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
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