writing from the library

Well, I figure I have to write more and make this blog more interactive and having more stuff in it if I want to attract a readership. The Letters cannot be posted until I have written a full complete thought process out. I mean a topic here.....or bunch of things that are all related and can be tied into one letter.......I have many in the works....it's a bit of a challenge for me to just write extemporaneously without going from a specific idea I have......and that takes a while to write out.....I have to let my thoughts "ripen" meaning I write out some words, give the group of words a number....then after some time depending on the topic and how I am feeling and what is going on in my mind....I write more....I expand the draft. And when I feel like the Letter is finished, I give it a title, which can be another hangup sometimes....it has to come out just the way I want it and it can take me a while to come up with the exact words that I want.....heh this isn't a very interesting post I guess...just a lot of detail about my thinking and writing process.....but I'm autistic so that's just the way it happens for me.....whoever comments on mine, will get some sort of welcome post....like Welcome to my fortress online.......and I can tailor that to whether or not he/she/they want to be named in the welcome post (named meaning with their blogger name or screenname or whatever).....if a comment really makes me think, then I will do two things.....(well all comments would make me think but I mean if a comment makes me feel like doing another letter on that comment or idea that is presented on my blog) I will reply directly to the comment, and then I will take it and make a group of thoughts for it, give it a number....and then eventually turn it into a letter. I'll give a connection link for it, so whoever left the comment knows where the letter talking about it is coming from. Well that's all for now.......I have to run to my math class.......I love math........yay!

AI

3. Athena and Ivan Explain

The first section of this letter was taken directly from a comment I left on another blog.

I’ve been playing the role of a much watered-down autistic (and therefore diagnosed Aspie) character I created, for ages now. That character (Athena) is half of me. The other half (Ivan; I’m female so the half the world sees had to be the “higher functioning” for lack of better expression, female character)….the other half is just as equally me. I never act as half though, at least I try not to. I try to make the world believe I am a seamless whole. Because otherwise, I would have no inner fortress untouched by the world, nothing to retreat into. I’ll explain more of this story later(second paragraph). I’m glad to find a place where I can tell the truth about myself.

More about the double life. I have been living as the character Athena (who has had one other name before, that was Acie, the name I used in highschool and my first year of college, which was an utter fiasco in itself. But that is for another post.) But I do not live only as Athena. I am also making decisions as Ivan sometimes. Though no one knows that besides myself. If something is really going to affect my feeling safe and comfortable, I try to think about it from both of my perspectives, Athena and Ivan. Sometimes one half will feel uncomfortable. Depending on how comfortable Ivan feels though, Athena decides to do whatever it is I-Ivan and I-Athena are thinking of at that time. I used to try and pretend that I had no other half, that it was only the "high functioning" outer character that was concerned. This got me into a whole lot of trouble. I say that because while I was doing well in school (until after 11th grade) I was starting to feel the strain of not allowing my inner self (Ivan) to express feelings of frustration, anger, hurt, alienation, etc, that I was carrying and accumulating over past years before 11th grade. All throughout grade school, and even at my special school that I attended for eight years, I had had a lot of trouble making friends. In fact, I will go as far as to say that the large majority of my efforts to engage my peers in conversation were more or less fruitless. I don't really consider monosyllabic responses to questions, as meaningful conversation. I'll make a separate blog for that later. But for this letter, suffice it to say that I was very hurt by my classmates' evasiveness in conversation. What were they afraid of, I wondered. Maybe it was the way I dressed. At any rate, I knew that feeling hurt would get in the way of my studies, so as Athena (Acie at the time), I dumped those feelings on Ivan. That, I would later learn, was to be only a temporary "fix" to the problem. The rest of this story remains to be told in other letters, about various topics where this one may come up again.

AI

2. Hurricane Ivan Act 2

Hurricane

Whomever had the idea to judge others by social presentation,
I wish I could tear you down.

Whomever had the notion that everyone wanted to conform,
I wish I could destroy you.

Whomever said to me "no you can't,"
I wish I could blow you away.

Perhaps one day I will do all of these things
Metaphorically at least, if not literally.

Well, this definitely shows how I feel about society trying to impose its norms on me. Dressing a certain way, behaving in a way that women are expected to behave in this society, believing what one is expected to believe or say, is absolute poppycock. I (Ivan) wrote this after my mom told me something about what I should wear or how my hair should be kept, or something to that effect. This poem was a result of my irritation at her comment.

Ivan.

1. The First Letter

hey
this is my first blog
I am on a quest to find more of the truth about autism and also to tell the truth about myself. I do not want to hide forever. The hiding isn't meant as being ashamed of my autism, this I am clearly NOT. But I've been hiding about how challenged I really am, about certain things, like knowing to ask my Mom if she needs help when she comes home, things like that. I pretend to "get it" because I've tried indirectly hinting that I might not get it, and she jumps all over me, figuratively. She's told me that if I really do have such and such problem, that maybe I am not ready for independence or real life or even college. This is why I hide those things from my family. But here...I don't have to tell anyone I know about this blog if I don't wish to.

The Fortress is my inner world, where I retreat into my thoughts, when I have overload issues. I used to go into my closet with a discman very often in grade school, when I came home. In fact, that was probably one of the first things I did when I came home. I need to escape....from the real world around me. I loved school, but I needed to destimulate from the school environment. All the classwork, class discussions, people moving around, etcetera. Wow, it's really amazing how these words are coming out because I am right now in my fortress, thinking of this, yet I can catch these words into this blog because I am sitting here, detached, allowing myself to type and type and type away. I am not even really looking at my hands now. I am trusting that they will type the words I am thinking, without me looking at them. Hey I could use this idea for driving! Trusting my hands to do what my brain commands, even as my eyes are not directly focusing on them.

Telling the truth when I've hidden for years, "behind the shroud of" (eh, not the best words but for now they will have to do) Athena my higher functioning half....is making me a bit nervous at the moment but I know it is for the better, in the long run. It feels horrible, to keep this kind of secret for so long, because it has been a very heavy weight to carry for so long.

AI