Healing Together, Walking Together

[Ed. note: After I wrote the essay Falling Down, I authored the update below. Please read Falling Down first, if you have time. Thanks!:]

While my wound is healing, it still hurts when I walk or put pressure on my left leg. I did see a doctor, even though it cost me a $25 copay, and I had to pay $15 for the supplies to treat my wounds. That's okay - I know that I have to stay in good health, and can't get an infection.

Speaking of old wounds, I have been feeling some anxiety about my social situation lately, although I suspect my fears are overblown. It's just difficult for me to avoid my apprehensions even when I have good reasons to suspect they're ill-advised.

I can recognize that many of my friends and the groups where I associate are trending in different directions than I am. Once again, tonight I am going on a date instead of spending time at an outing with some of my closest friends. Almost every time, I feel stupid afterward for missing good times with my friends in exchange for an at-best-mediocre date.

So why do I keep making this trade? There are a few reasons: I do feel lonely sometimes, and I very much want a relationship. Also, while I know my friends are close to me now and I cherish them, I feel vulnerable relying so much on the same people for so long. I want to expand the circle of people I know, especially people that I can keep close to me.

Sometimes I worry that my interactions with my friends and people I meet are two one-sided, too focused on myself and my needs. I want to be a better listener, a more generous and more supportive person. I feel inadequate in that effort in part because I realize that I'm not inclined to take initiative. I'm not always a demonstrative person, and I don't tend to go out of my way to connect with people. I have an inkling that I may want to change this feature, but I'm not sold yet, let alone wise enough to decide how to change.

I just feel like I don't know enough about myself, or about other people yet. This sense of ignorance feeds my insecurities, too...and already, we've returned to a focus on *my* issues - when I'm trying to think about others.

Cutting myself some slack, though, part of the reason I have focused more on my own reactions than those of other people, lies in good intentions. There have been times in the past when I've tried to connect with people in counter-productive ways and seen my outreach backfire badly. That is a major influence on my current instincts of deferring to other people or focusing primarily on my own perspective.

Focusing on myself has long felt like the safer and more courteous option. I am tortured by worst-case scenarios; I can't escape the fears I have of repeating the debilitating mistakes I have made in the past.

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, every day you can ask yourself two things to become a better person: 1) what have I learned today? 2) what have I done to help other people? Considered through this prism, I feel positively overall about the strides I have made to be a better person towards my fellow human beings.

I want to focus on the positive lessons I have learned, not on the dread or shame of past mistakes. I want to have the comfort level to take risks, and the discretion to take smart risks. That goes back to why I am going on a date tonight instead of spending all my time with the friends I already have: I know I could take the safer option, but how is my life going to improve if I always fall back on what feels safe?

Sometimes, I fall. Sometimes, I fall because I've done something rather stupid. I have wounds that have healed, and wounds that are still mending. Sometimes, old pains flare again, and it takes all my strength just to walk on my own. Yet - sometimes - putting one foot in front of the other makes me feel more powerful, wiser, and bolder with each towering step.

Watching those who are attempting the same journey, I wonder how I can do my best to help others. What does that promise mean? How do I fulfill this commitment? I have no idea. But first I'm going to get up, and I won't be going alone.

Falling Down

[Ed. note: I first wrote this essay almost two weeks ago, but waited to publish these words until now:]

Yesterday evening, I was walking home through my neighborhood, when I took a false step off of a curb and fell down. I was falling straight forward, so I involuntarily caught myself with my hands and knees. At the time, I was carrying my briefcase and a package of M&Ms, and I was thinking about something else.

I ripped holes in both legs of my dress pants, and managed to scrape my right hand plus both of my knees, which were skinned through the holes that were created in my pants when I was breaking my fall.

It was very painful to have to walk all the way back home. When I got there, my roommate gave me some bandages. I washed my wounds, and then put on band-aids.

My hand and my right knee seem to be alright, but the wound on my left knee won't quit bleeding. I had to ask my boss for a package of tissues to borrow so I can swab the blood. I already changed the bandage this morning. I wish I had a bigger bandage, but all I have are the standard-sized band-aids that are way too small for my wound, so I have to use four or five of them.

As far as I know, I wasn't having this problem last night. I'm worried. Hopefully the wound won't get infected and will quit bleeding soon. I'll change the bandages again as soon as I return home, but that won't be for several more hours.

I feel pretty silly about injuring myself from falling down in the street. I was just mundanely walking when, all of a sudden, I fell down.

When I was changing my bandages this morning, it was very painful. Ripping several bandages from my skin at once - plus the fact that the bandages stick to the hair on my leg and rip that off, too - makes the process hard to endure.

While I was writing the last paragraph, I had to pause and daub the blood off of my left knee again. Argh. I don't even want to buy bigger bandages, because I'm so low on funds before my next paycheck. I'm already trying to decide if I have enough money to pay my Internet bill during the next week, or if I can pay my portion of our apartment's lease change fee.

If the wound gets worse - showing signs of infection - I will be reticent to get that examined because, frankly, my insurance situation is terrible. While I'm fortunate that I can stay on my parents' insurance, since I live so far from them, places where I live that take our insurance are harder to find. I can pay a co-pay at the office because I have insurance, but then I get billed a ridiculous charge later just because I saw a convenient care doctor one time.

When you don't have much money, and don't have good insurance, even the smallest, most inane of events can produce anxiety - even something as silly as falling down.

Life Precedes Words

[Ed. note: I actually composed the following essay before I wrote Better Living Through References, even though I published the latter essay first on this blog. I intended the essay below to serve as my reintroduction to this blog, this time:]

I have allowed some time to elapse since the last time I updated this blog. That is true for a variety of reasons. In the past few months, I have started a paid internship which has become a temporary job. I am cautiously optimistic.

I am hoping to secure something more permanent while I continue my current work. I am heartened to have something steady while I keep searching, but anxious for the low margin of error I still have. I have faith in the skills that have gotten me to this more positive place, but still feel trepidation for the uncertainty ahead, just as I often have in the last few years.

I've also spent some much needed time relaxing with my friends. In between worrying about my work, whether I can pay my bills, or how I'm going to coordinate my living situation, staying in touch with my closest friends has been more invaluable than ever.

While I have wanted to expand my social circle, by and large, I'm spending time with the same people that I knew when I left college. Another side project, my writing, has been largely hit-or-miss. I've faced prolonged dry spells and feelings of inadequacy, laced with some intriguing experiments and inspirations. I do feel that I have progressed as a person, especially as a young adult seeking to be more independent and responsible. That quest continues to be my main objective.

I have been discussing my interest in the disability community with people from several organizations. My work in health and aging advocacy provides a natural segue to the disability world. I devoured the book "No Pity" by Joseph Shapiro, which chronicles the development of the disability rights movement and describes the challenges that people with disabilities face and overcome.

In parallel to this exploration, I have spent more time reflecting upon my identity as a person with a disability. I have not reached the end of my deliberation, nor do I expect to reach an end - everything I consider is a reaction to the evolving situations in my life, and I relish the opportunity to grow as a person and immerse myself in new experiences (and as clichéd and stilted as that sounds, I believe that attitude and embrace it fully).

So, I am trying to manage all of these different ambitions and necessities before I feel composed enough to express myself coherently on other topics - before I have time, or before I have inclination. I realize this is all elaborate excuse-making, but I also have a cynical faith that the best inventions of human reason tend to be rationalizations. In a last-ditch effort to be somewhat genuine, I am sharing my rationalizations here.

I hope to write more often in the near future. I hope to update this space with something to pique interest. Whether that hope materializes, I cannot predict. I have often hoped on one hand, and schemed to act differently on the other hand. If I have any shot at delivering on these promises, I must scheme to reverse myself again, and return to my original intentions - which change too rapidly to measure.

Yes, those who know me and follow my vain attempts at writing have learned that uncertainty is my crucible and my companion...the catalyst that overwhelms my reluctance, feeds my devotion, and yet, undermines my ability to articulate anything close to the thrill and fervent terror my mind evokes.

My entire life is a somersault: when I dare to reach new heights, spinning in the air to keep my balance, I am stretched so far that I am unable to bring my thoughts to the surface. It is in that brief moment afterwards, when I am standing on solid ground but still remember the sensations of leaping, that I can properly share a true vision of movement.

Okay, that's the round-up of what I haven't been doing, and what I don't know. Eventually, I'll return to tell you about another time when I haven't done something else...

Laughter As A Way Of Life

I used to be afraid. I felt rage and indignation, mixed with regret and despair.  I felt so out of touch, and I was worried that I would never feel at ease.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. I feel so much useless energy coursing through me. I feel anxious, and feel so many thoughts rushing through my mind simultaneously that I hardly know which way is which.

I am constantly reminded of my insecurities. Usually, I suppress these feelings, for lack of a better way to cope. I felt like I had to choose between suppression - ignoring the feelings entirely, or depression - blaming myself, or anger - venting at situations over which I had no control.

I didn't know that there was another option.

I'm trying. Sometimes I still feel like I'm in denial. My laughter is not a way to separate myself from my feelings - it is a knowing acknowledgement of the absurdity of my life - but is not a hollow, hopeless, or self-defeating absurdity. This is an affirmation.

I have tried, hard, to find another place - a better place - to go, mentally. I end up so often in my thoughts, that I need some kind of refuge. I have tried to appreciate things in my life for the way they are.

So I laugh. And why do I laugh, and what do I find funny?

I giggle about what I don't know - what I once didn't know but have now learned - what other people deeply feel to be true but don't actually know - about patterns others miss that I understand - when I finally learn something that it seems like other people understand easily.

One of my closest friends recently told me that I am one of the most optimistic people she knows. This shocked me. I have never thought of myself as an optimistic person. Now, I am trying to be more like the version of myself that she has apparently seen.

I'm not saying that I am changing to satisfy other people. I'm doing as much as I can to be true to myself, it's just that there are things about myself that I don't like. Besides, the idea of being "true to myself" has always seemed somewhat contradictory and problematic for me, both in theory and practice.

Theoretically, how can I be true to myself when I barely know what I want? Aren't I just privileging the things I already know? What's the fun in that? I want to keep expanding my horizons - I don't know where I will be in the future, and how I can be true to what I do not yet know?

Practically, I've always felt insecure about some of the ways I act. I feel very uncomfortable in many different situations, and yet I can be extremely engaging and gregarious with very close friends and when I'm talking about my passions. Still, I'm clumsy about how I express myself - I interrupt other people too much, and too often find myself waiting to speak again instead of listening to what people are saying. I'm genuinely trying not to be inconsiderate - I really am - I just find it so difficult to relate to people sometimes, that when I feel like I have something valuable to contribute, it's hard for me to hold back...so this is a way that insecurity feeds upon itself.

I'm constantly struggling to live up to my own expectations of who I can be, of what I can do, and what I can accomplish. I put a lot of pressure on myself. All this laughter is a way for me to deflate the tension.

Sometimes, I just look in the mirror, and I start laughing. Then, like the world's unsexiest vampire, I disappear for a little while.

Existential Sonatas in Pacific Time

I almost forgot to write a blog post for today - then I realized that even though it is technically early Saturday morning...for me...that my blog publishes my date-line according to Pacific time. So it will appear that I did write an entry for Friday! Muahaha! Of course, that I'm telling you about this insight does undercut my point, but I'm still happy to attain the technical accomplishment of keeping my promise alive for one more day.

I've been paying more attention to my experiences of time since I started my most recent internship. I've had days where I feel that I just arrived for the office opening at 9 am ten minutes ago -- when it's already past 6 pm. Some parts of my day feel especially fast or slow.

Lunch, overall, moves very quickly but each moment passes meaningfully. I am aware that I am running out of time - I know if I'm outside the office longer than I want to be - I can feel the moments expiring as they happen, individually and in sequence. But then what feels like ten minutes, when I look at my phone, was actually half an hour.

After work today, I met several of my close friends. One of these friends is a physics major. He told me that he gets aggravated by his quantum physics class which starts at 8:55 am. Or, as I told him, "you get mad about your 8:55 am quantum physics class that starts at 3 pm?"

I feel no fear when I'm with my closest friends. I say absolutely preposterous things. I utter words that would be reckless for me to say anywhere else. I am greatly fortunate to have such wonderful friends in my life. I've felt awkward and apprehensive around other people so often before now, that making and keeping friends has eluded me for some longer stretches of my life than I care to admit. (For instance, pretty much my entire freshman year of college.)

I have zero shame when I am with my friends. Even when I do something that I legitimately regret, I am able to move on and not hold onto the guilt as I would in other circumstances. My friends tolerate my quirks and don't judge me negatively.

It is now so late that I don't feel like writing any more words. I heavily resist the impulse to write further, yet I still feel incomplete. Tonight, I am thankful for my friends, my internship, my family, my senses, my learning, my home, and my creativity. I am thankful for time and change and entropy. I'm thankful that when I got really hot water from the cooler at work, that eventually it was only lukewarm so I could drink it before I left.

Everything ends, even days that you measure in Pacific time. But the most important thing is to make the most of the time you have, and that's what I'm trying to do. I am, again, exceedingly appreciative of the time I have, and to those who are sharing that time with me as we all journey into the unknown future.

That Loveless Feeling

I worry about the first impressions I make. I'm stressed that I'm the sort of person that people like more as they get to know me better, but I'm anxious that people won't take the time to let me reveal myself to them in a way that makes me feel comfortable. I also worry that people aren't that interested in my personality. I just feel extremely vulnerable.

I work so much, and I try to deal with my uncertain work and living situations, that I don't want to put in the effort to reach out to other people. I feel like every time I try, I get burned. Maybe I'm waiting for the right moment. I don't believe in fate, though, so what am I waiting for?

I believe that I have to make my own opportunities if I want to be successful in anything...maybe that doesn't sound romantic, but why isn't it? Effort is hot. If you work hard to encourage other people to see you at your best, if you're not counting on true love that falls down from heaven, that's an even truer love. That's a love that takes everything. What's more romantic than giving everything to a lover?

I hate dating, I hate being lonely, and I hate feeling uninspired. It's a chain of negative emotions. I'm trying to remain an optimist. I don't count all the times I have failed, all the awkward encounters I have had, or all the people who haven't called or written me back. I'm an optimist, not a masochist. But, somehow, I still manage to put myself through a lot of pain in the name of pleasure.

Dating feels very superficial to me. Of course, I'm no less superficial than anyone else in a lot of important ways. Physical attraction is very important to me. I know from my experiences, though, that it's more difficult for me to feel more than a passing physical attraction for someone unless I feel emotionally and intellectually compatible.

The beginning of dating never seems to involve this element much, so I'm stuck gasping for air more often than not. I don't want to get to know someone by being glib. I'm not going to waste my time. I don't feel comfortable being real with people I'm just meeting, but I don't feel comfortable being someone I'm not. I feel genuine when I can say or act in ways that I feel other people will not understand. Their judgment is looming over me.

You like Netflix? You work? You like this food, and those movies, and these songs? This kind of small talk is like warm piss: the words are beyond use, have become stale, and are going to smell worse the longer they sit outside -- until someone acknowledges the mess and flushes it where it belongs. I'm not sure what I want instead. I really want to have someone in my life who isn't afraid to risk everything for me, but how can I earn that trust? How can I earn the love of someone as crazy and curmudgeonly as I am?

I don't know how to fix this problem. I'm not sure if there is a solution. Maybe I'll just stay home and dance uncomfortably in my apartment while no one's looking.

Up All Night: Soliloquy

I enjoy talking to myself, as I've already mentioned in passing while writing a different entry ("Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Other People: It's Complicated"). I think about Hamlet, the protagonist of Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet gives so many speeches to himself. His thoughts race almost endlessly. His feelings careen wildly through the curves of manic anger, resentment, and depression. Hamlet really has no idea where he's going until he utters fateful and apprehensive words. One of the Hamlet's greatest strengths and weaknesses is that his words are his deed. Words can be a powerful deed, but the word alone is not always the entire deed. An ironic lesson for such a prolific wordsmith as Shakespeare to give us?

I've directly confronted this personal epidemic of talking too much and listening too little. How many Horatios are trying to give each of us good advice, as Horatio tried to help his friend Hamlet relax and focus his thinking*, while their advice is too long and too often ignored?

Hamlet also needs silence. In many cases, silence is a proxy for ambiguity. The incompleteness of human knowledge is a hallmark of what it means to be alive and deciphering our existence. It is commonplace that each individual must be content with the exotic vastness of what we cannot know. Yet Hamlet couldn't leave space to contemplate the things he didn't know. Hamlet filled every waking moment with talking, thinking, scheming, plotting, consorting, pondering...Hamlet sealed his fate in part through his inability to stop doing anything.

It is this balance of expressing my thoughts properly when I talk to myself and leaving space to consider the consequences of what I cannot know that I seek to keep practicing. I once asked my poetry professor about my practice of writing poems in great spurts, and then not writing for a similar period. I hoped my professor could alleviate my dry spells, but he did not offer me advice on that matter. My professor simply told me that I need to let my mind lie fallow sometimes, so I don't use everything I have at once. That was tremendously strong advice.

I also notice that I've talked too much at once sometimes when I would talk to my ex-girlfriend or when I talked to other women that I felt an interest towards. Perhaps I didn't feel secure enough, complete enough, confident enough to let go...and that's a shame.

I wish I had felt stronger during those interactions. I wish I had felt the strength to let go...that's not easy when you're feeling like you barely have the strength to hold on! Perhaps that's another lesson for me: don't try to hold onto something that you can't let go. I'm not really sure if that's true. There's only one way to find out, isn't there?

Yes, there's an insane, heart-pounding, wildly unforeseeable world that none of us can corner. That world is waiting for us to explore its endless boundaries. There's only so much I can tell you about that world, or about my portion of it. Eventually, you need to return to the world and experience it for yourself - just like I do!

*(To let it be, or not to let it be...that is the Shakespearean/Beatles question!)

Up All Night: Self-Identifying

For many years, I've struggled trying to decide whether I should self-identify in academic settings and in job applications as a person with Asperger's Syndrome. While I've had difficulties in social settings, I always sailed through my academic work until I graduated from high school. I got by pretty well, so I never saw the necessity of raising questions about a "disability", when I wasn't sure that this condition was disabling me at all.

Another issue that complicates my thinking arises when I compare my situation to the situations of other people who have a less high-functioning form of Asperger's. I've been very fortunate. That I can even write these words and tell you about my life is a major success. That I've found the self-awareness to question my own decisions and analyze my interactions with other people has been a major milestone and a great gift.

There are many people who have suffered through much greater impairments than I have. When I perceive that I'm indistinguishable from a typical person of my age, I can hardly justify to myself that I should self-identify as having some sort of disability. The only person I've met who's spotted me as someone on the autism spectrum was another college student with very high-functioning Asperger's -- which is extremely funny once you think about it.

Today, I heard some of my friends discuss some mutual acquaintances of ours who happen to have Asperger's. When my friends mention some of their unsettling experiences with other people who have Asperger's, it's hard for me to discuss my experiences: I'm torn between feeling sympathy for people following a similar outline and a crushing need to defend myself. I know very well that my lack of finesse with social skills in the past has at times brought me great chagrin.

I used to never make eye contact when I was speaking to other people. My dad would sit with me and drill me. He made me look him in his eyes over, and over, and over again. The overwhelming blueness of each of his irises encouraged me to concentrate beyond any ability that I knew I had. I swam into socialization on the cresting tide of that blueness.

I never knew how to join the conversations of other people. I had a terrible habit of interrupting people in the middle of their sentences whenever I saw a group of people I don't know and I wanted to approach them. I've always been pretty talkative for an introvert - since I finally started talking after a delay of a few years, I've barely stopped for breath. My feelings of anxiety and insecurity in social settings haven't helped - time has always ran fast for me when I'm around lots of people I don't know. I still have trouble finding a way to relax, slow down, and remain patient without disengaging entirely.

Every time someone tells me that they would never know I had Asperger's Syndrome is a victory lap. I have spent so much time and effort trying to be like my peers. Why do I want to identify myself through the prism of a disability, when I'd rather identify myself by the struggle I've undertaken to overcome my condition? Perhaps that's the best reason to self-identify: so I can provide some frame of reference for the sustained campaign I've waged against my own mind to free a little bit more of my soul.

Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Other People: It's Complicated

Yesterday, I was irritable while sitting alone on a bench outside my apartment building. I was waiting to meet a friend of mine. People that I didn't know kept walking past me while I was sitting there.

I kept checking the time. I don't like to wait. I can wait in the abstract sense. What I especially dislike is waiting in public. It makes me feel insecure and anxious. I feel defensive. I feel like I have to justify being there, wherever it is I am while I'm waiting for someone or something.

I also dislike the uncertainty of not knowing when whatever I'm waiting for is going to happen, or when the person I'm meeting will arrive. Normally, I don't care so much when something is not in my control. It bothers me when I feel like something is not in my control *and* that I have no other alternative. I don't like to feel boxed in. I also don't like having nothing to do but wait.

I can't even talk to myself while I'm waiting, because people in public think you're weird or not entirely there if you talk to yourself while other people are around. It's how I sort my thoughts. It's just easier for me to think when I can hear my own voice, choosing words to match my feelings. Sometimes, I'm not entirely sure what I'm thinking until I can find words to express myself.

When I'm alone, I don't mind uncertainty as much. Uncertainty bothers me more when it involves other people. If I'm going somewhere by myself, it doesn't matter very much to me whether I am lost for a bit or whether I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm with other people, not knowing where I'm going or what I'm doing make me very nervous. I feel like people are judging me for not having a better idea of what I'm doing.

While I was alone yesterday, I lamented that I let the potential criticisms of other people affect me so easily. I wondered if I worry so much about what people think because I have a high regard for the opinions of other people. If I had a lesser view of humanity, perhaps it would be easier for me to not take the treatment of others so personally.

I'm not a very secure person. I have achieved some meaningful things, but I still have many doubts. There are still areas of my life that plague me with insecurity. My interactions in public with other people are one area of my life that still flusters me from time to time.

Because I feel less insecure when I feel more control over a situation, I often prefer to do things by myself. Spending time around other people can drain me, especially if most of them are strangers and I have to consider the impression I'm making. I have spent much of my life concerned that I'm about to say or do something unbearably embarrassing. My concern about the reactions of other people is an instinct of self-preservation, but now I'm wondering if it's an instinct that preserving me or whittling away my confidence.

Reflections From Leaving College

I became an entirely different person during college. I lost faith in the religion of my childhood (and became an atheist). I acted in a theater group for the first time. I started performing improv comedy. I started drinking (shortly after the theater and improv). I had (and ended) my first relationship (also after the theater and improv).

I thought honestly about my history with Asperger's Syndrome, and I met other people who shared some of the same stories. I had no close friends my entire freshmen year of college. During my sophomore year, I began to have more friends, but doubts and insecurities about the reliability of my friends plagued me constantly (shortly after the theater and improv). In that same year, I failed my first (and so far only) class (shortly after the theater and improv).

The summer after my sophomore year, I started seeing a therapist and continued doing so until the end of my junior year. Most of the times I went, I felt miserable while I was with a therapist. I didn't know what I should say. It was extremely difficult for me to express my feelings to a stranger...or even to myself. This chance to sort my emotions still helped me immensely, and the lingering impressions of this experience continue to benefit me. It's a strange wonder that I was able to journey through my senior year without any therapy and without paralyzing myself emotionally.

Senior year was rough, but mostly I dealt with my problems better than I had when I was a sophomore. First semester, I was insanely busy. I was struggling with keeping my internship, my classes, and my relationship functioning. I partly succeeded, then I spent the second semester of my senior year trying to save the things I still had left after my first semester. [That was supposed to be funny.]

One of the best and worst moments during college came for me near the very end of my sophomore year. I was at a Cinco de Mayo party with some kids from my theater/improv group, and two of my friends were talking with me - while they were quite buzzed. They told me that they were quite impressed by my ability to do improv, especially since one of them knew me as a freshman when we lived on the same floor of our dorm. She noted that I seemed very shy and not the kind of person who would thrive in improv, but she added that she was pleasantly surprised by the quality of my participation.

I was extremely happy to hear that praise: at that moment, I was very depressed because I had quite recently realized that I was, in fact, about to fail an important class - that I had yet to inform my parents - and that I was moving out and going back home the next morning. It was a dark moment for me, and it was the precise time when I needed to hear some reassuring and uplifting comments. That's one aspect of my life during the past four years for which I am especially thankful: that every time I've felt most alone, least capable of handling my problems, or most lost and vulnerable -- that I've still found some consolation to ease my way through the anguish, and somehow become a stronger, more resilient person.