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[camille13512]

Hi Decimal, I think, normal people or not, we are probably disappointed more often than we would like when we reach out and explain to others. About "normal stuff" and "normal people", what is "normal" though? If you think about things that challenge you, I don't think that is anything inherently abnormal. It is unfortunate that something beautifully unique is also accompanied by painful loneliness. By writing those thoughts out, I believe that you are connecting to yourself if not one day someone else who may resonate with you. I think your thoughts are precious, and it is a great thing that you try to organize and explain them.

[sanmagic7]

i'm with camille here.  what the frick is normal anyway?  there are images all around us to show us what we're supposed to think/believe is normal, but those are images after all.  not reality.  2 dimensional images are not 3-dimensional people.  photoshop and other technology makes it even less real.  i don't believe in the reality of anything i see on a screen anymore, especially in advertising.

so, normal, abnormal, crazy - they all take on subjective stances.  i've been called crazy many times in my life.  does that make it so?  who knows?  all i can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.

that whole thing about death and what's the point of anything if we're all going to die anyway is pretty big.  we probably all have to come to some kind of relationship with it that suits us as individuals.  all i know for me is that i'll stay alive till my job here is done, then i'll leave.  simplistic, maybe, but it works for me.

love and hugs, sweetie.

[DecimalRocket]

These last few days I've been deleting each new thread or post I make. I don't know. I feel more emotionally numb than usual. A lot calmer, but just . . . listless. Other people could use up the space and attention that I don't ask for anyway. They need more help than me.

My ideas and support don't seem to do much for others either. Maybe they do more than I think, but I have trouble telling what people are feeling towards me when they don't say it directly each time.

They just seem to go on to continue their worries about themselves without replying— and well, they need that more than what I need. Without that acknowledgement, I can't seem to tell if they read it.

So I don't see much use to hang around other threads for others either.

What isn't directly said to me often doesn't exist, and well, maybe I don't feel I exist.

Who knows? Maybe I'll just delete this post later.

[ah]

Rocket,

Sigh. You know sometimes I wish my everyday thoughts weren't as hard to understand and often takes several paragraphs to explain. Other people my age either told me it was too complicated and gave up or idealized my smarts too much. Sometimes I wish I can like thinking about the normal stuff so more people would come by, but I'm not normal.

I've been getting that my whole life, too. Ever since I started talking, it's been:
"Whoa, that's interesting... who told you that, mommy?"
"You're heavy. Lighten up, man."
"That's too complicated for me."
"Wow, you're reading a book! Is it for a school project?" (Me: "No, I just like this one, it's a good one about..." Response: blank stare, turns away, enthusiastically chats with someone else like I'm contagious)

You and I are both a bit different, that's for sure. We're not totally average and it isn't easy. You too have cognitive disabilities, they're just at the other end of the bell curve - not below average, but just as difficult at times. It's not easy, I know, being different can leave you feeling isolated and misunderstood.
It's left me feeling like a bit of a freak much of my life. You're not alone, Rocket, I'm right there with you. There are others like you and me. Not many, maybe, that's just the way it seems to be for some reason, but we're out there.

Years ago I was chatting to someone who was a comparative stranger, and all of a sudden she looked straight at me and said "Aha! You're one of us." I didn't ask what she meant, and she didn't explain. We both knew, we recognized each other. We were both of that type.

These last few days I've been deleting each new thread or post I make. I don't know. I feel more emotionally numb than usual. A lot calmer, but just . . . listless. Other people could use up the space and attention that I don't ask for anyway. They need more help than me.

I hope you don't delete any more of them. For me, your posts are meaningful and thought-provoking. I'd miss a lot if you delete them.
And you know, even if what you wrote was uninteresting and silly, still I'd miss a lot if your words weren't there. I'd miss you. You don't have to succeed at anything or do anything a certain way in order to be worthy of a place here, or to be in my thoughts. You are because... because... well, I can't explain it. You just are because you're you.

For me, I can say these days I often don't have the strength to say a lot. It's a question of how weak I am, how hopeless I feel. I have about the strength of a wilted parsnip at the moment, parsnips don't talk much.

The need to be told and shown what others feel about me otherwise I assume the worst - I have that too  people who aren't traumatized have a hard time understanding that one.
I bet we all often feeling totally undeserving, exhausted, wasting others' time, unseen, unheard, jumpy, useless. And change comes very slowly... it trickles in gradually, it has to get through all the veils and walls of our past fearful habits. And past all these names the ICr gives us but they're all false, they're all lies. You have an important place here and you matter.

And,

I think I know the feeling you described very strongly... that terror of annihilation, it haunts me, especially at night. It's a harsh, cold, terrible feeling. Like the vacuum of space. It's beyond words, that feeling that I don't exist at all.

I think you, by having Rocket's body and Rocket's mind, are very much here. You exist in such a unique way all your own that I can feel you all the way to the other side of the world. Your words jump up at me. That's something that only you do.
To me you exist, no doubt about it. You exist when you feel confident in your own skin, and you exist when you feel you're gone.

These feelings have a terrorizing aspect to them, I think (in my experience) that's related to anxiety and to being in danger. But they also have the existentially benign, beneficial, interesting, real, in-depth, unusual, quirky aspect of reality to them. Analysis of what it means to be "me", to be a person, a conscious being in the world. I hope you never stop exploring that one.
I read somewhere that this exploration is like walking on the edge of a precipice. The existential questions, when asked well, lead you almost to nihilism but never really take you all the way there because it's You who is asking them, who is figuring things out in Your own unique subjective way. But unsettling they continue to be. Sometimes exhilarating, other times terrifying maybe. I personally think that's part of the price one pays for being a person. For thinking abstractly. It's part of the rules of the game.

Maybe.

[DecimalRocket]

Thanks for that, Ah.  . I don't know why but I've been reading your post repeatedly for what seems like over 30 times. For some reason, each time I read it I'm still touched by your kindness. Honestly, I'm overcome by the rush of emotions that are surfacing. It's an emotional mix pot -- lots of different emotions from positive, negative, strong, or subtle.

I'm pretty sensitive, and I guess I feel a little shy at how sensitive I am sometimes. But it's an overwhelming relief to be able to let these emotions out rather than being numb. I welcome it more than before.

I'd say more, but I'm feeling a little too shy about the issue for now.  Let's just say that my confusion and shyness  of people here are both caused by lack of intellectual understanding of them with more flexible social rules as much as trauma.

[DecimalRocket]

I tagged along to my parent's office since I needed to stay with them so they can drive their car to my therapy today. I met a friend of my dad, a professor of business in his 20s.

It all began when I had a laugh with other office people about the swear words I learned in the other official language of this country. Heh. I'd manage to find a way to make fun with humor that involves taking things unexpectedly literally, which isn't that hard because I genuinely misunderstand things..

Then with him, I talked about topics ranging from business, rockets, biology, adventure fiction, learning theories, tv shows, weird food practices and more for more than an hour. He was socially smart while I was more technically smart, and so we offered a lot to each other.

I suddenly feel a lot better after. I can adapt to people's interests since my interests range so much, but there's a special type of relating to someone when we can both connect and relate a wide range of topics together. I guess that's why I feel so lonely often even with real life friends now. I have more of my relationship needs to be met for emotional vulnerability and fun, but I'm lonely for intellectual equals.

I don't want to be the smartest and most curious person in the room all the time.

[Hope67]

Hi Decimal Rocket,
Your discussion with that person today sounds really great.  Stimulating and interesting, and it's great that you felt you complemented one another's interests.
Hope 

[DecimalRocket]

Thanks Hope. 

...
I've been wondering why I've been feeling so frustrated at people recently, and I realized it was because of another flashback. I'd never force people to reach out to me more than they'd have the energy for, but little me's pretty persistent about it.

I just keep remembering trying to suppress my frustration to ask for help at all and not be such a burden on my parents. I guess little me has learned the idea of asking for help, but understands it in more black and white terms — in that enough people should be absolutely available all the time.

I guess when I was a kid, I wasn't old enough to understand a more gray area of this and I guess that's alright. The usual people who've come to visit my journal are a lot more stressed and busy these days, so I'm learning to nurture my own little self myself and still fully grieve.

I wish someday I can spend a whole day without the need of someone to listen. I've spent about two to three years learning how to ask for help and trust people instead of relying on myself all the time. Now it's the opposite again.

But well, time to create a balance, huh? Heh. Funny how that happens.

[DecimalRocket]

All this time I've been afraid I'm crazy. I'm considering ideas I haven't before, and I remember in a math book I read, they talked about equations that are proved to be impossible to solve.

If I think about it — to know I'm sane or crazy is often judged by how I'm held within the major beliefs of society. But what if society is the one crazy? How can you tell? That's another "equation" that's impossible to solve.

If this goal is impossible to define, then sanity isn't a very helpful goal. Really, because sanity is a connection to reality, and hundreds of years ago, the Earth being flat was a reality. We think they're crazy today, and so will probably be humanity a hundred years from now. The addiction to be sane then is similar to the addiction to greed or status from its impossibility.

Maybe what I really should care about is to always have the doubt. To always have room to doubt that I'm wrong. I said my goals in life was to learn and to help people. I don't have to be "sane" for that, do I?

If I'd have to go insane for those two goals, then maybe I will.

So today I'll be crazy. Yes, I'm crazy, but at least I admit and starting to accept I'm crazy. Everyone is. No one is fully in touch with reality. I'm then fully in touch with the reality that no one is fully in touch with reality.

To admit I'm crazy makes me the least crazy.

[DecimalRocket]

I feel kinda petty today. I was curious about world issues, and it's a downer. I don't know about it, but I guess I got the message growing up that since I was the smart one, I'd have to take some responsibility to figure out something big for that.

On an achievement test, I got around the 99th or 98th percentile on everything except verbal ability — 92 percentile. People see changing the world as some admiring epic answer to happiness and admiration — but it didn't seem that way to me growing up.

I was smart, but . . . I was still a kid. That was terrifying to imagine to take.

I didn't want that responsibility.

I didn't want it.

[sanmagic7]

it's never a kid's responsibility to take on the world's problems.  never to have those expectations placed upon their shoulders.  and, as adults, all we can do is take care of our own little corners of the world.

i've heard so very often the idea that there are a few of us who try to remain sane in an insane world.  the rest just stay distracted with their techno toys.   i know i can't change the world, per se, but i can do good, be loving, to the people with whom i interact or come in contact.  smiling and saying hi to someone i pass while out for a walk may be a small thing, but it's putting good vibes out.  i just think every little bit counts. 

i believe the truly insane are the ones who retreat into a reality of their own making, while those of us who reach out trying to discover how we can become better people, more caring, giving, loving - even if it's that small smile - are the essence of sane.  not perfect, by any means, but not stagnant.  of course, there are all kinds of levels of madness in between.  it's like a minefield out there.

funny how we often learn the swear words first in another language.  i sure did that with spanish when i was in mexico.  they all knew the 'f' word in english, too.  quite the phenomenon.

keep taking care of you, d.r.  sending a warm, loving hug to you.

[DecimalRocket]

  San.

....

I have to confess. I was the troublemaker growing up.

The teachers understood that I was smart, but the other students didn't. The smart kids who got high grades were supposed to be the most obedient students they'd all say, but hey, look at me. Some thought I had ADHD.

My emotions were still affected by trauma, but in class growing up — much of it made me feel empty. There was something  both too unchallenging and challenging about it. More memorization than thinking. More verbal than visual. Too loud rather than quiet.

It wasn't petty boredom. It was the kind of boredom that made me want to literally self harm,  the boredom to self criticize myself harshly just for some kind of entertainment, or the boredom to binge on chocolate for a feeling.

But it was also creative boredom. It was playing bowling in the back of class using water bottles and standing books. It was using toilet paper to make art and mess with people. It was finding ways to eat entire meals inside a small classroom unseen when no food inside was allowed.

It's part of why I'm such a bookworm. They figured out that they can only seem to fully calm me down into my seat by encouraging me to read unrelated books in class — sometimes more advanced. Still seems to work today, eh. Mostly.

I guess I said all this because I wanted to hide the idea that I wasn't a perfect student. I guess I felt there was something inherently wrong with me for being bored  — everyone else seeemed to handle boredom better. Why didn't I?

Sigh. My own research did say I wasn't the only one who's gathered an extra amount of trauma from undiagnosed differences.

[DecimalRocket]

I don't know what to say, but let's just say today I had the worst EF in a long time. And I might have . . . not treated myself well.

I've asked too much from this forum. I've asked too much from everyone here. Asked too much from people in other sites and asked too much from people in real life. I've been too selfish with my time, and everything I've asked for.

Sigh. I guess I'm leaving OOTS for good then.

Goodbye.

[ah]

Rocket,

Sounds like one * of an EF  I'm so sorry you're in so much pain, how can I help so this load can maybe be a bit lighter for you?

I just read something you wrote a bit earlier here on your journal, you said:

I just keep remembering trying to suppress my frustration to ask for help at all and not be such a burden on my parents.

I can completely understand the feeling that you're a burden. And the overwhelming feeling that says to you that you're self absorbed. I'm told I am... I'm called "psychotic", "monster", "waste of oxygen" and so on and I'm convinced I am. So the depths of these feelings are a darkness that I've visited very often, lately I'm there 24 hours a day. These feelings aren't frightening to me, I know they exist and they don't change how I feel about you.

But even if the feeling is shouting at you that you're all those bad things, you still aren't to us. To me, you've never been a burden. Quite the opposite. I just can't imagine seeing you that way. If you were told you were a burden, I don't like that one bit. The way I see it, little Rocket wasn't a burden either. Feeling like a burden didn't make little Rocket one. It makes no sense to me, you're a full fledged complicated living being with different feelings and ideas and habits. You keep changing and growing, and you're not an object meant for anybody else's enjoyment. You're not a product to be used, you're a person.
You don't need to be happy or self assured to be kept safe and cared about.

Whether you're able to be there for yourself or not at all right now, you're not alone. You're in my heart, and on my mind.

[Hope67]

To me, you've never been a burden. Quite the opposite. I just can't imagine seeing you that way. If you were told you were a burden, I don't like that one bit. The way I see it, little Rocket wasn't a burden either. Feeling like a burden didn't make little Rocket one. It makes no sense to me, you're a full fledged complicated living being with different feelings and ideas and habits. You keep changing and growing, and you're not an object meant for anybody else's enjoyment. You're not a product to be used, you're a person.
You don't need to be happy or self assured to be kept safe and cared about.

Whether you're able to be there for yourself or not at all right now, you're not alone. You're in my heart, and on my mind.

I agree with what Ah said - Decimal Rocket, and I want to send you a supportive and friendly hug  and let you know you're thought of - and I hope so much that you'll be ok.

Hope