An Aspergian’s Thoughts On Emotions

This picture is very, very personal to me. Mainly, because it sums up what it’s like to live with Aspergers. Almost every moment I’m outside my home, I’m pretending to be someone else: this happy, open person who wants to connect with you and make friends and all that good stuff. Deep down, I’m really, really flawed. I’m too prideful to admit I have so many weaknesses, yet too afraid of the backlash from ignorant people. I don’t want to be viewed as a loner and a nobody, but when people ask what I do, and I just say  I write, I know they’ve written me off. I’m scared, I don’t know what to say, and it goes beyond being shy. I just can’t get the words out. When I’m talking to people, even if I know them, it’s a struggle just to string a sentence together. I’m stuttering, trying to say the right words. I know they’re judging me severely, noticing why I won’t look at them, or why I can’t stand still. That only makes it worse, so what can I do?

The first thing that people that I run across say that “I’m the quiet one” or “he doesn’t talk very much”. That’s because I’m too scarred to say what I really want. See, I’ve opened up to people before and got taken advantage of, so I am very reluctant to tell you anything. I could be dying, and I wouldn’t tell you. Some might say that’s stupidity, but it’s how I’ve learned to live. That’s where emotions come in. For an aspergian, we seem to be short on them, but that’s only half true. We don’t really show them in most cases, but god, when we do. I’ve had more explosive flare-ups than you’d expect from a teen boy, but this is the norm for us. Since I’m not the first to speak out about something, I’ll hold it in, and hold it in, and hold it in until I can’t take it anymore. I haven’t done this in public (I don’t think), but I am still ashamed and perplexed by it. I feel very childish when it happens, and at the same time so much more relieved. I used to have an anger problem, and while it’s one thing to blow up, it’s another to be angry too. I used to throw and break things, all the while hurting myself. I didn’t know what I was doing; it just seemed like the only way I could free myself from the pain/guilt/shame/all of the above I was feeling.

So, in regards to aspergians and emotions, I wrote these poems:

You were my picket fence

Controlling my anger,

and hiding my deepening depression derived

from fearful and anxious senses

Containing me only made me livid

and a finger to the lips

did nothing to negate that I was boiling

thousands of degrees, driven

beyond the arms of hope,

and the arms of stupid angels

that floated above those medieval pictures

I just needed a rope

 

I hate exercise

because no girl wants me anyway

so what’s the point in losing weight

I eat too much

because I love and hate myself

so what’s wrong with gaining weight

I don’t sleep

because I’m searching for a moment

of stability, even though I can clearly see my fate

I am content

believe it or not

because it’s not what I want, but it’s somewhat great

But I am not happy

or joyful, or particularly eager

Movements simply colliding into a quagmire of dates

I am grateful for life

and try to make the most of every day

but many days are broken lines

And I tear out nerves

with hundreds of different knives

trying to revive myself with one or two rhymes

but many days are full of broken lines

failed plots, and cardboard characters

and I stab myself looking for life hundreds of times

I crawl into another life

and hope the pain passes

under the steeple of the black rain do I lie