Things You Think You Will Never Say

Sometimes you have everything to say, but no words to say it. That is how I feel. I feel a lot of things right now, like hurt, justified, sad, relieved. I sit wondering if I did the right thing, if my feelings have validity. Or if I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.


I'm not sure if it's just my Aspergers, but I need to feel like everyone likes me. But more important to me is family.


I am having the hardest time talking about everything I feel. I don't even know why this effects me as much as it does. There are so many reasons why it won't work, and I'm not deluding myself into thinking it will. I stopped being a kid who falls in love and thinks the the bills will be paid with smiles. As much as my life as not been about religion, it seems to be the large influence on my anxiety levels, on my happiness. How do you tell someone how much it hurts you, when it hurts them more. How you can't live with that always hanging over your head. I stopped being a kid who falls in love thinking they can change someone. So the proof is in the pictures, people don't change. They don't stop everything they believe in so you can date someone. They don't stop wanting you to have their life, not yours. I can't, with sanity, always sit and wonder when they will make you leave. When you just give up the fight, because you will, I don't want to have to be the surrender. Every young person tries to defy the status quo to prove a point, it's just a phase of life. I don't want a battle, I don't want to give a choice; I'm not ready for the outcome.

It's more than how much my feelings are hurt. It's more than being constantly rejected. More than thinking I don't deserve to be put in situations that makes me feel like total shit. A lot of it is about not wanting you to sit through my pain, having to deal with me. That is who I am, I get upset about things like this, and I can't help it. I will always make you feel guilty without even meaning to. I will always be the place between a rock and a hard place. Always be the reason your parents think you are going to hell. I will always feel hated for nothing in my control, and I will always want that control thinking it's all my fault I'm hated. Not only feeling hated by them, but feeling hated by you for feeling the way that I do. The more I get upset, the guiltier I feel, and the guiltier I feel the more upset I become. I eat myself alive with all of the circles I put in my head.

You will never see how badly and to what extent this means to me. I don't want you to, because it would only put you in the middle more. It's not what I want, and yet there is nothing I can do. I have no options, and I'm so unhappy with the way things are. I don't like to be in the way, I will gladly move. I can't be the reason there are problems. I can't be the problem. And it's not fair for you to ask me to be.

The "R" Word

    Today on my drive to work, I did as I always do, listen to 91.5. It was News Hour from the BBC, broadcasting a special about the mentally retarded, autistics, and everything near or around that topic. Apparently in response to some celebrities tweet calling Barack Obama a "retard". The guest star was a young man with down syndrome, and a few callers with children who have Autism. Story set, now on to what I'm writing about.

   I have no problem with the word retarded. I don't say this to offend anyone, I just don't find anything wrong with it, (I will explain why), I even use it myself...sometimes. I have a few points about why I don't think this word is "offensive" or misused. One of them requires an explanation of what one of the mothers said as a guest caller on the radio station. 

   One of the callers said her son had Autism, and didn't specify, it wasn't Aspergers, but a low functioning form. The host of the show asked her, "And your son, does he understand...or should I say feel the hurt behind words being used like this?" her response set me in to a fury. She said that no, he thinks all people are good, so I have to let him know who the "bad" people are. She said there was a neighbor that made a remark about him having Autism, so she had to inform him that he was a bad man, and he couldn't speak to him anymore. She said, every time someone says something negative about his condition, she will let him know why it's so bad, and why he shouldn't like people like that. The host responded, "What does he think about being Autistic?" She replied, "He thinks it's really cool, he thinks it's a good thing." 

   I was shocked. I was even more appalled, that this ignorant lady was offended and associated her son with the word retard. Yes, in the dictionary meaning retard means somewhat not up to par with what is "normal", but for you to sit there and be upset that someone used the word retard to offend someone, only means that you yourself, think your son is a retard. Even from what you said on the radio, your son absolutely does not think he is, and is more than content in believing that this world can be good, without the crazy negative thoughts you fill his head with. I'm ashamed of that lady, for always telling him people are bad. I can't even begin there, it just makes me so angry. The only reason I feel sorry for him, is because he has a mother like that. 

   Another reason I don't feel this word is offensive, is because we (Autistic community) say offensive things all the time. We have all been in the place where we realize maybe we shouldn't have said that because it hurt someone (or everyones) feelings. I'm (having AS) the last person to tell someone they are offensive. I probably offended someone today, maybe while you are reading this. So what, it happens every day. To be mean to a person for something they said, so publicly and with so much anger, is exactly what we don't want happening to us. 

   And the last, I don't believe in being PC, maybe because I have Aspergers, I don't know. I don't want all this negativity around words we can and cannot use. By the time I'm 30 I'm going to have to carry around a book filled with just words I can't use. No thanks. I do want you to know, that no matter what words I use, or how you think I use them I do have a good heart, and never meant any harm. I also believe that the world is good, and we can all learn to hear the meaning of a person before we hear the anger in ourselves.