Dear mom and dad

 Dear mom,

I'm sorry things didn't work out.  I'm a 44 year old man now, and out of all that time here i only spent a short 13 or 14 with you.  I know you had challenges, not enough money to be a single mom in the beginning,  not enough confidence to date men that were actually good men and not just the man of the hour, and your upbringing left you woefully unprepared for the creature you created in me.  You were raised in a religious family and you bore an autistic savant child.  Speaking sentences before i was 2 and processing everything everything EVERYTHING in a way you could not possibly comprehend or be ready for.   I don't think either of us was ready for what kind of life i would have.  Severely sick and asthmatic. Allergic to the air.  Almost killed just getting out of the womb with nerve damage that nearly broke my neck.  The time, you know, didn't help.  It being the 80's no one really talked about autism that much then, or knew much about it.  Of course growing up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the shitcaked boots of local farmers didn't help one bit.  I went to 3rd grade in a chicken coop.  Yep.  A chicken coop in a small town full of small minds and no place to run.  I was hated, beaten on by kids in school, a teacher or two, and the men you dated, and the men you wed.  Not the first man, mind you, not my actual father, but that will come later. 

You seemed impressed by me when i was little.  You were a protective mother and fought for me when i was little.  That matters.  You stopped fighting for me as i grew up, i got smarter and felt confined in a world and community that did not want me.  You, changed to suit your surroundings.  Became less city and more country.  You worldview shrunk as you agreed more with your redneck husband, and no amount of a kid talking could convince you.  You were not alone in that.  It's not surprising how little value a child holds in the world, the minute they stop being little, they become problem children to be discarded, no longer kids to protect.  Teachers didn't listen either, and students were constant antagonists.  Small minded bullies and assholes that only responded when i fought back.  I tried words mom, i did.  I tried harder then any boy has ever tried ever.  One autistic kid against the world and i was always always always treated like i was wrong.  Like i was an experiment,  a freak, a test subject. 

You stopped believing in me, and started believing in the crowd, and that was it for us.  The string cut and cord severed and i was off to learn to be a man alone at 14.  

Oh sure, we tried a few times over the years to talk to each other, but you only got worse as time went on.  You moved to Texas with the Redneck and got ever more hateful and racist.  You got smaller while the world got big, you never knew that don't know shit.  I did.  So i was always reading always writing always trying to understand WHAT THE FUCK I WAS, long before i had a diagnosis.    I was out there being messy, trying and failing.  Alienating EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PERSON i thought i was friends with.  Without understanding any of what i was doing wrong.

I'm sorry i was right about him. I'm sorry he died.  I'm sorry you had to be the one to find him.  I'd never wish that kind of hurt on anyone.  I don't hate you, and for what it's worth i think i may have been a better man if i had parents.   It just wasn't meant to be i guess.  I was meant to suffer, to struggle to endure.  That is what made me the man i am today.  A force of will, a keen refusal to die.  For better or worse, i just keep getting up and trying.  I don't even know why anymore.  It's just instinct and i have no hope but to follow it now. 

You may think i am severe for not wanting to talk to you.  You were raised to not talk about money or politics or religion to avoid conflict.  I raised my self to learn the inner workings of everything and and everyone so that i could better understand the unwritten social rules of the world.  Autistic folks don't have the same instincts that social capability normal folks have.  We have to build it from scratch if we are lucky enough to be able to at all.    I tend to favor black and white.  Absolutes.  When you are someone who researches and reads and learns you find out quickly a lot of what people believe in is nonsense, fables, bullshit based on nothing.  I'm long past arguing with people about what is real, and IS and what ISN'T.  Your ignorance and that of the worlds is not my problem.  I have a zero tolerance policy for evil.  Evil thoughts, evil believes, and the ones who would enable or encourage evil deeds. In fact i'd say i'm more classically christian in that belief then 95% of people out there claiming to believe in god.   I don't support hate speech.  I don't support billionaires plundering the planet and killing poor people.  I don't support corruption and pedophilia and bribery and graft and the wholesale destruction of the justice system such that there is no longer justice for anyone who is not RICH.   Hopefully this helps you somehow.  Hopefully you can be at peace.  Due to my upbringing and the things i have suffered, i know i will never be. 

Dear Dad,

I don't really know what happened, or why you left when i was 2.  I know that mom claims you tried to kidnap me, but i'll never know that story for real.   I grew up an autistic asthmatic kid with a mom who worked 2-3 jobs and didn't understand me at all and your absence made that infinitely worse.  I don't know you completely as a man.  I know OF you, and from what little i know you seem like a decent man.  Clearly autistic as well, based on what mom and grams told me about you as a kid.  I wish you would have made an effort to be in my life, or returned my efforts that i spent trying to get you to communicate with me.  I've tried with you basically my whole life, and i usually get 1 phone call every 5 years and maybe one email or text every couple years.   The men that were in my life in your absence were abusive, shitty, idiot man babies that my mother hastily brought into the fold in what was no doubt a desperate attempt to fix a bad situation.  No dad, no money,  no help, for a kid like me, must have been truly awful to manage.  Especially without knowing what was wrong with me,  WHY i was so weird, so different.  Maybe if you were there i would not have endured such a horrible childhood.

Maybe i would not have been beaten by a stepfather in the grocery store parking lot, on the porch of our home, in front of a church.  Maybe i would not have been bullied by the other kids if i had a role model that was LIKE ME.  Maybe i wouldn't have to turn into the monster i became to protect myself in my youth, the monster i needed to be to survive being attacked from all sides. 

I'm sorry you were in a bad marriage.  I'm sorry carol was bad for you. It's hard to be with normal people when you are autistic, and i have the benefit of knowing, of having a diagnosis.  You never knew, maybe you doubt that still.   I'm sorry we never connected for more then a moment.  I don't know if you care, have ever cared, will ever care, but just know that for a man to grow up without a father, is a profoundly miserable thing indeed.  I am a good man. A strong man. A caring man.  I did all of that in spite of having no real parents most of my life.  But i could be better still, and if someone were to ask me what my biggest regrets are in my life, it would be growing up without a father. 

I am still here, for however long we have left, and so are you.  It's up to you how this story ends.

-E

Apathy apotheosis

 This should be freeing.  

The culmination of a lifetime of pursuing detachment as a grand overarching strategy for coping with the rigors of life.  A path set upon as a direct result of being born seeing too keenly, being too aware, and quickly making count of the chips i started with, and correctly, harshly, shrewdly assessing that i had no hand to play.  No power.  No money.  No status.  No exceptional thing that would allow me to circumvent the laws of capitalism, the laws of nature.  The strong have always eaten the weak.  Such is life.  Technology has streamlined the process, ensuring there is no fair fight to be had.  You see, most of the time, the tiger wins.  Rends the flesh, gets the prize, but sometimes... sometimes.  The beasts fight back.  They work together.  They stand an outside chance of winning. 

Now, our overlords can't have that possiblity existing can they?  They don't intend to put themselves in play on the field of battle and risk the chance of losing it ALL.   They will only play the game when the game is rigged.  The land itself comes first.  They poison the water, the air, the food to ensure no one truly strong exists to oppose them.  They divide and weaken, they distract and devour.  

Then comes the confusion.  They change the language of the world.  Make you uncertain of everything to such a degree that you no longer trust yourself, or others, and you have no way to know what truth is any longer.  

Then comes the dependency.  They give you just enough to feel like that kind of power is within your grasp.  That a faint possiblity that YOU one day could be in the spaces they occupy.  They give you enough to survive and perpetuate the lie.  They encourage you to spread it far and wide, they encourage you to become like them if you want to get ahead.  They encourage you to idolize them until you no longer believe in the spiritual gods.  You only believe in the money gods.  Living pharaohs walking among us.   You will steady yourself on bread, water and cold gravel, dreaming of a better tomorrow.  Dreaming of they things they promised you.

Then comes the foot soldiers.   Loyal broken beasts they employee to act as another level of control.  To ensure you fall in line, either with constant reinforcement of the propaganda they utilize or by force, to bash your skull into concrete for daring to stand against them.  You fight with words and heart, they fight with money and violence, murdering hurting and harming you all the while gleefully clapping and pointing whenever one of you gets lucky enough to land a punch.

"Look at the EVIL HATEFUL people that would harm us!  That mass murdering CEO or bought and paid for government official HAD A FAMILY!"

You did too.  They don't care about YOUR family.  Not if denying your medical care makes another million for them.  They would happily watch your mother die in a hospital bed while you weep and curse the world that would be this unjust. That would ALLOW this, passively, to happen to so many of us, to so many people we love. 

Now they take the field of war.  Now killing you is easy.  Now you are buried by so much toil and suffering, so much pain and grief, so many lies and false promises that you are nearing the end of the cycle,  

two doors remain.

Nihilism, or Apathy.

Either you reach your limit under compression and can no longer be crushed, propelling you towards rage, indignation and violent response to those who would do you harm while pretending to do you a kindness,

Or you simply become compressed and live through it somehow.  You no longer care about the evil done to you and around you.  You no longer feel guilt or sorrow or pleasure or pain, your everything goes blank into a white noise void, you touch No Mind and try to hold on to it as long as you can until they monetize your last breath. 

This is the funnel through which everything pours.  This is the treadmill that gradually reduces, decaying and disintegrating from the heels up as we walk, and turn to powder, heels then ankles then hips then heart then head, powering the soulless thing all the while, unable to escape, never to know what it might be to die with dignity, or to be truly free.  

Another urn.  

Another gravestone. 

Another invoice, 

more blood and bones for the machine. 

 

Simple minds and they harm they cause

So.

The world has ended.

We are beyond the pale now, and about to embark upon a furious and masturbatory dismantling of all sense, kindness, law, candor, and justice.

Ravenous jackals have descended upon this once hallowed place to desecrate and destroy any and all notions of America's status as a "shining city on a hill."  

The victory was a complete rout, and while the how and why will be datamined and diagramed endlessly from now until the heat death of the universe i have to wonder one thing.

Was i wrong to be gentle towards stupid people? 

I am, by all measure, an objectively smart person.  There are a myriad of metrics by which to measure this marvel (alliteration is one of them) and i chart well by all metrics.  I have a mensa level iq.  I have 2 degrees.  I am widely regarded by people i know or have known in my life to be a very intelligent person, a bellweather of valuable information and insight.   I have known i was different from a VERY young age, but i didn't always know what that meant.  For a while in my teen years, when i realized just how much smarter i was than those around me i amused myself with people, using my words to confound them, expose them, humiliate them, essentially bully them for no reason other than i found them incredibly stupid.  I thought them beneath me. A rare few were elevated to positions of respect  but most to me then, and sometimes still now, seem like drooling mewling children unable to understand anything of value with any degree of depth.

sometime in my late teens early 20's i studied Zen, bushido, and other religious and meditative disciplines.  I came to the conclusion then,  "You can't fault a dog, for being a dog."  In a manner of speaking to say, i cannot judge those that are stupid too harshly, because of the limitations they were born with.  I used this idea to try to find a way to be more forgiving and kind to those around me i considered ignorant, hateful, or just so simple minded that explaining to them why there are wrong would be a fruitless endeavor.   As John Cleese said: 

"If your very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you are very stupid?  You have to be relatively intelligent to understand just how stupid you are." 

So it's the Dunning–Kruger effect then. 

I of course labored under the misapprehension for a while that i COULD convince a person of supreme stupidity or hatefulness of the error of their ways with well crafted and thoughtful words about the topic at hand or the matter of the day but i realized quickly that was a fools errand.  There are many aphorisms for a reason you see, such as:

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink."

I could lead you to a conclusion where logically, you could not in any rational way refute the position i led you to AND STILL, irrationally refuse to accept the objective reality as truth. 

I want to be kind to people, honestly i do. I know that i did not STUDY a great deal to be this smart, i was born autistic, with a hyper mind for words, a larger brain with more connections than a normal human. I did not EARN my intelligence, at least, not at first, it was GIFTED to me.  So what kind of self righteous asshole would i have to be to deny that just as my brains were given to me at random, other's LACK of said brains wasn't also just a matter of random chance?  How could i blame them for being BORN stupid when i was BORN smart? 

Because we learn. 

Or, rather we have the capacity to learn.  While it's true as of at 2022 study, 21% of adults in America cannot read, and 54% of them read at a 6th grade level or lower, that does not suggest they CANNOT learn.  Perhaps the circumstances surrounding them were not favorable, perhaps they were poor and grew up on welfare (like i did) perhaps their childhoods were profoundly traumatizing (like mine was) perhaps due to some mental disability they are truly rendered unable to learn (below 80 iq is the technical threshold for the beginning of mental handicap) but how many are out there truly INCAPABLE of learning? 

I suppose we can't really know that.  I choose to believe that most people, CAN learn,  but there are many reasons why they may choose not to.  Some of those are nurture, in that they may have not been raised to be inquisitive, to be curious, to be encouraged to ask questions and seek true answers in a rigorous manner.  In the absence of that motivation you may be left with people who "learn" by choosing to believe emotional lies that line up with the things they WANT to be true, otherwise known as confirmation bias.  Wherein we simply SEEK OUT ideas that tend to confirm or reinforce our desired worldview,  regardless of if those ideas are facts, or entirely fictitious spun from the minds of manipulative sources.

Some of those reasons may be nature.  That is to say, we are unable to engage our rational thoughtful minds before succumbing to emotional cues that would lead us astray.  Our heart wants what is easy, what is pleasurable, what our ancient DNA tells it to want.  To lust after a person with our eyes is a genetic imperative, but our higher thought steps in to tell us to act rational, to be true to our partner and not our lust, that pursuit of that office crush might end in job loss and financial and professional disgrace. 

From neurological research, the sensory input always goes through the emotional centers of the brain before it reaches the frontal cortex — the place for our rational thought. With that understanding, one must realize it is actually physically impossible for thought to come before emotions. Some people struggle with this issue more than others.  It has been suggested that those with lower iq's are more prone to this handicap, being lead around by how a thing FEELS, versus how things really are in objective reality.   Remember we are all motivated by the same very basic things:

Seek pleasure and plenty

Avoid pain

and do you know what thinking does? It causes pain.  Cognitive dissonance occurs when a person's behavior and beliefs do not complement each other or when they hold two contradictory beliefs. It causes a feeling of discomfort. People may do this via defense mechanisms, such as avoidance. When you BELIEVE something because it feels right, it feels like the truth, it sounds like what you want to be true, and then you run into facts in the real world that disprove what you believe in with cold scientific facts, you get a headache.  It HURTS to think that this thing you feel so strongly, could be wrong, and your mind jumps into action to protect you from pain, reassuring you: 

"It's not possible for that other idea to be true.  How you feel is correct, how you feel is true, what you feel is all that matters." 

Do you see the problem we have now?  We have those that see the world as it is, and those that only see the world as they want it to be.  Two parallel mindsets, seemingly incapable of reconciling. 

There is of course another factor.  What about the environment in which we all live? 

Unfortunately that is yet another black mark for the simple minded.  Those with lower iq's are more suggestible then others, meaning they can be easily manipulated.  Untold amounts of money have flowed into politics as a result of Citizens united.  Of the top 12 megadonors in 2024,  only 2 supported democrats.  10 out of 12 billionaires supported republican candidates.   Naturally the rich are going to support the party that promises them more money, lower taxes, less regulation, more power.  They then spend tiny fractions of that money to finance endless ad campaigns to convince the most gullible among us to vote for the billionaires chosen avatar.  By hook or by crook, cheating, lying, distorting the truth and all the while leaving you feeling more frightened and less certain of ANY objective truth or reality while doing so.  You see, if you are scared, they can more easily influence your limbic system, hijacking your emotional response to fear and assuring you, scared, lost, confused, lonely little you, that only THEY can protect you from the strawman other, the bad man.  

WHY are they bad?  Because they are not us, that's why! Don't think about it, just FEEL.  It feels good to vote for us right?  WE'LL SHOW THEM!

They feed you this message.  On Tv. On the internet.  On Facebook, and twitter, and truth social, on message boards and discord chats, on billboards and bumper stickers, on podcasts and youtube videos, all assuring you "BAD MAN IS COMING FOR YOUR *insert cause relevant to you here* and he is BAD AND EVIL and we believe in the things YOU believe in citizen!"

All the while they have made you forget, that this is all a feeling.  and feelings can lie.  

They made you forget that they are millionaires and billionaires and you are struggling to pay off your mortgage and your car insurance and your health care bills.  They are pointing, furiously gesticulating fingers at people who are different from you just slightly, and encouraging your righteous anger and DISGUST at these OTHER people who are scumbags and scam artists and thieves and dastardly villains all the while they steal from your future.  They plot to control your rights.  They take away your freedom to read any books they deem unfit, to demonstrate peacefully, to have enough money to live a life like they do, and to think.

What they have left you is the right to feel, because so long as you do not think, rich and evil people will have control over you until their outstanding greed, avarice and over reach DOOMS THE WORLD. 

And all of this was avoidable.    You won't get a pass from me anymore. 

Science suggests that we CAN learn. Even people with disabilities, even people under duress. Those with brain damage who have lost the ability to speak words have in multiple cases RELEARNED how to speak with guidance and practice utilizing different pathways available in the brain, stimulated by music.

In spite of the fact that it is no doubt harder for some than others to learn new ideas, to embrace new concepts, to work towards empathy and compassion, i do not believe we should accept excuses any longer.

If you can learn, and simply choose not too, then no, "you can't fault a dog for being a dog." no longer applies. Even an old dog, can learn.

You. The human race. You have chosen not to learn. 

 You have CHOSEN hate, cruelty, racism, misogyny.  You have chosen to worship false idols in place of your gods, to make billionaires who would eat your children, steal your land and poison your air your new kings.

While you all burn in the raging conflagration you chose to feed,  i hope you understand i cared for you, so much, for so long.  I wanted to be kind just as much as i wanted you to be kind to me in return.  

That pact is broken.  That bridge is burned.  Your stupidity is a shield no longer. You choose violence over kindness, and i will delight in watching you stare slack jawed at the falling sky that you prayed for. 

Fuck you. 

Good night. 

Smiling like it's no big deal stabbing wounds that never heal

I need to go to my own funeral.  

Build a new me again, like i did when i was 15.

Then again, when i was 23

and again, when i was 30. 

Another improvement around 38.

Seems like it's time. 

I achieved my goals and sitting idle simmering is not working for me.  

I wanted zen. I wanted no mind, but my mind is just too ferocious to accept it, this lovely transcendent calm, for long. I can bask in it's healing light for a while, appreciating all the mountains i've climbed, all the obstacles i've conquered but the air up here... Is thin and cold. 

 Rest feels alien to me. Rather then a reward it feel like a sentence.   My limbs locked to my sides,  drinking in my own achievements.  It feels so self indulgent. Prideful. Arrogant. To sit here and think, "yeah, i've done all i need to do. I achieved more then most people have achieved.  I can rest now."

It should be enjoyment, but to me it just feels like waiting. Like wasted time.  Like staring into heaven suddenly turns into a swirling abyss.

My fingertips should be dug into the side of a new mountain somewhere, 

determined even if fruitless to overcome it, even for it's own sake. 

How am i so restless that i want to burn down my life just to build it up again?

Honestly,

that is the very embodiment of zen.

Dig a hole, fill it up,

then do it again.

Find peace in the movement.  Find joy in the ritual. The goal is there is no goal.

The point is

There is no point. 

Zen and the art of self sabotage

One new years eve, instead of a party or a bar, i went to a monastery on a mountaintop.  

Yes really.

Lets give this a little context.

I am an autistic adult.  Formally diagnosed at 30 years old as having Asperger's syndrome.  Yes, i followed all the clichés about gifted kids on the spectrum.   I had very advanced iq scores, a savantism for language and spoke like a professor at a young age. I was speaking sentences at 18 months old. 

One might think that this sort of intense skill for communication would be a boon going forward in life, the ability to be a great communicator is often a very desirable and oft applauded thing.  Turns out the mouth the message is coming out of matters a whole lot.  When it's coming out of a young child, adults chaff at the idea of taking advice or gaining insight from "just a kid" and other kids... wellllll, they look at you like a cow looks at an oncoming train.  You end up looking like this to your peers,

Re: a young child with autism talking to kids his age

and like a mutant all adults observing you.   You may be wondering when this is going to tie back into the start of this story.  Trust me i'm getting there.

So it will come as no surprise to anyone that i was bullied a ton as a kid.  One of my uncles described me as a "Bully Magnet." Not that i could do much about that.  I didn't understand what i was doing wrong because EVERYTHING i was doing was wrong. How i FELT was wrong, how i problem solved was wrong, how i appraised social situations was wrong. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. 

After a period of getting my ass kicked, running home from school, being let out early just so i COULD get home from school without getting beat up, i had a sea change, somewhere around jr high.  I got angry. REAL angry.  Sick of getting beat up by kids, ignored and given no assistance from teacher or my own parents, an orphan, a man on an island, i started to fight back.  I would just punch people down if they locker checked, throw them down and kick them, greet malice with even greater malice. I had nothing to lose. I would fight 3 against one, i would remain standing even with a broken nose and blood pouring out of me until kids knew to just leave me the fuck alone.  Upon the transition to a new school, high school, a place where no one knew me yet, i tried to lay low.  I was too strange for that to work.  My first day in high school, i went outside after lunch to smoke, there were a hundred or more kids out there already.  I walked to the other side of the street, and smoked alone.  Of course not understanding what i had done just drew an incredible amount of attention to myself without meaning to. I was adopted by some NT people who found my oddness charming, but the violent anger was still there.  When someone locker checked me my first week in i just punched him as hard as i could.  This sort of thing went on for a while, until once again this new school was made to learn, if you fight me, your gonna have to kill me. 

All of this anger made it hard to maintain friendships.  On top of the radioactive mess that was my autism i was now volcanic, on a hair trigger, and it wasn't going to end well for me. 

I took it upon myself to start studying stoic philosophy, and then zen, and bushido. The idea of detaching myself to better control my overflowing emotions made sense and appealed to me on a foundational level.  I can't solve all my problems by punching them, so i better figure out an alternative way to manage my overly responsive brain. 

I even wrote a book loosely about it, how apathy and detachment helped me survive myself.  

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Meaningless-Handbook-Erik-McCarthy/dp/1544264976

I was 15 when i started this practice and direction. 

I am 43 now.

So here i am, in a Buddhist monastery in the freezing cold, listening to the master speak.  I am at my utmost attention and excited for a chance to ask a question that has been bothering me for some time.

"what is the line between nihilism and Zen? How does one separate the two?" 

The monk smiled, a few folks gasped (and actually thanked me afterwards for asking the question, as they wondered as well)  Turns out there is no answer.  It's up to the individual to draw his or her own line.  I was dejected.  Defeated.

But no less committed to the practice and idea.  

A decade or more later, i can say i have largely conquered my anger. Like an alcoholic i don't know that i will ever be truly cured, but it's incredibly rare that i feel that instinct rising in me and if it does i am able to recognize and deflect it. 

Life has mellowed and much of the substantial challenges have been surmounted.  I am in good shape and work out routinely.  I seem to be well liked by most people who know me and interact with me on a regular basis. I have been with the same partner for over 20 years and things seem to be going well.  I own a home and my bills are low enough that it's virtually impossible for me to lose my home. I have a meager amount of spending money but enough to allow myself to indulge in multiple hobbies regularly. I have achieved most of my goals set for myself including getting to the Magic the Gathering Pro tour on my own, without a team, publishing my own book, an achieving my strength goals. 

I have slain the beast. Roll credits. I am done. 

I am 43.

My day to day presents no concerns or challenges at all. My cool detachment leaves me feeling both insulated and isolated from others.  

My partner joked i "did zen wrong." but did i?

I'm so detached, the very point of zen (to achieve no mind, or Mushin) that i don't really feel anything.

I've reached such a profound inertia that every day i feel like a robot executing scripting code that i have meticulously crafted for myself.  I feel completely removed from the timeline, alien to others as they are alien to me, devoid of any internal motivation and unable to feel any sense of external motivation.  I have enough food. I have enough shelter. I have enough money. I have enough love. 

I'm standing still detached and vacant unable to enjoy it all because the journey seems to be over.  A long endless winter of sitting atop the mountain awaits and i am struggling to know the answer to the only question that matters now.

What's next?

Have i done such a thorough job detaching myself that i removed myself too completely? What is a man absence direction, motivation, desires, purpose? 

I feel like a rocket with no thrust. Having achieved escape velocity and reaching my destination, a thing i would have not though possible, i am now drifting, dream-like in space, perhaps for all time, wondering if perhaps i have made some kind of terrible mistake.

Maybe i DID do zen wrong. 

So i'm doing all the by the numbers things humans do to try to fabricate a purpose, to simulate a living thing propelled by something, the simulacra of movement, the simulacra of a real live boy. 

As i listen to my partner list off ideas for a new "thing to do, goal to set" i am cold and gaunt as nothing appeals to me, nothing stirs me, no special interest is peaked at a suggestion and i wonder if i'm simply missing the circuitry required to "human". 

I say "i think we are attempting to address the symptom, not the cause. How do i FEEL? What, if anything, MAKES ME FEEL?"

So here i am, on the precipice of another abstraction.  A feelings inventory.

Good or bad, writing down what makes me FEEL at all, and if i can understand what makes me feel, perhaps i can make some kind of informed choice as to what a man of 43 should be doing beyond meditating on a mountaintop with the remainder of his days.

Perhaps i will come to the conclusion that like my question to the zen master, there is no answer, and that anything i do, is what i was meant to do, and anything i do not do, i was simply not meant to do.

I am a flawed gnostic, an autistic zen disciple, a man sitting in the cold vacuum of space staring at the stars wondering, 

Is this it? 

"enjoy it."

But what's next? 

Reflections

I was an angry, reactive, dangerous kid as a teenager.

I was of course a product of my environment.  Having by that point survived a lifetime of hell.  The kind that came via beatings, both physical and mental.    These experiences warped me from a young sapling into a twisted piece of petrified wood.  I was on edge all the time.  Years of surprise attacks in the school halls, or walking home alone.  I was coiled like a cobra after that, after so many people revealed themselves to me to be cowards, idiots, and bullies.  Kids and adults alike both proved to be more enemy then friend.  Adults were only interested in covering their own asses, kids would just brazenly lie when marched into the principle's office with me, the wounded punching bag sitting across from them.  That was as much help as your average adult was for me back then, and all throughout my educational process.

By the time i'd gotten to my teenage years, i had an aura swirling around me.  I had nothing left to lose, it had all been taken away from me already, so bullies sniffed around cautiously.  I still had a few, but i was fearless at that point, dead inside.  They learned quickly engaging with me was a losing prospect.  Either my years of abuse and hardness led me to beat them, and cost them their status, which would be passed up to me by other kids like a trophy.  Or they would outnumber me, beat me down, and i wouldn't cry.  I wouldn't complain.  I would stand back up and look them right in the eye, blood trickling down my face.  They would see there was nothing left to take inside of me.  I was hallowed out by other blood thirsty alpha's looking to make a name for themselves on an easy target.  Wasn't so easy anymore.

This mutation came from how i was treated, like creatures in the wild, it had evolved as a defense mechanism.  No one, and nothing, was out there to protect me from this.  My body had to come up with a way.  My mind ended up stitching it all together.   There were, and still are, side effects.

The rage of those experiences is permanently embedded in my psyche.  The angry and fierceness born of that nihilism hammered into me defended me so perfectly, but only from that one, specific, narrow type of enemy.  Covering your body in spikes and acid defended me from predators, but invariably repelled potential friends and allies eventually.   There was novelty in knowing me as i was, and many people latched onto that.   That's all it was though.  Novelty.  There were no real allies to be found when the days and weeks wore on and that got to see that it wasn't a costume i could take off at the end of the day.  That this is what i REALLY looked like. This i what i really was.  Angry. Acid tongue. Nihilistic. Hardened.

I was autistic too, of course, and had some simple tricks for faking other emotions, but as all weathered travelers know, the mask requires amazing effort to maintain.  And it slips. And it consumes the bones and sinew as part of it's price.  Drinks the blood to smile and joke. To look you in the eye.

That total defense that i had virtually no hand in building, ruined all the years afterwards.  I was too angry, so much so that it consumed me utterly.  I shook with rage at times no good reason.  I wanted to hurt, i wanted to harm, i wanted to punch everyone in the fucking face over and over and over.  I knew, rationally, that this was normal.  It was that wounded child inside of me that wanted revenge at the cost of everything else.  I would gladly, light the room i was in on fire, if i knew i could take some of them down with me.  Knowing wasn't enough. I didn't have any real support system, then, or in the years preceding either.  So while i knew what was happening, and wrote about it often, i could not conquer this thing with ease.   It took me years. and years. and years. Several of which i spent completely isolated. Not dating. Not talking to friends. Not doing anything.  and even saying this now i know, it's still a part of me.  I am standing above it now, but our positions change as the seasons do.  I want you to know i've done all i could on my own.

These memories are so visceral, that when i read about other kids getting bullied, or adults getting bullied, or autistic people getting bullied, i am completely overcome with emotion.  I feel great surges of fear, rage, sadness, and deep anxiety. I want to snap the world in half. I want to sob uncontrollable like a child.  Sometimes i do. When i hear the music of my youth, i remember each emotion connected to each song i sang. To each person i shared that song with, and i am filled until the pressure makes me wince.

The things we endure as we grow up, as so incredibly powerful and life altering, and we don't have any idea until it's too late.

If you ever have the chance to protect someone, all i ask is that you think about this story.  Really try to feel what i feel.   And you do whatever you possibly can to prevent that person from having to endure this pain.  It is not growing pain.  It is the pain that keeps on growing until it is the epicenter of who you are. Everyone deserves the chance to be happy, don't take that away. I am ruined by my trials. By body is a wreck as a result of what i went through, and as it turns out all the science is there to support it. Bad childhoods result in extremely poor health outcomes. It's call the ACE score. Mine was 8 out of 10.

These are not growing pains.

These are the pains that keep on growing.

If you let them.

-e-

Mission statement.

My name is Erik. I am 34 and on the autistic spectrum.  I am for all intents and purposes what you might consider smart.

I've been pinned down to paper like an insect and studied since i was old enough to go to pre kindergarten classes by psychologists and psychiatrists and teachers alike. I have a GIANT ream of paperwork with some of my records i managed to recover as a 30 year old man from my various schools that was so completely gut wrenching to read i was in a walking coma for 3 months afterwards, recovering from the whiplash of all that information and what it meant finally sinking in.   It was the key component to my finalized diagnosis after several months of dual evaluation (differential diagnosis) that led to me being official labeled as having Asperger's Syndrome. Though that definition may have changed slightly due to the DSM manual changing, so now i am simply an adult with autism, just maybe not the kind that you would immediately recognize.

I have spent a great deal of my life in the back of the class, literally and metaphorically BEHIND everyone.  I had to study in class to learn, and keep up with the standards of each state's requirements but i couldn't.  I couldn't find a way to meet that requirement AND to meet the requirements of my autism.   You see, I had to study PEOPLE when i was in school, and it was a full time job with much higher stakes.    Much of the class work was manageable, if i was allowed to do it my own way.  If i knew the answer in math class, i would write it down, but even if it was right, i was yelled at to show my work by the teacher, and i couldn't understand what he had meant by that. My writing started in the 3rd grade, and i was only encouraged because as it turns out, they were just using my writing to study me and perhaps publish a paper on my behavior. I wrote about trying to understand other kids, and why they were mean to me.  I wrote about how scary my asthma was and how sad i felt at home and at school.  I wrote about whatever autistic interest i had at the time. Dinosaurs for a long time. Then learning every breed of dog and how to draw them.  Learning to fix computers and write in MS Dos when i was in the 3rd grade. My homeroom was in a chicken coop outside of the school in a small town in upstate NY.  Not a great place for a kid like me to be, but i'm not sure there was any place in the world for a kid like me to be.

So i struggled. Of course.  The depth of that struggle is a million stories that would make your heart hurt to hear.  They make my heart hurt to recall sometimes.  I have achieved a herculean task in simply making it to this stage of my life.   In managed to exist right now.   I was never prepared to make it this far though.  I made it on instinct and relentless study and mimicry of my surrounding. I took social risks and after years of being beat on became hard and fearless in the face of threats and violence. I stood against my would be tormentors until they broke under the effort required to beat me into submission. I just had nothing left to lose anymore.

So here i am.  Smash cut to the here and now.

I'm functional, in some rudimentary ways.  But i'm also ruined for life, like a war veteran.  Warped by the things i've seen and had done to me.   My rational mind cannot filter out all the hurt, all the negativity, all the cynicism, even being this far removed from it's frequency.  I can't work a conventional job because for all my efforts, i'm still a mutant, and the fact that i require "Effort" at all to affect a normal personality to work with others saps my strength quickly and completely, running me into the same problem i suffered as a young man.    Either i can do the job well. Better then well.   Or i can manage all the social contracts in the workplace that must be maintained, and flounder in performing the actual duties with all level of acumen.

So i live lean. Incredibly lean. I have learned to make the meager stipend i receive for being ruined into a manageable mess, at least somewhat.  I have insurance. I have food. I have a tv, a computer, an internet connection and various other bits and pieces of a life strewn together from thrift stores and sales and trades and the like. I built my own computer. I fixed my own electronics. I don't have a cell phone or a car. I have enough.  Just enough. To survive, but not to thrive.

I have no family connections, nor do i have any connections to my social history.  All the faces and people i have met over my life have fled, many before they were aware of my condition, but i am certain they would not return upon learning of it.  Every living person i know and interact with by and large is brand new, and our relationships are kept shallow and distant. Engaging only under strict conditions of a shared interest on occasion and with great restraint on my part.  I yearn for a deeper connection, the strings i grasped at when i was young and tireless, but anytime i have attempted to obtain them, i find i am overreaching and run the risk of driving new people away.  I want to ask you who you really are, and why. I want to know your stories and how you got this age, to be sitting across from me here now.  My desire is to understand people, so that maybe someday i can fully understand myself. So that i might know warmth and affection born from a deeper place then the utility i offer. The odd collection of humor and skills that i present to you.

I don't have a dream. An overarching goal or purpose. Even when i was young, i just said i wanted to be happy. Maybe when i was a teenager, i thought i could be a singer if i kept practicing, but bands are VERY social and hard to manage.  And a job in the music industry when the pie was shrinking was not to be.  I wanted to be a DJ once. An on air personality, only to share my love of strange music with other people.  This is of course before i understood that being a dj required much more then just being good at it and having a great background in music. It required interviews and uniforms and protocols and gatekeepers. I tried, for a while, but it was not to be.   Since then i don't think i've had a single thing i've really wanted to be. I thought i might be a writer.

That my pain, my experiences, my unique brain and it's story might be worth something in the world. Maybe my life could help ease the pain of others, help people like me who could not relate in the normal world have a comforting and funny voice to support them. Something i wished i had in so many dark moments.  But i only knew the writing part of the puzzle. I wrote and wrote and wrote.  But i never knew what to do with it.  I'm not a guy with a terribly high self opinion. I could never figure out how to "market" myself. What i would send. What i would say.  What to do with a writing style that is like an unbroken ream of paper darting gleefully from gallows humor to sorrow.

I want the same things as you mostly.  A sense of purpose about my life and what i put my effort into. Some tangible result of that spent life to gradually emerge and form the beams that might support a fully realized person and life.  To feel friendship and feel no anxiety about losing it.  To make enough money to support myself, stand up from this wheelchair and walk off into the sunset alone, emerging when  i feel like it, not because i have too. To make a difference.  To mend my shattered wings.

So here i am, and here i have been for the last 2 years. In pursuit of nothing. Digging a hole and filling it back up each day. Strangling myself with my own noose of failure.  My own shattered sense of who i am, versus who i believe i am supposed to be.

And i still don't know. Maybe you can tell me.