Far Removed

You wake up and the world seems wrong.  It seems only slightly wrong at first but the more you look at it the more wrong it seems.  The colors, the light, the way things look when they're far away.  Everything seems off-model.  Different in a way that you can't explain. You go out.  It's too loud and everything costs attention.  And nothing works.  People are odd and even scary.  They build themselves entirely around ideas that you can't access the ability to care about no matter how hard you try.  You can't be sure you're connecting with them and in your uncertainty they leave you behind.  Whenever you're alone you feel as though something is about to happen.  You feel at once invisible and vulnerable. Years go by and this effect loses all subtlety.  You begin to feel pasted on the world, a design element from somewhere else.  The world for its part seems too big for its own good.  Its complexity feels pretentious...

I don't seek or collect experiences.  My life isn't episodic.  I'm not living a story.  I'm an edifice.  I stand in the elements and am affected and continue standing.  It's not an effort of will.  I am just a wall. This is in contrast to how I imagine others live.  How they consider their experiences, how they think about the content and character of the things that happen to them.  How they describe the arcs of their lives.  But maybe I'm wrong about that. I can only guess what other people's lives are like. I have no arc.  Or I am unconcerned with mine if I do have one.  Experiences flash and then dissipate.  I'm not interested in their memories.  Or in my life's posterity.  I let experiences happen and I do nothing most of the time.  Processing is no task since I am as well off if I decide not to do so as I might be otherwise .  Does this make sense?  I fear that it doesn't. If it doesn't it's...

I read something that scared me a little. Someone on a social media platform said: "I’m occasionally reminded that brevity is a part of kindness, politeness, civility. I can be saying all the right things but if I overwhelm someone with a huge block of text or long speech those words can feel invasive, entitled, draining." I don't know whether or not this describes a common attitude.  If it does, then I am dismayed.  I can be overtalkative.  This is common in people like me who are on the autism spectrum.  My social anxiety is related to the social difficulties my autism creates.  The above quote seems to confirm my fears that listening to me can be draining.  And it seems to support the idea that autistic people need to be quieter.  My talkativeness demonstrates interest, fondness, even trust.  I resent the implication that the way I am naturally seems invasive, entitled, or unkind.  That I seem uncivil on the rare occasion that I am comfor...

I have effectively retired from society.  I don't see friends and I am not close to many people.  I have few connections of any kind. I am enjoying this in big ways.  My mental health has been better.  My anxiety and depression feel almost under control.  Contributing to this, I believe, is informed self consideration.  I enter now into introspection with better understanding about what is happening to me.  I can self reflect more precisely and I feel better at understanding what I discover during self reflection.  This and a calculated withdrawal from social life have seen my overall mood improve somewhat. Said withdrawal remains in progress.  I continue to close avenues of distress.  Ways into suffering.  I've separated from social media as much as possible.  And I ignore the stressors therein when I must engage.  This has meant abandoning some relationships but that is OK.  My life has no social dimension.  ...

It's almost Halloween.  I don't care about holidays.  Though predictability comforts me, I get nothing from ritual.  The list of things that I want to do is very small, likewise the lists of ways I want to do those things.  Holiday celebrations generally involve socializing, which is something I don't want to do.  And they involve what seems to me to be feigned seriousness.   People decorate for many holidays.  The decorations are unimportant to me but they're predictable and I like that well enough.  But then people go from demonstrably ignoring whatever thing a particular holiday is supposed to be about to apparently pretending to care about that thing.  Sometimes the pretense is very transparent.  This is also predictable but I don't like it because it's disorienting.  It makes people seem mercurial.  Capricious in what they value.  I don't understand the change - or the pretense of change.  And I don't und...

I do not feel that I expressed myself very well in this post. I have been trying to get disability.  It's a fight.  The process seems meant to be demoralizing.  For fear of malingerers the system resists helping.  That's how it appears to me anyway, and I know naught of the politics at work.  I have been denied twice.  Now a man from a law firm is helping me.  He said that he believes my case is good because of my seizure disorder.  PTSD, social anxiety disorder, and autism spectrum disorder are not enough to make a case, it appears. I have to prove to the government that I am unable to work because of my conditions.  This is difficult.  And the SSA already disbelieves me on principle.  Or perhaps even by necessity.  The thought of pleading to them is daunting because it seems to me that they're disinclined to help from the beginning.  I picture the SSA arbiters as austere figures with crossed arms and deep frowns. I...

In an episode of Parts Unknown , Anthony Bourdain asks a group of young women about their hopes and dreams.  One of them begins to answer by saying, "I want to be satisfied with myself." Am I satisfied with myself?  I'm not sure I know what that means.  I'm thinking about it literally.  If I am in a position to evaluate myself, then whatever of me is doing the evaluating could also be evaluated.  If I decide that I am dissatisfied with myself, then I could also be dissatisfied with being dissatisfied and decide upon reevaluation that I am satisfied after all.  Perhaps I might be dissatisfied with my inability to evaluate myself as satisfactory.  What part of me evaluates me but is not identical to the part that is being evaluated? The idea falls apart.  I overthink it because I don't understand it.  It becomes too heavy and collapses.  I am bad at understanding this kind of language.  I don't know what myself  definitely is...

I think about my identity.  Sexuality, gender, race.  What does any description of my experience of selfhood amount to?  What defines me?  What bricks are in the wall of who I am? It seems to be important to many people that they be able to identify themselves with or as something and that they present to others pieces in their daily lives that are probative of a gestalt self-definition.  I am fascinated by philosophical explorations of personal identity and I've thought about myself in this context for a long time.  But I've never been able to muster any enthusiasm for the idea of arriving at one stable self-definition.  I don't care who I am, or even if I am definitely anyone.  This is an innate disinterest.  I'm not talking about self-annihilation here.  I'm describing weak propriate agnosticism.  I don't care what I mean by me or what relation I bear only to myself . I trust my senses as much as I must to get anything done....

Sometimes I write little things.  I'm going to put them here sometimes. === A sentinel bird, black with long, motionless wings, rocking in flight.  Alone at first and then others joined it to make a vertical flotilla.  The sky a phthalocyanine sea for cloud islands, cloud continents.  Storms coming seen far away.   The birds circling off those heaped shores watched for death like they knew.  Mim thought about knowing.  Minds couldn't be trusted to describe the world.  They left things out.  The circling birds perceived something Mim couldn't.  What was it like when the wind caressed your remiges or to smell a dead fox from high enough in the air that you looked like nothing but a crooked line? Mim only knew what she needed, only wondered about things that interested her.  She could grow up to be a bird studier and she could learn about what birds knew and maybe even how to describe a bird's whole life start to finish with...

I live near a liquor store.  I considered inquiring there about a job.  I thought about the people and situations I might encounter there.  I almost called the place but I didn't have the nerve.  I imagined an old man with a gruff voice and a strong regional accent answering the phone and I couldn't call. My personality is small, neat, and spare.  My diction is precise, my disposition is robotically polite, and I am shy.  I am disinclined to socialize and there is a litany of reasons why.  Among them are social anxiety disorder and Asperger's.  When I am forced to interact with others, I feel stiff doing so.  I proceed with no grace or confidence.  I am aware that people can often tell when someone is nervous or uncomfortable.  They must notice me then.  Though I can't tell whether they do or not. Sometimes people objectify me.  They think the ways that I talk and act are funny.  I seem to them like a milquetoast...