++++

Monday, January 30, 2017.  I plan to watch videos on YouTube related to and by Temple Grandin.  Before I do that I want to put notes down here from my thinking today as I expect new things to come to mind after my Grandin experience.

++++

— Was the VISION I had around age 15 spectrum related?  The ability to “sense” like that?— makes me think in some ways “we” might have uncommon abilities, or are connected closely to them.  (evolution?  are these old gifts that mattered for the survival of the species but that no longer are useful?  are they gifts that will humanity is not yet mature enough to find useful, to use wisely?

++

— POWDER PUFF incident, doing art therapy – that was so powerful and weird — yet it happened so naturally to me (“magnetism” as Abdu’l-Baha refers to?)

++

— need to rethink what the medicine man told me around 14 years ago”  “You don’t need people the way that other people need people.”

++

TOILET BOWL INCIDENT, in my book Story Without Words – pattern fascination with water reflection (see recent post)

++

— watching nature as a kid – there were no “human” ripples – patterns of beauty – in the smallest of flowers (delighted me!) – awe at seed/bloom cycles of wildflowers, was in love with them — watching nature like a camera – that kind of observation like with no ego, no self present – so pure – absolute stillness within – vital – a kind of complete inner silence

++

— my thoughts about THE FOX (in book) – an experience at age 5 of “being one with what is true” (existence itself, without question but with thought) – being at the center of that experience — patterns of vanishing and reappearance

++

— completely missing the human relationship of the book Heidi – a book I LOVED – for me it was the Mountain that mattered – I thought that was ALL that story was about, the girl’s love of the mountain (like mine)

++

— not surprised at all by the “almost cut in half, moved to safety by miracle” event when I was 12 – it ‘happened’ – that was all

++

— such a shambles our life was!  Could anything have been worse for an autistic child (along with long-term chronic horrible abuse)?  Yet did my particular way of processing information save me?

++

— Angel on the Mountain – more real to me than any person was – I had a relationship with her ‘saving grace’…. makes me think of that Baha’i writing I read 35+ years ago and cannot find again – that so SHOCKED me, that I had to work the magic of my faith around to accept – that in the eyes of God the most pitiful person on earth is far mightier than the mightiest mountain — I had a sense of “Oh NO!  How can that be POSSIBLE?”

++

— did my “strange ways” escalate Mother?  Any parent would have noticed I was different?
++

— How could I go through the whole graduate school episode of my life w/o ANY of the anxiety I feel now that consumes me and so limits my life (as long as I did not drive the interstates)?

I had great hopes – I was excited at what I was doing – it was a dream coming true.  I BELIEVED in what I was doing – and CINDY was there !!  also had Rose, Helen and Claude, such wonderful friends — AND I could be a friend to them – although it seems I just walked away and did not look back (I think this has happened a lot for me, and I don’t think it’s “normal”) — seems like a disjointed and “broken” way to get through life….  with Bobbi Henderson and Barb Hatfield, years did go by but we have reconnected – same with Roxanne Kibben – ???  And oh boy that time around 1983-4 that Betty Lou ‘disowned me’ CRUSHED ME – that hurt (oh well?)

++

— Working at Red Lake art therapy – office people told me when I left after 18 months that they didn’t like/did not understand why I never hung out in office with them visiting between clients – I did not leave my studio room, never even thought of it – yeah, weird, I guess

++

— I guess I wasn’t able to grow up being able to check my insides against anyone else’s reality.  Certainly NOTHING about Mother’s version of the world ever made any kind of sense to me!  and she kept me so isolated – how could her world make sense to me – it was psychotically abusively insane – and harder still because she was obsessed by HER dark version of me – a psycho lie but i had been raised with it from birth – brainwashed – and no input from anyone else (wish my sibs had shared their thoughts and feelings with me like they did with one another….they knew mother was nuts….

++

— and the amount of WORK I was forced to do as a child!  it consumed me, as it was supposed to.  and there was no play, not even with my siblings

++

— so now – I am making comparisons between what I have come to understand about all parts of me in my life — and how i might have ACTUALLY experience things “on the spectrum”

Yet I don’t see that anything I come up with will make life any better for me now.  But I don’t know that.

I think through adulthood (probably also as a kid) I simply moved forward through time.  The fullness of this anxiety now DOES seem to be totally post chemo.  Not that I wasn’t vastly terrified as a kid.  But this anxiety?  Was it disguised?  like divorce with Leonard and having Jered — in Bemidji?  Sioux Falls?  Taos?  Ashland?

Certainly I had many states of being immobilized as an adult and so confused (also as a kid) life-wise = LOST!

++

— How does autism, even w/o abuse, affect choice-making?

I see those – mirrors reflecting in mirrors that so fascinated me beginning age 8 – always the reflection “tunnel/channel” had to bend into disappearance – it had to – I was in the middle trying to SEE where the reflections went

an absolute inability to accurately anticipate outcomes

I could only act upon what I could see – could never ANTICIPATE far enough (like with grand school – or in Ashland – so many times…)  I could not anticipate FAR ENOUGH = what outcomes could/would be – could not “see into the future” – potential REAL outcomes

++

— Is this connected to “altered sense of the passage of time”????  Impossible to disentangle (like Teicher writes) the impact of trauma = changes to the development of my brain from abuse, including higher cortex

++

— so many horrible, HORRIBLE things were done to me that I oculd not anticipate or avoid or control

the sense of always being surprised – every time – by an attack – like it had REALLY NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE! – like each time was the 1st time!  That has never made any kind of sense to me – how was that even possible?  Does a spectrum brain explain THAT??

would my life have always been in the present moment no matter what — w/o any abuse?  does my brain link events together differently by inherent design and this is NOT dissociation?

++

— Does life, then, just “happen to” an autistic brain person?  Is this a PATTERNING DIFFERENCE?  (sequence of time passing in order along a line = a pattern)

it did not even startle or surprise or scare me when I could have been cut in half in tucson school parking lot – it simply happened.  it occurred.  it had nothing to do with me.  i had no one to tell.  nobody cared.  i never even thought about it again ONCE until decades had gone by.  (same thing with my vision)

Had I been forced to take so much horror and suffering in stride – so bizarre and difficult of a life — that it served me NOTHING to notice even things that uncommon?

Probably so.  I lived in a different world — all alone — with the madwoman monster.

(and certainly NOBODY ever asked me about that life when I left home at 18.  Nobody really does care about ANYONE’s real life….)

++

— maybe autism kept me safe – prevented Mother from being able to change ME, to would me at my core

maybe autism does not let person from moving far away from the will to survive – maybe lots of what people see, then, is that primal will to be safe in the world, free from what feels unsafe, assaultive – dangerous to a core self

++++