peer review

When I blog, I imagine lots of other people reading it. Not an audience, but specific people I know, of all kinds. I tap into the anxiety that occurs when I wonder if they might read it. I imagine what they'd think of it, based on my experiences with how they tend to think. Blogging helps me look at myself from many angles.

Often my feelings shift almost immediately, as I take into consideration all these different imaginary viewpoints. I question how well I really know how other people think, or if I'm getting it all wrong. Take the basic premise: I'm upset because a woman that I'm infatuated with just got engaged. This should not be an earth-shattering experience. It's inappropriate for me to have these feelings for someone half my age, and to hide them for so many years just makes it creepier. The whole scenario is me being a weirdo and then crying about it.

My primary defense is that yeah, that's what neurodivergent means. I'm a weirdo in many ways. I know my mind is all kinds of problematic and it's not a good idea for me to be this way. This is another reason I don't often post about this side of myself. My understanding of how it appears to others is pretty awful. A couple different variants of awful, and not a lot of imaginary support. 

Or put another way, my dysfunctional hyperromantic nature is something I'm typically ashamed of and keep to myself, but the state I'm in is making me more indifferent and screwing with my judgment. Let everyone see how pathetic I am. What difference does it make.

Emotional dysregulation is the flipside of emotional sensitivity. I know that there is not a lot of sympathy for people being hypersensitive, and this is similar. It's all in my head. 

Fuck you, imaginary people.

Suddenly my entire world has changed. It's shocking to me, this little piece of news, and bang, everything is different. Or rather, I'm different, so I see everything else as different. Why? I don't even know. It doesn't entirely make sense. I'm a ridiculous person. I struggled for so long to train as hard as she does did. Now what am I doing. I'm still training. I still have momentum, if not escape velocity.

I didn't know I could even feel this way about a real person. It is horrifying that this is the path I had to take to get here. 

processing

This is the best way I've found to process what I'm going through. Type through it, catharsis, that for some reason works best if there's a chance others might read it. I realize this is strange and may have some negative consequences, but it seems to help, and fuck, do I need help.

Why can't I just be happy for her, right? I've been here before, although not at this level. This is different. I absolutely do wish her the best in life, but if we're talking about emotions, you have to understand just how over the top my dysregulated emotions are. 

I never blogged about this before, because I didn't want to take even the slight risk that it might get back to her, but that doesn't seem like it matters now. We're not friends. I wish we could have been. That would be difficult now, but we're not, so it doesn't matter. I was never able to form even that much of a real connection with her. I'd still prefer she never finds out, but I've got nothing to lose anymore.

So how over the top are these emotions that I'm supposed to just set aside and be a grown up about? What words am I supposed to use? Is it just a crush? Is it stupid to call it love, because we don't have a real connection? Is it autistic limerence, a clinical phrase that twists the whole thing into an abstraction? This is not rational. My more logical circuitry has been rebelling for years, to no avail. It's how I feel. 

I've never told anyone how extreme these types of emotions can get, because I know it's borderline psychotic. I would do anything for her. Whatever interests she has, I would make my own. I would have followed her to the ends of the earth and worshipped the ground she walks on, if she'd let me. Insane, right? It's clearly been an unhealthy obsession, but a lot of it has more to do with me than her. This is how my brain works.

I used to think I just needed a relationship and I could map these sorts feelings onto whoever would let me, but it doesn't work that way. I hate the idea of dating because I need to get to know people before getting into anything like that. Turns out someone needs to be exceptional for me to feel this way. I have to admire such a person. I hate to admit this, but of course it matters that she's also incredibly fucking beautiful.

I should probably elaborate on why I've kept this all to myself, in case it isn't obvious. I've touched on the rain man problem, and for me that's first and foremost. She's a happy person living an incredibly successful life, and the idea that I'd be a lot happier if someone like her liked me back does not bridge that chasm. A relationship with someone like me would make no sense for her.. never mind the fact that she's also twenty years younger than me. That she was at times already taken felt beside the point. 

I'm a bit shocked at how much this hurts, given that nothing has changed- I had zero chance with her before. Zero chance with her now.. but years go by, dynamics can change. Zero chance in the future? I must have been holding the longshot hope that such dynamics could somehow shift in my favor someday. While minor relationships come and go, getting married unequivocally shuts all that down.

I'd always been nonchalant about training with her. I only had the opportunity occasionally, but I'd always hope for it. If she had any idea how I felt, it would have been creepy and she wouldn't want to train with me ever again. That was my priority, to just enjoy her company as long as I could, to the extent that I could, and now that's gone. The last thing I wanted to do was make things weird.

I always have to return to my lonely apartment and be weird by myself. 

Holding back was not low self esteem, just me choosing to be sane and realistic, despite the insanity going on in my head. Maybe I can finally let go, and maybe that's a good thing, but now my world has this gaping void in it again. The same gaping void that has defined my whole life.

engaged

I knew it was coming. I just had no idea how to protect myself. Let it happen and hope for the best. I didn't know when, but yeah, it turns out that would be yesterday. She just got engaged. 

She hasn't been training much at all for a long time now. I suspected why. I thought I just missed rolling with her. Maybe. So, why does this symbolic ritual matter so much? Nothing has changed- she hasn't been training anyhow. I never knew if she might come back to it at some point. She still might. 

But I don't want to roll with her now. I don't want to see her. All the fond memories I have suddenly become painful, because of this symbolic ritual that allegedly doesn't mean much to me. This would seem to imply that I don't just miss rolling with her. I really have been hanging on to some hope. I really have been in love with her.

For how many years? It happened gradually but it goes back before the pandemic. Every time I went to the gym, looking around as soon as I walked in the door, hoping to see her there. Maybe we'd get to train together. Training was the only way I knew how to connect with people, and I wanted so badly to connect with her.

It's not fair. I desperately want normal healthy experiences, and instead my engagement with the world just gets all twisted into this creepy bullshit that I never asked for and wasn't looking for. I want to meet someone appropriate for me that I feel this way about, but that's not possible, because I'm like rain man. I'm not going to feel this way about someone appropriate for me.

I'm not going to enjoy the company of someone who's as much of a loser as I am, unless they're a loser in a matching way, which is to say, like nobody I've ever met to date of any cohort. She's probably not going to come walking into the gym one day. I'd have to meet and reject lots of women if I were going to proactively try looking for her. That is to say, dating. It's not that hard to meet people online, but I can't deal with the realities of it. It makes me feel like a terrible person. So, my situation seems hopeless.

Instead, I try to get what I can from the life I have, and it's fucking brutal. Disappointment, frustration, anxiety, only to eventually get eviscerated. I hate myself so much. Why? Because I can't attract someone like her. I'm not sure what else even matters in life. I don't know why I'm like this; why I feel that way. I don't know what to do about it. 

I lack emotional regulation. This does not mean that I can't control my behavior or control how I express my emotions. It means that what's going on inside my head is brutal regardless. I want to feel a torrent of something positive for a change, for someone receptive to it, but I've known since I was a kid that I might be fucked in that regard. I'm not like other people. 

What does that mean? It doesn't seem to so abstract anymore. Being around people as much as I have been, it's become pretty straight forward. Twice exceptional, some call it; being disabled and gifted. While I'm far from being the only one, people are disabled in different ways. Gifted in different ways. What we appreciate and what we tolerate has to match. We have to enjoy each other's company, but most people make me feel like I'd rather be alone.

I enjoyed her company like no one else I've ever known. 

The last time we spoke, a few weeks ago, I came as close to shooting my shot as I'd ever come. I felt good about getting it off my chest, in my carefully defused sort of way. She was telling me about how she doesn't plan on doing any more competing. I said she had a really good run. I told her that I admired her. I admired how hard she trained, and how well she did. I told her she had a knack for teaching. I conveyed how much I liked her, in the most harmless way possible. 

For eight years, she was the most positive thing in my life. The closest I came to looking forward to something, in a life where I never look forward to much of anything. Now I just want to scrub her existence from my brain, because this hurts like hell.

To be more normal under these circumstances would be to drink myself to death. Somehow, I just keep pushing forward instead, going nowhere. I don't know how this will play out. How quickly will I recover? Will it fester and abscess or will I just get over it? Every time life fucks me over, it changes me. It damages me. It further undermines my ability to feel anything good ever again.

I know it's my own fault, and nobody else cares.

what am i

When we think of who we are, what defines us, implicit in that is the concept of objectivity. Who are we really, undistorted, free of subjective bias, delusion, and deception.

But what is objectivity in relation to identity? The natural universe doesn't have all these values we attribute to everything. Are we pretty, or smart, or interesting? Those concepts don't exist objectively. Everything that constitutes identity is subjective. Who do I think I am, who do you think I am, who do they think we are. 

When we are concerned with objectively defining ourselves, I suspect that underlying that is the concern for what others think of us. Other viewpoints, consensus, these can make the subjective seem more objective, but identity is still a lot of arbitrary and relative nonsense that only exists in the human mind, ours or theirs. Do I really care if I'm interesting or do I just want someone pretty to think I'm interesting?

cerebral

I have a fraught relationship with reality. I have never looked forward to going anywhere or doing anything. Except as a child, maybe. I looked forward to going to video arcades, gaming shops and comic book stores. A theme of escapism developing early. "Reality is boring," I'd say.

It's a common mistake to take the things we think too seriously. We don't know what's going on, especially as kids. Our brains have evolved to compensate by taking stupid guesses and moving on. Why did I feel that reality was boring? This probably had less to do with me thinking about it wrong, and more to do with my lived experiences feeling that way. I wasn't connecting with the world.

What I've been through not only being external, but also internal. Not just what's happening to me, but how I experienced it due to the particulars of how my brain works, followed by an array of consequences. I was unhappy a lot. I was sensitive and often overwhelmed. Lonely, alienated and isolated. I was very imaginative with an extensive inner life; the most fundamental sort of escapism.

This naturally leads to failures when it comes to actually dealing with the reality I'd spend all my time avoiding. It would be a bad plan, if it were simply a matter of thinking about it all wrong. To say that I never look forward to going anywhere is pretty extreme though. What I do feel is a barrage of anxiety to fight my way through, when I have to go anywhere or do anything, leaving the peace and safety of my apartment. Reality is hard for me.

I've had to learn all sorts of coping strategies and ways of getting myself out and doing things anyhow. They don't always work, but it's been a massive improvement. I'm usually happier for getting myself out and around people, but I feel like I dissociate my way through a lot of it. It's stressful. I try my best and fail a lot. My ego has been pulverized into oblivion. I'm constantly recovering from burnout, and I don't even do that much. The longing to just stay home all the time never seems to go away, because this is just how my brain works. These are logical consequences.

It's been hard facing that I really am disabled. That's why my life is like this. I've always been like this. I don't handle reality very well. I'm struggling to function as best I can in spite of this demonstrably crippling disability that can be traced back throughout my entire life.

I've spent most of my life inside my own head, where I had a much more flattering take on the whole situation. I've come to realize that people do not have much faith in me, because they can discern some of this, and they don't trust me to handle reality. It has been terribly unflattering to realize how others perceive me and that they're not entirely wrong.

I desperately want a pretty girl to tell me they are wrong. It's a nice fantasy, right? I think about what I want a lot. Actually do anything though? Reality is a lot less nice for me, for all these converging reasons, internal, external, and consequential.

I never look forward to going literally anywhere. Can you even imagine that? What does that alone do to a person's ability to be a functional motivated human being?

nuff said

Realizing that I'm autistic has been traumatizing. It's just a word, in terms of its capacity to communicate information. It represents different things to different people. 

In specific terms of where I am on the spectrum, it represents all sorts of things I thought were hurdles that I inexplicably couldn't get over. In my head, I'd overcome eventually. One day I'd be a functional grown up, who could hold a job, afford a place to live and a car. I'd have a social life and a girlfriend.

I hate when people doubt why these things matter. It makes me defensive. How absurd to be miserable about things that don't actually matter, but these are just the basic underpinnings of good mental health in modern society. It is not delusion to understand the need for material security and independence, emotional bonds and experiences with other human beings we enjoy being around. 

It is not delusion to understand how and why our capacities for these things matter to other people. Nor is it delusion to see how other people's opinions of us can have substantial consequences. 

Being autistic is more like cerebral palsy or downs syndrome than depression or anxiety. Less overt or outwardly obvious, but we are not seen as peers, especially if we don't work or drive. Even more so if we don't do much of anything because shifting gears is so hard and we can't focus on anything outside the scope of whatever it is we're focused on. 

I'm not bad at social interaction because I have anxiety. I have anxiety because I am fundamentally and inherently bad at social interaction. In those times when I seem to be doing ok at it, just understand that it's taking a lot of effort. I've gotten better at it over the years, but it rarely comes naturally. 

To a greater extent than I'd realized, this is just the way I am. Autism is not a mental illness. It is not something people are afflicted with, overcome or even get treated. You can treat symptoms like depression and anxiety, as with anyone else, but you don't really treat autism, let alone cure it. 

It explains a whole lot about my life, while making me realize, I am never going to be a normal society navigating functional adult. I've made some progress, I've grown, I've learned tactics to manage, but I'm no less autistic and never will be.

This was the crisis I was going through, before having my life taken from me. When I needed support and stability to navigate this in a positive way, I was cast out like trash, my whole life upended. I'm grateful for the support I received in Philly. The problem was that it was in Philly.

I completely fell apart in Philly. I didn't know what I was going to do or where I'd be able to live. I am doing better now, but I am seriously damaged. My entire trajectory nosedived, and even as I recover some of it, it can't ever be what it was. I can't be who I was. I can't go where he was going. I'm doing what I can. I have ambitions again, my life has some direction, even if not what it was before.

Stumbling through roadblock after roadblock, and well, I'm 50 now. My trajectory is what it was. I'm pretty much done.

attachments

The monotropic mind tends to dig deep grooves fixating on what it can. We don't handle change or adapt well, because we become so attached to the way things are, or if we get too lost in our own heads, the way things should be. It isn't just difficult in some nebulous sense of sweating and struggling, but wounding and extraordinarily painful, losing everything I've been fighting to get used to.

Some in the autistic community will say that we are not disabled, just different, trying to function in a world designed by and for neurotypicals. I think what they're missing is that neurotypicals are all kinds of different from one another but they're also much better at adapting to whatever life demands. The inability to adapt is the problem. It's not a matter of being different. It's disabling.

As I struggle to get from one day to the next, I cling to what I can. I become attached. Then life goes and rips it all apart, and it hurts like hell. I've been through so much here in Philly. It wasn't what I'd wanted or chosen, and pushed me well beyond my comfort zone, but now that it's all being swept away, I can't help but mourn. 

I lived almost a year of my life here, with my kind landlady who referred to herself as more of a roommate. I saw my aunt all the time, who I hadn't prior seen in years. I met people at these different gyms and at vegan food swaps. I earned honest money pet sitting, house sitting, and even some chicken sitting. I got to know lots of people and their pets. I wandered all over Germantown and Mt Airy, with the occasional trip to center city. I'm going to miss H-Mart. I'm going to miss all of it, all gone in a moment. Again and a-fucking-gain.

I have an apartment in Burlington now. I'm leaving Philly tomorrow. I get to try to reconnect with my old life. I don't know how that will go. I don't know how much ground I've lost or gained, physically and mentally. I feel very damaged. In addition to grieving for everyone and everything I'm saying goodbye to, I'm full of fears about what traumas my new life will bring, as once more, I'm thrust into the unknown.

People ask me if I'm excited to be going back to Vermont. I've been here a long time. I don't know what I'm going back to anymore. Maybe things will go well. It's theoretically possible. I can't stop crying, but I'm no longer suicidal, and that's no small thing.