Through the Rain

Blogging   I found one of my passions, and I’ve been putting it off the last week or so, partially because I’ve been feeling bad about myself, partially because I’ve been afraid I had nothing to contribute and that I would fail. Writing, and blogging specifically has become a passion of mine. It is my outlet through which I reflect on myself and into the world key questions (I hope) that get people thinking. I know I’ve thought a lot about the questions I’ve posed recently. I was afraid that without a specific topic in mind at the start of each post, that I would turn into a puddle of goo. “Obligations” was one of my favorites though, because it offered insight into my passions without me having to do a deep dive into my psyche, a thirty minute mindfulness meditation, or being yelled at by anyone for being selfish and wondering if I truly am selfish being stuck in the inner thoughts of my life. Another form of writing I have “taken up” seriously in the last few weeks and mont...

The Walls We Build   Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? I’ve gone back and forth on my answer to this question. The romantic in me says of course loving is worth it! But then the hurt part of me says that no, it’s not worth it to be hurt like this when they leave or by death. I’ve been thinking a lot about the different friendships and types of relationships I’ve had over the course of my life and how being gay and being autistic and especially how being diagnosed autistic has affected all of them. Being diagnosed was like a light switch went off, and not always in the best of ways. Some people have described it as a complete change in me. Most people I know now I didn’t know then and most people I knew then I don’t talk to now. Few understand. Heck, I don’t even understand. It seems easier to get to know someone these days than to talk to someone I knew pre-diagnosis. It’s like the walls I kept building higher and higher around my fake perso...

Autism in My Own Words Part 2   I can’t believe it’s been exactly three months since Part 1, and I had absolutely no idea when I was going to do this the time frame. I looked up to see what I had written to remember, and it said June 3. That’s three months, right? I talked about how exhausting a half-hour conversation was and to mask for that long, even though I wasn’t trying to mask in front of my friend but “in public.” I talked about how each individual THING was broken down into step-by-step instruction manuals, and that there weren’t really muscle memories for some autistic people. Parties were overstimulating because I was trying to filter out one sound in a sea of sounds of the same volume and no, my brain couldn’t filter out the background noises. Today’s life looks much, much different. I’m part of several online Facebook groups, one community that has some of my favorite people in it, and have accidentally found a few people where I live who are autistic, just by be...

Why Can’t We Be Friends   I spent so much time trying to be friends with people that for the first time last night, I called myself an extrovert, and it seemed true in the moment. I want to connect with people, yes on a deeper level, but also on a positive note, whether that be a smile and a good morning or whatever. I may not be the life of the party, but my facial expressions always seemed to make me one of the most dramatic when I had something to say. What I wanted to say was this morning I happened to stop chasing friendship, and it found me. I started a few conversations with guys from the men’s chat from the NeuroSpicy Community group last night, and one lives in Australia, so of course the conversation ran a little later because he’s 14 hours ahead of me. 9pm my time was 11am the next morning for him. Then the next morning for me was the evening for him. We talked about autism and how it affects our health. He has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and a lot of our symptoms ov...

Rewriting the Story   I’ve started making a couple new friendships, and with these friendships I’ve started something new. With the first friendship, instead of deep-diving into my story of pain and suffering and suddenly becoming “that guy,” I let him talk. Two hours of him talking about whatever he wanted to talk about. No, it wasn’t a monologue; it was a conversation infodump with him at the helm, and I was so glad to listen to his passion about work and his family and comics and books! Those two hours flew by! For once, I got out of my head and into someone else’s. I got out of “feelings” and into something new… excitement! The second one happened recently. I know I need work with boundaries, and this was a fellow who knew he was on the spectrum also, so I felt comfortable shooting straight with him: these are the boundaries. We aren’t going to make it about pain and suffering. It’s not going to be about tragedy. We are going to keep it lighthearted! You cool with that? I...

Proud of Myself Again   I’m super nervous and fidgety, yet I don’t know what to do and run out of energy and get overstimulated often, so I will do what I do best besides eat (since I fail at sleeping now). I will write. I don’t know what I’m going to write about. I was going to go ahead about my love of writing, but that seems so trivial. How does one put into words the overflowing of cursive on a page when a story comes to life and a “two-page assignment” turns into a ten-page story about Thanksgiving, or a haiku turns into a twelve-verse haiku about Jesus healing the sick in a nursing home? I used to love a challenge. I challenged myself all the time. I want to cry thinking about how passionately motivated I was, because all I can think about is all the extra work that took and for what? Was it really for myself? I think part of it was. I was proud of myself. When did others being proud of me become so stupidly important? I want to be proud of myself again. I want to be ...

Campy Comic Books   I was trying to think of a “cool name” to call this post, and I had to laugh when I stumbled across this pun. I was reminded today of my love of comic books. In finding my identity, it’s been suggested that I go back to my past, before I started mixing who I was with who I was supposed to be, and remember what made me happy. X-Men always drew my attention, and Storm was always my favorite of the characters. I don’t know what it was about her, whether it was the way her cape connected at her wrists, that she controlled the weather, that she knew from an early age what her power was and was revered/respected, or that she could give two craps what other people thought of her powers because she knew she was a freaking awesome beast with absolute control. Or that her eyes just turned white and you knew “ooooooooh, no! Something baaaaaad’s about to happen!” But that has nothing to do with camp. Who I’m talking about was one of my all-time heroes: PowerMark! You ...