updates

everyday I check my updates...
In the morning I read the newspaper on my computer first.
After I usually move on to other updates of things that I follow.
I have things I check every single day and each day they give me a little more,
then I have things I check every once and a while.
The things I check every once and a while have lots for me to be updated on.
The daily updates serve to keep me just hovering out of the reach of reality and the inconsistant to vault me far away from reality for up to an hour...

Occasionally, I spend great swaths of time scouring the internet for all the new updates I might have missed
but this always leads to an inevitable desert of reality.
With no more updates left to discover on the internet I move to my bookshelf.
I frantically search my bookshelf things I haven't read.
I search for text books but then remember selling them that one week I needed grocery money or a ticket to an art exhibit or something or other...
After staring at my bookshelf for an hour, having removed most of the books and set them on my desk,
I begin pacing through the kitchen.
I search through the drawers and the cupboards.
I look at the silverware.  One of them has water stains on him.  So I wash it.  I place it on the drying rack, take off the dish washing gloves, and lay them on the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.
I pace between the living room and the kitchen for ten minutes, pick up 3 beer bottles and place them in the recycling.  The beer bottles make me want to drink booze.  I stare at the clock and it's the same time it was an hour ago.  It takes me a full minute to realize the clock is broken.  I walk over to my phone to get the correct time...
I pick up my phone, it says I have unread emails on both my accounts, a text message, 3 missed calls, a voicemail, it's 11:13, and it tells me It will be more than twelve hours before I go to sleep even though I got up 5 hours ago...
Anyway, I reset the clock to the correct time...
Or I hope it's the right time.  I'd rather not check my phone again...
I didn't actually read any of the messages...
Coffee!  That's right it's too early to drink so I'll make coffee.  I dump the grounds out of the french press from the previous day and I'm about to clean it out when I just stare at the pile of dirty dishes for five minutes then walk over to the coffee grinder.  I think about the sound it makes.  I feel nervous.  I think about turning it on then running out of the room so I don't have to listen to it.  Instead I strangle it tightly while it runs in a feeble attempt to smother the sound.
I realize I haven't started boiling the water yet...
Shit...
A moment passes and I'm staring at the kettle.
A moment passes and I'm trying to see if there are puffs of steam...
Should I have filled it with hot water instead of cold?
Would it really decrease the amount of time it takes to boil?
My scientific mind thinks yes but my artistic mind disagrees.
I remember being told that warm water has more toxins in it so I think next time I'll use warm water.
Still no puffs of steam, back to the bookshelf.  If there were any books still left on the shelf I remove them, leaf through them, and set them on the desk.
Back to the kettle and still no steam...

Christmas

Christmas is a time for pretending.

We pretend that Jesus is the reason for the season.  

Just like pagans who, 

before the Christians stole it,

participated in Saturnalia would give gifts to everyone they were supposed to care about.

We play this game on such a large scale it should come as no surprise that it also plays out in our personal experiences of Christmas.

Even in Dicken's A Christmas Carol the final thing Scrooge has to learn, 

to truly change, 

is that he will die if he does not.  

He will die, Tiny Tim will die, and nobody will care.

Even when Scrooge does the right thing it does not create life, it does not give him children, it does not fix Tiny Tim.  At it's ideal it can only minimize pain.  

Tiny Tim is still a cripple but he's a living cripple instead of a dead one.

Scrooge's change begins with the threat of an afterlife of suffering and ends with the threat of death.

I have always wanted Christmas to be about joy rather than minimizing pain.

I wish Christmas wasn't about fighting pain and death

but about living.

I'd like to find a deep joy in Christmas.  I want to, so much so, that every Christmas I want to have some deep powerful moving life changing conversation with my father.

Every time I try to press the conversation it ends in a fight,

A fight I will never win.

I want him to take my gender seriously.  

I listen to him spout on about the meaning of Christmas as I sit writing and reading on my laptop and I want to create exactly what he is talking about.

I want the profound catharsis that Christmas promises.  

I want to have the fight but at the end

we will reach an understanding.

He will finally understand why I'm taking hormones, why I'm changing my name.

I hope beyond all hope that he will understand me.

I want him to look me in the eyes and say 

"I'm so sorry.  You're a wonderful daughter and I'm so glad to know you."

Teary eyed I will look back and say

"I'm sorry I didn't know the words.  I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

Everything healed, everything complete.

Christmas promises made good.

Of course, his expectations come in conflict with that vision.  

For him the narrative is different.

In his mind we'll come together and spend hours sitting around the campfire.

We'll talk about how great our family is.

We'll talk about how smart we all are.

Old memories will be discussed leading to new memories being made.

His dream is simple and picturesque.

My dream is moving and cathartic.

Instead, he'll sign a truce and I'll compromise.

Neither of us will provoke conflict

He will never use any pronouns or gender specific language around me, passively remaining unengaged.

I will not speak about anything that matters to me but I will speak with enthusiasm about the past.

It is all we can offer each other at this time of year.  There will be other days for conversations and fights.  Other days without all the history of Christmas bearing down upon us for that.

For now I will smile and laugh at the past no matter how painful it is to me.

For his part, he will not comment on my life no matter how strange it is to him.

We will do this because it's Christmas.  We will superficially smile.  We will lie to each other about how we feel and, when we can, we will lie to ourselves.

Occasionally we'll both let slip little stabs.  

A line about how his mind, in old age, is slipping.

A line about how back when I was a little boy I used to love this or that.

Only a toe over the line.  

The truce will not be broken because of minor violations.  We'll will do our best to preserve a semblance of peace.

We will do this not because it is painful

but because it is the least painful way we know how to behave.

We will cause each other as little emotional anguish as possible.  

Christmas is a time for pretending we haven't been hurting each other for our entire lives.

On Christmas Day we tell ourselves "All you need is love" 

We smile

And we open another bottle of wine.

Stress

You must find ways to deal with it.
Stress must be relieved
and you need a whole bag of tricks if you're going to deal with the stress you'll face.
But eventually you will develop coping mechanisms.
Remember them.
While doing one over and over may be unsustainable,
Crop rotation may be the perfect solution.
Diversify,
find ones that people consider to be good things
find ones that people consider to be bad things.
I know there are things that I do, that if I did consistently I'd be considered a craven
but layering those undesirable coping mechanisms, drinking, drugs, not sleeping, watching a whole season of something, and everything else bad for progress,
with things that are positive can help
and turn you from a crazy person whose acting crazy (someone people cannot empathize with)
into someone who is just trying to get by with hard work, (someone people can empathize with)
the positive coping mechanisms being things like writing, cleaning, burying yourself in your work, keeping meticulous account or hygiene or anything that you can do methodically.
Often when stressed I wish I had a garden to weed.  I don't know where that lies
but probably in a third catagory
neutral
listen to music, read a classic novel, see a play by shakespeare...
things that slowly increase your ability to be a human but doen't have any direct influence in your life.
Don't be afraid to be a crazy person
Don't be afraid to loose track of reality
It'll come back everything will come back into view
You need to believe so.
It will keep you from doing something incredibly regretful.
At this moment, in writing this, I don't feel I have a clear grip on reality.
I don't know what it is I am.
I don't know why I do things.
I spoke with someone I didn't trust and they told me what I should do
and it worked
I spoke with two people I trust and they didn't give me anything...
but they've already given me so much
I feel I can hardly ask them for more.
They've done there best in the capacity they've served but
I needed to be better.

When this person I didn't trust was faced with my absolute sincerity they told me exactly what I needed to do.

I developed a new coping mechanism and a greater understanding.

I came one step closer to (neurotypical) personhood.

What do I mean by that?
well, I'm trying to construct a full blown neurotypical personality within myself... a thing that I can call a human that generates empathy.
(because honestly, the primary goal for me, I'm trying to be a human that generates an exchange of empathy.)
And it seems one of the core problems of autism is empathy.
But I have to build from things I do understand into things I do not.
A good example of this is relationships.
I have had to create within myself the desire to be in a complete whole comforting supportive caressing kind loving living relationship.
For me, it had to be built out of my desire to feel someone's chest pressed against mine.
This began with just the desire for human contact in any way, shape, or form
and I spent high school  having nervous breakdowns
first, whenever someone touched me
second, whenever someone I wanted touched me
third, whenever someone I loved indirectly touched me
and finally, whenever I could make someone feel something when I touched them...
Of course in high school touching someone and making them feel loved could have been as simple as making someone feel a comforting platonic love.
In college this meant having sex.
And this became the second great defeat for myself.
Because I had become so desperate to just be touched comfortingly
and so good at touching
that skill subverted goals.
I ended up giving more than I could and taking more than I knew what to do with.
I found people and the ability to take empathy from others
but I still do not know what to do with it.
I have written a play which exists to steal the soul of the audience and do nothing but keep it.
and that is cruelty
I have become a cruel person (the cruel person I've always had the potential to become).
To people who have become methodical at human interaction I say, you are tyrant sociopath.
be careful
through empathy comes trust
and it's a trust you may not deserve.
and if it's a trust you don't deserve know,
with absolute certainty,
that you cannot give it back.
That the true crime of regifting is regiting emotions
and when someone asks you
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
you do them no favors by saying
I DON"T KNOW.

you simply pass the plate.
and people live and die
without your participation.


Finally,
I want to say...
I want to support you
in anything you do.
I don't want to tell you
only to help you.
I want to support you
To help you move towards something you see as desirable.
But you don't know what that is
and neither do I.
I still don't know what to do.
I'm sorry
but please wait
I'll come up with something.

Right, I need to post more.

The beautiful abstraction,
The suggestion of perfection.

Children are Crazy but that's OK.

Maybe somebody should tell them.

Sleep

Sleep,
It's tough
isn't it?
I want to sleep.  I need to sleep if I'm to get up early.
If I'm to be a good person, I need to sleep.
Otherwise, I'll sleep in and
I won't get the things done I need to.
If I don't get the things I need to done then I'll never move forward.
If I don't move forward I'll never meet any success.
Without Success Everything will fall apart.
Without anything I'll fall apart.
Without myself I'll not
know what to be.
Without knowing what to be
everything I'll say will be a lie.
Eventually everybody will notice everything I say is a lie.
When they notice they will cease to listen to anything I say.
When they stop listening to me completely I'll be alone.
When I'm alone I'll have to
change.
Again, I'll have to change who I am.
I'll have to reconfigure all the different parts of myself.
I'll have to piece them back together into a different shape.
When that shape comes together I'll have to make sure there are no spare parts.
When that shape comes together will people believe it?
If they don't I'll have to start from scratch again.
Will I be the same person I've always been?
Will people see that person as the same person as the person I knew before?
Can everything I've been be the same
as everything I desire to be?

I am certain that I began my life lying.
This makes me call into question everything that I've done up to this point.
I remember as a very small child, feeling sad and alone, attempting to call upon my great grandparent's guidance.  I remember asking them wether or not I could live my life as a female while I was born as a male.  I remember them coming to me.  Pulling out of the ether.  I remember, vividly seeing them.  I remember seeing my great grandfather as a shapeless white form.  He stared at me, two empty spots for eyes.  This memory was in my first house.  Where my parent lived before we moved, when I was in first grade.  I remember looking into the emptiness of the eyes of the ghost I had summoned.  I remember them staring at me.  I had blocked up the two windows that were above my bed.  I had sealed up the door to my room.  I wished for no light from the external world.  The white formless great grandfather, long dead, stared back into me.  I had wanted it there for guidance.  I had desired to call it for answers.  When it arrived I was terrified.  Just empty eyes staring back.
It offered me no guidance.  It offered no council.
I felt nothing but terror as I stared back at it.  It lingered so long.  It stayed there unmoving for the rest of the night.  It had no answers for me.  It wouldn't speak with me.
For years after that I would try to block out all light in my room.  I tried to block out the light as if that were what had called that specter into existence.  As if that would make it come again.  I blocked out the light to make the things that I now saw disappear.  I now saw horrible things.  I now saw disfigured bodies.  I saw them linger.  I saw them stay in my room.  I couldn't chase them away.  I needed to let them stay.  I needed to give them a place to stay.  I saw people who were so completely disfigured that it made me queasy.  I could feel my stomach turn as I looked at them.  As I lay there in the absolute darkness I had procured for myself.  A darkness which they borrowed from me.  I saw them in all their horror and they always stared back at me.  They looked back into my eyes but out of respect they never moved forward.  When I saw them they stopped.  They wanted to be seen.  Not because they were disfigured but because no matter how you look you want to be seen.  No matter how good or bad things have been you want someone to know.  You want to be seen.  So, for years they came to me, to be seen.  I could not forget them, as a courtesy.  And as a courtesy to me they never moved closer.
I remember the one I saw most often.  He would come closer than the others dared to.  He would stand about two arms lengths away.  His body was always turned to the side but his face was always turned toward me.  The left side of his face, my right, was smeared away.  Behind him an ever changing cohort of destroyed people.  One of his eyebrows was gone.  His hair was pealed back on the disfigured side.  I was never sure but it seemed he was a burn victim.  And though only half his face had burned away he had not survived.  He is, to this day, why I'm afraid of getting burnt.  I worried at times that someone had ignited his hair and that was why he was missing half of his face.   His cheek on one side burnt away with everything else.  It left his half of his teeth so visible.  The muscle damaged and remaining only in strings.  When everything went, half his face went with it.  But if his face had been burnt by his hair lighting on fire it was not what killed him.  His chest was caved in on one side.  It left less than two lungs in his body.  Whatever it was, it left only half a heart.
And even now I write this in homage to him.  To remember him forever, in return for him never moving closer.  I feel a terror.  I see the movement of a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

Only when I was in college would I learn about how blocking out all light to the eye can cause it to hallucinate.  I would read about the Ganzfeld Effect.  A curious truth, whereby a human can block out all inconsistent information to the eye and induce hallucinations.  I would remember all the painstaking measures I would take to block out all light into my room, in hope that I would not have to gaze upon their disfigured shapes.  How I wished not to see or disrespect them.
Blocking out all the light and never being able to sleep.
Staring out into darkness for hours.
Causing the very thing I feared most about sleeplessness.

Walk Away

Walk away…

You don’t have to announce yourself.  Walk away as if nobody will notice. 

You walk away hoping nobody will notice.

What you need is a moment alone. 

Find a quite place and cry.

Pray nobody comes and sees you and cry.

How did you get here?  You feel so confused.  As you sit with your knees pressed to your face.  As you lay with your eyes in the pillow,

you ask yourself “How did I get here?” 

When the day began you didn’t feel exceptionally good but you didn’t think today was a lost cause.

When you were around people you noticed that it seemed as if you and everyone around you were having different conversations.  Everything they said to you getting meaner and meaner

and everything you said just trying to recover self.

They will wonder why you were being so cruel to them but you will not understand what they mean. 

Maybe you’re so wrapped up in the jabs between you and the others that you don’t even realize how aggressive you feel until

Someone says something that just cuts through.

You feel cut deep and betrayed.

You can’t hear the cruel things coming out of your mouth as your mind reels.  When you talk it over with them the next day they ask you why?  They were so excited to see you.  To spend time with you and you were horrible.  They hadn’t expected it.  Of course you resent them for behaving the way they did but as you explain they just become more frustrated with you.

At night, you will feel regret.

Your heart will swell.

You’ll know you have something beautiful to say to them.

Something full of love.

Something full of regret.

They’ll never hear it and you’ll never remember it.

Something to show them.

A wordless faceless emotion that they’ll never get to meet.

When you wake

it will just be something to distant to even take seriously.

When it comes again you’ll wish they could just plug into your soul and hear your sound.

In that moment of regret and love you’ll understand what you did wrong. 

Still unexplainable though it will hang in your mind, your throat, and your heart

waiting for you to find a way.

It feels like an exercise in futility.

It feels like a waste.

You wonder if it is vain.

I believe it is important.

I believe in remembering that feeling.

So in the moment of pure spite. 

The moment that generates the regret

The sadness of rejection that feels undeserved, though it is not

You must walk away.

Find a quite place and cry.

Sneak away if you can.

You won’t ever truly escape notice

but don’t make a scene

and as you cry alone and full of regret

you might come close

might glimpse

that feeling of love

that feeling of caring

and you might ,

after the crying,

make up for how worthlessly cruel you are

sometimes.

Letting go

First, let it go.  This is the first piece of advice and something you will never truly learn.  You were correct but it didn’t matter because you acted all wrong.  You remembered the facts perfectly and the thing that they said was odd and didn’t make any sense but let it go.  Nobody cares except you and the person you’re arguing with.  You seem like an asshole.  More so because you’re right.  Worse for your mind if you’re not but worse for your friends if you are.  Let it go.  You don’t really care.  What you care about is people.  People are special, your opinions are… lacking.  You need them and they don’t need you.  Let it go.

            Firstly, objective truths are never as objective as you’d hoped.  they always end up wrong anyways.  Approximations are never objectively correct though they try for objective truths.  Let’s take Newtonian Physics.  You might be the type to have adamantly defended them against people.  Against people who believe that the center of the universe is god and god wants things to fall down and so God, not gravity, GOD causes things to fall.  Seems insane to you.  And you, while explaining Newtonian Physics, become excited.  Your voice rises in pitch.  You become louder and louder.  All this happens without your awareness but the person you’re speaking to notices and is… frightened… intimidated, if you’re lucky, and you don’t notice.  Then suddenly and without warning,  they turn away.  They pull away.  An immeasurable distance forms between you

 and them.

You feel so completely Alone.

Almost offended

certainly afraid

you’ve been here before.

Do you really hate them?

Certainly, in that moment you do. 

For me, I’ve found, that I will

always forever

immutable gap.

Apologize.  You may not have been wrong but

You behaved poorly

You behaved like a child

Now, you’re even more adamant about defending yourself.

Protecting with logic.

Armor of Objectivity

Let it go.  It doesn’t matter.  You will not change the way they think about things.  If you want to change people’s opinions go into Art or Research.  That is the only way.  Either change a society that dictates truth or change the masses minds.  Either way your conversation can change nothing.  If that person specifically needs changing then let it go.  If you must change their minds. 

AND ONLY IF YOU MUST.

you can do it through caring and love.

You must bridge the immutable gap and connect.

You must connect to them and love them completely. 

You must know what it is that led them to their decision and why.

You must feel the way they feel.

Exactly the way they feel

Accept why they’ve done what they’ve done and

and I’ve no idea but you’ll be a different person for it.

Probably a better person for it, though I offer no promises.

Right, You’ve tried.  You wanted to love them but they didn’t love you.  It left you feeling alone.  You wanted to connect to them.  As perfectly as you could.  You felt your chest pull forward and you watched them pull away.  What did you do wrong then?  Nothing.  That is the sad bitter truth of reality.  I guess if you’re hung up on that I’d recommend reading about Soren Keikegaard’s Life.  He was, arguably ( possibly in my opinion) , the founder of existentialism.  He wanted desperately to be true to himself and Christianity but his belief was that one needed to take a “Leap of Faith” to believe in God.  That there was no objective way to decipher god’s existence and therefore one must make a leap of faith to believe in god.  Despite this he believed in god.  Despite being exiled from the church he believed in god.  And despite being rejected by the love of his life, who married someone in better economic standing( for better or worse),  he choose to continue to love her and believe in god.  Not because it would benefit him but because he believed outside of himself that it would be…

I guess it is at this point that I should say I’m an atheist and I can’t really say why he decided to believe what he did or do what he did.

For me, it has value because I don’t really believe in anything.  I try to find any value I can in anything. 

I remember how, as a child, I was told that people who live there life this way are destroyed.

In high school I discovered Sartre.  Sartre got me through the chaos of highschool.  By middle school I had given up on the religion that was being taught by the Lutheran Minister who “confirmed” me(in the Christian faith).  I still felt I needed to learn more.  Needed to believe in something.

My parents told me about people who “followed Sartre’s teaching”.  These supposed Existentialists who, always, ended up sad and alone.  Had they seen these people’s lives.  80 or 60 or even 30 years of experience they pretended to have seen every moment of.

Like the other day when my father told me my aunts were just terrified of death because they’re atheists and how they’re just getting their just desserts for making fun of old people for dying when they were young.

And then when I mentioned it to my mother and she told me how he was really referring to his parents.  She knew this because earlier that day they had a conversation about how his parents had made fun of people who were getting old and how his parents had not believed in god but then they died afraid and alone. 

Like we all do.

This all connecting to his grandparents, my great grandparents, who had converted to Christianity.  You see, my father has always believed in his grandparents and since they believed in Christianity, he would believe in their god. 

But it wasn’t their god.  More precisely it wasn’t their gods because they could never stop themselves from believing in what we now call “Norse Mythology”

Valhalla and all. 

And I only know this from the information that I’ve compiled from all the million stories I’ve heard of them.

Even my grandparents, his parents,

specifically his father could never truly let it go.

A story about a severed thumb for another time.

Context is an everexpandingbastard.

Well, who’s the father?

it’d take a lifetime to explain.

SO,

let it go.

People will tell you that you were in the right when you explain it

but let it go.

Don’t explain it.

Apologize.

or if you’d rather, spend the rest of your life obsessing over it and explaining it and defining it and exploring it.  There’s nothing wrong with devoting your life to the pursuit of understanding.

If it isn’t worth that

Let it go

and

you probably should apologize.