Who am I? What could I be? What do I want to be?

Just when I think I have a clearer picture of the person staring back at me in the mirror, circumstances have arisen that make me question if I am really 'there' yet.

Where exactly 'there' is I don't know. I don't even know if other people reach 'there' and at what age? Or are they less concerned if they are 'there' or not.

The 'there' of which I am rambling about is the understanding of self....

The problem as I see it...that if I don't reach this destination soon, I will forever be indecisive, forever unable to stick to my goals and opinions, because they are continuely fluid, so able to be moulded by anyone that may happen to pass my way, with a myriad of underlying motives unknown to me, and how can I know if they factor in what is best for my interests at all? Let's face it...we all are selfish individuals in some way or another, all have needs to be met.

Also another related line of thought.....how much am I able to change if I did want to?

Am I happy with my own package of strengths and weaknesses or have I just learnt to be somewhat comfortable with them since learning about all these neurological disorders.....I know I used to try a lot more to be like everyone else, and push past all difficulties in order to get out there and live. I wonder if I had of known as a child that my brain was wired differently and which meant that I would always find certain taks harder to achieve then the majority....would I have just not put myself through the struggle at all? And now....am I putting everything that is hard for me...and blaming it on just the way I am...in such a defiant way that if anyone dare suggest I try and change, accuse them of dissing my whole entire identity?

How much of my difficulties are actualy due to environmental factors of circumstances in my childhood, or my teen years riddled with abuse and traumatic experiences?

And how much can be attributed to my decline in central nervous system health since developing transverse myletis!?

Or what about the insult of years of a whole pharmacy load of drugs being pumped through my body as if I was a common lab rat. Or my own experiments in self-medicating?

So what is my potential? What can I over come with time, motivation and effort? And what do I need to just accept and expect others to accept as well?

And yes of course the final question is what do I want? If I am to put all this effort into changing...is the motivation coming from within? From what I want to become and be able to do? Or am I just trying to keep people happy at the cost of betrayal to my true self?

Thinking thinking thinking.....

I know one thing though....no way am I ever going to be able to stop analysing, picking apart every bit of imformation I come across with no process of prioritisation. I can somewhat hold back with force the consequences of having an over-active mind, but in someway or another this trait of mine is always going to find a way to overtake and embarrase me.

Have also been thinking about researching into thought processing speed...as tests show that this is one of my strengths...however what could this attribute contribute to my behaviour? Or maybe it is this factor combined with the executive functioning deficiets that may mean that ALthough I absorbe a lot from my environment, I have little ability at organising that information in order for it to be much use!? Does that make sence? Again I am only 'draft ranbling'....quite hard to express all the information and ideas that do come to my attention at once. Like trying to catch clouds....

ANd that is another thing that brings me down...that I am all too aware of. Knowing that I know a lot more then what I can express....it just comes out all jumbled and wrong. I then come across as a scatter brain.

Also with all this imformation streaming through my brain....how can I slow down and just talk about the mundane. Oh wonder what people would say if I just completely spoke out loud every word and descibed every image going on inside my head as they tryed to talk to me about some general topic. Hehe Wonder if in the future there would be some kind of device that would show your thoughts on a project screan above your head. I think others would go mental just at the sight of it!

Another random thought just before I go to bed.....be great if there was some kind of way in which I could turn on and off in a second my stim med brain and this me (more creative, impulsive, talkative)....adjust the ol' neurotransmiters to suit the situation....

Okay think that's enough for manic Monday....if read this far....hope I haven't scared you off. I am quite sane. Just letting my mind free to express....it gets constrained far too often these days.

'I'm still here'- Goo Goo dolls/Dr Who video clip

Recently I have come across a few songs with lyrics that seem to portray fairly accuratly thoughts/feelings/opinions that I have been unable to give words to myself. I rarely play songs that don't fit my situation at any given time either by their lyrics or the feel of the whole music in general, so if one was wanting to understand me, it would be of better use to go through my playlist for that day, rather then engage me in a conversation...you might as well tell a blind man to see!

I'm still here by the Goo Goo Dolls-

I am a question to the world
Not an answer to be heard
(I am one hard person to figure out, the harder you try to find answers, the more questions you will recieve!)
Or a moment
That's held in your arms (you may be 'holding on' to what I was in one particular moment, when that is not who I always am.)

And what do you think you'd ever say?
I won't listen anyway
You don't know me
And I'll never be what you want me to be
(No amount of persuasion is going to create a different person out of me. I am who I am, and the person I am can be very uncomfortable to others at times, but I can never really be who people want me to be, without sacrifising my whole being and feeling like I rather be dead.)

And what do you think you'd understand? (I often get annoyed with people who 'think' they understand all about me, better then myself, and then dictate these theories back to me as indisputable truth! When really it is just what they have learned from interactions with other women or their own experiences. They can not percieve that someone can follow along a different script!)
I'm a boy, no, I'm a man (okay obviously change to girl/woman....I often feel like I am just a child and emotion wise, I still can be, however I am a woman, and have all the expectations and responsibilities of one, which I have to remind myself (and other people) at times.
You can't take me
And throw me away (again you can't take away the part of me that makes me, me! You can't 'cure' me as you might as you would be 'throwing away' all that I am with it!

And how can you learn what's never shown? (In reference to having to learn intellectually all the social/emotional things that others just know intuitively?)
Yeah, you stand here on your own
They don't know me
Cause I'm not here

Chorus:
And I want a moment to be real
Wanna touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on and feel I belong (Oh how I have dreamt of what it would be like to have a brain wired differently, to experience life the way others do, so I can relate and feel like I belong!)
And how can the world want me to change?
They're the ones that stay the same (Yes I find that it is a different matter when I want others to change the way they communicate/behave to fit with me. I am expected to be the one to change (and not only that to want to change), to fit in with the majority. I am forever trying to analyse myself and to work on my own self-improvement, taking in everyone elses comments, I have always felt though like I was the only one concerned with making such improvements!?)
They don't know me
Cause I'm not here

And you see the things they never see
All you wanted I could be
Now you know me
And I'm not afraid (Having said all of the above, if someone was to come into my life who understood, accepted and loved me for who I was, I would be more willing to become a better person for them within my abilities to do so, knowing that I still would be loved if I could not obtain such a goal, I wouldn't live in fear of them rejecting me.

And I want to tell you who I am
Can you help me be a man? (I desperatly want to tell at least one person who I really am, for just one person to understand me, and who will help me 'grow up' without being critical.)
They can't break me
As long as I know who I am (As long as I have my identity intact, that I don't change into who they want me to be, and worse, starting to believe myself that is who I am, then I will be strong enough not to be 'broken' by them.)

Chorus

They can't tell me who to be
Cause I'm not what they see
Yeah, the world is still sleepin while I keep on dreaming for me
And their words are just whispers and lies thatI'll never believe

Chorus

I'm the one now
Cause I'm still here
I'm the one
Cause I'm still here
I'm still here
I'm still here
I'm still here

Okay. I think you get the idea of why I like this song so much.

You see, the way I see it is that I don't have a 'social self', a social identity that truely reflects who I am. Rather the person that you may converse with is simply a reflection of the people I have learnt to mimic, in order to be involved with other people at all! The only way I can think to describe this feeling of social interaction is 'abusive'. It is like others are taking away your identity, your right to 'be'. If I am around others too much I can forget who I really am, totaly feel 'out of my body' and wonder if I exist as an individual entity at all! I then can become reliant on others to tell me what to do, to make decisions for me, to tell me how to think and what my opinions should be. I can easily become controlled and am vunerable to abusive relationships because of this lack of identity. That is why I like my alone time. So I can have my own thoughts, my own feelings, uninterrupted by others around me.

an attempt at providing context.

I just thought I might explain a little bit about myself, so my view of life can be taken in context. I believe it is invaluable to look into the life of the person behind the creations, in order to truely understand the meaning that the creator intended. Without such insight there is always the danger of the work becoming infultrated with the percetions of so many others that even the composers themselves may have difficulty recognising the work as their original.

Even stating this belief of mine, might give evidence towards the fact that my mind is programed with a preference for the gestult. In deed I could give a lot of examples such as this throughout my life, even when it came to the way in which I learnt to read and speak. I am yet to fully understand this perceptual difference, and I find it quite interesting that it appears to actually go against the assumption that people on the autism spectrum fail to see the 'big picture' for their intense focus on detail. This is something that has interested me, however that is a topic for another day.

You also may have realised my difficulty in actualy giving a summary of life events, and getting to the point I actualy set out to share in the first place. One aspect of my difficulties is in the area of executive functioning, something of which is not as impaired in some people on the spectrum as others. It is also a major feature of adhd, and this is where the two disorders can appear similar. There has been debate over whether the impairments of executive functioning actualy differ between the disorders. Another topic I would like to go into further.

Anyway I was wanting to explain where my life is at in the present.

I am....

on the surface- *1

A 24 year old single mother of two girls. I try to do most of the 'mum' stuff as anyone else, even taking my daughter to 'mini musos' and preschool library days on occasions. I go to church on Sundays. I cook, and clean, I even go out for a coffee and chat with my mother at times. I catch up on people's lifes on facebook and I listen to music constantly on youtube.

All fairly typical, right?

dig deeper and you will find a much more complex being...

With a past containing every abuse imaginable, a strong, even overbearing at times, sence of social justice, a mind that is constantly analysing a trying to draw every meaning out of life. Someone who finds people absoltely fascinating yet overwhelmingly confusing. A nervous system that easily gets overloaded to the point of shutdown when taken over by too much input, sensory or emotional, and of which causes me to withdraw for days on end, yet still an over-riding motivation to keep on challenging myself with new persuits, that I may serve some purpose in my time on earth. My time alone is spent in research of what ever has gained my attention the the time....psychology, neuroscience, poetry, nature, genealogy! And to wind down I may watch a Doctor Who episode, or sometimes even just a scene over and over again, the predicatability as comforting to the sences as the motion of my body gently rocking back and forth.

* 1 To give you an idea of how my mind gets sidetracked with associations, when I added this, I immediedtly thought of when I studied geology at school, then went off to read up on rock formations and how they are formed....all those diagrams are so fascinating to me! Then an hour goes by....

Let's finally start this!

I have decided that the best way to put my thoughts and experiences out there is to just post tidbits of information as they come to me, without having to worry about editing and making it into a work of art!

One aspect that I struggle with when it comes to actually presenting my work is perfectionism. When I write a piece, whether it is an essay, a journal entry, or prose, I often agonise over the words, turning them over and over in my mind. Changing words over and over so as when I read over them, the sound is exactly right. I need them to be able to convey my intentions perfectly. Unfortunately language often fails in the task of expressing my thoughts, and this frustration I just simply have to live with!

Today I have been struggling with emotional overload. A new person has come into my life and this for me takes a lot to be able to adjust to such an intrusion. This may sound harsh to some, but it simply how life is for me. Issues such as this, that of which I have no control over, but I know hurts and confuses the people around me, causes me added distress because I would rather people were not hurt over my actions. I care about people a lot, however it does not always come across this way. I have been called selfish and uncaring, which I know to be untrue and yet at times I have taken on these labels as an explanation I have not always been able to give!

I have learnt to cope with my emotions in ways that are more constructive. I believe this is a very important thing to teach young people on the Spectrum. It is of no use to tell a person not to be stressed, frustrated or angry. Even God got angry! But what is important is what is done with the emotion.

And here are a few examples of what was generated from my emotions today-

hide me from the sun, it is too cruel, too revealing,
fall leaves fall, surround me in my hiding,
quiet the birds, their chirping increasing,
leading one to find my place of restitute from seething.

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do not disturb my restoration,
lest you perturb my concentration,
and longer must I be in hiding,
to heal the wounds of your misguiding

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these words of mine don't always flow,
so swiftly as of now,
this muse of mine is somewhat fugacious,
fickle minded and tenacious,
for one to hold her, she won't allow.

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At times like this of intense emotion,
this, the only language I can lend
words out of rhyme, rhythm or motion,
are all too harsh to comprehend!

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I could not look after my daughter properly today, because I NEEDED to write. My mother had to take her for awhile so I could do this. If the people around me allow me to do this when I need to, then I am able to function again in a much shorter time then if I had of been forced to just carry on.