On: The Self

I often feel surreally on the outside looking in, as though I know something that the entirety of the rest of the world is somehow blind to. I think how ignorant and foolish mankind is as I stare down at them in astonished wonderment as to how they could be so stupid! And then, after some time, I realise I was looking in the mirror but hadn't realise it. I realise how ignorant and arrogant I was, not to mention presumptuous. I just find it far easier to criticise and call out others in those regards than to call myself out. But then, I wonder, how am I supposed to teach anyone anything if I don't call them out, if I don't criticise them..? I'm not criticising in the most common sense, but in the sense of a well-meaning critique, intended to help provide guidance and improvement, yes? No, not so much. At least... not with the exclusion of myself. I cannot drone on about how no one is special without saying that I am not special. I cannot drone on about equality while raising myself above others. I cannot drone on about how selfless I am without saying how selfish I am, as well. There are two sides to every coin, after all, and I even say often enough how much duality has veins deep within my world-view and personal philosophies.

But this arrogance of my act simply demonstrates the point! I point out other's ignorance or arrogance, but in doing so, must also confront and point out my own. My spiritual views are pantheistic, and I believe all that is is God, and therefore God is all that is. Doesn't conflict with the bible, nor many other religious views, either, which I'm contented about. I also see the entire universe as fractals from the smallest things in existence to the very largest. Patterns woven into the fabric of reality over and over, creating bigger and bigger versions of those same patterns. I believe all is one, and one is all. Therefore, whenever I say something of someone else I hold to be true, is that not therefore true of me in some way? Is the world around me, and all those who fill it, not simply a reflection of myself in some way?

When I lash out, it's because I'm also lashing in, in essence. My loathing of the world tends to merely reflect my self-loathing. Likewise, others being happy can very well make me happy, even if I have no idea who it is that is happy – I merely know that they are happy, and that's enough. Their happiness makes me happy because the two – I and they – are reflections of one another. Likewise, I preach letting go of the ego – or the self – in favor of living for others, and yet acknowledge the necessity of serving one's self, lest they cannot serve others. Serving others, however, serves the self, just as much as one must serve the self in order to serve others. The two are one and the same, so really, I mean that one must let go of the illusion that the two are different. Oneness with God, in my views, is no different than Oneness with the Universe. Therefore, loving thy neighbor is fundamentally loving thyself, as well. These are what I personally hold to be mutually inalienable truths.

If others are delusional, then so am I. If others are dumb, then so am I. If others are selfish, then so am I. However... if others are intelligent, then so am I. If others are beautiful, then so am I. If others are loving, then so am I. One is One with God whether one wishes it or not, and yet I see Hell as the dissonance of one from God (and, therefore, the universe, including those around them.) This dissonance, this disconnect, causes friction and frustration, discord and dysphoria. You can believe or not believe in God, it does not matter. You can see God as merely a literary device or metaphor, but I implore you not to let religion or semantics get in the way of these words I write.

Accept your flaws when you can. Accept the flaws of others when you can. Accept your good qualities when you can. Accept the good qualities of others when you can. Accept yourself for who you are, but accept others for who they are, as well. This does not mean you should become complacent. This does not mean there is no need, nor reason, to change. However, in the moment, all is as it is, and nothing can change that, as change happens over time, and therefore cannot happen in the moment that all is as it is. Accept that you do not have power over all, but also accept that you are a part of the universal power over all that exists. The point is not to succeed in these things, nor is it to become a 'perfect' human being. Rather, by accepting these things, you accept the reality that such is quite impossible, and that no one is perfect. The point is simply to try. Try for yourself, but also try for others. Try for others for yourself, and try for yourself for others. Give to the universe, and you give to yourself. Give to yourself, and you give to the universe. However, by making a distinction, by giving to yourself purely for your own sake, you breed dissonance and discord with the universe, and by giving to the universe purely for the universe's sake, you breed self-destruction.

Shut-Down

If, in person, I seem mute, it's not my intention. My mind is going a million miles per hour, screaming, but my lips don't move, my voice does not resonate. As I become more and more overwhelmed, my body starts to shut down, piece by piece, and my voice is quite often one of those things that just seems to 'turn off.' At the worst, I can become totally non-responsive, and yet consciously and fully aware (except that my eyes also may be closed.) I become trapped in a shell that is my body, struggling to move even a single finger. Fear and terror fill my mind and turn into a cyclonic fireball of utter self-loathing and destruction. But this is all inside. No one can hear it, and no one can hear me. I scream, but not a noise comes out. I can appear almost dead, breathing shallowly, unresponsive to most stimuli, unable to speak or move, eyes often closed. And yet... I'm still there. My mind is still present. And so I am simply left there to listen, to feel, to hear, to smell, to taste, and sometimes - if I can manage to open my eyes - to see. But, with all of these things, I still cannot seem to interact with the world around me. Others begin to feel or treat me like I no longer exist, or like I'm some petulant poltergeist trying to nudge, pull, squeak - trying to make any kind of outward communication possible.

Many people can be left speechless. This is a whole other thing. Imagine being an android, but believing that you're a human. Suddenly, as if by remote control, your arms stop working. Someone just turned them off. No matter what you try to do, you can't move them voluntarily. Next, your legs. You collapse, unable to hold your own body up. You try to call for help, but your voice also got turned off. You have trouble moving your jaw, your lips, and your eyes get extremely heavy. All of your nerves still work, so you can feel every sensation, you are present of mind, but trapped inside of the cage that your body has become, unable to be heard, unable to do anything at all. It's isolating... Dreadful... One of the only things I can think of that might embody the true Hell.

Love..?

Dead.

Joy..?

Dead.

Hope..?

Dead.

Rationality..?

Dead.

Reality?

Dead.

People get divorced over this. Realities become so warped that it infects the actualities of the reality. What is depression? The brain... literally - and I do not mean figuratively, but literally - dying. Brain cells start decaying and dying, neural activity lessons, the spiritual and emotional centres of the brain undergo a brownout where all positivity is severed from consciousness. The happiness, joy, and love being stripped from you, and so suddenly, shreds your heart apart. You question everything you thought was true, and begin to doubt everything.


"Do I really love her?"

"Is this what I want for my life?"

"I'll never be happy again."

"Everything hurts."

"There's no forward, backward, left or right. I'm lost."

"I'll never get out of this dungeon!"

"Kill me. Please, kill me."

"I want to stab myself in the head with a pitchfork."

"I don't want you to see me like this!"

"Help... Please... Help me."

"I'm already dead inside. Just end my misery."

"No future... There is no future..."

"No one loves me."

"AHHHHHHHH!"

"I scream and scream, but nobody hears me."

"Trapped, locked in this cage. I can't get out. I'll die here."

"I can't take it anymore!"

"The world is better off without me."

These are the things people with major depression truly feel, think, and sometimes even say.

To the Healers

To the disillusioned, the world-weary, the beaten and the worn. To the aware, perceptive, intuitive, and empathetic. To the watchers of a world ablaze, and to those pulling others out of the fires at grave personal risk. To the wise and the wary. To those who guide, lead, and build...

Your work is Sisyphean, and yet you toil over it day after day. You don't truly see change, no matter your greatest efforts. So why do you do this? It is not truly about change or improvement. It is about balance. You are at the forefront of keeping the balance. Without you, the world would surely crumble. Everything hangs on by a thread, all thanks to you and others like you. You are dutiful, compassionate, truly life-saving. What do you get in return? A broken body, an exhausted mind, depression and anxiety, pain and tears. In this world, selfishness, disregard for others, narcissism, ruthlessness, a lack of conscience and morality, a cold heart... These are the qualities that provide worldly rewards.

You take the road less travelled, off the beaten path. You spend much of your life in solitude, even when surrounded by others. You are unique and rare in this world. There is an eternal blaze, and no matter your efforts you will never put it out, so you instead try to keep it from spreading. It is there, it is very real, and you've seen it consume all too many. Your acts are not for praise or reward, not for some ulterior motive... You do this not because you were asked and commanded. You do this because every fibre of your being says it is right, because your heart wrenches every time you see another person get burned. You realise that the 'self' is just a piece of the whole. You are like a cell of a body, or - more aptly - an atom. You make up such an infinitesimal piece of the universe. And yet, if each of you did not do what you do, disaster could occur. Even the Law of Conservation of Mass agrees that you are required for the Universe to be.

Others may hurt you, not appreciate you, look down on you... but do not let this deter you. They do not see the truth, the necessity of your existence. You do not take this path just for the sake of taking the path. You do not have some sense of self-righteousness or entitlement. You do what you do because it is who you are. Others may try to change you - do not let them. Do not change to suit others, but rather to improve upon who you already are. Seek enlightenment, improvement, and transcendence. Do not become disheartened when you fall, or when you make a mistake. Take the time you need, get up, and keep being true to yourself.

Innocence Lost... in Translation

Aspies (a fun and casual term for those with Asperger's) often find their words and intentions get lost in translation. We're blunt, we're honest, and we don't really pick up on other's intents and meanings, as well, either. But there is a fairly important difference between the misunderstandings of one with Asperger's and those of others who don't...

Imagine someone who is illiterate looking at a page full of words: "What are all these weird squiggly lines?" It wouldn't mean much to them would it. This is what body language, things like vocal intonation, many abstract concepts (like sarcasm), and other social cues are like. We don't pick up on these things as well as others, but we can still learn - we just need time and lots and lots of practice (not to mention a desire to put forth such effort.) So, if you see someone on the autism spectrum not understanding your feelings and intentions, try to consider your body language and vocal intonation, amongst other subtle cues, which come naturally to you, as that text on the page in front of the illiterate. They can't read it, but you can help teach them.

Now, how about the misunderstandings of those without autism? Okay, now imagine someone took an equivalent, or nearly equivalent, alphabet to write in English. A person who isn't familiar with both alphabets could get very confused. Let me give you an example: Кан ю рид дис? If you can't read that, you probably don't know Cyrillic, and unless you speak languages like Russian, Bulgarian, or Mongolian, you probably wouldn't be familiar with it. Trying to read an Aspie is like trying to read the same exact language... in a different, yet more or less equivalent, text. Just like an Aspie being able to learn the body language and social cues of non-Aspies, the inverse can be true, as well - non-Aspies can just as well learn the inner-workings and behaviors of Aspies.

The interesting thing about this is that Aspies are different, and yet very much the same. It's pretty much all a matter of perception - Aspies tend to perceive the world around them a bit, or a lot, differently from most other people, but it's all the same world. People with autism are really just humans like anyone else, with emotions, struggles, aspirations and goals, and who want to be loved and accepted. No matter how much we seem like it sometimes, we're not aliens. When a non-verbal autistic (typically regarded by most as 'retarded' and 'not worth trying to make understand') write, whether on a computer or text-to-voice program, or some other means of giving them a voice, people are realising, "Wow, they're really just like us!" Just because someone has different mannerisms, body language, perceptions, and has difficulty or is unable to speak, it does not mean they're stupid, idiots, retarded, or essentially vegetables of people who are burdens to society (this is truly what many, if not most, people believe, including medical professionals.)

If a foreigner came to your country, and didn't know your language, would you ridicule them and call them stupid for not understanding what you're saying? If you say yes, then you're one of the many ignorant individuals who probably thinks the above misinformation about Auties (like 'Aspies,' but for all autistics) is true.

Now, I'm going to say some generalisations that are true more often than not, but like all generalisations, certainly has its exceptions. People with autism:

• Are usually literal and take things at face value
• Don't like to bother with lying because it's more work than just telling the truth
• Are typically honest to a fault (consider if you really want to know the answer to what you ask!)
• Often just want to be accepted and loved, and will often try to do their best to receive such
• Are loyal to a fault (many with autism get taken advantage of for this)
• Are usually willing to try to learn new things if it's important to them that they do (like social skills)
• Just want others to be patient and understanding
• Usually need some degree of their own space, but can also be very clingy (try to go with the motions, providing them with the space and tranquillity they need, while also being there for them when they need)
• Usually have a thousand times as much going on in their head than they could ever verbalise
• Have co-morbid conditions like hypersensitivities (proneness to sensory overload, sensitivities to all five senses, and prone to hypersensitive immune systems, such as proneness to allergies), mood disorders, anxieties, ADHD, OCD (either tendencies or the full condition), psychotic disorders, neurological disorders, somatic illnesses, genetic conditions -- BUT KEEP IN MIND, THESE THINGS, THEMSELVES, ARE NOT THE AUTISM!
•  So on top of just seeing the world differently, not being able to naturally pick up on social cues (instead having to learn the behaviors intellectually, or utilise mimicking), having difficulty with abstract social constructs like subtext, ulterior motives, spite, and dishonesty, people with autism typically also have to deal with a wide array of psychological and physical ailments that simply coincide with their autism, but which make things all the harder

All of this said, some with autism do use their diagnosis as an excuse to behave badly. This isn't acceptable, and no one should use autism as an excuse to intentionally do wrong. That said, I think most with autism probably stay away from such behavior if they can, and if they do do something wrong or hurtful, it's probably unintentional. Honestly, I believe there is a reason why those with autism relate to animals so well. While we do have the brains of humans, many able to at least write eloquently, to be well educated and very knowledgeable, as well as even very self-aware, I think that, when it comes to social dynamics, we're more akin to animals. Animals don't lie or cheat, they don't plot... Animals take in what they see, they react, and they're deliberate in what they do - they won't deceive you. And animals that are loved can become some of the most loyal companions you will ever meet. They're innocent.

O, Ambivalence

The bitter-sweetness of depression and love... Feeling two things that oppose one another simultaneously... Listening to sad songs that are beautiful... It's hard to stand with one foot in one world and the other foot in another. Contradictions are both natural and unnatural, their very nature contradictory, and yet there is some strange sense of purpose and meaning behind them oft enough. Paradoxes, mirrors, asynchrony, ambivalence. Logically speaking, they shouldn't both be able to exist, and yet somehow they do. There can be as much tangible nature to both things, things which oppose the other's very existence. Yin and yang... Darkness allows light as much as light allows darkness, and yet each opposes the existence of the other. Night and day, light and dark, love and hate, war and peace.

My sadness allows my happiness to exist, and my happiness is payment for my sadness. I could forever dwell on the unfairness of my depressions, or I can see my depressions as the price I pay to experience happiness. Everything good costs at least something bad, and everything bad can reward with something good.

Always When Things Get Good

Warning: Rated MA (LV, for crude language and violence)



Bipolar... One son of a bitch of an illness. Or more like a smart ass illness. It always makes certain to keep me reeled in by reminding me over and over about the mania highs, the wealth of empathy and compassion it provides me, the unique perspectives I have because of it... Do I have Stockholm Syndrome? Yeah, it feels like my bipolar has held me hostage for all this time, and to survive, I fell in love with it. Stockholm Syndrome. It holds a gun to my head and I beg it not to leave.

Right as that perfect moment comes up where things are feeling like they're all good, it pops up. Depression. Often, it creeps up slowly, building itself up more and more, but sometimes it's stealthy and it hits before you have time to react. By the time you realise what's happening, it's already too late. Over and over, the word, "Fuck!" rings in my head, as though a resonating voice in a very long, echoing tunnel. I'm a very reactive person. Every time something happens, I react, and the better or worse the thing is, the more strongly I react. I suppose it's normal when phrased so simply, but the nature of the reaction is more complex than that.

Mixed states. Often considered the worst of the worst moods for bipolar, they can wreak all kinds of havoc and are typically even more unstable in nature than mania. Most bipolar suicides occur during such states, as they both have the mania for the energy (mostly negative energy, though), and the depression to push the suicidality. Most often, when people are suicidal but don't actually attempt to commit suicide, it's because they don't have the energy to do it, not because they consciously decided to resist. People are given euthanasia in some countries for less than this sort of thing, and the suicidal simply take the burden of giving euthanasia to themselves, rather than having someone else do it. I have had suicidal ideation, we're old pals, but I've never truly been suicidal. Suicidal ideation simply means dwelling on the subject, not necessarily wishing to do it. I've always been able to find at least one good reason to stay alive, and that's more than some people. Many other people are so hopeless that they can't even come up with one. Keep them alive and let them suffer, or let them die and be buried in peace... An ages old dilemma.

When I get into a dysphoric mania like this, I have this... built up energy like shaking up a champagne bottle corked and full of champagne. Sometimes, the cork just can't hold, and it pops. I also get racing thoughts that are constantly morphing and changing like the winds around a fighter jet going at Mach 3. It's turbulent and the smallest deviation from its heading can cause significant changes in the aerodynamics. One tiny mistake can send that fighter jet rocketing into the ground and exploding into a million pieces; at least it'd be a grand display. I feel creative and yet blocked, inspired yet depressed, restless yet lethargic... Sometimes, I just feel like ripping my own arms off and beating myself with them, not that I even know how I could possibly do that; how would one beat themselves with their own arms when they have no arms to hold the arms? Sometimes, I feel like twisting my neck so far that it just snaps and bye-bye world. Sometimes, I feel like peeling the entirety of my skin off, exposing all the muscle and bone beneath it. Sometimes, I feel like running as fast as I can into a cinder block wall, ramming my head as hard as I can into it, and then just living with the result.

When I put names to my problems, I become way too fricken aware - hyper-vigilant - of all the little things that make up that issue. It consumes me, and it can sometimes feel like my only purpose in life is to monitor my illnesses and creating stats. "I have no other purpose; I just tally the problems!" Good things feel toxic to me. Sometimes, it seems like I'm deathly allergic to good things, so I avoid them whenever I can. Bad things, however, seem to be the antidote and vaccine, but I have to get it regularly to keep the good at bay. Wouldn't want that pesky goodness to kill me, after all. Chaos is me and I am chaos. I want to get high by getting off the drugs. I want to let my mind run wild and crank out all that it can until it overheats and explodes through my ears and eye sockets, a moment later annihilating my skull into a powder cloud of bone fragments, nothing but a poor, ripped up torso and legs to commemorate me. I want to walk into that Starry Night and to walk on moonbeams. I want the world to become a painting and become a beautiful stroke of red across the canvas in blue.

"Do you want to be an exceptional mind and be dead?" said the psychiatrist on Black Box. She's saying that someone on a self-destructive warpath to annihilate themselves may be exceptional and unique, but they also end up very dead very early. I find the answer to that question a little difficult to find. Sometimes, I think I'd rather drown in the sea of my disease than let it become a barren desert. I've often thought, for years and years, that drowning would be my ideal death... It would be peaceful and quiet at the end with a wonderful view (I would want to drown facing belly up somewhere that isn't so dark nothing can be seen, perhaps like the open ocean on a starry night.) Yes, there would be an instinctive struggle in the beginning, but then the calm approaches and you're slowly lulled to sleep.

Things have gotten good in my life. Can you tell?

Asperger's? Empathy?

My grandma was actually the first to say she thought I had Asperger's. I pretty much immediately said that I didn't, though I admitted that I shared some similarities. Well, about a year later, I started to think more and more about those similarities that may not be just similarities. On the show, Parenthood, a kid named Max has Asperger's, and many sources say that the portrayal is exceptionally accurate. I could relate tremendously to Max, and yet I know that my own experiences and how I've handled things in life are quite a bit different. However, Max seems to be on the somewhat more severe side of the Asperger's spectrum, which may yet still be on the mild side of the autism spectrum. Max is the key reason why I thought I had similarities, yet did not have Asperger's.

Later on in the series, the character Hank - a successful photographer who has fumbled all his relationships with people his entire life - reads a book about Asperger's to try to get to understand Max; however, in reading that book, Hank instead learns a lot about himself: that he probably has Asperger's. Hank is rather laid back, seems quite normal in most respects, and yet has a lot of difficulty in social circumstances. You wouldn't look at him and just think right off the bat, "Yep, he's autistic." Perhaps you'd think he's artistic, being a great photographer and all, but not autistic. He proceeds to see Max's therapist who specialises in Asperger's to try to understand himself further and why he keeps screwing up his relationships with everyone he knows.

It is Ray Romano's portrayal of Hank that made me start to realise that I may, in fact, have Asperger's. My nurse practitioner, who is for all intents and purposes my psychiatrist, has long said that she sees many qualities in me that you would find on the autism spectrum. When I told her that I was finally starting to think that I may actually have Asperger's, all she really said was, "Yep." Seems she knew all along, but never came right out and said it. Maybe she knew that I was gradually getting closer and closer to that realisation, and just let it come to fruition naturally. I can't say how many times I've listed this quality or that which "is like Asperger's," without giving having Asperger's the credit that's due. I haven't done any official tests - just those online ones to give me a ballpark estimate - but my NP sure seems to think I have it. She also thinks I'm schizoaffective, which is on the schizophrenia spectrum, and the Asperger's and schizophrenia spectra both overlap genetically and symptomatically. Seems all my problems are linked from just a couple genes.

Besides probably having Asperger's, I'm also a wildly uncontrolled empath. Being super empathetic has both its benefits and downfalls, as you can understand other's feelings, yet by taking on at least a portion of that same emotional toll, for better or worse. I've also heard that those on the autism spectrum have a whole lot of empathy, but don't especially have the social skills to be there for the person they are empathetic towards. Often, seeing that their actions often just cause distress, they instead distance themselves from the situation whenever they see someone in pain of one sort or another. I've found that those with Asperger's frequently have immense, unimaginable difficulty and frustration trying to understand others... something I found so ironic about the apparent abundance of empathy.

One of the quotes from the character, Max, is: "I try do understand them, but I can't... Asperger's is supposed to make me smart... but if I'm smart, why... Why don't I get why they're laughing at me?" A clip of that exact scene can be found here: www.hulu.com/watch/611376 Well, empathy is supposedly what makes a person able to, "step into someone else's shoes," so to speak. I ask myself, then, why is it that I have all this empathy, all this understanding of the trials and tribulations of another, yet don't understand people? I can sense and feel the emotions of others, yet I don't even know how to take a compliment, let alone properly engage in any sort of social interaction. I suppose I certainly do have my good times, and I tend to communicate quite well in writing, but the simple face-to-faces, I struggle with. I become more and more shut in and distanced from people who are or were physically in my life because I unwittingly, as well as unwillingly, push them away.

I don't understand people, nor what they expect or even will accept from me. I don't understand social constructs, rituals, and the like. I struggle with the very... abstract and fickle nature of etiquette, politeness, sociology, and society itself. A number of times that seems uncountable, I've been asked some pretty basic questions about myself, as well as what I think of others in one way or another. For years and years, I've really struggled with the answers. For instance, being asked, "How do you feel today?" I often joke or say something veiled by sarcasm, trying to evade the question. To be honest, I can't put many things about how I feel or how I think others view into words. When I do sound more serious, it's usually from memorisation of what I should say, because I can't come up with an answer on the spot. Most of my limited social skills are from trying to mimic others. I rather subconsciously observe others and how they act in various situations and try to emulate that to appear normal. However, because I do use mere mimicry, I often find myself employing what I've seen others do in the wrong circumstances or times.

I know that a lot of this seems pretty standard human behavior and confusion. To be honest, I'm extremely afraid to say that I am, or have, something that I'm actually not. I feel like taking such titles without properly earning them brings shame upon myself for some sort of offence against those who have earned it. It probably sounds silly, but it's true. I have found that some people find my long list of issues and labels is absurd and somehow reflects badly upon my character. But the way that I view labels is very literal: they are a method employed to more easily realise what you're dealing with without having to know each individual quality or characteristic as an individual. You can group things together and know them as a body, a whole of some sort. Labels are organisational and intended to make understanding things easier because they aren't so scattered. It's always harder to find what you're looking for when there is nothing but chaos. I can put all those little pieces of my issues into boxes, and then label each box so that I know what I'm looking at and where to find it.

Asperger's... That feels like a big title to take on. Am I deserving? Is it not my place to say I have Asperger's? Some things have just... begun to sink in, I suppose. Of course, there's a whole lot I need to figure out for and about myself. Asperger's just may be one more thing to add to the list.