Today, April 2nd, is Autism Awareness Day.  Personally, I prefer Autism Acceptance Day, so I'm running with that.  Many of you who read my personal ramblings on this blog may not understand the ramifications of that one word change, so let me encapsulate it.  As a woman diagnosed as "on the spectrum" I can speak to my own issues of awareness, ( Read more... )

Another day, another discovery and now another journal entry to try and put it all in perspective.  As many of you probably know by now (simply because I keep going on and on about it), I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome about a year and a half ago.  I learn more about  myself every day, I've learned to listen better to my body and how to ( Read more... )

Yesterday, my niece and I went to the LACMA to take in an installation of women surrealists.  We ogled at the people ogling the big shrink-wrapped rock (if you're in El Lay, you might know about it because it's been blocking traffic for the better part of a fortnight).  That isn't why we went though--and it isn't what we left with.  We were both ( Read more... )

I've had this image in my head today, as I crawled up out of my despair and forced myself to work yet another day.  It's tough to be where you feel not only out of place, unnecessary, unwanted, but also...unsafe.  Despite how awful that feels, I can't quite get my head around a solution--because there is no better place to go, no wiser choice, no ( Read more... )

I'm actually a little proud of this.  Thinking about taking it to an open mic, because it's meant to be performed, and looks a little forlorn sitting there on the page as text.  My journey to identity after my diagnosis continues to be excruciating, but this helps me get my voice back.  Peace, friends.

( A is for... )

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Coming from behind the mask that I had always used to hide my Asperger's Syndrome has been a very freeing thing.  It has given me a new chance at life.  It has cost me much, but at the same time those losses were things burdening me with the mask of social normalcy anyway.  It's interesting to me, that in the months following diagnosis (finally ( Read more... )

Earlier this week I wrote about a student who is weighing heavily on my mind.  There's an irony to that, he probably doesn't give me a second thought after he leaves, unless it's to curse me out when he cracks his book to study or wrestle with homework--me, I'm expending a lot of energy trying to figure out how to reach him before it's too late, ( Read more... )

Making a conscious effort to sit with some gratitude this morning, because I've got some bad energy following me around this morning.  It's that time in the semester when the students have gotten to know me a bit, and I start to see which ones I've connected with, which ones don't give a fuck and which ones have written me off ( Read more... )

My friend had some more questions for me--they were hard to answer, so of course I got right on that.

When my son was much, much younger, he had a terror of getting things wrong. I’ve written about this elsewhere on LJ, but I did ask him why, when he was older. It wasn’t the fear of the consequences - in many cases, there were no consequences. There ( Read more... )

 When I was three I had a nightmare.  I don't remember what it was, but I do remember being allowed to stand at my mother's side while she did the ironing late one night--something she didn't do during the day with several small children underfoot.  It must have been a terrible dream, because I refused to go back to bed, and stood there, hypnotized ( Read more... )