Aspie, and PTSD (100th post)

Today is my 100th post, and I am proud of myself for it. Not only have I managed to keep a promise and write this blog, but I have met so many amazing people along the way. Even if they were single serving friends (Fight Club reference :p ) I know now that each and every one of you that stop by and give encouraging words, check in on me when I have been a little quiet, or those that left comments on the posts, or my Google+ wall. You are all to thank for the beginning of this journey.

So thank you all, thank you so much for the support.

Today is a a special day for me, I am going to try and break the cycle PTSD has thrown me in without a fore warning. The cycle is one of being closed off to everyone and everything. So afraid to open up and be hurt again that you close up tight, and close yourself off from the world. Because if the world can't get in, you can't get hurt, again. Right?

Wrong. Very wrong.

When we close ourselves off to the world, we are hurting the world. The world is a darker place without us, those who have survived our events. Those with PTSD are a special breed, we are all the ones that world has seen fit to be able to survive abuse, physical/sexual or otherwise. We have survived war, rape, the ugly of the world.

We are the strong, we are the powerful. We cannot hide ourselves from the world, a world that needs us. Needs us to show them how to survive. This blog is my attempt at sharing, at guiding those who are on the dark road before us all. You are not alone, you walk among others who are there for you.

As promised, today I am going to attempt to open up and share more of my soul. Share more of myself, I am handing the keys to my castle over to you.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned that I felt disconnected. I went on to talk about how as a child I felt that way, and how now as an adult I fell disconnected as well.

The disconnection I feel now, as an adult is brought on by my PTSD, I walk through the world watching and observing as if I were a visitor of this world. Many of you can relate, I am sure.

But the disconnection I had as a child was different. To say that I was socially awkward is an understatement. I remember my brother and sisters making friends like it was nothing. I remember them walking into school, and running off to their friends and going about their little lives. I could never understand this. Most of my adolescent life, I had one friend. My brother. Yes I had people who were friendly to me, and I returned the favor, but never any friends.

As an adult this doesn't bother me, as a child I never gave it a second thought. I did not connect with people, I was more comfortable reading a book, or playing with computers. Not on computers, this was before the internet was everywhere, back in the dial up days. The first computer I remember owning had a 3.5 disk drive. Yeah, if you don't know that is old. I would spend the hour and half, my mother let me use the computer, a day compressing data, trying to get more than the maximum 3.5 MB on those disks.

I had a telescope as a child, I built tree houses, made bows and arrows. I had summer jobs, I read and I read. When I was a child they just called kids like me strange, or anti-social. I was the kid everyone wanted on their science project, but never wanted to talk to outside of the class.

I was born different, and thought nothing of it. I was born with Asperger. Asperger's is amazing, at least I think so, it is a form of autism. But I see as my own super power. The left and right sides of my brain communicate in such away that the line between the two is blurred. I am able to understand concepts, ideas, equations, theories with ease. But as with all super powers there are down falls. Social and emotional ques, are my kryptonite (superman's weakness for all you non-nerd types).

Since I was a child I thought I just did things that other people refused to try doing. I was good at math, and couldn't understand why others weren't. I was fascinated by science, and computers, and reading. As I grew older, it dawned on me that I wasn't like others.

When I was a child I the other kids would call me an "asshole", or "heartless", I even got "Why can't you just be normal, like everyone else?". When I was in high school, I tried to be like everyone else. I would watch people, and study how they interacted with each other. I would go home, and spend hours trying to mimic the facial expressions of the kids I saw that day. I would copy the tones of the words they used. The inflections in all the wrong places, would drive my aspie mind insane.

Why was everything a question in high school? WHY?!!

Well I played the mimic, the copy cat for as long as I could. My dad would take time out of his day to talk to me, just me. He would try to tell me that "No man is an island", I still remember this phrase, because even to this day it doesn't make sense to me. Of course no man is an island, that is silly. But at the same time every man (and woman) that has ever been is an island. We all die, and go back to the earth. So literally every dead person is an island, and every living man is just waiting for his turn to be an island.

He was trying to tell me that "No man, can survive alone", I didn't understand that fact until I studied social and physiological studies. The scientific fact that social interaction is required for life, is what got through to me, not my dad's words of wisdom.

I lack the ability to read social and emotional ques. That has lead people to call me names like "heartless", when I am confronted with a problem, I try and solve it using logic. When I was in high school, the logic I possessed said to mimic those who wished for me to be more like them. As an adult and now with PTSD, logic tells me:

If I am not like you, that is a good thing, I have experiences and knowledge you'll never be able to understand.

The reason I write is a two fold issue. One being my PTSD makes it impossible for me to vocalize my problems. Two is because as an aspie, a person with aspergers, the written word is easier for us to communicate with. The written word is free of emotion, yes it is possible to convey emotion, but you are still using words that are free of emotion. There is no confusing inflection on any of the words.

When I say that I have waking nightmares, I mean that. No more, no less. There is no mood, or gender or questioning inflection there. So after all the puzzling questions of high school, after all the "you're weird" comments of elementary school, I found my way in life.

I may have asperger's, I may have PTSD, and I may be a very broken man. But after all that I have over come in life I know that there is nothing in life I can not do. I am done trying to be "normal", it is exhausting trying to be like everyone else. I can only be me, and the me that I am, I like. Flaws and all I love myself.

So from now on, I won't be like everyone else. I won't be anyone but me, the crazy, broken, aspie, PTSD self. 

99th post

Today I am writing a bit lost at the moment. My head is in the game, my body is willing, but my mind is wandering. Like a small child all the shiny things are distracting today.

This being my 99th post, I thought I would share my plans for my next post, usually I open my blog, stare that the screen, while I visualize all the ways I can express myself, once I do that, I write how to over come those things.

My entire blog is very raw, there are errors everywhere, and I keep it that. It is a way for me to remember the hurdles I had while writing. Like little invisible flags that say, "hey this, this right here, is when you almost lost it writing that sentence. You remember?"

Yes, yes I do remember.

But tomorrow I am going to try something new, I am going to break my habits. As I write this blog, I keep person information to a minimum, while sharing my soul. My last two posts have gotten a lot of attention. A lot of questions have arisen, some that can only be answered with tomorrows post.

I have an issue sharing my personal information, even with people I love, and call family. Large portions of my life no one knows about. Huge chucks of my life I have kept secret for fear of giving people the ammo necessary to harm me.

My walls are still up, my defenses are still strong. My will still fights me, to pull back, and delete this entire post. My mind screams for me to stop. But if I am to break through the walls of PTSD, I must push myself. I must open myself to the possibility of being hurt, of being weak, so that i may grow and become stronger.

I must fight the anxiety, the nightmares, the waking dreams, the fear. I must fight it all, so that I may over come it.

Now I say tomorrow, because I am not yet ready to open up. I am not yet ready to hand over the keys to my castle and hope that those who enter mean me no harm.

On the marrow, my good friends. On the marrow, we shall rise stronger than before. 

Never quit.

When I was 7 years old, I wanted to be the first man on Mars. I wanted to ride NASA's X-23 Rocket (that is a real project NASA had) all the way to Mars. I used to dream, as a child, of my boots hitting the surface of our red sister planet. Red dust billowing in the airless atmosphere, the sun reflecting off my helm, and NASA patched through my helmet.

"Commander, do you copy mission control."

"Roger, read you Lima Charlie, mission control, over."

Then the long wait for a reply. 

Even as a child I would imagine that NASA would take minutes to reply because of the long distance between Earth and Mars. While in the midst of these day dreams, I would train myself for the mission. I would imagine that if anything happened on Mars I would at some point be forced to hold my breath, if there was a hull breach. Waiting for the imaginary reply from NASA, I would hold my breath. 

Waiting. Counting the seconds. 

As children we have a sense of hope that is invincible. We create worlds without limits, without "can't's", we live in a world of possibilities. 

As we grow older, life tends to think we can handle more. The more we take on, the more we realize that the odds are forever against us. We won't get rich at the Casino's, the odds are literally against us. We take this underlying lesson and apply it to everything in our lives, without realizing.

I am here to tell you, that even in Casino's the odds are not always against us. Sometimes, just like in casino's there are areas where the odds are in no ones favor. In those sweet spots, even in life we have a chance. We have a chance to come out on top. 

We have a chance to beat the house, and walk away stronger and wiser than before. But I don't want this to sound like you have a chance to beat the house, sticking with the casino analogy. In live there is only one "house" you need to worry about, and that is you. You house all the demons, all the hope, and all the angels. You house all the despair, all the malice, discontent. 

When there are no demons within that can harm you, there is nothing that can harm us outside. 

What makes us quit, quit dreaming, quit fighting, quit screaming into the endless darkness, isn't the world around us. It is our voice within telling us we can go no further. Every time we list all the things we "can't" do, we aren't helping ourselves. We are setting up all the road blocks needed to halt our progression in life. But when we say, "I don't know what to do" well that is something completely different. 

"I don't know what to do", is allowing the possibility of success, all while admitting you need help. 

I have over the last few years slowly, and surely given up saying, "I can't". 

Now instead of listing the things I can not do, I say "I will handle it", or "Let's do this", or "let's find a way to get this done." Failure is not an option, failure is something you either sow, or let grow. When we set it in our minds to never quit, to never give up, failure has no place to plant roots. 

Never give up, never quit. Change isn't automatic. We won't find a cure, today, or tomorrow. Or even next week, if we aren't around to fight for it. PTSD is a call to rise up, and find the strength to carry on. It is a call to break down the walls that shot up without our knowing. I am unable to share my life with anyone for fear of giving them the ammo necessary to destroy me. My walls are up, my guard is vigilant. 

But I will be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the week after, because I can not quit. 

I can never quit. I will stop fighting when the nightmares stop. I will stop when the PTSD stops making me fear everything, every second of the day.

Fight with me, stay with us. Never  give in. Never go silently into the night. Leave this world with all f your dreams and aspirations fulfilled. Leave nothing undone, leave nothing un-invented. Leave no story untold, leave no inch of this world or any other ndiscovered. Make our children, and our children's children take up the same fight. 

If fear breeds fear, then hope, and bravery, and courage in the face of those things must breed something so beautiful that my finite mind can not fathom it. 

Never quit. 

Never lie down.

Never go quietly. 

Disconnect

I have tried to remind you, my readers, that hope is always there. Always present, and not far from the pain you are feeling. But... Half the time I am trying to convince myself. Life has a funny way of testing us, of pushing us.

Recently my car was broken into and ALL of my work equipment was stolen. Not too funny, right? I mean that is a terrible set up and delivery of a joke. The "funny" way life tests us, isn't in the events, but in the type of events. In the way we react to them, that is where funny is transmuted into peculiar, the strange, and even odd.

Now in my car, I had tools, wires, gauges, connectors, power tools, even a 300$ juicer that didn't belong to me. They left all of that. They took my emergency cash fund out of the glove box, and my work equipment, and my medication. I work in IT, and an IT guy without a laptop isn't much of an IT guy.

In one night, my safety net, my career, and my medication were all stolen from me.

No my safety net was about 30-40$, not a whole lot of money. But it represented a cushion, in case something happened. Something did happen, I was without my cushion.

My career, will go on, I called work they sent out a replacement, but I lost all my work. Life goes on, just a mild irritant.

My medication, now that is a slippery slope. I realized yesterday that it had been almost a week since I took it. That is getting close to it no longer being in my system, and I have noticed it. I am saying mean things, things I do not mean.

So in one night, fears of being without a safety net, adding in growing irritation, and my anger over nothing all came back. I was asked if I am doing ok, I am maintaining as usual. I am partially dead inside, so that helps keep everything from seeping out. But I feel it a boiling. The truth is I am a powder keg ready to blow, ready to destroy ones own self, and everything around me.

I don't feel violated by this robbery, I don't think like that. My SO was freaked out by it more than I was. I feel like maybe...

Like maybe the medication isn't helping like they say it is. Like maybe life is meant to be hard and disappointing. Like maybe there isn't light at the end of the road. Maybe there isn't a road at all. Maybe there is no such thing as light, and we created it in our minds to have something to hold on to. Maybe I am just fanning the flames of my own destruction with the blankets I keep throwing on the fire of my own raging insanity.

I started writing because I was unable to talk about PTSD, now I do my best to write about the hope we need in the dark times. I try to show people that just because life is always spitting on you, just because your fears and pain keep you chained there will ALWAYS be a better tomorrow, just around the corner.

But as usual, since I was a child, I feel disconnected from the world. Now I have PTSD, I have hope, and I have a raging storm inside, and no way to scream for help. I have demons whispering vile, disgusting, horrendous things in my ear, and I love them all. I have nightmares that fuel my passions. Hope has become a name plate I wear as I check into work. Hope is the pair of glasses I put on each morning, to filter out all of the bad.

Through my hope goggles life seems pretty sweet. Luckily they weren't stolen. But then again maybe if they had, the person who needed them the most would have them.    

It never ends

Just when I grab ahold of hope once more, I get over eager and squeeze too tightly. I hold on and I pour myself into it, even when I shouldn't.

I am not better, I am not fixed. I have been dealing with a building storm. Hoping, and praying to any who would listen. But no reply came, no reply ever comes. My knees bleed, and my hands ache from begging and praying for my old life back. To be normal for one more minute. Just 60 whole seconds of normality is all I beg of you.

But the wailing of the winds are all I hear, empty, cruel winds.

How does one have faith in something that doesn't exist? You fool yourself into believing it. That's how. There is no cure, only a life long curse. There is no magic pill, just the paranoid voices forcing you to swallow your own madness. There is no treatment, just the way others treat you. There is no going home and sleeping it off, only the nightmares that drive you from anywhere safe and warm.

If I could cry, I would rain the icy shards of my shattered soul. My mind own stop running down the river beds of my fears. If I could cry I would know that I were still human. But I can not. I can not cry, the pain within dams up everything within.

Am I no longer human? Have I lost my humanity, that undefinable piece of your soul that makes you like everyone else?

I live in shame, of my actions, and my words. I live in shame that I lost my empathy for my fellow man. I live in doubt of my own sanity. Am I living if I am an empty shell of who I was? Am I worth saving?

On dark days I curse hope for making me believe in something I can not see. On good days I pray to deaf ears that hope is leading me to a safe place. In my heart I know neither are true, and neither are a lie. The world is not black and white, it is a foggy gray.

I am a boat lost at sea with no spot light.

It's funny

I am nearing 100 posts, and I have been so busy lately that I went back and I tried to see if I could clean up my drafts.

I started with the thought of deleting them, but that quickly disappeared as I reread all the forgotten posts since the beginning of this adventure. I catch myself finding a certain fondness for them, more so than the posts that actually did publish.

Some are like a road map reminding me where I have been, and where I want to go. Some are a reminder of darker times, of times I wish never existed, but if I lived as if they didn't I would have nothing to learn from.

My life has been hard, that is a fact. Sometimes it is just as hard as others, and sometimes it is harder than others. But I do my best to remain hopeful, and I keep one thought in mind.

When others say "You never know, man", What they really mean is "You never know, something bad could happen". Now what I think when I hear that, or say that is: You never know, there could be an adventure around the next corner.

Hope isn't hiding in the things we know. Hope isn't that trust factoid you remember from a book you once read. Hope... Hope is the unknown. Hope lives, and flourishes in the unknown. I love the unknown, because I have nothing to fear there. The known is far scarier that what I don't know. I don't know if I can fly a plane, but I am willing to try. I know I can't fly like Superman, I know I can fall like gravity intended. Falling is way worse than figuring out you aren't born with the ability to fly a plane.

My SO hates it when we leave to do a random chore, or whatever, and I ask her "What tiiiiime is iiiiiiit?". When I ask that, my child like wonder is swelling over, it needs to experience the unknown. I want so badly for her to go "OMG is it ADVENTURE TIME?!" But it usually ends up with "Dear God don't crash my car."

She is not a risk taker, I enjoy a bit of risk. Just to find out where I can go, and how far I can take myself. Because in my mind, Hope is a place I haven't found yet. Hope is hiding in the unknown. I am scare, and frightened of the known. I have seen what the world is like when it is at it's worst. If I have seen the worst, than the best must be in the unknown. Even if more horrors and terrors hide in the unknown, there has to be light there as well.

There has to be good there, hope reminds me of that fact everyday I wake up.

Sleep has returned.

As many of you may know, "A friend" partakes in medical marijuana. This "friend" has spent a couple days over the last two weeks, trying to maintain a level head and stay objective.

The goal was to see if noticeable changes were taking affect, and if they were negative or positive.

And from [his] caregivers mouth, "You seem... I don't more Happy. Less jumpy."

Sleep has returned, [He] is able to focus without the nightmares from last night nagging at [him]. Because there are none! No more nightmares!!!

None!!

I... I mean he hasn't had any in almost 2 weeks!!

Now there is all kinds of science that explains all of that, and there are pot heads out there that can tell you the best strains for turning purple, but all of that means nothing to me. I have not had a single nightmare in, I don't know how long since I started getting them.

I don't care about the science, I did all my research before hand, I don't care about strains or names or CBD's and THC's. I may not be fixed, I may not be cured. But I'll be damned if I am not on the road.

I don't want to be one of those weirdos that believes in something that truly isn't healthy for you. Or one of those peace loving, tie dye fruit cake hippies. But I haven't had a sound nights sleep in, going on 8 years. 8 years!!! I have siblings that are younger than that.

I have lived everyday for the last 8 years in constant pain, and steady exhaustion. For the first time in years I can feel my ankle, not just the blinding stabbing pain that radiates off of it 24/7, I can actually think about something other than the aches and pains of my body.

My days are no longer consumed by the nagging desire for sleep, and the endless fear of dreaming. Yes I still have pain, everyday, yes i still have fears and anxieties. I still have, what I like to call "soft flashes" where for a moment I am back there. For a moment I am reliving it. But I know where I am, I know when I am. I am aware of it happening. But I am not effected by them. They are fleeting, and weak. Yes I have all of that still. I am not cured, but I am better equipped to function through all of the battles I have everyday.

There may come a time when I will find myself blacking out again, falling over, or swinging on people I don't recognize. But I know that for now, I will sleep. For now, I will rest. I needed it. I learned my lesson, my battle is not over. But I can take a break now, and recharge my batteries. I've got a long fight head of me if I am going to make it another 50 years.