My friend has been in my living room for almost two months.

I find that my regular patterns are interrupted. I'm used to being able to relax in the manner I want to. I'm slowly going nuts, and getting angrier.

The loud gum chewing doesn't help matters.

Ugh.

Anxiety, moving machines and freaking out

I had a meltdown today.

I hear a lot of people use that word pretty often in Aspergian communities, and I'm always hesitant to go there. I tend to shut down a bit, or get snappy or overwhelmed, but it takes a special brew of circumstances to go beyond that.

My parents have been here all week, and that's been a good thing. We've actually only had mediocre logistical stress, and we've been having fun. But the constant stimulation, the constant need to be conversationally on, the constant new situations and trying to direct via convoluted GPS instructions - My stores of calm have been getting slowly depleted, beyond the level where normal things could pick that level back up.

Tonight, after another long day, I had to jump my partner's car. After dark, and in the rain, and not really knowing what I was doing. Then I had to navigate myself onto the highway and to a place I had never been before, using my GPS in a car where I've never used it before, and without an exact address. In the dark and rain.

Jumping the car was stressful, moreso because I had to quickly pull the cables off in the correct order and hop in my car and get out of the way so that my partner could take off right away. (The battery was a side problem - the original is that the filter got clogged and the car was sluggish and stalling out in park.) I got my car out of the way and began to fiddle with the GPS, trying to figure out where to plug it in. I got that done and got on the road, and had to pull over again to turn on the voice option, which had been shut off.

The paving job downtown isn't the greatest, so I had a hard time knowing which lane i was in. That was stressful. So was having to cut over two lanes because the GPS lied to me. and then, once i got on the highway, i had a hard time seeing and was surrounded by trucks, and i just wanted the whole situation to disappear, and i was rapidly melting into flight, but i couldn't, because i had to safely navigate my vehicle in treacherous conditions.

i started crying and wheezing. i didn't want to put myself in even more danger, but here i was having a full panic attack and i was hurtling down a rainy highway, with no place to pull off. We were on large overpass ramps with no shoulder.

i just started screaming - a gutteral rage sound from deep within my psyche. I kept that up as I lined myself up with a large truck in front of me and told myself that i had to do only one thing - stay lined up with that truck. Then I would know that i was in a true lane. Somehow, that continued bellow pulled up the last bit of strength from the core of me, and extended it throughout my body, giving me the wherewithall to stop crying and slow my breath and truly focus on the road.

As soon as I reached my destination, it flowed out. It was gone. My partner drove home and I mostly tilted back in the seat with my eyes closed, trying to pretend that the world didn't exist.

Let's talk about sex

I feel like my lack of a sex drive is ruining a lot of my relationships, or my chances at them.

There is only one person I enjoy having sex with, and I think that it's more of a spiritual thing, and because he enjoys it so very much and it makes me happy to make him happy. I don't care if I get off. I do enjoy playing with sensation and skin and impact play, but if we bonded equally well through a different ritual, I would not mind. I get to "play" sexual in that relationship - tap into a fantasy where I am actually a highly sexual person, and because there is power and ritual behind that, I can get into it.

I do enjoy touch and cuddling and intimacy. My idea of a really good time is a nice massage. But there's something about sex that shines a spotlight on all of the things I don't like about human nature. I feel like I am turned sideways to the universe at that moment.

So sexuality in the majority of my relationships has always been about weighing several concerns. a) Not forcing myself to do things I don't want to do. b) keeping the other person happy. c) Having the cuddling and touching I enjoy without it being sexual.

I am in a new relationship, and this is all becoming really apparent. He's highly sexual. I'm not. I want to fall asleep and cuddle, and he wants sex. I give him enough to keep him from feeling unwanted, but i feel like i'm putting my desire to not do things i don't want to do ahead of his happiness - and it's starting to manifest in hurt comments from him.

I find him attractive and he smells right. I enjoy kissing and cuddling and even doing impact play. I generally feel no desire to go beyond that. That's probably not going to work long term, and that's disappointing to me.

Even more disappointing is the fact that I have someone that I essentially share my life with who goes off and gets sex elsewhere, and now i'm freaking out because this person spends days at a time away from me. I've lost intimacy and friendship because i can't provide the one big thing that people seem to really lose their heads over. I wish I could just enjoy it, or find a solution that worked.

Of course, it does occur to me that maybe i don't really love anyone but the one person i click with, and that's where i'm stuck. maybe it's not about sex. but i don't know? i've never felt comfortable with sex - i've always had a weird reaction to it. it doesn't seem to be a need for me in the way that it is for others.

I feel the world with such shattering intensity that sometimes it's hard to believe that I can get up in the morning and go about my day without getting pulled into some emotional and sensory storm and getting lost on the wind.

My daily battle is to use this energy to further my own life goals instead of hindering them. I am only moderately successful. But I strive. It will be worth it to be successful, so that I can spend more time feeling, experiencing and doing, and not be trapped in a place of survival and panic.

I am feeling pretty good about where I'm at right now - just have to clean up the lingering financial mess and move on.

Of course, listening to a powerful song that hits on many of my emo triggers is not helping me get off on a good start to my day. Or maybe it is, in sending me off awake.

Music

I like music that has unexpected key changes, intense base lines... music that soars and resonates. I'm a sucker for metal band power ballads, for instance. I was raised early on to appreciate many different genres, and got a lot of classical and classic rock under my belt, in particular.
The music that stays in heavy rotation tends to really emotionally resonate. If I'm listening to music for background, it needs to be light and frippery and low in volume. If you take one of these frippery songs and blast it, I go into shutdown mode. If you take one of my heavy emotional songs and blast it, particularly if I'm not expecting it (like "Uninvited" the other day at work), I had to find a solitary place for a moment to experience the song, and hoped that I wouldn't get pried away by interaction or a task. Now I've been listening to it a lot throughout the day.

Whoops, tense issues there. Can't be bothered to go back and parse that out, because this blog is mostly about writing the stream of thoughts in my head and not obsessively editing for grammar. I still had to make that disclaimer, though. :)

Ah yes, music. I can enjoy happy stuff, but it still tends to have the unexpected key changes and nice beats. 70s era disco diva songs are surprisingly fertile (and gay) grounds. Donna Summer's cover of MacArthur Park is a good example there, as is Dancing Queen by Abba. I can get away with liking stuff like this in public because i'm a big queer-bo and so are most of my friends and many of my co-workers.

(I just got completely distracted by a 2006 performance of MacArthur Park by Donna Summer on youtube. Really, gonna finish this entry some time tonight.)

Or maybe not. Another day.

Aspie experiences

I was down in the basement doing laundry, folding clothing alone in a dimly florescent lit room, when I wondered what it would be like if I wrote a book on my aspie experiences.

Would it be a smooth narrative, or broken into sections of stories around particular topics? "Driving" could be quite a large section.

So could "finances" and "using the telephone."

Of course, I'd want to talk about the good stuff, too, although that seems like the stuff that's actually harder to put into words. It would be worth the effort, though, because so much is focused on the disability and not so much on the amazing perception powers one has.

I might use this blog to test some of that writing out, so if anyone out there is actually reading this, you have something to look forward to other than whining. Oh, and please don't steal my material.

Moments passing by

I am very stuck on moments that cannot happen again.

By this, I mean that I get upset when something was supposed to happen and it didn't, and because of the nature of the thing, there is no chance to experience it the same way again.

I'll take the current example. We had said months ago that we wanted to have a movie marathon of a series that our friends had never seen before. I was really excited about sharing this experience with them. I had seen the movies already, but since i had introduced them to the books and urged them to read them, i was really excited about all of us seeing the movies together and getting to see their initial reactions.

They went ahead and watched the first two on their own. I was disappointed, but urged them to watch the rest with us.

Now they want to watch them all alone first, and say, "we'll all watch them together soon!"
a) I don't believe it. Not that their intentions aren't sincere, but it just won't happen. Without the motivation of seeing the movies, the time will not be made. I can almost bet everything on this.
b) That feels stale. They will already know the movies; the experience won't be the same.

Irrational spinning off brain is so upset that I don't even want to hear them talk about the movies; they ruined a moment for me and now it's too late. I will never have that moment with them ever, ever again. Watching the movies with them later on will only remind me of this and it makes me not want to do it.

Rationally, I don't know if I should be feeling upset. And I would get *something* out of watching them with them again.

Argh. I don't know if I'm fucked up about this or not.