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Thursday, January 26, 2017.  If one takes a look at results from an online search of terms “grammar my self myself” an interesting panorama appears, including “When the Subject and the Object in a sentence refer to the same person or thing we use a Reflexive Pronoun. It is the only area of English grammar that is reflexive.”

It appears to me that writing a post about my very new understanding of MY SELF (myself?) as EVERYTHING about MY SELF (myself?) throughout the entire 65 years of my life on earth is BOTH a “reflexive” (reflex) and a “reflective” experience.

I do know that I am extremely grateful that this completely life changing epiphany that I “am on the autism spectrum” happened NOW that I have escaped my winter tomb in North Dakota to arrive in this beautiful New Mexican town.  Timing is everything.  This is true for everyone.  For all of us.

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Yet I did not CHOOSE to “have” this epiphany.  There is some kind of an information doorway becoming visible right now at this point of human evolution (at least in the mainstream western mindset) about “autism.”  I call it a portal.  Just the vaguest of outlines of this portal are visible at this point in time.

That is enough for me – right now.  EVERYTHING I know about me is being transformed.  And it seems that I have no awareness about which parts of my life ‘take the change’ WHEN.

And what on earth am I going to DO with this new information about my self (myself)?  Am I – as a defined self – moving into the abode of MY LIFE now in ways that have NEVER happened before – because they COULD NOT – because only now am I able to access even the most rudimentary information (such as humans seem to understand it at this point in time) about autism that I can FINALLY – RECOGNIZE – MY SELF?

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I am writing these posts for myself. (I think I can agree with myself that myself is fitting here in this statement.  This matters to me right now because prior knowledge has not been accurate, hence leaving ME out of my own life.)

I am having far too many fly-by epiphanies right now.  They swarm and bat me around.  I need to capture them and paste them down somewhere.  Somewhere is here.

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So my siblings evidently wondered why I responded to Mother’s horrible insane abuse the way I did. For example:

Why did I not CRY during Mother’s horrendous beatings during the 18 years of my life she COULD beat me?  My sibs thought if I HAS cried – maybe even begged? — Mother would have STOPPED a beating once she had felt she “won.”

• Why did I not cry? As an Autism Spectrum child I COULD NOT choose to cry or not to cry. Why I do not yet know.  I suspect that autism puts us on a path of inner integrity that is not negotiable.  I think the ability to negotiate socially is a non-spectrum ability.
• For this same reason it was impossible for me to admit to Mother – or to say I was “sorry” to her – for anything I did not do! Because Mother was psychotically mentally ill she “manufactured” all kinds of crimes that I supposedly did that I came to fully understand about 3 years ago DID NOT HAPPEN – but she absolutely BELIEVED DID HAPPEN.
• Maybe no young child could have negotiated with this violent insane madwoman to save themselves suffering. I do not know. I know today that I absolutely couldn’t even consider the possibility – because the Spectrum doesn’t likely build people that way.
• Why did I not, during 18 years of chronic horrendous abuse while my other five siblings lived in an entirely different ‘favored’ universe, EVER feel self-pity, resentment, anger at mother, envious or jealous of my siblings, etc.? TODAY I KNOW IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO DO SO! I was not/am not built that way.  Such feelings would have happened to a non-spectrum child in that same situation, I bet – because those feelings are part of a SOCIAL engagement universe.
• OK, briefly put, I admit that since 1980 when I entered “recovery” I have ALWAYS thought that the horrendous abuse targeted at me as it included extreme social isolation and imprisonment, even to the Alaskan wilderness homestead living arena, MADE me different socially. There is no way those events did not affect me greatly, BUT as a Spectrum child?  Oh WOW!  If I EVER thought I was innocent and vulnerable during abuse that began at my birth – add to that now the awareness that I was a “special needs” child?  Yeah?
• Add to this the fact that NOBODY would have been able to fully understand any child (or even an adult) who was on the Austim Spectrum back then (and barely now….). I am racing at warp speed through any kind of “gee, Linda, some of this must be YOUR fault for being an ‘unusual’ child who really DID “make trouble” in the life of your mother/father/family. REALLY?  Another WOW – along with NONE OF THAT ABUSE WAS MY FAULT EVER NO MATTER WHAT!
• Another part of this – for any readers who have scanned (at least) through my book mentioned below, Story Without Words – all of those incidents of my own suffering I mention there are changing in focus. IF I had not been a Spectrum child I would probably have NEVER noticed that incredibly amazing, beautiful image in the toilet bowl (I was 3) made from sunlight, hairs in a bowl, bubbles and motion. Logically, with my Spectrum brain/mind that I am for the first time being able to WITNESS AND OWN as ME, that horrendous abuse incident would not have happened plain and simple if I had never SEEN that pattern!  Not that Mother’s insane reaction was OK – of course not – get it?
• And also in that book, The Bubble Gum Incident story – remember that incredible shifting pattern of light on wading pool water shimmering on my bedroom ceiling? Yeah – because I was a Spectrum child, that could save me.
• And my FEELINGS after horrendous beatings, in the middle of further horrendous abuse that could last days/weeks/months – on the homestead – escaping just long enough to walk through a bit of so-beloved wilderness to the outhouse – and THERE was that angel on top of that mountain!!! I KNOW that I NEVER carried anything within me from one “attack” to the next – and remembering the outhouse/angel on the mountain trips – I didn’t carry any thought-based MENTAL experience of abuse with me. I carried suffering, true.  It was unavoidable.  But ME?  MY SELF?  I lived in beauty.  That angel was BEAUTIFUL to me!  I FELT beauty.  I know now, that is a Spectrum child ability.  (WHO DARES to call that a disability?)
• Scroll down at this link through these pictures and see if you can spot the Angel on the Mountain.
• There is also a filtering shift going on about the fact that even though Mother had attacked me every day in some way, and brutally out of nowhere most days (and nights), never ONCE did I, as I have said to myself many times in my recovery, “did I see it coming.” ALWAYS, every single time, it was a surprise to me when she attacked me. This has been mysterious to me!  Was this “dissociation?”  I have an answer now – as a Spectrum person something about how I process my self in the world is different.  Now I know where to look, info-wise, for explanations about this.  My PATTERN of being alive as a terribly abuse child somehow spared me from dragging along within me the toxic “barnacles” of Mothers treatment of me.
• I guess that I can say at this point that I felt perpetually confused as a child (and very, very often as an adult). As a child I DID NOT understand what happened to me. I had NO ability to fight back in any way, even as an older child.  I am at this moment coming to understand that MY world is not ‘the common world’.  I do not share in common with very many people a pattern of being in the world that matches what is probably shared in common by the neurotypical crowd within which most others share their lives no matter WHAT they have endured.  There are many things about being alive I can now quit wasting my time attempting to comprehend.  This will now give me a MUCH needed inner platform of rest.

I will now be able to begin to take care of myself in ways that have never been possible for me before now.  The immeasurable efforts I have put forth to “give to others” first and foremost has ended.  I am guessing that neurotypical people get something back from their efforts when they interact with others like themselves that Spectrum people can never receive.

And I am also thinking it is for this exact reason that autism is not recognized in females unless they/we are on the far end of the “problem area” of the spectrum.

Exist we do.

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Here is my first book out in ebook format as it provides an outline of the conditions of my malevolent childhood.  Click here to view or purchase–

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.  A daring book – for daring readers – about a really tough subject.

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Tags: adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders,borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse,depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder,dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame