Unwanted.
All my life, I feel it; a weight of dull, dead eyes, not seeing me, only an obligation unwanted, an unfortunate-but-legally-binding presence upon the mind and being of another.
I never wondered why. Why would I? The world was entirely certain. The normalcy of what is creates its own authority, it’s own terrible credibility. With time, it is sealed, like so much cement, into the abyss… falling, ever falling, into the quiet, dark void wherein I dwell.
I float in it, you know. Always have. I did not realize even this until very recently. I just thought that everyone was pretending to be happy because I knew that was what I did. Somehow, without explication, I realized that the worst thing you could ever be in this life and world was “different”.
So I pretended. I watched closely, learned carefully, and practiced until the practice was indistinguishable from anyone around me.
I fit in.
Well, kind of.
The older I got, the angrier and madder I got that, no matter how much I tried, no matter how much I set forth to “prove”, I could never seem to find another with whom mutual safety and care existed. At this time in life, it never even occurred to me that I had that in myself (or could ever, since ‘everyone knows’ it’s all just a grand pretense).
So, eventually, I decided that, if the way the world wanted to be was to beat me down until I fought back, then the world was about to get a big surprise; just because I didn’t want to fight didn’t mean I didn’t know how, or that I was not as intrinsically able in violence as any other human drawing breath.
When you learn only by trial and error or bad outcomes that, somehow, miraculously, you survived, you tend to learn only enough to escape, to move through and beyond. In the process, you learn that which cannot be moved must be eliminated, and that which can be moved must be both understood and respected before said move. After all, you’re about to put it behind you… shouldn’t you feel securely about it?
Of course, this means that life quickly becomes honed upon the whetstone of need and focus rests so heavily there that no room remains for the concept of wanting, except as intermittent flashes of resentment that are like cyanide salt upon every meal.
But the worst part is that you learn along the way just what it is that you lack, why you lack it, and how it is that the likelihood you’ll ever do other than lack it is profoundly, cosmologically large.
That feeling? The one that sits at the period of the previous sentence?
That is a unique blend of autism, intelligence, and depression otherwise known as “me”.
I should never have made it this far. Knowing it is at once the blessing and curse of being me. Watching the world rediscover it is like standing upon the event horizon of some quantum mobius… dharmachakra… samaara… samaya… sealed, sealed, sealed.
I am so tired.
I am also clinging like a bee to the single rose in this, my life’s garden – my husband.
Ever significant other in my entire life has abandoned me. I view this as karma and have struggled all my life to be as caring, forgiving, kind, loving, and warm as I could manage in any moment.
It has always been my hope that any moment of another seeing me to be otherwise might be tempered by a far larger, richer weave of moments in which I wasn’t… somehow, balancing the ledger in my favor over time in ways my own awareness and skill would simply never manage.
The ultimate humor, black and rich as oil, is that we are the only ones who will never truly know if we managed it.
Or maybe that’s just how I feel and think of it because my lens indicates it would, naturally, be an impossibility.
I try. Still.
Because I have my husband, I continue to try. He shows me every day all the things I have never been able to see in myself, all the things that no one has ever shown themselves able to see in me.
He says I do the same for him. I always have a hard time believing it, but it must be true because… well… he’s here.
He is my energy when my dwindling lake is low. We walk slowly, but with care and consideration of one another… which is more work than it may sound in a simple sentence.
Even now, just thinking about him, I backpedal from the edge and beckon to you to do so, too.
I didn’t tell you all of this to make you feel as I do, only to help you realize that none of us are really alone in the darkest parts of our experience.
In the same way that we fail to see the inner being we so deeply share in others, they too, fail to see it in us.
The result in the experience of life and the world are obvious. Consider it.
I am sick and sad and sorrowful about this world. I am often the same about myself. But still, there is joy.
I am autistic. I am depressed. I have been both all my life, but I am still here, and I still find joy.
We are never alone. When we feel convinced otherwise, we need only say these things to someone, anyone, to see very quickly just how true this is, for all of us.
This is the gift I intended for you. These are the words I wove to make it. I know it is sloppy and lacking in perfection… but I also know this only makes it more beautiful (even if it has become fashionable to snicker more than smile about it).
I’m glad you exist because of the beautiful gifts of all the moments you create, regardless any “negative” ones may happen in the process. If I cannot properly express that to you and with you, I remove myself from you… this, to me, is an act of love.
Some will say that makes me a coward; better a coward than your impediment.
Some will say that makes me weak; better to be weak than willful.
Some will call me names; they could not find one I have not used already within myself… moot.
In principle, I purpose to love all. In reality, I strive to love all and that which I cannot skillfully care for and sustain receives the best gift I have to offer – refrain.
Do as you can.
Don’t as you can’t.
Demand that you challenge both, recurrently.
It’s life. It’s happening even if you do nothing… shine.