Living in the shadows of the light that exists within
encased darkness. Trying always to balance a miriad
of contradiction. Wanting to please yet wanting to
just be. Feeling the pressure of demands from the
outside but understanding much more clearly the
call from inside to seek quiet purposeful soothing
environmental co-existence. The world is not a
friendly place to those who are very sensory-sensitive.
Years of difference, being left out and never fitting
in no matter how hard I tried. Scars. Wounds. Pain. A deep
understanding of where rage comes from. A deep understanding
of the meaningless montage of moments that so many try to
make mean something so inter-connected. Loss becomes a friend
when others refuse to understand.
Bridges burned. Singed by the fire of faking feelings
and trying to fit in. Alone, behind a wall of glass that
often no one tries to penetrate. Glass that has become
inpentrable from the inside. There is so much sound beyond that
wall of glass. Enough sound to eat one alive if you let it.
There is endless noise, a barrage of colours, smells and
unpredicatable and seemingly-ever-changing variables.
Great numbers of people know the dance, the dance of
socialization. It's as if they've heard the melody all of their
lives. I am left to ask why the music wouldn't play for me.
I am left to wonder at the awkwardness I experience, painful
awkwardness, whenever I have tried to dance. My dance was
to be in tune with theirs but when I stood up to join the
music died. The melody changed. The rules changed. Just me
missing the beat as always. Embarrassed, alone, frustrated,
humiliated and left to seek retreat.
Light illuminating the masses as I stand in the darkness
of overload. Calm comforting communication they seem to share.
They are enjoying each other. Why? How? What does that mean?
I am panicked at the thought. I am lost to the ebb and flow.
I pull away, always away. Darkness enshrines my efforts to
reach out. Ill-timed, awkward and not well-received. Why can't
the light of their shared song light up the darkness that I know
so well? I have a strong sense of knowing that I don't fit.
I have a strong sense of knowing that I don't belong. I know
that I am separate. Like shadows cast on the wall of a cave
to this void of everything I am a slave.
Wanting to know, sometimes, how they feel. Sitting in my
reality with all that I must conceal - watching them look
at me with amazement transmitting their anger and resentment
as if I am with-holding me from them on purpose to be a pain.
Do they run circles around me to lose me? Are they just being
them? I sit in the screaming-silence of my inner-world with
an eye on their bright noisy-quiet sunshine clouded by the
differences, differences that I'm told are mine.
What I experience hurts. What I experience is painted
as weird. What I experience is often ignored by others who
keep telling me that I am like them and that I just need
to try harder. They don't get it anymore than I get what
it is that they want me to share. I don't get that. I don't
get that. It matters not how smart I am for what it is that
I don't get does not live in my intellect. What I experience
is a lack of just that. They are like a dog and I am surely
like a cat and that is just that.
Next Article: Working To Come To Terms with Asperger's
as of December 24, 2001
