Just what the title says, pretty much.
1. I am terrified of clowns, have been since I was a kid.
2. I have slept in a cemetery, and more than once. Quite a few times, actually. I used to live very close to a cemetery so at night when I couldn’t sleep I would get up and go for a walk down to the cemetery. After that, all I remember is waking up still there in the morning.
3. I hate escalators. Because for some reason, whether it is going up or down, as soon as I step on to an escalator I trip over my feet. There have actually been incidents when I step on to an escalator, I trip and end up falling back…or sideways. Either way it is always awkward and painful. So I tend to avoid them as much as I can when I am out.
4. I love food and eating and just…well, food, pretty much. But I hate eating in public. This used to be in all public places, just anywhere that is not my home but now there are a few places where I feel reasonably comfortable to eat. But, really, I expend a lot of energy on not eating in public. It has got nothing to do with the actual act of eating. It’s just the fact that I am in public. I am a person with severe social anxiety so that probably has a lot to do with it. If I am out for most of the day, it does not matter how hungry I am, I will not get anything to eat until I am in a private place. I want to change this, however, and I have tried, but every time I get a meal in public I cannot physically ( whether it be food which requires the use of cutlery or anything that can be consumed using one’s hands, like a muesli bar ) bring the food to my mouth because my hands will start shaking so violently that I end up fumbling cutlery, dropping plates, spilling drinks, or dropping the food/meal. But, hey, I am working on this…well, “problem” I guess one can call it. And there are days when I hate myself for not being able to…to just eat in public, days when I feel like crying because I am so tired of being so scared and so confused and on edge all the time. But then there are days when I will make progress which inverts everything in that I feel excited and incredibly happy and optimistic.
5.
When I talk to people, and if we get on to the topic of relationships, a lot of them have asked me “Do you have a boyfriend?” when I respond with “No”, they tend to ask “Why not?” or “Why is that?” or stupid things like “A girl like you should have a boyfriend” ( and wtf does that even mean ). I always answer with anything ranging from “Um…I don’t know. Because I just don’t” to “I don’t know a lot of guys except my mates, and…well, I would not date them because they’re my mates” or “I dunno, guess I’m just not in a rush”. Each one of those responses are valid and true but I also have my own private reason/s as to why I do not have a boyfriend; the kind of reason/s that I will never have the courage to disclose to anyone in a face – to – face interaction. But I can say it here; because when I write I feel like I can say anything. It’s because I’m f–king scared, alright. I think a lot of people are scared to be with another person, to be intimate and vulnerable and to be with someone in every way, and I will say right now that I am no exception. I think about relationships a lot. I think about my friends a lot. I think about acquaintances a lot. I am completely open to a relationship or dating someone, but it is not something I would jump straight in to. There have been times when I hang out with a friend, usually in a public place, and in that moment with that particular friend all I want is to enjoy his company, to hear everything he says, to laugh with him, to look at him and remember that I am with him right there, wherever we are, because I care about him. But more often than not I find that I cannot do any of that because I get distracted by everything around us. The lights. The smells. The noise. The people. And then my attention shifts away from my friend to my hands when they start to shake, to the heat in my cheeks when I feel them start to flush, to my head when it starts to pound and rattle, to that inner voice imploring me “keep it together, keep it together, don’t freak don’t freak, not now, not here. Not in front of him. But so many times I lose it. Sometimes the friend that I am with is kind, he does not look for the nearest exit. He stays with me, and that means so much. But other times with a different friend he gets embarrassed, then angry then he’ll start yelling at me to “cut it out, you’re embarrassing me”, even though I’m trying to stop. When I get that kind of reaction from a friend, it fuckin hurts. A lot. So…well, if it feels that way with a friend than I do not want to know how it would feel with a boyfriend, if he reacted the same way. I can’t do that to myself, and I can’t in good conscience do that to him. I have read about people with Social Anxiety Disorder and ASD ( Autism Spectrum Disorders ) in relationships, and many of them have expressed that they are “lucky enough” to have partners who/m are caring, and patient and understanding. Okay, yeah, that sounds nice and all, but I think it is unfair of me to expect all of that from any guy. I think it is unfair of me to go in to a relationship when I know that he is never ( or not as much as he may want to ) going to be able to do the kind of things with me that couples do, like go out to movies or a restaurant because I’ll get anxious and panicked before we even get there, or that we will run in to problems like talking on the phone because I am literally terrified of answering and making calls, I’ll probably end up “missing his calls” because when ( or if ) he calls my hands will tremble so hard that I will drop the phone several times and by the time I get a firm grip on it, it’s stopped ringing. I am not completely pathetic, I know that; believe it or not I do have confidence in myself and I believe that every day I am taking steps forward in dealing with and overcoming all the challenges that come with Social Anxiety and ASD. But really, it is one thing to deal with it myself. It is another matter entirely to expect someone else to put up with it; I cannot do that without feeling guilty.
6. One of the few times I have cried and it really, really hurt, the kind of crying that shakes one’s whole body and makes one forget all the good things that have ever happened in their life, is when I came home from my acting class one night, my Mum ( all of my family were there, too ) told me that our kitten, Smudge, had been hit by a car literally hours before I got home and the driver took off. My sister was there at the time, she turned away for a minute, probably less than that but it was enough for Smudge to take off. No, I do not believe at all that it was her fault either. But she is the one who ran out on to the road, picked up his body and just sat there in the middle of the road screaming and crying, she told me that he was still alive when she got to him, that his body twitched and convulsed in her arms for a few minutes before he died. I remember when I came home and my Mum told me what had happened, the first thought I had was “She’s joking. She must be. Please, please don’t let it be true. Please let him be alive”, but here’s the thing : my mother is not a cruel person. She would not joke about something like that, I loved that kitten. He used to sleep on my desk amongst all my paperwork and my books, he used to try and jump up on my lap when I was typing on my laptop at my study desk, he used to climb all over me in the middle of the night, he used to pee in my bed, sometimes I would wake up with a mouthful of fur because he was a cheeky little shit and for some reason he loved sleeping on my face. I would always lament to my Mum “He’s spoilt, that’s what he is. Did you know he f–king followed me to the toilet again? And then when I shut the door in his face because I wanted some freaking privacy for once, he had the audacity to just sit right outside and meow and scratch the door like the demanding little shit that he is!” and my mum would laugh and shrug it off, because she knew that I did not really care about any of that. So she would not joke about Smudge dying by hit and run. On that day after Smudge was hit, we did not take his body to the vet straight away. Instead my Mum wrapped his body in an old blanket, placed him into a laundry basket then placed the basket in to our laundry room downstairs. So when I got home from my acting class, my Mum bought his body out to me. Still, before she pulled the blanket back and I saw the way his body was twisted and broken, even though he was not literally broken, I kept telling myself that he would be alive. But then I saw him and, well, there was no mistaking the fact that he was dead. Each person in my family are different in the way that we express grief. My mum cries quite openly, she was crying as she bought his body out to me. My brother was crying, my mum told me that he broke down completely when he heard about Smudge then more when he saw him, that she had never seen him cry so hard. My sister who was with him when he was hit, she was physically spent from crying and screaming at that time but she was still hurting, that much I could see. My youngest sister seeks affection from loved ones when she grieves, she cries just as hard and for just as long and she needs to be hugged or kissed on the cheek, and she gets that from my mum. Me, I do not like to cry in front of my family. I do not like to be touched. I am not receptive to gestures of comfort or sympathy. I want to get away from everyone and grieve in private, I want to cry my eyes out alone. But on that night my mum would not let me; she asked me “Are you alright, Leesh?” and I could not say “Yes” because I knew that she would hear the truth in my voice, so I shrugged and tried to get in to my room away from her. I turned away from Smudge’s body in her arms and tried to get in to my room and shut the door before she saw me cry. But my mum would not let that happen, for some reason she would not let me pretend that I was fine. She grabbed me and pulled me in to a hug. My body went rigid as soon as she did that, I felt it and she felt it. I wanted to push her away but I didn’t because in that moment when she was too close and too intrusive, I realized that she wanted me to comfort her. I think she just…needed me. So I didn’t push her away. Later my mum put the basket with Smudge’s body inside, back in to the laundry room downstairs, then went upstairs along with all my siblings. It was really late by then so we were all going to bed. But as I mentioned earlier my bedroom was downstairs and so was the laundry room. I was tired, really tired, the kind where you feel so tired that you don’t know if you’re actually tired or drained or both. But I could not sleep because my room was right across from the laundry room. And Smudge was in there. Alone. He was in there in some ratty old blanket, and I remember that night it was cold, and all I could think was “He’s alone in there. Someone needs to be with him. Someone needs to stay with him. He…he has no one”. Logically I knew he was dead, I knew that. But it did not matter to me. I could not shake the feeling of guilt and the sense that it was just so wrong to leave him in there all night by himself. So I climbed out of bed, grabbed my sheet and blanket, went in to the laundry room. I lay the sheet out first on the tile floor, pulled Smudge’s basket over so that he was right next to me. Then I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and lay down facing Smudge. It was a bit cold, the floor was hard and uncomfortable but I felt a sense of ease. I felt calm. I don’t know, I guess I had just gotten so used to him taking over my bed when he was alive that when he was dead I could not deal with the change.
7. I learned a lot about myself while I was in acting school. I learned that people see more in me than I see in myself. I learned that I see more in other people than they see in themselves. I learned that I am capable of so many things that for years before I enrolled in to acting school, I never thought I would ever be capable of let alone achieve. I learned that, sometimes, the doubts that I had about myself are for nothing. I will be completely honest here, before I got in to acting I had little to no confidence. I was not confident enough even to wear dresses or skirts because I would try them on and feel ridiculous and stupid, I used to walk around with my head down, arms folded, hair all down to cover my face, shoulders hunched thinking “Just don’t look at anyone, don’t look at anyone and they will not talk to you, then I won’t make a fool of myself”. In classes my classmates used to sit together, all in a circle and then I would go sit on the other side of the room away from them. Not because I hated them, it never had anything to do with them. Only because I was too scared to sit with them. But they…far out. They were amazing. Every time they would say to me “Elisha, what are you doing all the way over there? Come sit with us!” and when I would mumble and stutter, they would brush it off and be like “Get over here, girl!” So I would.
After class sometimes they would make plans to go out for drinks, and I never believed that I would be invited so when we all went to leave and they would walk one way to go to…wherever it is they were going, I would walk the other way to go home. But then they would call out to me “Where do you think you’re going?” and when I would respond with “Um…home?” then they would ask “You don’t want to come out with us?” I could not figure out why they would think that I didn’t want to hang out with them so all I would say was “Um…I didn’t think I was invited?” At that they would laugh, walk right over to me, grab my hand and actually drag ( well, not literally drag but I assume you know what I mean ) me along with them. They would shake their heads and say things like “Jesus, girl, you need to stop doing that. Stop thinking that when we go out you are not included. Why the f–k would we not want *you* to come?” And…wow. I cannot describe how much that meant to me, how those words stayed in my mind for hours, how it made me want to try harder to be the kind of friend that they wanted, to not screw it up. It also increased the fear that I already had about being friends with them; because the more you care about a person or persons, the closer you get to someone the more you worry about losing them. If you don’t have friends in the first place than you have no one to lose.
When my classmates organized birthday parties, or halloween parties, or came up with any social event I would look at them and think …“Am I invited? Oh, God. I don’t even know anymore”. But they would walk right up to me and say “You’re coming, alright? I am not taking no this time, Lish. I want you to come”, and I would just stand there with this stupid look on my face and be like “Oh, um…well. I was not sure, I mean you don’t have to invite me if you don’t want to-” and they would always get mad at that and cut me off with “I’m not inviting you because I have to, you know that stop trying to make excuses to not come. I better see you there”, and that was it. I never argued with them after that. The point that I really knew that they all considered me a friend and cared about me is when I planned a birthday dinner for my 20th. I invited every single person in my class which amounted to over 20 easily and the whole time I was afraid that not one of them would turn up. Each day that passed was another day closer to my birthday dinner, and every one of those days I felt increasingly anxious and worried and fucking scared, to the extent that I nearly cancelled the whole thing. But my Mum would not let me. And that is just one small example of why I love my mother because as it turned out everyone came. Every single person that I invited. That…that blew me away. That made such an overwhelming impact on me, I was so relieved and excited and still in a state of “I…wow. Wow. I don’t even know now. Like, what, what, what do I say? How do I show them what this means to me?” But I don’t think they needed me to. I think they knew, somehow. So I will always be grateful to them for befriending me, for not letting me push them away, for being able to look past all my insecurities and still take what I had to offer. They are all a big part of why I am the person that I am today. I am not saying that my confidence would not have improved or progressed without them but I wonder how things would have turned out if I had never met them.
Aspergian*101 