Archive for Marriage

Why I Can’t Do What I Used to Do

June 29, 2009 Rachel Aging, Anxiety, Diagnosis, Marriage, Spectrum Pride

This morning, I ran across another amazing piece by the brilliant Amanda Baggs called Help! I Seem to be Getting More Autistic! It’s a long, informative piece about all the possible reasons that we can lose abilities as we get older. The section called Burnout especially spoke to me, setting off a cascade of feelings and associations that helped me understand why I can’t do many of the tasks and activities I once did.

Amanda explains that burnout begins because we are working at a level of energy that non-autistic people would use only in emergencies:

“Most people have a level to which they are capable of functioning without burnout, a level to which they are capable of functioning for emergency purposes only, and a level to which they simply cannot function. In autistic people in current societies, that first level is much narrower. Simply functioning at a minimally acceptable level to non-autistic people or for survival, can push us into the zone that in a non-autistic person would be reserved for emergencies. Prolonged functioning in emergency mode can result in loss of skills and burnout.”

Until my diagnosis, I’d been functioning at emergency level for 50 years. Amazing, isn’t it? I should get a plaque, or a trophy, or maybe even a write-up in the local paper. Can you see the headline?

LOCAL AUTISTIC WOMAN BURNS OUT AFTER 50 YEARS OF EMERGENCY FUNCTIONING
“So THAT’s why she’s so quiet,” says neighbor

In the article, I would explain why my short trip to the hardware store this afternoon was followed by several hours alone in my loft, writing my little heart out. After all, if you had to walk five entire minutes to the hardware store, buy four sponges, a spray bottle, super glue, and some scotch tape, and then walk five more minutes back, you’d be exhausted, too. If you were me. Or anyone else who has tried to be “normal” for as long as I have.

But back to Amanda’s piece. In the same section, she sums up, well, pretty much my whole life to this point:

“The danger here may be obvious: It may be the people most capable of passing for normal, the most obvious “success stories” in the eyes of non-autistic people (some of whom became so adept at passing that they were never considered autistic in the first place), who are the most likely to burn out the hardest and suddenly need to either act in very conspicuously autistic ways or die.”

Given all the plates I’ve kept spinning in my lifelong quest to be neuro-typical, having a simple choice between 1) being conspicuously autistic or 2) dying—well, it’s one hell of a relief, let me tell you. I’ll take the conspicuously autistic woman behind door number 1, please. Why has no one told me about her before? She’s quite wonderful!

The problem, of course, is how do you get support services when you’ve made a seemingly phenomenal success of life? Amanda writes:

“Sometimes this kind of burnout is what leads adults to seek diagnosis and services. Unfortunately, many service systems that would otherwise support people in their own homes, cater only to people who were diagnosed in childhood, and will look at someone with a very good neurotypical-looking track record of jobs, marriages, and children with suspicion. They need to be made more aware of this possibility, because there’s a high chance that an adult in this situation could end up jobless, homeless, institutionalized, misdiagnosed, given inappropriate medical treatment, or dead.”

This problem is why I have decided not to apply for disability. I don’t think that anyone at the Social Security office could begin to understand what a difficult time I’ve having. I can’t blame them, because I’m just beginning to understand what a difficult time I’m having. Fortunately, I have Bob and his family to help me, so I don’t have my back up against the same financial wall that so many others do.

After I read through Amanda’s piece, I went downstairs to the kitchen, and I told my husband that I feel even more adamant about getting people to help with basic tasks. We’ve hired a housecleaner who is starting this Friday (yay!), but we need to continue reconfiguring our lives to deal with the reality that 1) I’m autistic and 2) he will be able to do less for me, not more, as he gets older.

From the time I was first diagnosed, my husband has used a great image to describe what has happened to my life. He said that I’m like the Road Runner in the old cartoon. The Road Runner would run right off a cliff and be perfectly fine—until he looked down. Then, he’d crash. Every time I say to Bob, “What has happened to my life? Why was I able to do so much more before?” he gives me the same answer: “You looked down.”

I looked down and saw that I’d been running off a cliff for some time. I just didn’t know it. By trying to take care of everything myself and not asking for any help, I was working way past my capacity. When I got my diagnosis, it was like finding myself in mid-air. I had to face the inescapable reality that gravity was going to win.

As Bob and I talked about the image of falling, I suddenly understood the source of my worst nightmares. Since childhood, I have had two related, recurring dreams.

In one version, I am on the ground watching a plane or a bus or a car, with people in it, zigzagging across the sky. The vehicle is out of control, and I know it’s going to crash, with all those people in it. I am terrified for the people who are going to die, and as the vehicle starts plunging to earth, I know that if I don’t wake up, I will also die. I am always able to wake up just before the vehicle hits the ground.

In the other (and even more terrifying) version, I have climbed to the top of a very high place using several ladders or flights of stairs. The problem is that the ladders or the stairs are on the outside of the structure, and I suddenly realize, to my unspeakable horror, that I cannot get down. Going back down the ladders or the stairs is out of the question. I am very high up, the stairs or the ladders are nearly perpendicular to the ground, and the sight of the earth below is dizzying. I know that if I try to get back down, I will fall and die. There is no way to get down gracefully. I stand there wondering how I could possibly have climbed all the way up without realizing that I wouldn’t be able to get back down. And then, I’m so scared that I wake myself up.

Both kinds of dreams are about an autistic person trying desperately to be a super-competent neuro-typical person. All my life, I had climbed the ladder of success, and I’d spent my life convincing people that I had it all together. And all that time, behind the scenes, I was terrified. In fact, I can barely remember a moment of my earlier life in which I wasn’t anxious or afraid about something. Now I know why. 

I was always afraid of falling off the ladder of success. I was always afraid of a “fall from grace.” I was always afraid that someday, I wouldn’t be able to “do it all” anymore. I was afraid that someday, I’d have to be who I really am.

That’s a fall from grace? What a laugh! Everyone should be so lucky. It’s been more like a fall into grace. Here I’ve fallen from this high ladder I climbed, and look where I’ve landed: I have a husband who loves me as I am, a kid who loves me as I am, friends who love me as I am, an online community that gives me a phenomenal amount of support and understanding, and a local community in which I feel safe coming out as an autistic person. So what’s not to like?

Sometimes, I wonder: If there had been an Asperger’s diagnosis when I was younger, would I rather have been diagnosed at 5, or 12, or 18 years of age than at 50? After all, I would have had many more supports and a much more realistic view of myself. But each time I ask the question, the answer is no. If I’d been diagnosed earlier, I wouldn’t be where I am right now. I can’t regret the past, because it’s brought all the people I love into my life.

Tomorrow, my husband is going with me to the thrift store. We’re going to walk around, watch how I’m feeling, and consider how I might make a place for myself there. When I told my husband that I was going to the shop tomorrow, just to get a feel for the place again, I didn’t even have to ask him to come with me. He just knew I needed him to be there.

While my life has not been the easiest life, it hasn’t been the hardest, either. In fact, it’s become a very interesting adventure. I hope it continues so.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

12 comments

When Will I Ever Learn?

June 18, 2009 Rachel Communication, Marriage, Social Gatherings

Last night, I did something that I should have known wouldn’t work. But because I’m still winding down from trying to impersonate an NT, I did it anyway. And today, I’m a bit of a wreck.

Do you want to know what I did? It will knock your socks off. Really. You’d better be sitting down for this one. I’m serious. If you fall over and bump your head on the floor, it’s not my problem.

Here’s what I did: I went out for dinner with my husband, my daughter, and one of her best friends.

That’s all. Really. There’s no more to it. The part of my brain that still thinks I’m neuro-typical says, “That’s all? That’s a mistake? What the hell is your problem?”

Fortunately, a great deal more of my brain understands that I’m autistic. Those parts of my brain are all acting in unison, saying, “Try and explain to the nice people who read your blog why going out for dinner with three other people was a serious lapse in judgment.” So I will.

Here’s how it went: I spent the day gardening yesterday, and I felt great. About 5:00 pm or so, my husband said, “Do you want to take the kids down the street and get some Thai food?”

I simultaneously thought, “No!” and “Yeah, that’d be great!” The reason it felt so great is that we all love Thai food, the restaurant is a short walk from our house, the people who run it are incredibly friendly, and the last time we went, they made special provisions for my inability to deal with lots of noise.

The last time, it was just Bob and me, and the place was very crowded. There were several small, adorable children, making several loud, repetitive, adorable, childlike noises, and after sitting at the table for a minute or so, I realized that I’d never make it through dinner in one piece. There is a quieter part of the restaurant, and Bob asked whether we might sit there. The response was that they don’t usually open up that space for dinner, but they understood that I couldn’t enjoy my meal otherwise, and they were gracious enough to seat us well away from the noise. We ended up having a very good time there, and we thanked them profusely for being flexible.

Yesterday, this lovely experience was in my mind when I said, “Yeah, that’d be great!” I figured that if things were noisy, we could just sit in a quieter part of the restaurant. I forgot about the part where sitting and talking with more than one person at a time is impossibly difficult.

Sitting with Bob is simple. It’s very little work. Sitting with Bob and Ashlynne is a bit harder, but because I know them well, and they respond to my need to slow a conversation down, it’s quite doable. Sitting with Bob and Ashlynne and her friend (who is a regular and welcome visitor to our house) is exponentially harder. And did I mention that Ashlynne and her friend are teenagers, and that like many neuro-typical teenagers, they talk very, very fast? Consider it mentioned.

So there we were, sitting at the table, and very quickly, I began to feel like the boring autistic person in the group. Everyone else was bright and chipper, and I was feeling like a dud because I couldn’t keep up. At that moment, it did cross my mind to leave, but that’s when the habit of pretending to be neuro-typical kicked in. And such a bad habit it is, too.

So, I stayed for the entire dinner. I tried to keep up. I asked questions. I made jokes. I responded to the things that other people said. And I tried very hard to mask the fact that I was getting disoriented and exhausted. Of course, I was keenly aware of what a strain it was. I was conscious that I was dissembling, and that my face was not reflecting the enervating effect of every word that was coming out of my mouth. The whole experience was very familiar, especially the part when the migraine started coming on. Somehow, the familiarity of the strain I was under made it that much harder to detach from the situation and get out of there.

And I really wanted to be there. I enjoy Ashlynne and her friend, and it was fun to watch them have a good time together. And yeah, okay, I didn’t leave because, goddammit, why should I? Why should I have to leave when everyone else is having so much fun?

When the girls finished their meals, they decided to go, so Bob and I got to sit alone for a little while. By that point, I was pretty much down for the count. As we were walking home, I told Bob that the whole thing was very, very hard for me, and that I probably shouldn’t try it again. It was difficult for me to translate the experience for him, so I finally said, “Suppose you had to get some cans down from a very high shelf, and that the best you could do for an entire hour was to jump, and never quiet make it, over and over and over, except that every now and then, you actually touch one of the cans, which makes you want to jump and try it again. That’s how it feels.”

He nearly shivered at the thought, and we talked a bit about the difficulties of autistic-to-neuro-typical translation. When we got home, I realized that it would really help me to show him Amanda Baggs’ In My Language video and look at her blog with him. And it did help. I wanted him to have more of a sense of the dissonance between how a person seems on the outside and what’s really going on inside. He was very taken with everything I showed him. He’s always been supportive, but her blog helped him understand more about how I work and how I feel.

So that was a very good outcome of the whole disaster.

Today, however, I’m paying for it. My bladder hurts. My neck aches. And despite having slept in for half the morning, I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. Fortunately, I can still write. Later on, I’ll get under my weighted blankets and rest.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

13 comments

Words, Truth, and Literal Thinking

June 9, 2009 Rachel Communication, Literal Thinking, Marriage, Perseveration

I’ve never really considered myself a literal thinker. Most Aspies seem to have many childhood memories of taking idioms and metaphors literally. I have just one or two, and I usually have trouble bringing them to mind. I’ve often wondered why I don’t have lots of childhood stories about literal thinking. It bothers me, because I want to sit by the campfire and make all the other Aspies laugh, too.

In the last couple of days, though, it’s occurred to me that I have a major piece of literal thinking that derails me time and time again: I take people at their word. Or, to put it another way: When people say things, the picture that their words paint seems so real to me that the image takes on a reality of its own, even when I know that the words aren’t true. And worse than that, I believe that other people will be taken in by these words. That’s when I start to worry, big time.

Part of the problem is that I don’t really understand deception. I don’t understand why people would say things that are patently false. I can come up with all kinds of reasons for this phenomenon, from self-deception to outright cruelty, but viscerally, I feel a deep loyalty to words and what they represent. Just as I would never use a saw to cut an apple, I’d never use a word to signify something that I know isn’t true. I can’t fathom why other people don’t see it that way.

But what really gives words their power over me is that I see them spelled out in my mind when people speak. When someone tells me his or her name, for instance, I see the name spelled out in my head. Multiply this example a few million times, and you’ll get a good picture of how my mind sees information on a daily basis. It’s as though the words themselves, because they are so vivid in my mind, have actual, living substance, rather than being inert, disposable objects.

This way of seeing trips me up in a couple of ways. For one thing, it can make me very inflexible. For example, when my husband says that he is going to be home at 8 pm, I see the words so clearly in my mind that it’s as though what they signify has already happened.

Time and again, my husband and I have knocked heads over this issue. He’ll tell me that he’s going to put Plan 1.0 into action, and I’ll get ready for Plan 1.0. Then, Plan 1.0 changes to Plan 1.1, or Plan 1.13, or Plan 1.13A or, for reasons I can’t even begin to imagine, Plan 5.0. I mean, how can you go from Plan 1.13A to Plan 5.0 without going through Plans 2 through 4 first?

If there is an external, objective, unchangeable reason for the plan to be modified, I can adjust—not always gracefully, but I can get there within a reasonable amount of time. After all, it’s not my husband’s fault if there’s a backup on the highway or the store doesn’t carry my daughter’s favorite brand of cereal.

But if the plan changes just because people decide that they’d rather do Plan 1.13 than Plan 1.0, I’m lost. Utterly lost. Ultimately, I throw my hands up in resignation at the desecration of all that is high and holy, wander in a wilderness bereft of logic, and send the following unanswerable question into the void:

Do WORDS have ANY meaning AT ALL anymore?

I have spoken that question so many times in my life, I can’t keep count.

Now, if inflexibility were the only problem that results from the vividness of the words in my head, I wouldn’t mind. But there is a much worse problem. When someone says something that I know isn’t true, I get so confused that I start to panic. I can adduce all kinds of reasons why a person would lie, but the cognitive dissonance causes me so much physical, mental, and emotional pain that my current context fades out, and a brave new world comes into being, hewn from the stone containing the lies, as though the previous context had never existed.

And if this entire new reality hinges on someone saying something untrue about me, dear G-d in heaven, I’ve got to clear my schedule so that I can perseverate on it for several days and drive my husband nuts with the catastrophe going on in my head:

WHAT? Oh no! How can anyone SAY that about me? It’s not fair! It’s so untrue. And here are all the REASONS it’s untrue. [Insert numerous reasons here, repeat them, increase volume with each repetition.] And oh, yeah, I just thought of another reason. [Add new reason, repeat entire sequence, increase volume with each repetition.]

This is bullshit. How can anyone say SAY such things?

Oh. My. G-d. Maybe they’re right. Maybe everything they’re saying is true. Maybe the sky really is red at noon and we all walk on our hands to the store on Tuesday. I mean, if it wasn’t true, why would they say it?

And maybe it really is all my fault. Maybe the sky was blue and we all walked upright until I came along and fucked it all up.

No, no, no. It’s not my fault. I know that. I know it, I know it, I know it. [Insert numerous reasons here, repeat them, increase volume with each repetition.] And oh, yeah, here are twelve more reasons.  [Add twelve more reasons here, repeat entire sequence, increase volume with each repetition.]

But no one else knows it’s not my fault. Oh, crap. Everyone’s going to believe that I turned the fucking sky red. My life is toast.

It goes on like this until I get a migraine. Then, somehow, if the Sumatriptan kicks in fast enough, the hard drive with all this crap on it melts like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz—except that the flying monkeys scoop up some of the best bits and bytes and scatter them hither and yon into my poor, tired brain. After all, the witch must be avenged. 

At that point, I figure, I’d better keep busy and have some ice cream. So what if dairy isn’t good for me? Holy shit, the world is ending, and it’s all my fault. Give me my chocolate.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

21 comments

Giving Autism an Equal Place at the Table

June 4, 2009 Rachel Communication, Marriage, Spectrum Pride

My husband and I had a great conversation yesterday about how to integrate autism into our lives.

The conversation began as a way of strategizing how I can best handle my husband’s absence when he travels. As we discussed the issue, a light went on, and I realized something very important: I still see my husband’s neuro-typical way of dealing with the world as “normal.” And for years, I’ve tried to emulate him. 

And why not? After all, what’s not to like? He’s very diplomatic. He’s very sociable and enjoys talking with people, as long as there is some actual content to the discussion. He has a very serene way about him, even though on the inside, he doesn’t always feel that way. He’s loving, he’s flexible in his thinking, and he knows how to walk away from a situation without telling everyone how wrong they are.

And me? Diplomacy? Oh, goodness. To give you an example of my diplomatic skills: One day, as we were standing on our porch, we saw one of our new neighbors go the wrong way on our one-way street. I immediately assumed that she’d done it on purpose. Bob thought that because she’s new, she’d probably forgotten about how the traffic flows. Anyway, I freaked out about it, because all I could think of was my daughter driving home and finding my neighbor’s truck coming at her. Once an image comes into my mind, it’s very difficult to forget.

So, I asked my husband if he’d speak with our neighbor about it. He said he would, but because he hadn’t met her yet, he wanted to introduce himself, have a friendly conversation, and then remind her about which way the traffic goes. So, each day, I’d say, “Did you talk to her yet?” And he’d say, “Well, she hasn’t been at home when I’m at home, but I’m looking for the opportunity.”

After a few days of this routine, I started to get really impatient and said, “Why don’t you just go down the street and tell her not to drive the wrong way?” 

He laughed and said, “Look, I have my own way of doing things. I’m not going to do it your way: Hi, I’m Rachel. F**k you.”

I laughed, because I know what he means. I don’t generally say the F-word to people, but I know that I come across as though I do. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand how that can be. I’m just a little intense, you know? I don’t do the social dance that comes before the content. I just start with the content, keep going with the content, and finish with the content. People seem to take it personally. Who knows why?

For years, I’ve been trying to figure out how to do these sort of things differently. I’ve been trying to emulate my husband in all kinds of situations. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve tried to emulate every friend, every partner, and every colleague I’ve ever had. The other person is substantial and inherently worthy, and my job is to get into sync with all that substance and inherent worthiness.

Not surprisingly, it leaves me feeling like a second-class citizen.

So, as we were talking yesterday, I realized that I don’t have to emulate anyone. My autistic perspective is just as valid as any other. My autistic way of going about my daily life is just as worthy as any other. My autism has to have a full and equal place at the table, every day. I cannot shove it into a corner. Why? Because it’s a pervasive condition. It’s already in every corner.

So here’s how bringing autism into the center of our lives helped us deal with the issue of my husband’s travels: Every couple of weeks, my husband goes down to New York for a few days to see his dad. He generally leaves on the same day that my daughter goes to her father’s house. It’s a very big, difficult adjustment for me to be here without them, but I slip into my Aspie hyper-focus at some point and dwell there in solitude. Then, after a couple of days, my husband comes home, and I feel like I’m just supposed to drop everything I’m doing, ask him about his trip, and somehow enter the land of “normal” again.

And, the truth is, I want to be flexible and drop everything. But my brain doesn’t work that way. If he gets home and I’m working on a project, I can’t just drop it. Clearly, I can put something down and keep my hands from moving, but in my brain, I’m still working on the project, and it hurts to be in two places at the same time.

It’s been difficult for my husband to leave me at home when he goes to New York. He feels very torn. I totally support him going to see his dad, and he knows it, but he also knows how difficult it is for me to adjust to his absence. And I feel torn as well.

I finally realized that the way to free both of us from this conundrum was to let him know that the only thing that’s more difficult than adjusting to his absence is having to do a quick turn and re-adjust to his presence.

So, I told him that when he comes home, it’s important that he realize that I’m on my own schedule and in my own rhythm. It will take me a while to finish whatever I’m doing. It’s really important for both of us to remember that our brains work very differently, and that I take a long time to do transitions.

The fact is that I’m very happy when my husband comes home. His presence is so comforting and so reassuring. But I still need to wind down from Aspie solitude into our Aspie-NT relationship. Once I wind down, I can go downstairs, and we can be together, each of us in our own experience.

Now, that’s something to look forward to.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

7 comments

Letting Go and Starting Over

June 1, 2009 Rachel Autism-Literate Therapists, Eye Contact, Marriage, Meltdowns, Occupational Therapy, Parenting, Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), Sensory Processing Issues, Sleep, Spectrum Pride, Volunteer Work

Last night, I reached a milestone in my life. And today, I am so relieved. Tired, but unbelievably relieved.

The backstory: We’re having a new ceiling put into our living room because the old plaster was flaking off. The process entails moving everything out of the living room into the dining room so that the contractors can work. The whole job will probably take another three days. So everything is piled up in the dining room, and I have to walk through the mess if I want to use the bedroom, the kitchen, or the bathroom. Did I mention that I hate clutter?

Yesterday, the contractors were supposed to be here at 9 am. I had planned to do some writing in my loft in the morning, while they were here, and then hang out in the rest of the house after they’d left. It’s always difficult for me to have people in the house, especially ones making lots of noise, so I figured I’d burrow into my loft for a few hours, and by the time I came out, they’d be gone.

Nice plan, huh? Unfortunately, the guys didn’t get here until 11 am or so. Isn’t it fun when people are late and blow your plans right out the window? I got very agitated. I could feel my nervous system panicking. They had good reasons for being late, but I felt like my day was getting totally disrupted. 

In addition to getting here late, the guys were here a lot longer than I’d thought they’d be, and the whole thing became very overwhelming and disorienting. There is only so long that I can hide upstairs before I need to go to the kitchen and get something to eat. And, of course, the irony of the whole situation is that the guys doing the work are wonderful people—friendly, conscientious, and good at what they do. In other words, they’re the kind of people that anyone without a jangly nervous system would love to have around.

But I’ve got a very jangly nervous system, and by the evening, it felt like my day had been turned upside down and shaken a few times. Needless to say, I started to get upset. The disorder in the dining room was driving me nuts. My nervous system was so keyed up that I was shaking. I was feeling angry, and I said so, but the anger very quickly turned to tears. My meltdowns seem to follow this pattern these days. I go through the anger part really quickly and then go straight for the sadness.

I felt really exhausted, but it wasn’t just because of the work on the house. What happened yesterday was just the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. What I’m really exhausted by is all the energy I’ve expended since forever in my ongoing quest to become neuro-typical. Now that I’ve realized that I don’t have to pretend anymore, everything I do out in the world feels impossible. Working at the store feels exhausting, because every single time I have a conversation with anyone, I have the following script running in my head:

“Okay, smile……Make eye contact. No! Not that much……Pause. Say something helpful, but don’t jump in too fast……Wait……Wait……Now! Say something clever……Very good……People laughed……Now, make more eye contact……Okay, the conversation is winding down……Okay……Oh, shit, how do I exit gracefully from this interaction? I have no idea……Help……Okay, okay, I’ll just use my strong voice and act confident……There……I’m walking away now……G-d, I feel like such an idiot….”

For some strange reason, running this script just isn’t fun for me anymore.

My husband and I talked for a long time last night, and he helped me to see that almost all of the commitments I’ve made in the outside world are optional. I don’t have to do them. I made most of these commitments when I was still thinking that I just had to work really hard at the store, or on my OT work, or whatever, and things would get better. Even though I knew that I couldn’t change my neurology, even though I had accepted that I wouldn’t make friends at the store, even though I knew that the OT work might not have any effect at all, I still went into everything with the old idea of progress. It’s hard to shake. In large part, it consists of trying to be the NT that I think the world expects me to be. I know I’ll never get there, but over the course of my life, I’ve tried getting as close to it as inhumanly possible.

At some point in the past six months, it did dawn on me that I might not be the quite the actor I thought I was. But this realization didn’t stop me from trying. I still catch myself working on my big, ongoing, lifetime challenge to see how close I can get to “normal.” I used to wonder whether I’d actually fooled anybody, but you know what? I don’t care anymore. The only way for things to get better is for me to start untangling my true Aspie self from all my ridiculous mega-efforts to be someone I’m not. 

I’ve had an NT impersonator job all my life, and it’s time for me to retire. Fifty years is enough. It really is. I don’t need a pension, and I’m not going on the public dole. I’ve got all kinds of great things I love doing, and the old job is getting in the way.

So, although I love my OT, driving an hour to see her is really out of the question. I’m so exhausted by the intensity of all the sights, sounds, movement, and emotional energy out there in the world that I need to pull back in a major way and have some respect for myself. And I don’t want to work at the store again until I find some way to be there without constantly running my script. Having come to these realizations, I emailed my OT and the people in charge at the store. My OT wrote me back a really lovely, supportive email. I’m pretty sure I’ll get a similar response from the people at work. After all, I have taken care to surround myself with very nice people.

Meanwhile, here I am, living in this strange transitional state of knowing that the old ways won’t work, and wondering what the new ways will look like. I hate transitions, but there you are. I don’t know what the future has in store, but I do know that my marriage, my mothering abilities, and my capacity to be a friend all depend upon being in some kind of harmonious relationship with who I really am.

I’m only beginning to understand how different I am from most people. I’m only beginning to understand that most people do not experience the world with anything remotely approaching the intensity that I do. And I have to respect that. I have to respect the fact that just going outside and seeing all the green leaves on the trees can be a beautiful and overwhelming experience. It’s overwhelming because it’s so damned beautiful.

Perhaps I need to experience the world in small portions. Something like that.

It  feels so good to start over—to get up in the morning and tune into my hyper-aware, hyper-sensitive Aspie nervous system and see what we can do together. Last night, I didn’t sleep well, and when I have things to do in the outside world, I always feel very anxious trying to do them without enough sleep. But this morning, I realized that I didn’t have to go out there. I could be tired, and it would be all right.

The one outside commitment I’m keeping is to my new therapist. First things first. I want to work on accepting who I am, and she seems quite willing to help me. So that’s where I’ll begin. Again.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

13 comments

Aspie Women: Saving Our Own Lives

May 13, 2009 Rachel Marriage, Women and AS

I just saw a comment today from Saja, a new poster on this blog, and it was so moving to me that I want to write some words in response. In the Every Aspie is a Working Aspie thread, she writes about finding herself at a fork in the road:

“I am at an impasse, at 42, in which I can either decide to drop ‘passing’ in a big way, or die-–literally. I cannot continue to live the rest of my life the way I’ve lived it up to this point, rewarding as that has been. I did what I most craved as an awkward little girl: I learned how to fit in with the rest of the world. I’m socially adept. But the cost; oh, the cost. There’s nothing left over for the real me, the inner me. And that *has* to change, to save my life. Literally.”

At 42, I felt as she does. I had gotten what I had always wanted. I had learned to fit in, to succeed, to become a competent, self-supporting, professional woman. But inside, my light was dying out. I’ve heard it said that Aspie women can seem very competent on the outside, while inside, they are dying. That was me.

For a long time, I’ve been wanting to write about what saved me. Every woman’s story of coming back from the brink is different. Here is mine:

Nearly nine years ago, when I was 42, I met Bob, who is now my husband. He was the spiritual leader at a synagogue that I had decided to try because someone told me it was friendly to kids. At the time, I was married, as was Bob. My husband was healthy and well, but Bob’s wife was dying. When he and I met, she had just decided to stop going out into the world, so I never got to meet her in person. Bob and I became friends, and he invited me to help lead services at the synagogue.

That’s the story from the outside. But something happened to me when I met Bob that completely changed me. I felt a love for him that I had never felt before for anyone. I kept trying to put it in some familiar little box and keep it sealed up, but it never worked. It was very powerful. All I knew was that it didn’t originate in me. I want to say that it came from G-d, but that’s not quite right. It didn’t come from G-d. It was like being in G-d, in the midst of a love that embraces everything and everyone.

I’m not sure what I believe about G-d, even now. I’m not sure that I have belief. All I have is an experience that I refer to as G-d. I’m not sure that there are any words that can describe it, though. All I know is that it wasn’t “falling in love” in the usual sense. That would have been easier.

I don’t know how I managed to hold it together that first year that we knew each other. I didn’t know what was happening to me or where it was leading. It was easier while Bob’s wife was still alive, because the boundaries were very clear. She passed away within the year, and then I nearly fell apart. I thought I was crazy. What I knew for certain was that my marriage was done. It hadn’t failed. It was just done. We’d gone as far as we could go, and there just wasn’t anymore left.

It was very sad and very wrenching to watch everything come tumbling down. The synagogue community was not exactly thrilled about the new me, and when Bob and I finally decided to be together, we couldn’t be there anymore. But in the midst of all the wreckage of what had been, my inner light began to shine. It became brighter and stronger. I don’t know what would have happened to me if it had died out altogether. I’m not sure I would have survived it.

Bob and I have now been married for almost 6 1/2 years. He always tells me that I saved his life. He says that he can’t imagine what might have become of him if I hadn’t shown up. But I don’t think I saved his life. I think the larger love saved his life, as it saved mine.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

11 comments

The Words I Most Needed to Hear

May 11, 2009 Rachel Anxiety, Disabilities, Gravitational Insecurity, Happiness, Making Lists, Marriage, Meltdowns, Parenting, Sensory Processing Issues, Women and AS

Some momentous personal things have occurred since last Friday. It’s taken me awhile to know how to express what I feel about them. Although I woke up with a bad cold today, I’m feeling fairly lucid at the moment, so I thought I’d start describing the happenings.

Last Thursday, I made a big mistake that only I could see: I tried to do two things in the outside world in a single day. And worse than that, I tried to do them consecutively.

Before I left for my volunteer job last Thursday, my husband asked whether I could stop at the co-op after work to get him some more homeopathic medicine for his cold. I told him I’d try, and I felt the way I always feel about these requests: Totally Lousy. Lousy because it’s so hard for me to go to two different places in the same day, and lousy because I wish I could just say, “Sure, honey, no problem.”

In any case, I went to work, and then I went to the co-op. Outside, there were some really nice plants, so I bought a bunch, and then I went into the store and bought some medicine for my husband. Luckily, the store was quiet, so I didn’t feel completely overwhelmed. When I came home, I was tired, but that’s pretty normal after work, so I rested. The remainder of the day went along fine, and I felt great. 

Then, Friday came, and I had my first meltdown since my diagnosis in November. To understand why, you’ll need to understand that every Friday, we get ready for Shabbos (our Sabbath), which includes the following tasks:

1. Sweeping up the house (me)
2. De-cluttering the house (me)
3. Emptying the wastebaskets and recycling (me)
4. Buying the food for dinner (my husband)
5. Cleaning the bathroom (my husband)
6. Setting the table (my husband)
7. Cooking the food (my husband)

This past Friday, though, my husband was sick, and I started worrying about having to take on some of his tasks. That was the beginning of the meltdown: the worry. I knew I couldn’t do the food shopping myself and get the house cleaned up, so I offered to go food shopping with him. I figured that it would help us both. So that was the plan.

Nice plan. Except that then I had to figure out in what order to a) clean the house, b) get a shopping list together, and c) go to the co-op. But I couldn’t even get to the point of sequencing. Each task felt absolutely monumental. Like. Turning. A. Barge.

So, I started with what was familiar. I started sweeping. And as I started sweeping, I noticed that I was becoming more and more sensitized about how hard it is. I’m fine with taking the broom and moving it back and forth on the floor. But then, there’s having to pick it up and pull the dust bunnies out of it; somehow, having the broom upside down makes me dizzy. And then, of course, there’s having to bend down with the dustpan and sweep the dust bunnies into it. Serious gravitational insecurity moment. Just thinking about it makes me anxious. And then, the worst part is sweeping under the bed. Arghh. I have to get down on the floor on my stomach and kind of shove the broom here and there till I get all the dust balls. When I’m all done, I am one dizzy, disoriented human being.

When I realized how hard all this was going to be, I started to get really agitated. And when I get agitated, I start thinking really helpful thoughts, like, “Hey, Rachel, if you’re so smart, how come sweeping the floors is so hard, huh? Huh? HUH?” As my self-esteem started going down, my irritability started going up, until I was stomping around and angry at everything. When my husband committed the unforgiveable sin of moving the recyclables to the garage, the recyclables that I had planned to move myself, thank you very much, I just about had a cow. Fortunately, I was able to recover some sense of time and space, and say, “It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”

Ultimately, I just broke down into inconsolable sobbing. The more I thought about how hard it was to sweep the floor, the more I thought that writing up a shopping list was beyond my skills as a human being. How could I possibly transition from one task to another in the state I was in? Especially when writing a shopping list required time and concentration that seemed impossible to locate at that moment. On a good day, each task feels like a big challenge. On the day following one in which I had pushed my limits, each task seemed beyond my reach.

Hubby tried to give me some comfort, but I just kept saying, “Everything feels so incredibly hard. Why does it feel that way? Why can’t I just sweep the room without getting dizzy? Why can’t I just make a food list and be done with it? I can’t stand it.”

And then he said the words that I’ve been waiting to hear all my life:

“It’s not your fault.”

I melted. What an incredible relief. It’s not my fault. I’m doing the best I can, and then some. I have to accept myself as I am. I need to stop apologizing for what I can’t do. It’s not my fault.

Wow.

Okay, hubby loves me as I am. He sees me clearly, and he loves me as I am. That’s very good. Cross that worry off my list. Done. I got it together to make the food list and go shopping. My husband even swept under the bed and swept up everything into the dustpan. We were both tired out, but we were in it together, and that put me in a much better frame of mind.

But then, on the heels of this major piece of wonderfulness, came the second worry: I don’t do enough for my daughter. I can’t cook more than a one-course meal because the sequencing is too hard. I can’t go to her concerts at school because the sensory overload is immediate. I didn’t go to the paintball place for her 8th birthday. And on and on like that.

I was right back in the soup. I felt like writing her a letter, apologizing for all the things I haven’t been able to do over the course of 16 years. I know, it’s a little much, but that’s how I was feeling. I decided that when she came back from her class trip, I’d talk with her about it. I’d try to explain why I am the way I am. She knows about the AS and SPD, but we haven’t talked about its impact a lot lately.

So, I was getting ready for this conversation when Mother’s Day came, and I thought, great, we’ll have our talk today, when everyone is in a good mood. And then, before I got the chance to initiate even the merest hint of a beginning of a conversation, my wonderful, loving, utterly fantastic daughter gave me a Mother’s Day card she had made.

And the card said, “Thank you for being such an awesome mom. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I love you so much.”

I couldn’t believe it. It was perfect. I said, “That’s so beautiful, Ash, and so much what I needed to hear.” And then my big strong teenager gave her little Jewish mom a great big hug.

I melted. Again.

So, in the course of 72 hours, I got to hear the words I most needed to hear:

My challenges and disabilities are not my fault.

I am an awesome mom.

It’s no coincidence that today, I’ve finally got this cold that’s been coming on and going away for months now, over and over. Until today, I’d start to feel sick, and then a few days later, it would turn into nothing. This would happen in two-week intervals, over and over and over.

Now that I’ve had these two weighty pieces of worry taken off my body and soul, I can get sick like a regular person, get over it, and go on with my life. That sounds pretty good, don’t you think? ;-)

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

11 comments

Every Aspie is a Working Aspie

May 6, 2009 Rachel Disabilities, Making Art, Making Lists, Marriage, Meltdowns, Occupational Therapy, Sensory Processing Issues

On any given day, venturing outside the walls of my house feels akin to entering a sensory minefield.

Of all the things that feel difficult, driving my car keeps rising to the top of the list. I’ve had a lot of resistance to driving for some time now, which is difficult when your teenager goes to school an hour away.

My daughter has a friend nearby who goes to the same school, so our two families share the driving. My husband does our share of the driving, and the other parents do the rest. Occasionally, my husband is out of town when my daughter is with me. At those times, I am perfectly capable of getting up at 6:00 am, getting in the car by 6:45 am, getting my daughter to the bus stop by 7:15 am, and then driving home.

Perfectly capable. It all goes swimmingly. The problem is that I cannot do this routine every day. When I have to do it, I do a lot of advance planning to clear my schedule for the rest of the day. If I can’t clear my schedule, and I have to do something else in the world, the next day I’m pretty exhausted. I stay home, and if I’m lucky, I might remember to drink enough water.

For some reason, driving feels especially daunting. It must be all the attention that I have to give to so many things at once: other cars, stoplights, pedestrians, work crews, construction vehicles, and road signs. I simply must read all the road signs. Every. Single. One. Then, of course, there are all the various stores, and advertisements, and strip malls, and signs with print and flashy graphics by the side of the road. Of course, I simply must read all of the print I see flying toward me, even though I will never go to MacDonald’s or to my local Chevy dealer. When I think about driving, the sensory minefield image becomes especially vivid.

Now, it’s true that I drive an hour for my OT appointment, but that feels very different. I know that when I get there, I can relax my attention completely. My OT has set everything up so that life doesn’t feel like a sensory minefield. She even asks me how the drive felt. She doesn’t ask whether there was a lot of traffic, or whether I knew which exit to use. She asks how the drive felt. It’s a minor miracle, really.

The drive home is pretty good, too, because I’ve just spent an hour with someone who understands how much work it takes for me to do any of the following:

1. Drive
2. Plan a sequence of apparently simple tasks
3. Transition from one apparently simple task to another
4. Walk through a grocery store
5. Figure out how to put my shoes on without feeling dizzy
6. Keep up with a conversation between two people
7. Keep up with a conversation that involves more than two people
8. Be in a crowd in which people are talking loudly and/or all at once
9. Handle sudden or persistent noises
10. Keep track of visual stimuli, whether moving or stationary

She also understands that the following are not optional or a waste of time, but activities absolutely essential to my neurological health:

1. Walking or bicycling
2. Making lists
3. Singing and moving
4. Stretching
5. Doing my OT exercises
6. Touching soft fabrics
7. Watching spinning things
8. Writing
9. Resting under 30 pounds of weighted blankets
10. Doing physical labor (the more strenuous, the better)
11. Having a routine
12. Doing art work
13. Stimming
14. Having a good night’s sleep

The husband also understands all of these things. He’s amazing. Today, for example, he asked me whether I could take the car in for inspection, because he has a cold. He didn’t say, “You do it, honey. I’m sick.” He said, “I don’t want to do it, but I realize that if you do, it means dealing with the outside world.” He understands that I need a fair amount of lead time to prepare, and that I will need a great deal of recovery time when I get back.

I felt pretty goddamned awful about having to say no today, but it wasn’t because he was putting any pressure on me. It was because I had to say the words: “I have a disability, and I can’t do these things on the spur of the moment. We need to start thinking about getting some assistance from other people when you’re not feeling well.” It was so hard to say those words. I went outside, dug up some more grass (yes, we still have some, but not for long…) and felt really sad. On the positive side, however, saying those words helped lead me in precisely the opposite direction from a meltdown. Not bad for one lifetime.

I used to be able to do everything. Really. You must believe me. Everything. I could get up in the wee hours of the morning, drive long distances, go grocery shopping, work at a demanding job, teach my kid, support my family, pay the bills, cook, clean, plan birthday parties, include all the neighborhood kids in our Jewish holiday celebrations, plant a garden, exercise, and do just about anything anyone asked me to do, except stand on my head. But, as LizzieK8 said so beautifully in her comments to Monday’s post:

“We’ve spent so much of our life using up our energy to pass for normal, that we just don’t have the reserves for full-time passing anymore. We can do it when we have to (if given enough time to prepare), and we know better how to take care of ourselves when we’ve had to overextend our reserves, but we just don’t have it any more to do a full-time job, day in and day out.”

I burned a lot of energy in 50 years trying to be “normal.” I tried to do everything I thought the world demanded of me, and I did it with a very sensory-sensitive neurology, undiagnosed AS, SPD, dyspraxia, and who knows what else.

But those times are over. I’m sad that they’re over. And I’m also unbelievably relieved.

I’m finally learning that a human being is not an infinitely renewable resource. We have to take care of ourselves and use our energy wisely. For Aspies, just walking through the world and taking care of ourselves is a lot of work. For those of us who are feeling the effects of a lifetime of defying the way we were made, taking care of ourselves is the most vitally important work we can do.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

13 comments

Success!

April 10, 2009 Rachel Anxiety, Communication, Happiness, Judaism and Jewish Life, Marriage, Sensory Processing Issues, Social Gatherings, Weighted Blankets

Well, I’m amazed, but I made it through our Passover seders in one piece, and I’m feeling pretty good.

On Wednesday, we were able to get all the cleaning and other preparation done with time to spare, thanks in no small part to all you wonderful people who extended so much kindness and support. On Wednesday night, we had a mini-seder for our immediate family–my husband, my daughter, and myself. We had the ritual foods, said the blessings, and then spent a lot of time singing songs from the haggadah.

We decided on a mini-seder because, a few years back, we had two full seders at our house and decided never to do it again. Basically, the first one left us running on fumes for the second one. So this year, our homemade, doing-it-our-way first-night seder was perfect for us.

We had invited guests over for our second-night seder, so yesterday, we got the house prepared. I set the table, got out the haggadahs, put out the seder plates, and made the matzo ball soup. My daughter helped my husband chop up apples and walnuts for the charoset (a mixture of apples, walnuts, and grape juice that my daughter could eat 24/7), and my husband prepared the chicken.

At one point in the afternoon, I began feeling very apprehensive and irritable, and it occurred to me that I needed to clarify my role in the seder. So I told my husband that since singing is very soothing to me, I would like to lead all the singing, while he could take charge of navigating us through all the ritual.

It took some time for me to explain to him what I needed, and it took some time for him to say that he didn’t want me to blame him if I had a bad time. Yes, I’m sorry to say, we’ve been there before with the blame thing. We’d go to a social gathering, and I’d feel excluded and expect him to make everything all right. When he didn’t, I’d get upset with him. This time, I reassured him that however the evening went, I wouldn’t blame him and that I wasn’t interested in tapping into that pattern again. Been there, done that, enough already. He felt reassured.

I then made one of the best decisions of my life, ever. I took the two weighted blankets we have, brought them up to my loft, put them on the futon, and laid down under 30 pounds of beans and fleece. Then next thing I knew, it was an hour later, and my daughter was knocking on the door, telling me that it was 6:30 pm and that everyone had arrived. I had actually napped! Usually, the best I can do before a social event is to lie down, concentrate on my breathing, and try really hard not to get a migraine or a stomachache. The nap put me in such a calm and grounded mood that I felt ready to meet the world.

There were seven people in attendance: my husband, my daughter, my stepson Elijah, our friends Julia and Tristan, my daughter’s friend Claire, and myself. Because Julia used to be the music teacher at my daughter’s school, she knew my daughter and her friend, and since my stepson teaches at the school, she knew him as well. So everyone there was connected in some way to everyone else. That made for a very good feeling.

There was quite a bit of ritual before dinner, and everyone seemed very engaged. Sometimes at seders, people show up out of obligation, or take on the role of tourist and just watch the proceedings. It can be very tiring to host a seder under those circumstances. Luckily, at this seder, everyone was there by choice and ready to jump in. I took the lead on the singing, and I had a great time with it. Julia is an artist by profession, with a beautiful singing voice, and when she didn’t know a song, she picked up the melody quickly and added some gorgeous harmonies. The dinnertime conversation was very friendly, and then we finished with some really fun seder songs.

I had thought that I’d need to take some breaks during the evening to fend off sensory overload. In fact, I’d planned on it. I had everything set up so that I could go and snuggle under my weighted blanket and calm myself down when I needed to. As it turned out, I didn’t need to take a sensory break. Instead, I found that the sensory protections were built into the evening.

First of all, I decided to wear my weighted OT Vest. I felt a bit self-conscious about wearing a 4-pound vest, but it was a damned sight better than getting a migraine, so I went for it.

Second, the social gathering was held together by a traditional structure laid out in a book. I had forgotten how much any kind of ritual structure wards off sensory overload for me. It always makes me feel calm because I know where I’m going. For Passover, it’s the same routine, every year, and for an Aspie, that is a Very Good Thing.

Third, I had a job to do, leading the singing, so that gave me a significant focus. There aren’t just a few songs scattered throughout the evening. There is at least one song on nearly every page. That held my attention and kept it from getting too diffuse.

Finally, I realized that I could do a lot of work with my hands, which is also very grounding for me. There were a lot of plates to bring back to the kitchen after the first part of the ritual, so as to make room for dinner. Plus, because dinner came in several courses, there were different kinds of food to bring back and forth. I took on the role of making sure that everyone had what they needed, and then I sat down to have dinner, too. Being able to get up and walk around was a good sensory break.

As for the “otherness” factor, it was definitely there. I was aware that I wasn’t keeping up with what people were saying, and that over dinner, with more than one conversation going, it was hard for me to hear all the words. I felt so comfortable with being an oddball, though, that I stopped things every now and then with “What did you say?” or “I don’t understand” or something equally honest about how clueless I felt. No one seemed to give it a second thought, probably because I wasn’t trying extra hard to be “normal.” I was just feeling comfortable being the weird Aspie at the end of the table.

After lots of very fun and raucous singing, we finished a little after 11 pm. Instead of being wired and exhausted and up till the wee morning hours, as I am after most other social gatherings, I actually fell asleep by midnight.

I couldn’t have asked for a better time.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

6 comments

Meltdowns and Otherness

April 7, 2009 Rachel Loneliness, Marriage, Meltdowns, Perseveration, Social Gatherings

I started to hit a wall today while doing the Passover preparations.

My husband and I sat down on Sunday and made a list of everything we needed to do. (I know, a list! Aren’t you surprised?) We wrote down what I could do, what he could do, and what we could do together. It seemed like a pretty realistic list, and things have been getting done.

Today, I began to have trouble seeing how everything could possibly get done by tomorrow night. My husband’s basic approach is that we should do everything we can while enjoying the process. Whatever gets done is fine. It’s a good approach, except that I’m an Aspie, and I started perseverating on how I could possibly sweep and mop the floors and get all the Passover plates switched with the regular plates before tomorrow night. I started to get teary and agitated. All of my husband’s reassurances fell by the wayside. I felt like I was moving toward a meltdown. I haven’t had one since my diagnosis, and I really didn’t want to have one today.

So I decided to go to my volunteer job for a couple of hours, just to get out of the house, get some perspective, and have something of a routine in the midst of all the doings. I was glad I did. I got to work on some jewelry for two hours, which is like a zen meditation in a corner of the store. I wasn’t feeling great, but I got to focus on something other than the object of my worries, and that was good.

Afterward, I stayed around the store for a little while and began to realize how “other” I felt. I feel “other” pretty much all of the time. The AS diagnosis has only confirmed that I haven’t been hallucinating all these years. And then I realized why getting ready for Passover has been feeling so impossible.

Of course I can sweep and mop the floors. Of course I can switch the plates. It’s not about that. It was never about that.

It’s about having people to my house and feeling my otherness. It’s about knowing that I can’t possibly keep up with the conversation. It’s about knowing that I’m going to get overloaded. It’s about knowing that I can’t just show up in a group of people and have it be easy. For all the years that I’ve been having Passover seders, for all the years that I’ve been having gatherings of any kind, the feeling is always the same. The moment people arrive, my heart drops to the floor, because I feel so completely and ridiculously insufficient. The minute the doorbell rings, I’m about to fall behind the pack, and I feel it. I’ve always felt it.

It’s hard to think about being “other,” so I worry about the floors and the plates instead, as though they are amulets that will assure me a sense of belonging, a sense of being understood, a sense of being one of many.

My meltdowns stem, in part, from this feeling of otherness and from my fruitless attempts to erase it by working harder and harder, hoping that this time, if I work hard and get it “right,” everything will be okay and I won’t feel so alone. Of course, I work so hard and ignore my needs so completely that I get a migraine, or have a meltdown, or both.

Why are migraines and meltdowns preferable to feeling alone? Because feeling alone makes me want to cry. And why are stomping around and getting angry and having a meltdown preferable to crying? It’s the adrenalin rush. When I have a meltdown, I’m on a roll. I’m the most intelligent, the most insightful, and the most unfairly treated human being on the face of the earth, and I’ve got the adrenalin rush to prove it.

When I’m crying, none of that happens. I have to admit powerlessness and sadness and all that stuff. Who needs it? That’s much harder.

Every year at Passover, Jewish people don’t just tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. We relive it. The point is to liberate ourselves from the narrow places that constrict and enslave us. I feel like I’m in that narrow place of having done the same thing over and over, year after year, working harder and harder, trying desperately to be “normal,” all to no avail. Sometimes, it feels so easy to be this weird person who enjoys solitude, and it all feels okay. But there’s the flip side, where I stand apart and my solitude is transformed into loneliness, even in the midst of people who love me.

The only way out is to embrace the otherness, to fully accept it and to feel everything that comes with it. I hope I can start to do that.

It’s an incredible blessing to be able to write about all these feelings and know that at least one other person out there will understand. One other person is infinitely more than none. It makes the otherness all right, because we share it. Perhaps that’s the way out, to know that we are other, to know that we are alone, and to know that we are together in that experience.

May everyone be renewed in this season of renewal, whatever path you walk.

© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

12 comments
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