Wonder if that would happen a lot more if I'd boost this post. I've never boosted a post on Facebook, but I probably will once the book comes out. One of these will click to the twitter link, which already has over 400 impressions in less than 12 hours, the other will click to its new Autisable home.
And I really don't know if that had anything to do with waking up to a Google Alert that Janika Banks has been added to a German white pages listing on Denmark internet.
This is translated.
And I wanted to see if that's a real thing, and sure enough, comes up on page 3 in a Google search for Janika Banks. Brand new out of the bag.
A couple of years ago someone told me they were going to write up my Wikipedia page, and I laughed and said sure, go ahead. No one really has yet, but for some reason I've either been auto-boosted into legitimate search or manually entered by someone on a job or weirdly obsessed. I'm going with auto boost for now. There are so many automated info pages out there I could claim (traity was dumb, I had it for awhile and let it go), but that's way too much work.
Like I told a friend privately a few days ago- "If I don't get my crap done by end of summer, I'm an idiot. My launch platform has never been more visible."
So I get a porn boost right on top of #netneutrality, crack me up, and then I get a major Google Alert on top of my self-stim post. Never in any parallel dimension did I wildly dream of sex selling anything about Janika Banks. Wow.
:edit: Space Cowboy suggests putting pretty girls in vids to sell merch. Pretty sure some of us are in it for the actual music, so here you go.
Also, this is a thing. I have lifetime potential earnings of $33, crack me up. Bet that would change real quick if I could get some of my friends talking with me about Lexx and stuff. Anyway, you can get into this and click around, kinda fun checking out other channels. Very handy.
This is my personal intro on my activity wall at Autisable.com. For newer autie bloggers coming out now, I go back to 2008 as Bluejacky and have been autie, spoonie, and depression blogging for nearly ten years. And scifi and other entertainment commentating. Lots of that, going back to 2004, actually. I go back to 1994 in internet fandoms. Anyway, if you are interested in autie blogging, whether on spectrum yourself or someone you know or whatevs, Autisable is pretty awesome and we'd love for you to join.
Hello =)
For ppl who don't yet follow me anywhere, I'm a huge scifi & Sherlock fan, and I keep up fairly well with the real time breaking news from the Sherlock/DoctorStrange/Benedict fandom in real time on twitter, plus live tweet Syfy, TWD, and other shows with the #Snarkalecs, and I've got Lexx groups and pages and a fan blog that's been translated into several languages by other fans. I lightly stay in touch with a lot of people who are really spread out, which is ideal for me since I don't do deeper friendship groups well. My friends on twitter who survived the Pond of Death era are really solid, even though I never got back on social media to make friends. Took awhile, but I think I've about found my balance on the webs.
I've made it pretty clear in several places that I don't respond to "hi" or "how's it going" prompts, nothing personal. Hard experience has taught me that vague chatter usually comes with some kind of agenda that diverts my focus, and that usually winds up in what I call exploding bridges. No more blowing up bridges, which means I don't respond to chain yanking. Aspienado is not a doll with a string for personal entertainment, although I still fall for it all the time because Pinky Robot has an automatic response and comply program. I'm far too congenial until I realize I'm a pet on a leash, and then I bite. Nine years with a psychologist is helping me understand why I repeat this pattern over and over. It's called being 'easily led'. I have a court appointed payee based on glitchy cognitive documentation. I'm high IQ and unreliable for time orientation and following directions. If I were Star Fleet mapping planets, I'd be the one who'd stay in the same uniform for 48 hours straight and show up in the wrong conference room, but my report would be immaculately detailed.
While others carefully walk the line of self discovery either with the #actuallyautistic tag or vicariously through their kids, I'm full blown diagnosed aspienado and don't apologize for who I am. I am the bull in the china shop in an eyeblink even when I'm trying my best to behave, and the most challenging thing I've learned on the webs from PR is 'don't respond'. I don't realize I accidentally shred people mowing them over, and I very obviously cannot shut up when I get started, even though I am very quiet in real life and read, research, and study prodigiously. I am driven like an addict toward information input and processing (I'm a compulsive reader, and yes, that is a real thing), and a friend of mine nailed it asking me if I'm a robot. Yes, I am Pinky Robot, learning to integrate all my split web personalities into a psychologically healthy whole.
I'm also YabloVH on the Mo Creatures minecraft multiplayer server, so if you love minecraft, I do, too. =)
I'm not into negativity or any kind of side taking. I used to eat people for sport or think it a challenge to asplain stuffs, now I think there are better things in life I can be doing. I'm very thankful for Joel and Autisable being there for my first step into public sharing the real stuff in my head, and I've been practicing being public on Pinky blog so I don't blow the internet up and then hide in my cave. I'm not into comments, commentary, praise, stick poking, or general "Happy whatever-day-of-the-week-this-is", but I've found my niche in fandoms and memes, and no one will ever be able to pry my brain tentacles out of that crazy abyss.
My goals are simple: Stay public no matter what, and keep sharing my journey integrating into a more socially functional and psychologically healthy person so that I can be good for other people, and especially help despairing parents from the other end- I am your child all grown up now, and I've even had my own kids. It took me a long time to connect all my dots so I could see the bigger picture, but I understand now my mom didn't get what she needed from me, and even though it's too late for her to see me now, I can still encourage other parents who are still getting through the hard stuff with their kids. I was a screamer who got motion sick every single time I was in a car and screwed up every holiday visit with relatives and argued about jots and tittles and shut down everyone trying their hardest to give me a hug. Hi, I am aspienado, and I know now that I love my mother very very VERY much. Please know your kids will get there, many of them probably a lot faster than I did.
And now I'm going to run off and forget to come back here for awhile, because that's what I do.
Note before I get started- I've trained my reader base not to comment because I'm easily triggered. New readers who don't see comments shouldn't misunderstand this as Pinky blog not having a solid readership. I usually leave comments on anyway, but am turning them off for this particular post for those who would use me as a springboard to launch into lengthy diatribe. This is Pinky's Haus.
I've been trying to put a finger on what exactly is specifically bothering me about the #actuallyautistic crowd suddenly blowing up twitter this last year, and after several months of sifting through tons of extremely lengthy explanatory posts by a number of people chock full of self discovery and the joy of finally sharing their noggins, it's dawning on me that they think they speak for other #actuallyautistic people in general.
One of the big brouhahas has been over whether we even need a spectrum label.
YES.
I am deeper on spectrum than the people in the posts I am reading. I never learned to mimic and hide my flaws because I never saw my flaws to begin with. I never even realized I don't fit in, much less how or why. I simply just saw everyone else around me as stupid, and I learned to dumb down and interact as efficiently and as little as possible. I never learned the social graces and I never, EVER learned to mimic them until quite late, and that with the help of a psychologist.
I'm not invalidating all the females finally finding their voices, and I'm #actuallyquitehappy that they're rising up.
However.
My frustration reading their lengthy self discoveries and sometimes excruciatingly detailed shares about every thought they ever had is that they realized they were different.
I didn't.
People TOLD me I was different. I heard that word so many times.
Here is the ugly truth about women and autism that you don't see in these other blogs- some of us are beaten into submission as children. (Some in history before us were institutionalized, and some even nowadays are sold all over the world as sex slaves.) Some of us grew up with abuse that makes doctors cringe when we start talking about it. Our parents didn't know any better.
So all your super lengthy #actuallyautistic autopsies over every little event in your lives sounds like whining to me. Don't get me wrong, I really am glad you found your voices. But I've been saying since 2008 that it's time to start being HONEST about who we are and how we feel, so this is not new. I feel like I'm suddenly being drowned out in a sea of clone posts about "this is who we really are". Um, not me, guys. Don't include me in your 'we'. (I have my own 'we'.)
One of the reasons I've gone silent on twitter is because 1-that is actually my natural instinct, and 2- neurodiverse advocates are lately being the ones likely to tangle with me over other labels I have. If WE are going to stick up for neurodiversity, then don't be stomping the ones you don't like flat in public venue. I have more than an autism label, and y'all make me sick.
I grew up between two fairly strict religious cultures clashing in my household. I was punished almost unceasingly at some points in my life for so many things most people take for granted as normal behavior even in normal children. Still, my differences were caught very early on. Ever since kindergarten I've been labeled with "Does not play well with others". My seat assignment was changed several times in both kindergarten and first grade. My first grade teacher begged my parents to get me to a psychiatrist. They didn't. That's how obvious I was, and I still. did. not. get. help.
The big deal with #actuallyautistic in girls nowadays is that these girls manage to blend in. I have never in my life blended in. Even when I think I'm blending in, I stand out like neon and everyone but me sees that.
So don't sweep me up and lump me into that big ol' #actuallyautistic category with all your own new definitions. Your experiences don't define mine. Your conclusions don't explain my life and my point of view. Your lengthy analyses don't HELP me. Maybe they help other women with #actuallymilderautism, and that's great. But I need the differentiations because I evidently have more problems and special needs considerations than some of you guys do. I feel invalidated and discounted every time an #actuallyautistic person proclaims just taking the spectrum out of the label.
Totally going to ramble this morning, and I'm better now, thank goodness, so I'm going to share one of the coolest Halloweens I've ever enjoyed. Alone. #itwasawesome But real stuff happened, too, and I really did suffer, so the fantastic level was at pure 10.
Up to this point, I haven't been a nether person and avoid portals. I find 'hell' disorienting and get lost.
But this portal showed up by my new digs...
My day started with the dentist. My teeth aren't beautiful, but they are healthy and functional, plus my gums are also still very healthy, which is phenomenal at my age, so I don't mind going in every 6 months for little fixits, like sealing a broken bit or keeping an eye on a teensy spot for a year and a half that finally became a witty bitty cavity.
At first we had no idea who did this, and it wasn't until signs with coordinates were left on a doorstep that we decided to investigate.
I get the epi-free numby shots because regular novacaine catapults me into these magnificent anxiety attacks that make me feel like I've been electrified right down to my toes. I usually take benadryl and extra xanax before I go in to help handle the needle (super aspie's so aspie), and my dentist is unusually awesome with autism spectrum, so over a few years I have really settled for him. Yesterday I tossed around pros and cons of moving a xanax dose up a couple hours, overlapping previous dose, and the result was floating around for a few hours, and thank goodness because this was actually a pretty painful fix, even with a numby shot, and even though it went really fast. I was nearly backflipping outa the chair while the band was being jammed down into my gumline. He said I would feel it later...
Stepping through the portal, I can already see hell on the other side.
I floated out of there and over to Walmart, which was unusually super busy on a Monday morning, so I guess it's official- Christmas is here and the next 10 weeks trying to get a few groceries will be like trying to navigate Silver Dollar City on Memorial Day weekend. But it was cool, I was still numb and floating, looking like someone punched me lightly in the face, which is a great way to deter being smiled at by strangers. I wrote this in 2009 when life monumentally sucked. Smile. You'll feel better. Things are way easier now, but I was kinda loopy yesterday, so best not interact too much.
Stepping through is really dangerous, you get attacked immediately. The first time through, I wound up reeling and falling into lava far below.
I haven't indulged in scented candles in several years, so I picked up a large Moonlit Night (Yankee Candle) by American Home. Oddly, as perfume-y as it is, it's one of the few scents that doesn't start me sneezing immediately, or even at all. I just need to smell something besides my house. I keep airing it out because it's been so gorgeous outside, but my allergies are still going full blast, whee.
Seriously dismal, but I'm getting good enough at minecraft to handle it now, plus with the old server going out soon, we're allowed to switch to creative mode, which I have to do very quickly every time I go either way through a portal because for some reason, stepping through throws me back into survival.
So that numb shot and xanax both didn't wear off until right in the middle of the Gotham live tweet last night, and *wham* that sucked. Instant dragon again for about 10 minutes before I realized and took a pain pill. He wasn't kidding about feeling it later, it's 24 hours later now and my face hurts like crap and I can't take anything yet, so I'm in this weird limbo state where I'm nearly in full shut down trying to stay on autopilot switching from one thing to another every few minutes. I started this post 7 hours ago.
I shared in yesterday's post that we'd been sent on this mysterious adventure to find riches or something. I followed really vague clues and found this place by sheer accident.
And in case you're not ready to be over Halloween yet, here, go have some fun. Tim Burton Illuminati (search list)
And then ask yourself if his 'fails' and 'losing his edge' is really about sales. If you don't see CATCF as a perfect counterpart to AiW, then you're living in a really tiny bubble, because we are immersed and there is no 'out' of hell.
I kept thinking there HAD to be more to adventure than just finding a secret lair hidden in the nether, right? I've been learning how to use xyz coordinates to determine probabilities and was getting pretty good at finding villages and temples like crazy, so maybe I could do the same thing in the nether....
Ok, you found that boring, you need much more difficult gristle to gnaw on. Here, try this. the difference between historical illuminati and pop culture illuminati (another search list) My question- if Illuminati doesn't exist in any real form from any point of view, then why is it so pervasively used? Doesn't that itself cause its existence? Just because it doesn't fit a definition for the 1700's, or just because it's a fictionalized part of our modern world doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For a conspiracy word, this one is about the most pervasively slippery being used at every turn but not really being real. Why are we using it, then? (doublethink) A Brief History of the Illuminati
I personally don't care if there are secret historical ties or it jumped the shark, but everyone seems to be on board this train, so let's just call it what it wants to be called, ok? Maybe someone co-opted it.
Long story short, after a couple of hours of plotting and surveying, a small piece of ladder magically showed up on a block near the lair, and quite simply, I took it to mean 'go up'. I was in creative, easy peasy, just launch up and punch my way through layers of hell, It didn't even hit me I could punch through and get completely OUT of everything. Wo....
You guys didn't see me getting all my dishes done between paragraphs. I don't just sit here and surf.
Someone had been busy! I just sat here sqeeeeing like an idiot, I was so tickled to get to see this.
It was about this time last year that I got called a psycho for freaking someone out. It was a weird friendship, and I'm sure the innocents had no idea I accidentally popped his PTSD cork. If you don't know what I'm talking about, take the blue pill and go back to sleep. Me, I like being awake, and walking among the dead. Ok, yes, even with an outstanding headache from the dentist. Don't scoff, some of you people blowing it off with everyone goes through that. Um, yeah, fine, just spend a day in my body and then go cry on twitter about how much frickin nerve damage is ruining your life. I'm amusing myself through a headache. Some of you will probably never understand that.
Behind the figures were stairs leading up a sort of nether temple mount, and from there I was running around inside the figures (more clues!!!) and back down into the nether through the Outside mountain.
By the way, I'm using a crockpot liner today. I still have fond feelings for him, even if he is still stuck in a blind loop. Apparently a lotta people are. Blame the drugs, blame the porn, blame the music, but if he's not a slave, he's a slaver, and I walked through the wrong door and triggered alarms. I never saw a more tortured soul trained to bolt, unless he's got genius acting skillz, which I doubt, although I do think he's a trained watchdog. I'll be more mindful next time. I know, this blogging out loud stuff is unreal, but srsly, I'm currently eating sauerkraut and hot dogs and about to go fold laundry. It's just a headache.
And then from there I was able to find out how we were being watched without being seen, found more chests (mostly empty), pretty much the remnants of a game not finished. Apparently it had been tried out (the original participants in survival would've had to be teleported to the Outside start point by admins), but I'm betting not completely solved, and there must still be hidden riches of some kind. Why else would clues be set up for us to find? The server is about to be wiped and reset, and the creator of this game probably never saw it finished out. I'm one of the regulars still logging in, and I love tunneling and snooping around other people's stuff. I am really enjoying this game.
You can make a big deal out of symbolism all you want, from any angle. Point blank, all symbols exist, whether humans exist or not. Whether they are mathematical and found in nature or are emotional or spiritual, they necessarily exist because the world is the way it is. Applying mystical meaning to a specific set of symbols is co-opting, adopting them for special interest usage. Historically, the 'Nazi' symbol has been used all over the world to mean very different things by a variety of peoples, but Hitler is the one who made it so famous that it became representative of something forever burned into our brains now. Same thing with other symbols in religions and politics of all kinds. When symbols become synonymous with ideas in your head because you've been trained to associate those symbols with specific ideologies, you have effectively been brainwashed. Everything from there becomes a muddle of string pulling and side taking, sometimes to the point of hate-mongering and even deeply trained fear and anxiety response. When you can walk away from ALL the symbols, you will be free. Nations and religions adopt symbols so people can find their 'kind' and group up, and this has become very fashionable in popular cultures and sales motifs. Guys, symbols are just symbols. If all symbols were taken away from us and we couldn't identify ourselves or other people with them, what would we do? Love each other? Can't have that, can we?
I don't know if Alien will see my note, but I did a screen shot for posterity. We'll always have hell...
I'll probably be listening to this right up through Christmas.
I started this yesterday because I felt so crap I couldn't watch TV or do anything or even lay down for awhile and I was doing my best to focus and concentrate on doing something through pain, so unless you're desperate for something to read, save yourself and flee this post.
There is a place on earth worse than the DMV, and that's the social security office.
I saw a lot of all kinds of people today. I sat in a hard chair for nearly 90 minutes waiting for a turn I thought would never come, and I listened to a guy behind me talk nearly the entire time about everything in his whole life clear back to the 90s. I know his family ancestry, his work history, where he banks, what the inside of his home looks like including detailed descriptions of his furniture, where he actually lives, a number of people he's met, how various family members died, whole convos he's had with landlords, and through the entire thing he never once mentioned a spouse, children, or pets. Not once. He never shut up for well over an hour and never once brought up a relationship. And that whole time I couldn't tune him out because super aspie's so aspie, and the pain running along the nerve paths in my shoulder and neck ramped up into a delightfully nasty headache, and by the time my name was called, the people near me were actually leaning away, I'm sure probably because I looked like that one person in the entire collection of mentally and physically disabled specimens that might actually pop a cork and have a real meltdown. I did my best to sit still and not look like I hate the whole planet, because I really don't, it's just the pain, but I was this close to tears and the only thing holding them back was allowing myself to be pissed that the guy just wouldn't shut up.
I was the scary one in the room. The quiet type who visibly struggles to hold back whatever is fighting to get out.
The guy who finally called me back was awesomely nice. He assured me that I had the short form, and that simply mailing it back at all with any kind of noted touch base with a real doctor in the last 2 years was all they wanted, because so many people get their disability settlements and disappear. He looked up my stuff and was surprised I got the short form, because at this stretch of time people usually get the long form, so he looked some more at the notes about my disability hearing and was impressed and said no wonder. I said yeah, I'm one of those that got it on the first try, both cognitive and physical, and part of the visit today was making the mistake without supervision before I mailed it off. He assured me again it would be fine, and not to worry about that triggering a more lengthy reevaluation or stopping my payments. At first I was a little confused by the continued reassurances, but I guess he didn't understand- I was there because of typos. I told him I wasn't worried about another evaluation, hadn't even thought of losing the financial support. My medical file isn't growing any thinner. I was there because my cognitive disability compulsed me to freak out about typos. I'm an autism spectrum freakazoid who can't live with something written down wrong on a piece of paper. I have piles of spirals all over my house full of scribbled notes, years and years of spirals, and no matter how many notes I write and how many blogs I have, I still make stupid mistakes on simple forms and never even notice. There is something about filling out forms that shuts my intelligence center down. I'm professionally trained to assess and care plan and tech talk, but hand me a form and all I have to do is write down a number and sign it, I get it wrong every time.
I don't say that much about what really motivated me back out on the webs. I've mentioned just missing being in an accident that would definitely have been fatal, but I barely mention the stuff that happened afterward, or all the stuff that was going on around that time. No one saw my world blowing apart.
You know how I start time skipping in June and think I've missed the 4th of July? It got really super bad in 2012, which I've mentioned, but the irony behind it is all the real life stuff I was juggling with the people around me by the time the 4th really arrived, and all the stuff that blew up over the next couple of weeks among them afterward. I handled so much stress for so many other people, and no one had a clue what it was doing to me, or that I'd already had what most people would call a nervous breakdown. I'm nice enough not to spill too much for public, but all the same, that was a pretty tense tightrope at first.
I am here because I started blogging publicly. Bluejacky blew up with one survey after another that summer, grandfortuna came back out of oblivion, I reopened new twitter and facebook accounts, and I held on for dear life staying as public as I could with a plan I devised, because this is what my real life was feeling like.
I saw that full screen in a theater, and I'll never forget how shocking it felt to suddenly realize what it must feel like being the aliens crashing onto an unfamiliar planet. What only one person at the time in 2012 actually knew (I confided in @bonenado) was that I had reached a place where I wasn't sure I could stop myself from a compulsive leap into the fuzzy unknown, because I had so little grip on what was actually reality for a few weeks that summer, and I didn't want to be labeled a suicide just because my head was melting apart. I might have been vehemently against my own suicide and still not been able to stop it. I had to create another reality to be present in, to show up for. I had to come back and be my avatar. Sometimes it's ok to escape real life like that, as long as I stick to my preset guidelines and focus on my goals. Every bit of this was supervised by my psychologist. What those of you who've watched all this have seen is genuine live blogging through very real crisis.
My ship had already gone down years earlier, and although it was a somewhat controlled crash, it was much more devastating and destructive and very pre-psychologist. That crash lasted for 3 years, and nearly everyone who was in the Lexx fandom back then had no idea this is exactly what it felt like was going on in my real life for that long.
My whole life has been a series of crashes. My car wreck is obvious, an actual crash. I've talked about the monitored double hormone crash in 2012. I've been through some debilitating systems crashes that nearly destroyed me physically and some devastating losses that broke me emotionally, the bulk hitting in 2004 nearly all at once. I've crashed off addictions like alcohol and medications. I've been through a very long string of friendship crashes. If there is anything I know how to do, it's survive a crash, but knowing and experience doesn't make the next crash any easier.
What's different now is I'm coming out of all those crashes. I've been doing physical therapy for 4 years for old injuries from the car crash. I've been following a whole different lifestyle the last 5 years for the plethora of chronic illnesses that crashed me. I've been seeing a psychologist for 9 years now after the several really big emotional crashes (losses) happening all around the very physical crashes. Maybe I'm almost ready to talk about the real real stuff that goes on in the middle of crashes, like how I keep kicking when I know another crash might just be the last if I don't keep hanging on.
While some of you pinball between trying to figure out the disparaging meaning behind mass shooters and the sadness of suicides, I'm treading what feels like an ocean full of gunships and subs, helos flying over, on alert for missile launches and air strikes in all directions. It's not so bad nowadays, perhaps going public really was the life preserver I needed in all the chaos, because I haven't been so immediately and continually summoned by people around me nearly so much since then. The pressure has definitely lessened, and I've been able to start processing my own stuff instead of constantly swooping in for others blowing drama into crises. One of my rules for public blogging was it has to be about ME. My stuff. Not their stuff. But one of the clauses is that when people intersect in my life, it becomes my stuff, doesn't it? I think that's why several people in real life suddenly backed off. We've got some spectacular laundry that I keep saying would make great TV material.
Something about sitting at the social security office has triggered all this, so I'm trying to work through it here on Pinky blog. This post is getting way longer than I intended, and I'm not sure of the direction, so I'm just letting stuff flow out.
My mom made me learn to hold things in growing up. If you have an autie/aspie child and you are familiar with meltdowns, imagine what it would take to force that child to learn to never display their real feelings. (Some of you just did a quiet omg what happened in your heads.) Imagine someone like that under a great deal of stress holding everything in for many years because they'd been pressured all their lives to do that, maybe by another person who'd been pressured all their life to do that, maybe by someone who was just plain mean or ignorant. Imagine that you have no idea how many people like that exist around you on any given day. Unless they talk nonstop about their lives like that guy sitting behind me at the social security office, you have no idea what kind of person they are. They can be clean and dressed decently and quiet and polite and you'd assume that person couldn't possibly do whatever it is that people say surprises them. You'd never see it coming.
I'm not the only one in this world who lives a normal life in front of a lot of bad memories. I can't speak for other people, only for myself, but as I stand up and speak for myself, others may feel like I also speak for them. Inside of me there are flames and horrors and screams that no one ever sees. There is cruelty and meanness and great swaths of sadness that could swallow a universe.
But inside me there is also an ability to let it all go in an instant of distraction, or a few moments of quiet. All it takes for me to survive is a time out. I time out as often as I can as long as it's safe for me to do so. I did my best to time out over and over at the social security office today. It's so easy to click-lock my eyes onto sunlight filtering past leaves or blinds, or an odd color or pattern on a wall or floor, but it's really difficult to do that with rows and rows of a hundred people lined up to face each other. So many faces in the way, trying not to see each other, feeling out of place, looking anyway and recoiling or pretending to smile. I'm usually pretty good nowadays about being able to look up and smile, but I just couldn't yesterday, and I couldn't just let the pain dictate how my eyes meet other eyes. Humans are so good at killing with their eyes. I was in kill mode. For most people, that's simply just a hateful look. For some of us, it's a warning that meltdown is imminent. The last thing other people need from me on their own bad days is a meltdown. I've had a couple of public meltdowns, but the disclaimer in me needs me to say I was legally stoned out of my mind on pain meds and muscle relaxers and still so terribly miserable, and I couldn't stand looking back at myself behaving like that. One of the big reasons I cleaned off prescription meds is because I don't want to go to my grave with people thinking Thank God that's over. It's an awful thing not to be able to control your behavior and realize it makes people wish you weren't around. I have a mean enough personality without meds as it is. When I lost my best friend over this stupid conundrum, I spent a year grieving and then set out to change my life.
I have to insert a disclaimer that on good days, I can carry on convos with strangers like we're best buds, as long as it doesn't last too long, but if someone I know is with me, they get squirmy because I am a little too friendly, and I think it gets creepy or something. Like, Scott pulls me away and steers me clear of people handing out pamphlets on my talky days. I'm creepy. You'll wish you never handed me a pamphlet.
I would like to describe what a time out feels like. It's a literal time out. There is no time. Even just a moment of time out feels like a different place, and I'm really there. It's not an imaginary place, I don't invent it or visualize going to it. It's just there. It's always there. It's like the flip side of here. Here is always here, there is always there. When I am there, it's just me, no one else. There's no hint of all the here I disengaged from. Sometimes I can keep both open, but usually I space out to the point of completely missing what's happening right in front of me. I imagine that makes me look fairly mental. It's kind of a joke between me and @bonenado. If I'm spacing out while he's driving, it's a very good thing. If I'm spacing out while I'm driving... not so good. I have to stay vigilant and self monitor when I drive. I've tried telling doctors I need to legally become a nondriver, but so far no one has taken me seriously. I'm a great driver, no accidents for decades, no problems or tickets, but 2012 broke and I haven't 'come back' in my car yet. That year, though, I did have a good delayed Tourette's related PTSD in my car convo with my psychologist. What super triggered the old crash memories was flying. I came back and couldn't make myself touch my steering wheel for a solid month while I was driving. I haven't flown since.
Back to time out. There, light is a thing. Colors are things. They don't need to be part of anything else to be defined or to even be. I go into light and colors a lot. Colors are like a different language. I'm not talking about frequencies and vibrations, but maybe I am. Maybe I can see the sciencey things differently in my head. I get other dimensions, too. If I let go and don't think about it, I can watch how other dimensions work. I've never been able to describe what I get in my head, and I realize it's because they need to be described in relation to something tangible, so there's no context for sharing. I recognized fractals when I first ran into them because I'd played in my head like that when I was a kid. I recognized Smale's horseshoe because I think about that kind of stuff all the time in my head. I was thrilled when multi universe theories started coming out because I'd already played with the 'fabrics of spacetime' in my head. Parallel worlds and alt universes are think tank toys I played with growing up. By the time string theory rolled in, I was already past turning music into light into objects into effervescence in my head. Once in awhile I'd try to describe the cool stuff I could see, but people say things like "You think too much" and shut me down. I wasn't exactly thinking, I was free associating through thought. Thinking is focused, time out is just floating through the nirvana of all the things. I've never told anyone light can talk, and I don't mean like we talk, but I bet science would back me up if I said it differently. That kind of stuff.
I would never be able to talk for a solid hour about my family history and work history and my bank and my furniture and the convos I've had with strangers, but it's a fair bet that guy from the social security office is on a spectrum like I am. He's a living recording machine and I'm guessing he can't stop broadcasting long enough to develop relationships, so he fills his voids playing his recording to everyone he meets. Maybe he's incapable of timing out. He mentioned being able to go days without sleep, even on handfuls of sleep presciptions, yes, which he named off, dosages included. Whatever his soul is on this earth for, he has done it all through a brain hard wired to record and play back everything that's ever intersected with his life. What impressed me most was he seemed so nice and sociable in spite of all that, like the absence of time outs didn't phase his demeanor while he could rattle off every bone and cartilage and process in the human body, there was no hint of ill will or even opinion, just the constant regurgitation of experience. That doesn't mean he's not a ticking time bomb, and eidetic memory doesn't always equate to being capable of advanced theoretical discussion, but his brain chemical cocktail was obviously way easier to live with than mine. The more he talked behind me, the more I slid into hardcore shutdown trying to stave off meltdown, and even though everything he said was actually interesting and pleasantly shared, it was all I could do not to turn around several times and ask him if he never shuts up, and knowing that could be part of his disability is the only thing that kept me sane through it. I'm pretty sure I'd have found him delightful as a people watching study if my pain level hadn't been shooting holes through my head.
~~~~~~~~~~
Ok, this is today, Friday.
That was a lot of stuff!!!!
Now we need way different stuff. I've probably shared this one before, but bless the fans who do this stuff. You save me like nothing else in this whole world.
K, I've got stuff to do, need to get order pulled together before Bunny spends the night tomorrow, get back on my work track, the usual basic stuff. I just wanted to say, I'm still here. Despite how it looks sometimes, I truly am grateful for every single person who has ever interacted with me online, and you guys need to know you've been meaningful enough to help me stay focused on more healing and hanging in through all the pain, both physical and emotional. I made a Pinky promise not to disappear off the webs again, and that's a real thing. Yesterday was really hard again, this whole week, month, and year has been really hard again, but I'm on a calmer ocean nowadays and I just need to remember to touch base and be the avatar I created. We can do this.
This was really hard to write. I beg forgiveness if anyone who knows my mom misunderstands any of this content. I sincerely write out of love and respect, and I know aspienado sucks sometimes, but this is my journey from my point of view.
Watching my sibs do friends-only Mom memories on facebook. Here is my fave ever pic that I took of my mom.
If you don't want a trip down another memory lane, dive outa the moving vehicle NOW. #tuckandroll
2007- Still pre-loss, but I was DPOA and Mom was already living in the nursing home. I was getting a little snappy.
And that was nearly a mess and a half. I've noticed some of these new Walmart kids coming through the registers aren't always savvy on sacking strategies, but when a young lady turned my HOT deli chicken sideways to slip into a sack right next to a gallon of milk, I did that "uh-uh-uh" thing you do automatically when a 3 year old gets into something really scary and you know you can't reach them in time and the words don't come out fast enough. I know I embarrassed her half to death, but if I hadn't immediately rescued that chicken, the juices would have leaked all over that sack and my jug of milk, not to mention warm up my milk and cool down my chicken.
I was reading in my mom's super old gigantic recipe book the other day, always find something surprising in there. This time I ran into "alligator pear salad". ?? Turned out to be avacado. That is the coolest book. It's nearly 900 pages and missing the cover and the first 50 pages, so I don't have a clue who published it or when. Wanna make a pidgeon pie? It tells you how. They start off with fine table settings (that not even 5 star restaurants adhere to any more) and ends with basic food preservation and pressure cookery, but you can find *anything* in between. Well, I haven't yet run into anything on how to kill and eat a bear, and it was obviously published before the States had food franchises and international cuisine on every corner. They've got a whole chapter on coffee service alone. There are at least 10 different ketchup recipes. I mean, this was even before bottled ketchup. Wild, huh? People used to make their own ketchup. And there is a sauce for just about anything. You name just about anything unpalatable, this book will tell you how to cream it or make a sauce for it that sounds out of this world.
Had my 2nd progress exam with the chiropractor today. I've made it up to 56% improvement. I went in for the back injury, but I'm getting help healing now from other old stuff that I've tolerated for years. This is the first time in 25 years my neck hasn't hurt. It just suddenly quit hurting a couple of days ago. I have lived with that so long. I can even kind of bend my neck back now and look up without feeling like I'll faint. I haven't been able to do that since I flipped out of a car when I was 19.
2008- We didn't know we still had one more year to go and we were all very exhausted.
I got this corn bag from a girl I worked with years ago at Kohl's during a Christmas gift exchange. She was a single mom of 3 boys and very poor, but she made the cutest corn bags for everyone. Her uncle had a bag of seed corn or deer corn or something, and she used scraps of material and her mom's sewing machine to make 'corn pillows' to put in the microwave. This is the BEST gift I have ever gotten from a work gift exchange. I didn't like her much because she was kind of a trouble maker, but I am grateful for this gift every time I use it, which lately is several times a day. I even heat it up and take it in the car with me. I know I've had it at least 5 or 6 years. We've never run into anything in a store that even compares to how versatile and tough and easily moldable this is. Might go ahead and send Dad an anniversary card to take in to Mom. After the big deal he made last year to me about stop sending cards and flowers for everything, (....) I keep hearing from Dad about everything Mom still gets on her birthday and whatnot, and I'm like- this is crap. Why list everything other people do for her if I'm told not to do it? And their 50th anniversary is coming up either this year or next. Waiting on an email back from the other sister on that now. But I'll have to get that mailed by Monday. (confirmation, this is the 49th)
I think the hardest thing to go through, besides losing a child, is watching your parents go down.
2009- The year Mom finally left us.
First of all, hopefully on a funny note, this is the year of the wacked out greeting card fiasco. I had started a sympathy card to M when school started back up in August, wrote a whole sentence and laid it down, walked off. Last week I ran across it and suddenly HAD to finish it, HAD to get it off into the mail, wrote something under the sentiment inside that I was using up one of my dumb cards on her. Didn't find out until later that (her other gramma) died that ~same day~. Just a tad awkward... So C's birthday was coming up, and bless that kid's heart, I have been uber late on her birthday every single year since the Bell's Palsy. I decided that's not going to happen this year, got a card with $10 off, and the day Mom died (her gramma), she opened a card that said, "Celebrate!" with a big balloon on the front. Awkward, awkward, awkward... As for hanging out with Dad, man. That man is weird and a half. Before Mom died he came back to the nursing home with some brand new pajamas in a sack, have no idea if someone had left them at their house years ago, he said we should bury her in those like she was asleep. They were 3X, she was 130 pounds... That argument was so aggravating and senseless and stupid. Everyone else blew him off, guess they're used to him. Then the next day after she died we ran him around doing final arrangements and signing papers with the funeral home, and he argued up one side and down the other about the payment method, because it was insurance paying the nursing home a huge sum of money, and Dad getting the leftover check, which will actually be fairly large because the burial was so cheap (just over $3000). Dad was doing everything in his power to push them into dispensing the money his way so that (and here he didn't outright admit this was his goal) he wouldn't have to report it on his taxes. The way he planned it out, the nursing home would be helping him to commit tax fraud, but it would all be perfectly legal if they would just listen to him. By the fifth round he stood up and told this lady to "Just be quiet and LISTEN", and dang if she didn't find a way to make him shut up again. I think she'd been through this before with other old men. It would have been pretty embarrassing if people all over town didn't already know him so well by now that they're used to it. Fortunately, I was drugged out of my mind and didn't get pissed off at him.
The rest of this is how the world looks through the eyes of someone who has just lost a parent after many years of continual care and phone calls. It's outrageously both funny and stupid, and if you think about it, a blessing.
On the other end, G. is calling us every half hour driving us ~crazy~. R. went to Minnesota with her instead of Scott, but as much as she calls, Scott may as well be with her in the car. Her nerves are so racked with the upcoming game, rumors going around sports message boards that someone on the Packer team is planning to break Favre's knee during a play, and Scott had to calm her down, it's just crazy fan talk, yada yada. I *told* her to take her xanax. Wonder if she left it home.
A few days later during the memorial service, she kept texting Scott the football scores. I've been thinking for years how I need to get someone set up to text me something trivial throughout her memorial service when it's her turn. I'll be like my husband and forget to mute my phone. Ok, I'm kidding. I hope some of you reading this know that humor is how people deal with hard stuff. It's just that memories of my mom passing will be forever tied to memories of other people eyeball deep in football fever. Whatever gets us through our days. It's all good, and there are way worse memories in this world, so I'm cool with this. Besides, my mom was keen on irony. I'm pretty sure I got my love of irony from her.
The main thing is that @bonenado and I survived each other.
And it all kinda balled up on me in Walmart today. My entire nervous system suddenly just fried, and I was unable to get past the frickin' pain for a solid hour. All I could do was just sit real quiet waiting for it to pass over. Scott got me home, I took a pill and laid down, slowly coming out of it. I think I'm going to be ok. I think what happened was my body demanded to know what the f*#k we were doing in the car again... It's been a LONG weekend. I'll be glad when Scott finally figures out he doesn't have to emotionally knee jerk react to it. He's doing better, but at this rate, I'll be 90 before we truly synchronize with his brand of empathy. The man just doesn't know how NOT to hit every single pothole or have me bracing against sliding toward the windshield at every stoplight. And when he says to stop everything and we'll go home when my pain maxes out, then suddenly whips down another road to go get a danish, then drives around the parking lot twice unable to decide what to do because I question that, then leaves without the danish which utterly wasted the crap he put me through, yeah, I'm gonna be grouchy. Grouch happens, deal with it. If I were a dog I'd have bitten him.
2010- I'm about to disclose some hard stuff. No offenses intended, but this is how I'm able to understand that going through the death day of a parent (especially the first one) can make everything look ridiculously outa whack, especially if a person has an emotional challenge or cognitive difficulty to begin with. (Experience makes us wise.) I myself don't empathize well at all, and I can come across as a very hateful person when I have no idea that's how I look. This is why aspienado doesn't talk to family and friends very often and blogged privately for so many years. I can look back now and feel very blessed to have so many caring people in my life, but back in my egocentric heavy painload days, I was secretly pretty awful.
Today has been a year since we buried Mom. I wouldn't even have thought of it if my uncle hadn't texted yesterday at 8 a.m. with a basic 'thinking of you' reminder. Good way bring down the weekend first thing, right? I've never understood social 'niceties'. I see stuff like that as intrusions that disturb my little pond. I have no idea how my sibs are feeling about it, and I'm not in a very good empathy position feeling so gross like this (glands ~really~ hurt behind my jawbones), so I'm just keeping to myself in my cave, hoping no one calls.
Poofing is molting, like a poof of feathers exploded out of a feather duster.
Dooney poofed this morning. Macy stopped laying a few days ago, wonder if she'll poof soon. Spencer is nearly done growing back.
Skip loads of personal stuff.
I'm in xanax taper, my glands hurt like hell, I've lost my fantasy game 4 weeks in a row now, and I have to deal with Scott going mental on me while I drag around doing the laundry and dishes by myself. I am so tired of this. We will be arguing about Twink until the day one of us dies. I'm so sick of their mentality I could scream.
That was actually about comparing his kid to someone else's who was in our house for awhile. Skip loads more personal stuff. I know this is extremely passive-aggressive, but I was using my blog back then to NOT fight with him. I would clean out my head, dump all the baggage, and then engage later in a somewhat nicer way. By nicer I mean not eating his head and spitting it back out off the deck.
First of all, Scott, I'd appreciate your timing being better. Today is the anniversary of my mom's death and burial, do you MIND???????????? My entire family would disown me if he pulled that crap. I don't care how idiotic his own family is, he's NOT smashing the fragile ecosystem I barely have with my siblings. It's all I have left. Maybe he hates his own family and refuses to go to his mom's house when they're around, but displacing his crap onto my family is going to get him hurt pretty badly. By moi.
He doesn't hate anyone, I was just blowing off. But that really is a picture of my whole marriage from my own point of view, no matter how important something might be to me, something else ridiculously popped up and became consumingly more important because I'm surrounded by very in-the-moment people. Aspienado married ADHD and was juggling way too many things at the wrong time when that first anniversary hit. The fact that I could intellectually understand what that setup was underneath everything is probably what has helped saved this marriage many, many times.
But, at any rate, my mom's first death day was horrible for me in ways no one ever knew, because everything I needed to deal with got mowed over by a plethora of other way less important stuff. Other people's dramatic emotional crises are why I have always wanted to be Vulcan since I was a child. I'll get really super honest here- I'm one of those people who, if everything went all wrong one day for me, IF I happened to be the sort who blew up over stuff accumulating, would have no problem blowing up buildings and going on shooting sprees. Yes, I've brought this up with my psychologist. Given that I actually don't dwell on these things as a problem solving method, and given that my first real life instinct is always a super nurture response, he's not worried about me and I'm not either. BUT, that is how unempathetic I am about other people having bad days, especially on top of MY bad day. You guys want school shootings to stop? BE NICE. Notice how stupidly and awfully you mow other people over with your tantrums and snide remarks and poor me and angry at the world dramas. The quiet ones might just be corks about to pop, but you'll never know if you don't just shut the frickin hell UP.
Very few people have ever seen me lose it. The ones that have actually told me later I scared them. I scare people. I found that difficult to believe at first, the incredulity of me actually hurting someone seems so laughable. But after a few years of thinking, I have to admit that just underneath all that pent up emotion is an actual trained killer skilled in dismemberment, and I do realize that scares me sometimes. Thank goodness for private blogging.
I'm not particularly upset or depressed. Just sick of it. I don't even have the energy to be resentful. Used my energy doing the biggest pile of dishes you ever saw and several loads of laundry. Have been surprised at how much I'm able to keep getting up and doing even with my glands hurting this badly.
2011- The year I actually snapped and had to be supervised by 3 doctors crashing down off two hormones, which took several months. By the time Oct 3 rolled around, I had lost 50 pounds and was in a somewhat controlled hyperthyroid condition. Mentally- both cognitively and emotionally- despite my psychologist helping me get through and stabilize (amazing how much body chemicals can affect the brain), I was in no shape to handle thinking about my mom, so I simply didn't.
I think I'm rounding another corner in spinal nerve trunk healing. Last week chiro bubbled out how he was able to get as rough on me now as he does the high school athletes that come in. I doubt that, but yes, I'm handling adjustments 150% better than ever, after-adjustment nerve reverb and fibro rebound is so much less and easier to tolerate now. Except after last Thursday, I woke up around 1 a.m. in a brand new kind of jaw spasm on the right side, lasted several days and started wearing me out, although initially I slept even better for a couple of nights. I've noticed nerve responses after taking pressure off them sends me through a variety of sensations, especially around my head and face if it's my upper neck. I think those sensations are a lot like the Bell's, nerves realizing communication is restored and running diagnostics, Hey, Ed, blink that light switch over there, etc. Usually calms down pretty quick. But I slept so hard and good Thursday night that I think I had a fibro seizure take over and squeeze back down on the nerve again, so by this morning I sure was ready to get that popped out and take the pressure back off.
Distraction is always good when you can't handle something lurking beneath the surface. This kind of blogging is me practicing distraction. I was experimenting with changing how I blogged, turning the dumping into storytelling.
!!!*!*!*!*!!*!!!????
You know that noise you dread hearing when your guy is on 3 story scaffolding and the extension ladder sounds like it plummets over and scrapes down the side of the house, and you know you have to go outside and look just in case, and there is this horrible dread you'll find his unconscious broken body laying in some horrible twisted shape? **He's ok!** My nerves are shot. I can't even be out there watching him. He was trying to get one more platform on the top bit of scaffolding, which I couldn't help noticing is on WHEELS... and that platform is what went crashing down the side of the house and tried to take the ladder with it. "You couldn't rent more scaffolding with feet???" "It's ok, the wheels are locked." omg, just turn around and walk back in >now< before you lose it and freak out...
Here it's all done, put together and the show off is ready to start staining.
2012- Still staunchly not dealing with my mom's death day, but had come back out public a few months before. I was double blogging, publicly at grandfortuna and bluejacky, and privately on yablo. After years of cognitive and memory challenges, my brain was coming back on and I was working on staying as busy as I could (distraction approved and encouraged by my psychologist) as a way to handle severe depression as I continued to taper off meds and improve my overall health.
Back to my usual shorter sleep night. Been awake since around 1. Made myself lay there and wound up getting up around 4:30 with the beginnings of a neck headache. Guess I was in town too long yesterday.
Got C's birthday card off ahead of time this year, yay! Well, barely ahead of time. I like to mail cards at least a week ahead, but her birthday is Saturday. She's 16 this year. She's already on probation at school for winding up in a fight with someone. I told J at least she'll have good stories to tell. And you know how they are nowadays, a 'fight' isn't the good old fashioned slugfest it used to be, all you have to do is look at someone cross eyed any more to get in trouble for 'violence'. I don't think they even had the chance to pull one another's hair. When I was in school in New Mexico, I saw kids beating the crap out of each other in the hallways every little bit, and girls got pretty nasty.
Scott dropped down into the 170s over the summer, now he's packing it back on, and he doesn't seem to care any more about his blood sugar. We went out to Celito Lindo's for lunch yesterday (I took a packed lunch), and wow, he cleaned up. And then last night he ate two grilled cheese sandwiches and soup, which is super carby. I had him trained to avoid carbs for awhile because spikes made his heart beepy, but now that he's getting used to it again, he says he doesn't notice it any more. And if his doctor says anything next checkup, he's just going to try going on the metformin. I'm just going to sit back and let him get fat again. His choice. He's talking about joining the fitness center with me, though.
Meanwhile, I'm still holding around 187ish. Better than gaining. I'm too old to gain.
Need to do a lot of cooking today. Got dishes done yesterday morning before I went to town. Really need to get the new spray bottle filled up and going in the bathrooms. Need to do a lot of stuff. Staying home today, guess we'll see what gets done. Working on an article to post, plus I have the Halloween survey I want to get done, plus I'll need to start another Lexx post soon. Started looking through my notebooks thus far, going to have to sit down and just grind down on the work. I WILL NEED A COACH. I have many questions about how you did your stuff, so next time we chat, remind me, just whenever. Little technical details.
Plus I have 4 library books to read. Finally caught up on a month's worth of Dr. Who shows piled up on my dvr. I can't get over how burned out on tv I am, I couldn't wait all summer for those to start, then I just never watched them.
Ok, already up and down doing stuff, better post this over before I forget about it.
That was one of the emotionally healthiest blog posts I'd written in a very long time on October 3rd.
2013- By this time I was blurbing publicly at syfydesigns and all over twitter. I hadn't yet committed to public blogging. I think I might've liked my sibs' mom memories and photos on facebook but I don't think I acknowledged my mom's death day any other way, even four years after.
2014- I finally hinted at accepting it on my mom's birthday in June, but I was still unable to handle dealing with it in private and reclused, barely hinting that it was an important day at all in this public post.
2015- That's today!
It's been six years. After years of watching other people spill their grief over losing and remembering lost parents on facebook, twitter, and blogs, here I am finally making a public post after working all year on a book that will begin with this tagline.
A lot of parents out there are raising kids like me, on the autism spectrum. You are probably at your wits' ends half the time wondering if they'll ever come around and understand how to share that they love you, or even acknowledge that you love them. I know your feelings are hurt because a parent's deepest instinctual need is to be loved by their children, and you might not be getting those signals back.
Please know it's all getting in there. As someone a little deeper on the Asperger's spectrum than most that I see online, I can tell you it's all there.
I've actually blogged quite a bit about my struggles growing up with my mom, and some of her struggles emotionally coping with the world telling her she wasn't a good mom when the question of me came up. I even dealt a little with the loss here and there. But the first time I really came out about my personal relationship as an aspie kid with my mom in public was in a survey on August 18, 2012.
Has anyone ever made you cry just by saying I love you?
This has way deeper significance when you know that person literally cannot say anything else and hasn’t been able to have a conversation with you in over two years, and you know it’s getting close, and they look you in the eyes and tell you they love you, and you know they mean it, and there are millions of unspoken words that come with it that let you know everything is forgiven and nothing is in the way any more. Yes, you go home and bawl your eyes out. ****Ok, I let this one sit awhile, and I keep coming back and reading it, and it comes across weird and creepy, so I’ll clarify a little. My mom died a long slow death from several big strokes that left her very deficit both physically and cognitively. I was not close to my mom growing up, felt rather picked on continually for what none of us realized was Asperger’s, never felt forgiven, and never really felt loved, although I’m sure she never meant for that to happen. When she started having strokes there were so many unfinished emotions that never got resolved, and despite the relief I felt that I no longer had to tolerate her unceasing judgement, years of taking care of her and watching her slowly spiral down were anguishing. I learned over that time that nothing means more to our lives on this planet than resolving our relationship issues before it’s too late. There is just nothing else comparable to the real meaning of life that goes round and round your head, if you don’t get those solved you feel like you failed somehow at why you were here. During her last couple of years I was seeing a psychologist for help with my Asperger’s and social skills and whatnot, really eye opening stuff for me, and I began to realize and understand what it must have been like for *her* to raise a child like me. She’s not a bad person, but without her own social safety net and support system, she was lost and flying blind, and made ever so many mistakes. My memories of my childhood are fairly tragic in places. By the time she reached her last summer, I was reaching a place where I could let all that go, where I wanted God to erase it all and just make it ok, because we really had made it through our stuff, and I no longer wanted or needed validation or recompense or some kind of understanding or forgiveness. I just loved her and wished I could go back in time and give her lots of hugs and tell her everything was going to be all right. And that is the magic. The last time I saw her awake and somewhat responsive, and I guess this sometimes happens when people with brain problems near death seem to snap back into momentary coherency, she suddenly locked eyes with me and grinned so big like she was not only glad to see me (that had never happened in my life), but like we had a big fun secret just between the two of us. And for the first time in my life, as well, especially with the Asperger’s, I locked eyes right back at her and grinned right back, and every bit of it was “I love you, too”, no hesitation, no baggage. That moment, as in a previous question further up, was PERFECT. And then I went home and bawled my eyes out, because one moment was all we got. She went blank and never looked at me again, and died a couple of months later.
I woke up this morning with this song in my head. I can't help thinking my mom would've really loved Heath Ledger. I know my family might not see it, and I know she herself might never have admitted to that and many other things, but this represents the common ground between her and me (I knew her longest of all the kids), a link, a love of good guys and bad guys and entertainment. She pointed me in the directions she could not and dared not go, because I am the Elephant's Child and never stopped asking questions.
Fave DMs and PMs after I announced on 2 different medias that I'm taking a break from them.
"Pinky I need to speak to you?"
*crickets chirp for 18 hours* It's kinda like phone calls, if it wasn't important enough to leave a message, I'm not playing phone tag chasing down why.
"start watching this video at 35:54" Aspie writes 3 long paragraphs back due to excitement trigger, cat scratch emoji snarls back.
"Okay random question - Travis Walton, the logger that was allegedly abducted by Aliens in the 70s. Truth or elaborate hoax? I want to believe it." I... can't even ask why, what, huhhhh?
It's all good, though, at least it's not 'I skyped with this actor and he got weird flirting' again. I've only heard that how many times over the last year? Asexual aspie doesn't caaaaarrrrre.
I know I'm not particularly special for this, I'm sure several if not most of my friends got invites, too, but it felt good. I thought Cool, now I have an excuse for Lexxperience to invite him to like back. On some parallel Sliders world, the Lexx is a real thing and really blew up Orlando and ate Holland, so it's ok if he doesn't reciprocate. I know how offensive something like that can be.
Facebook says these are my top ten visiting countries so far on my Lexxperience page. The fans know it's there, but they're understandably *cough*shy*cough* because then their own stalkers can see them supporting me and jot more notes in dossiers. I'm surprised I have more than 3 likes on that page as it is. I know most of you can't appreciate all of us laying low on the fandom politics, hopefully for the greater good, but *I* can, and I'm pretty thrilled.
I'm amusing myself through a several days long headache. I hit defcon a few times over the last 24 hours. Little wobbly, but I can look at my screen again. I was actually up at 3 a.m. working on a Stanley post, so that'll come out sometime this week. I always wind up doing Lexx when the pain level breaks out off the chart and keeps drawing a line around the wall. Right now I'm about 2 walls around from the chart, really thankful we ebbed back down from that third wall. 'We' being all my little cells. Trillions of us. We're all in this together. Sometimes you hit not just one wall but 3 walls and leave a string of decorative chalk outlines.
+_+ I can't even look at my football team. I think I'm giving up again. This might be it for today.
It's funny how a person can go through life not seeing the significance of something simple, until looking back highlights a sense of continuity. If anyone had asked me three years ago why I showed back up as Pinky, I would have said it was like a random thing that popped into my head, like a leftover echo from the past. I never had a plan to make Pinky a meaningful thing. I forget how long I was on twitter before I ever attached another name to Pinky. A year? I started wondering this last month where Pinky actually came from to begin with.
I was first called Pinky in the third grade. I always wound up in the rowdy gang on the playground, and we got a particularly rough Red Rover circle going for awhile until the teachers broke us up. One kid in the group could never remember names, so he named us colors. "Red Rover, Red Rover, send Pinky right over." The goal was to break through the super double locked arms without being flipped over. (I'm usually the one who thinks up the new rules. I guess we flipped a couple of kids a little too hard.) After the teacher broke us up, they stopped calling me Pinky and I forgot all about it.
I have no idea why that kid named me Pinky. I actually hated the whole soft pink girly thing and never associated myself on purpose with the color pink if I could help it, although I thought Pink Panther was the bomb, and by my teens felt cruelly inflicted when my mom wouldn't let me have any violently hot pink and neon orange smashed hippie clothes, saying pink and orange clashed and could never be worn together. That was about the time Tupperware helped push the bold new orange kitchen motif, and I loathed how my mom jumped on that one, and extra-ly loathed anything pink if it didn't have orange in it just to be spiteful. I raged against the pink, as it were. Nowadays I laugh because pink and orange together are so trendy and fashionable again. @bonenado's girlie had pink and orange wedding colors, which I thought was delightful, and Bunny shows up in pink and orange all the time.
My next pink phase was when a friend I palled around with in college had a pale pink puffy coat through the winter, and I could always spot her in the crowd and go meet her. She was a pretty big person, which never bothered me, and extraordinarily witty so I never got bored, and I nicknamed her The Big Pink because of that coat. I never said it out loud because I didn't want to hurt her feelings, but I was quite fond of that handle and still think of her as The Big Pink. That was also about the time I got into my weird pink aspie diction games, walking around saying "pink" in as many different styles, inflections, and voices as I could, which I mention in You may be an aspie if... Other aspies and auties reading this are probably nodding.
Pinky became a real thing when @bonenado surprised me one day dragging me into a huge local jeweler and there I met Woody Justice himself, and he personally catered to me, bringing me a handful of rubies to pick from out of his hand. I designed my own engagement ring- a Pinky ring, made of twisted rope gold with a gold rose blooming on top, and a pink ruby set in the heart of the rose. It was one of the smaller rubies, but a true pink so I went straight for it, and he told me I had chosen the most expensive ruby in the pile. I don't remember if I told him I'd been studying gemstones on the side during a special section on rocks during a geology class (which came in handy later as I worked the jewelry counter in a nice store). I no longer wear my Pinky rings (I later got a matching twisted gold rope wedding ring) because they slide off my finger too easily, so I keep them on a necklace.
As more time marched on, the next big pinky thing for me was finger hugs. I grew up refusing to hug all excepting a very few members of my family and extended family, and when my sister's girl felt the same way, I initiated the finger hug. A particularly bad day would get a pinky hug. Finger hugs are very important. They are real contact when a person can't bring themselves to be touched, and that often happens during years of illness when contact is a continual germ threat and hugging hurts, or when personal space feels too personal, or when surviving even just emotionally makes it difficult to entangle or share presence. Sometimes you just can't play the head game and do real hugs for show or ritual when your whole world is a tightly knit fragile sphere of inner circle and everyone else has to stay out. Somehow, she let it be ok for me to reach through that sphere with a finger hug, and near the end I think our last touch before she went away was a pinky hug. I've continued the finger/pinky hug tradition with her sister.
My last big Pinky thing before Pinky blog came into existence was actually being a Pinky. I'd never called myself Pinky to anyone before, even though that was the first nickname I ever had. Pinky was a secret self that no one else ever knew about, until I named myself Pinky to one person in a chat room. I didn't realize at the time that was an emotionally significant moment, and that it meant I was letting someone come further into my head than anyone ever had. (Aspie's so aspie, alas.) About a year later, I 'came out' on a blue blog as a sort of pink freak, as it were. As per my mention above during The Big Pink friend phase, I've been a bit obsessed with the word 'pink' most of my life and never revealed it until April 4, 2008. From my original Bluejacky "You May Be an Aspie If..."
A year later my mom died and suddenly it wasn't fun to rage against pink any more, and I realized I actually do like the color pink in all its variations very much, especially in paisley combos with other colors. Three years after that realization (four years after the coming out about obsessing over the word pink), I came back public as Pinky on twitter, and within a couple months publicly confronted my orientation problems for the first time in my 100 Girly Questions Survey, originally posted on my bluejacky blog. If any of this sounds ridiculously obsessive, all I can say is I have Asperger's, and I have a pink thing that was hidden for many years behind a massive blue thing. Is it possible to be prejudiced against a color? Is it ridiculous to hide a color love from the entire world for one's whole life? Is this some kind of metaphor for an asexual aspie synesthete who struggles to process emotions in real time? It's obviously tied to a history with my mother and our difficulty with my rebellion against standard 'pink' female orientation. Once in awhile I run into other people with outright prejudice or adoration for very particular colors, either feeling so repelled that they avoid it at all costs, or so attracted that they absorb that color into every facet of their lives. I know my weirdness isn't that uncommon.
Anyway, I've had a string of names over the years as I've come and gone, but this is the last one. I will always be Pinky now. I've sworn never to go away again.
Pinky promises are a big deal. The tiniest part of your body symbolically carries the biggest secret, the weightiest commitment, the tightest bonding seal. A pinky promise is more than just a promise. It's bigger than a swear on someone's grave. It's a symbolic entwining of hearts and souls. It's tiny, like a secret. You can be in public and no one might ever see you touch someone's pinky with your pinky. That tiniest touch sometimes means more than any eye contact, and expresses more than any hug, especially if your nature prohibits physical interaction.
Imagine the thrill I got over the very first Sherlock episode being A Study in PINK.
