This week is about growing up and moving on. I must admit, I am one of those people who, because of my home life, is always ready to run. I am an expert mover and can get my shit together at a moment’s notice, but neither am I above leaving everything behind. Stuff is stuff, but what about when the stuff you are leaving behind is people?
That can be a little harder, can’t it? Or when you are the people, your people are leaving behind. Of course, sometimes, we can feel like life has moved on without us when, in reality, it is we who are mired in the past. That is why we have to unleash our past. Write, paint, or sing it out so it can’t bog us down. We don’t want the pain and longing for happiness we never realized in childhood to be mixed with the discontent of our tedious adult lives, transforming into the elusive swamp of quicksand we all worry about but never seem to materialize.
Look On
“So many times people gossip and watch as so-called friends fall right off the “deep end.” Then, they walk away when things are too hard to deal with. If you see someone struggling, be a friend, not a jeering onlooker.”
I wrote Look On before I knew what autistic burnout was. Healing is by no means a linear journey; some days, I’m even more frustrated now that I’ve started giving myself the support I need and cutting all of those so-called friends out of my life. I feel much better physically, having my support needs met, but it can’t make those needs disappear, and that’s the problem. Most people want your support needs to be temporary; they don’t want to have to deal with someone who will have a high level of support needs every day for their entire life. It just isn’t something that most people seem equipped to deal with, no matter what they say at the outset of a friendship.
So healing, accepting, and becoming the person I need to be for myself means grieving the fact no one is willing to be there for me, no one except my husband, who rightfully has his own needs. It means searching for more support no matter how long it takes to find it. It means setting up new, properly working systems to care for myself and my family. Because what works for someone else doesn’t matter one wit if it doesn’t work for us.
I’ve had to use the blanket term disabled since I had no other way of describing what was happening to me up until this past year, and the emotion I feel reading this back, the anger and disappointment with society at large for leaving me and my autistic peers behind is immeasurable.
I would estimate that approximately every ten years, I experience a burnout. Unfortunately, depending on the support I get, or in some cases the opposite, the burnout has been forced through to the tune of severe physical ramifications I am still dealing with, or this most recent one lasted eight years due to inconsistent and ill access to care. I am only coming out of it now since I am facing the root cause of many of these issues and moving through the trauma, not keeping it buried and continuing on mismedicated.
I am so unbelievably angry at my parents and schools for working me to the bone as a child and telling me it was going to mean something someday, that one day, someone would eventually pay me. One day, someone would eventually like me. One day, someone would eventually love me if I worked hard enough and changed myself. That wasn’t true and would never be true. I can’t change myself and broke myself trying to pretend I was different than what I am really like.
The only way to be free of the anger locked away is to face it, feel it, and let it run its course. I don’t want to be angry forever, and I don’t think I will be. The only surefire way to stay angry forever is to trap it inside and never let it fully express itself.
Look On
One day, you'll watch
Looking on without care
I'll collapse
In the absence
Of power and air
Transformation
accompanied by
menacing flare
Maybe, my "friends
I am already there
Family crowds
Cameras flashing
To see how I fair
Just a doll
Made of rags
With no shape
Form, or thought
Once my
Momentum has gone
The illusion
Has dropped
With mouths wide agape
Minds come
To a curious stop
All pointlessly
Now conjecture on my lot
“No explanation”
“No reason nor rhyme”
Someone says
“You better just leave it”
While I sit motionless
For all time
The crowd, now bored
With nothing
Keeping them on the line
All just disperse
Hurriedly stepping over
My lifeless body
Grounded and supine.—Originally published in The Power of Poetry on Medium.com January 23 2023
The Fires of Adversity
This piece examines the constant fight between what we are being told we need to do to achieve our goals and what it actually takes, which are invariably very different things. It looks at the impossibility of staying constantly vigilant in a state of constant fear and pain. Yet, it has a positive quality and tone in the face of these near impossibilities.
Life can swallow us up if we only focus on the multitude of problems facing us and the whole of humanity. Finding tangible ways to care for ourselves and those in our community and measurable ways of effecting change in larger areas of concern can ease our worry instead of hyping it up.
Poetry, for me at least, does the opposite of what the news does. If I sit down and watch a news story or read a mainstream news article about a depressing topic such as war, my energy is siphoned away. I can read poetry and heartfelt commentary on the same subject, only to feel inspired and revitalized. Because intention and humanity matter, they translate and shine through to touch our hearts and lift our spirits.
When reading this, the pairs of lines essentially line out problems and reactions. There is a hint of a rhyme scheme; the first couplet has a rhyme in each line, while the following couplets each rhyme one line with the other as a traditional couplet would. I often include rhyming in my poetry, but not in a conventional structure. When in school and when first dabbling with poetry, I rarely wrote with rhymes and actively avoided it to an almost obsessive degree. Now, I have taken to using rhyme quite a bit, but I still rarely consciously use one particular rhyme scheme or another. I have trouble sticking closely to prompts as well. I like being inspired, not told what to write.
I wanted to generate a piece of art that gave a hopeful feel, and I love the cute little Chibi art style and the brush symbolizing art and writing leading the way through these challenging times.
The Fires of Adversity
When paralyzing heartache insists on persisting,
you slip into the monotony of emergency.
Each day just flows one into two.
It feels like evil’s chasing you!
You are never steps ahead.
You just keep trudging on instead.
The end is always just in sight.
So you heave with all your might!
Somehow, finishing victorious is always steps away.
Yet you never set down or wander off the way.
The journey matters as much as the goal.
Keep refining, jealously guarding your soul.—Originally published in The Power of Poetry on Medium.com January 26, 2023
No Place Like Home
“My last move in Sept of 2022 put me into home number 14. As a child, I was very good at lying to myself, telling myself and everyone else I liked it, and I enjoyed meeting people across the country. That was a lie. I am neuro-divergent, causing me to be very socially awkward, something my family largely ignored and told me to get over. We lived in the Midwest and on both coasts. At first, it was okay; we moved around our local area, and I got to make new friends and keep the ones I already had, few as they may be.
When I was a teenager, and we moved halfway across the country to Florida, it was horrible. I didn’t feel like I could change my tune, though. Eventually, I started letting everyone know how much I disliked living in Florida, and not necessarily because of my protests; my family finally moved again. At that time, all the way across the country to California.
Even though we had moved to a much “better” place, adjusting wasn’t much easier. I made some friends, but it was at least as tricky to make friends in California as it had been in Florida. The older we get, the more difficult it is to move around and slip into a new social ecosystem. Now, I never feel settled. I could walk away from 99% of the things in my home today and never look back. I am constantly vigilant for the next reason to pick up and move on. There doesn’t even need to be a reason because my parents didn’t always give us one. Panic is the reason; it probably always was. Panic chased my family around the country and continues to chase me today.”
Reading these poems and commentary back, only around a year later, is sometimes surprising or funny. I‘ve learned so much about myself in a shockingly short amount of time.
As previously discussed, I’ve known I have ADHD since I was maybe six or seven, but even that was downplayed and gaslit so much as never to be considered a factor in why I had trouble making and keeping friends or difficulties in school. It was always laid squarely on my shoulders for being too annoying, talking too much, having incompatible interests, having a selective memory, etc… The main factor constantly blamed was our moving. My parents usually didn’t give a reason why we were moving. Of course, now I can see many of these inexplicable moves were because doctors, teachers, or uninvolved church members were starting to notice the abuse.
Moving was one of the only constants there were in my childhood. My mother was obsessed with finding a nice house; after we went to church on Sunday many weeks, we would go around to model homes to walk around and look inside them. We were all dressed up so my mother wouldn’t be embarrassed, and she would talk about the decor, tell my brother and me to walk around and think about which rooms we liked best, not to pick one out, because we all knew we weren’t planning to buy any house.
I know this wasn’t meant to look for a house because I mostly remember this being something we did after my parents bought one and we moved away from my grandparents into our new builder home— for six years. So I guess some of those times were legitimate, but I don’t remember them; it wasn’t strange when we really were buying a house…
They had it made to my mother’s specifications and everything. We would fairly regularly still go see the model homes in our area. We lived in a rapidly developing locality, so there were lots to see. Sometimes, I would even swear we had been to those before, but no— “These are different ones; you just have a bad memory.” She claimed it was for interior design ideas, but even as a preteen, I could sense it wasn’t about that. Or why would she need us all to dress up and accompany her? I could tell she was searching for something she couldn’t find in a building.
No Place Like Home
Where is it you go back to?
When every coop
you've ever stooped
are place holders
just pretend
No location
you'd want to
bestow the
warm appellation
home
Plenty of houses
so many rooms
yet not a spot
to call your own
Food in the
cabinets
cooking in a
kitchenette
You may have
found a new place
to set up
always on the
planned defense
bags packed
ready to run
never any resting
or fun
Finding hollowed-out
spaces to hide
placing comfort objects
squirreled away inside
Maybe you'll be
happy in this place
It's nice and big
maybe the only answer
to lifes distress
is getting gone
without a trace.—Originally published on Medium.com May 17 2023
The Moving Bug
“ My husband and I decided that our time in CA has run out, and we will move back to his home state of Vermont. We can’t get stuck; we must stay ahead of the most difficult times. If there is one thing I know how to do, it is move. I will slowly pack and leave my reselling stock for last so I will have the shops closed for the least time. We have no solid timing yet, but I hate being caught unawares. The last move was a huge blow, and this one will be on our terms!”
When I read this, I can’t help but feel thankful we took the time to count the costs and take this move on our own time and our own terms. We had initially intended to be moved by now. Still, once we started planning and looking for jobs and housing, we concluded there wouldn’t be affordable housing where my husband would need to be working, and although we originally had somewhere to stay while looking, when the person who offered found out I am autistic, they immediately retracted their offer. Stating my husband could move there, but I would need to stay behind or find another place to live.
At first, this was devastating—one of the most brutal blows I’d had since I started my healing journey. I felt like my world was crumbling down around me. I had just cut my family out of my life, and now a new fear that my husband would abandon me and go back to his home state without me emerged. Thankfully, that was not an option. We put our plans on hold, and while we were rethinking how we would accomplish things, the northeastern United States started experiencing terrible flooding.
Instead of fretting and feeling stuck, or worse, like we were taking steps backward, my husband enrolled in classes here where we live, something he had planned to do after we moved. This gives us a sense of continued forward momentum without needing to physically pick up and move when there is nowhere to go.
I also finished writing, collecting the poems for my second book, and self-published that. That gave me a sense of purpose and accomplishment. that I have been trying to relay into my substack newsletters. I just got my author’s copies, and I need to promote both of my books locally, especially since we will be around town longer.
This poem is short and sweet, with a rising beat. It plateaus around the middle and continues to rise until the last word. Though the topic isn’t cheerful per se, the piece’s tone is hopeful and bright. Forward looking.
The Moving Bug
It’s caught me again
The moving bug
I see a new future just around the bend
Misfortune can’t catch me on the run
I had this plan all along
Flattened boxes behind the bed
Items chosen
Sacrificial pyre fodder
The smoke will be our needed cover
In the darkness of night
We pack up and flee
Never again to be seen—Originally published in The Power of Poetry on Medium.com February 03 2023
Who Will I Be?
“Everyone has so many expectations on them from youth onward, but at some point, we all have to take the reigns to our own lives and start riding off on our own course.”
The unbelievable amount of guilt I’ve had piled on top of me year after year due to the fact I couldn’t explain why I was unable to repel unreasonable requests. I could say no once, but if someone pushed past my no, I felt utterly helpless to deny what they were convincing me to do, no matter how obviously incapable I was of fulfilling their requests, leading to frequent failure, physical injury, and exhaustion, and blaming me for being unable to fulfill these outrageous demands.
Finally, having an answer for why this is has brought me so much relief. I may not be able to completely stop this type of abuse from happening ever again, but I can set healthy boundaries, including cutting out people who refuse to abide by my boundaries from my life completely. No means no in every aspect of life. Anyone who cares about me should be able to understand my limitations. It isn’t easy to find a way to feel valuable when your entire worth has been defined by what you have been able to do for, make for, and get for other people. How you are fairing is never even taken into the equation.
This is one of the tasks a disability advocate can help with; even adults with autism can need help distinguishing between reasonable requests and unhealthy boundary crossing. That is why I try to accommodate others when I am capable. Things have to be a two-way street, but they have to actually be a two-way street for any relationship to be balanced. It is why I have cut so many people off; the more people who push and take without reciprocation or remorse, the fewer people will be allowed in my life. Period.
This is another reasonably short piece; I played with repetition and font a little bit. I am a big fan of using Bold, Italics, underlining, and strike-through not just for emphasis but for comparison, to indicate movement, to show strength, or to illustrate the breaking apart or rejoining of something. There are so many ways to employ these simple text enhancements. It really depends on the context as to what you can use them for. It’s like painting; yellow isn’t only for the sun; it’s for corn, sand, and fabulous abstract triangles—anything really, as you feel it is yellow and as the painting dictates it.
I tend to do this as its own pass. Editing is done in layers. You write, then you write again, then you pare down, and you correct errors. Then, you get into the shape of the thing, line length, and breaks, forming stanzas. Finally, we have these fiddly bits. Like font, size, effects, and maybe even color. When are they going to let me type on here with color? I would really love that. I know I can add color images and such. I guess I could start adding screenshots of poetry written in other programs with more color and shape. There’s an idea.
Who Will I Be? I will choose who I become I played their parts up 'till today A dancer on call for any stage A chef ready to fill their needs I cleaned And cleaned ANd cleaned AND cleaned My care doled out Indiscriminately 'Till I realized the choice Was mine to make It is them Or it is me That’s why they'll fight To keep you busy Hide your options Keep you from breaking free
—Originally published in The Power of Poetry on Medium.com February 13 2023
Cassandra
When I read the story of Cassandra as a kid, I immediately felt a kinship with this character. My entire life, I’ve felt that exact way. It seemed to me that no matter what the topic, whether it was an academic subject I was giving information on, a personal experience, or just my own opinion, every word that came from my lips was instantly discounted.
Since finding out I am Autistic, I have learned this is a feeling other autistic people almost universally share. Whether it is because we do not use the unspoken social codes when speaking or because we use less or more emotion than expected when talking to neurotypical people, both Autistic children and adults are frequently taken less seriously or have their words given less weight even if they are capable of verbalizing distress.
This can have disastrous consequences outside of personal self-worth and peer interaction. Numbers vary, but children with autism are subject to higher rates of abuse, three to four times higher than the national average in America, with little to no way of obtaining assistance.
I feel the combination of factors, me being “undiagnosed” and a girl, both weighed heavily against my ability to get help. I firmly believe my family hid my diagnosis to more secretly and effectively abuse me because they knew with no doctors, teachers, or state agencies knowing I needed any special interest, little appeared. When questions did arise, I was taken to a new doctor, we moved to a new congregation, enrolled in a new school, or moved across the country.
Of course, these social discrepancies don’t just disappear when a person with autism turns 18. At least in my case, they become more and more challenging to overcome. Causing me to work harder and harder to mask and camouflage just to be allowed to spend the requisite time in neurotypical spaces to continue living.
Of course, Just because I was doing it out of survival didn’t mean I was happy or fulfilled. I was exhausting myself and wasting away. I had collected so many rules and examples, but still I had been told every day that I was doing everything wrong. Events like family members, teachers, and fellows asking seemingly innocent questions, only to become dissatisfied or sometimes upset with my answers but be unwilling to clarify. It’s devastating.
Or my favorite, Vague directions on a work or school project, and even when requests for clarification are made, the only answer I would get is being told to do it “however I wanted, just get it done.” This would invariably lead to being graded or dressed down for “doing it wrong.” This was a soul-crushing exercise in wasting my extremely pressed time and limited energy. In some cases, every motion, even every word, is painful for me to expend. Every moment I was outside of my home, answering emails, looking at text messages, or otherwise engaging with this sort of social bullying was torturous. I would describe my life from eighth grade onward like this.
Or there’s the event that sparked this line of thinking that led to Cassandra, the last poem on our list. It was hauled all the way up from eighth grade. My reading class teacher did not like me for some reason and would constantly accuse me of just having a book on my desk “for show,” which wasn’t the most hurtful or ridiculous thing I had ever been charged with, but was up there.
She would frequently quiz me when I walked into the room with a book visible on the contents of said book, always to her embarrassment. The one book I recall her being particularly offended I was reading was A Girl of The Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter. It was a fantastic book; I felt very connected to the main character, and I will never be able to determine why she was upset I was reading it. The book encouraged female education by way of its plot and characterization. Although it was set in Rural Indiana, the swampy, backward community reminded me much of my new Florida home. A reading teacher mad I liked to read? Go figure.
One day, I commented on a vocabulary word— Lamentations- and stated that it was a book of the Bible. It had been an open-ended question asking what we knew about the word. She insisted it was not and made some rude remark, calling me a know-it-all maybe, which landed to a chorus of laughter.
I was obviously embarrassed to be called names by the teacher, but I had a Bible in my bag at the time and just pulled it out and showed her the table of contents; she was very unhappy with that turn of events and took it out on me for several weeks after. This had the unexpected side effect of garnering me an unusual amount of attention from my peers. That wore off in a few days but was uncomfortable while it lasted.
From my perspective, this is why some aggressively ignorant older folks are so upset the “kids today” have access to phones and tablets; they are just mad they can call them on their BS. I haven’t often thought about that incident since it happened; I tended to shove bad things like that down and lock them away. I still can’t quite explain it.
I love reading and learning; back then, I read tons of physical books. I can’t imagine what I did to offend her. It seemed from the very first day she picked me out of the class to be the scapegoat, and I have recently included the possibility it was just being autistic that upset the order of things, even if she wasn’t consciously doing it. Though, I suppose it could have equally been any number of things. I know very little, except that people are complex beings, and feelings are a real bitch.
Cassandra
I’ve found
most people inquire of you
facts they did not want to know
When you answer truthfully
They look away and
curse your name
I’ve had enough of
verbal traps
I’ll weaponize my
anti-lies
Trap you back,
reverse, and snap
I see your ways
Preempt your attack
You may not believe
Yet you'll hear my truth
And feel my wrath—Originally published in The Power of Poetry on Medium.com February 15 2023
Growing Up, Moving On