I'm probably going to regret this soon.

Character Sketch?

I am meaning without words, certainly, and certainty with an uncertain countenance, counting all the beats between and among. It's not that I'm not listening to the same music but that I hear it a different way, and it's not that I don't understand people but that I understand them differently. Just as there are many layers to a melody, so there are many layers to who you are, and no one can hear all the notes alone. You might even forget that you have one in some places, and it takes the rest of us to remind you to "listen to the e's", in the music of your life and the world around you.

I am a trapped breath, a stifled thought, a quivering tone that says too much and not enough in a time too small. And you've all been there before when the words don't come and your voice rebels, and for maybe a minute you wish you were somebody else. It's not anxiety so much as an imperfect performance of personality--a personification of the desire to get it all and get it right, like the kid in the front of the room who desperately attempts to transcribe the lecture word for word so that he can be sure he won't miss a beat. Is he just another overachiever with no excuse for his behavior, or is he paranoid? Terrified of life without knowledge and the security of it? Terrified that he'll get it wrong and never get another chance? And you know that when he does, he'll try his best never to make the same mistake twice, but that's the part I consider my vice. I'll try and try, but the mistakes just hide, chameleons like me. They change their colors more often than I, and it's like shooting darts into the night. Be my flashlight.

I am a room full of things that don't fit together or anywhere else but paradoxically seem to be just right where they are. I am old posters and haphazard paint jobs and pictures of long lost friends in boxes on your floor. I am the clutter and the laundry that never goes away. I'm the keys you can't find and the gross, unidentifiable dinner plate you wish you hadn't. I am a shelf full of books and secrets just waiting to be heard. It's a mess, maybe unlivable by the standards of most, but you think it's home, and you know exactly where everything is and that that's exactly how it should be. And even if it doesn't look like I know what I'm doing, I know that everything is in its place, and if it isn't, I know I'll find the right one someday. It may take till the day I move out to find that perfect spot, but you can be sure that I know it's there.

I am the pleasure found in patience, the power found in perseverance, and the person found in people, and I pray that I may never forget that I am proud to play as ME.

Beginning in the Middle

I used to have something like this a long time ago. I used to type freely, without regard to criticism or to the feelings of others. I viewed the internet as my personal bitchspace, and I somehow believed that this space possessed a far greater ability to keep me anonymous than it actually could have. I was young. Well, that's a silly thing to say considering that I'm still quite young and have no intention of departing that state, but I was a bit younger than I am today and a quite a lot stupider than I would ever admit to anyone in person. That stupidity birthed one of the greatest personal tragedies of my life--a child brought into this world through the lustful, heartless rape of my developing individuality by the socially stifled yet ever-present adolescent arrogance with which I had on my own fought so long. But, alas, the arrogance overpowers the individual almost every time, and how was I supposed to cope with that at the age of sixteen?

I don't think I've ever gotten over the loss of my first best friend. It's one of those firsts that sticks with you for your whole life: You replay the scenes in your mind innumerable times. You stick your cortical iPod on shuffle, hoping the same sad songs will escape the random number generator this time. But it's always the same, as if you've only got that one song--that one memory of what went wrong.

And it's really tough to get by that kind of stuff when most of the people you knew back then still kind of resent you for it. And when you do something so as to defy the wishes of the one that trusts you above all others with the dear holding of those wishes, it's hard to recover a certain confidence in yourself and your ability to maintain lasting, healthy relationships. It hurts to think that almost every serious, non-familial realtionship that I've had has ended poorly, with the aforementioned having the worst culmination to date. Having recently broken up with a serious boyfriend of several years, my confidence has once again been diminished. But part of me does recognize that I have come to handle these trials well, for I admit that I am experienced in the ways of dealing with maelstroms and shitstroms of all varieties, and though I do fail and falter almost every day in one way or another, I know that I'm generally okay and getting better all the time.

I have a lot of people to thank for my developing abilities as a social being. I once lacked so many of the skills that most people take for granted. I could not converse normally with my peers for most of my childhood, and I even had trouble conversing with other drummers in my line--my class. It's taken me all these years I've been here to finally be comfortable enough with myself to show the world the best of me, and the worst of me. I'm slowly getting over that fear. Let this current school year and past marching season be a testament to the progress that I have made. I am nearly there, and the whole university will know this in time.

Perhaps I haven't revealed a lot about myself just yet. But do relationships ever work that way? You get a chance to make a first impression. You get a chance to tell people exactly what you want them to know, and, with the advent of the internet profile, you now get a chance to present yourself in the way you want to be seen. You give the best of yourself to a world you don't even know, hoping for some sort of reciprocal learning to occur. You present yourself to the world because you are--I am--finally okay with being seen.