Day in the life, uh.

Living with me, or knowing me closely, is not unlike living with any other disabled person. 

I may not require the direct sort of care some on the spectrum do, but what i require takes resources just the same, and can foster frustration in those that would attempt to give it, no matter how well intentioned. 



Every single day requires a concerted effort on my part to feel normal, to feel, if not happy, something approaching it. 

It requires hours of concentration just to achieve something akin to not feeling entirely destroyed and hollowed out, each and every day.

If that sounds exhausting to endure, that's because it is. I assure you.  

It's no picnic to be around either. People take their normal friends and relationships for granted often, and it's not until that normality is juxtaposed against some disparity struggle that the value is crystallized. So who in there right mind has the metaphorical "Time" for that?  We are all so deeply individualistic, that i can't begin to imagine this idealized person because it's absurdity in the concept phase alone of consideration stops me abruptly, as if walking face first into a wall. 

Sure. Sympathetic right?  That happens. It's close to pity, often crosses over, but it's not your burden to bear and i respect that. I never wanted pity, and i'm past needing sympathy. Parity is all i strive for. And an "X" in the win column once in a while, to go beside my collection of check marks on spent calendar pages, gathering dust in yellowing boxes in my mind. 

I used to aim higher, but one to many trips down this flight of stairs from extending my hand enough to skew my balance has made me coarse and cynical, even if i'm still not especially cautious.  There was never a body capable enough nor willing enough to help drag me out of myself past my limitations,  it's just too much hard labor, too much work, and no one can be bothered.  

I do what i can with my skillset, but i and not the sort of brain, the sort of man, that can do everything myself.  I wish i was. I wanted to be. I can write the words and stack them up together, but i can't turn them into a book, into a working relationship, into a job.  I can sing the songs well, practice of years has lead to mastery, but i can't market myself for shit, so only the neighbors and my apartment know.  I can pack my own bags damnit, but the gatekeepers out there are all normal, all powerful, all excluding, and my own personal rat race for years has been trying to sneak in the back way. 

Nothing's changing beyond my age, and the depth of entropy, the intensity of my gravity. At the end of the day the world still operates in a way that i cannot penetrate. I am the powder, i am the lead, I am the hammer and the tensed spring, but absence the casing i am,

wasted. 

So i tell my story walking, late at night to people who keep on talking, while i'm out there being awkward, wishing that just this once i would fall forward.