I may find it painfully dull to be among people

October 28, 1986

Things are beginning to lose their Char-ness. The Walgreen toothbrushes, the composition books, the sweater of her lover before you. I no longer feel as violent about Honda Civics - even the oxidized red ones seem virtually harmless. The coffee pot, jar and the knife she gave you are losing their pasts. My bed only vaguely remembers her presence. The clothes you wear have almost lost the dust they retained within their fibers from her bedroom floor. The clothes you possess are losing the remnants of Char as they rubbed off your body in the morning.

My memory of Char is painful. She was my rival, the taker of what I believed to be rightfully mine. I hate her.

Your memory of her is more of a mourning of the great love and happy times you once shared with her. It is sad - these differences. I feel bad that I cannot think nice things about this woman whom you once loved. I tried at first, but I never will except the fact that she has a right to a bit of your life - because I know your love is yours to give away as you choose and it is hard to believe, no not believe - accept - that the receptor of your love wasn't me. As I know I am only receiving a deflected love even now.

You seem to be in love with someone (or more than one) else besides me. I don't see how you can fragment yourself - not giving it all to just one as I would wish to believe would be the easiest thing to do, but you prefer the role of silent suffering - suffering in self-denied love.

Now I'm going among people. I may not know anything, but a new life has begun for me. I made up my mind to do my duty honestly and resolutely. I may find it painfully dull to be among people. To begin with, I decided to be frank and courteous with everybody. No one can expect more than that from me. Perhaps even here they regard me as a child - it can't be helped! For some reason everyone regards me as an idiot, too, and it is quite true that I was so ill at one time that I really was an idiot. But what sort of an idiot am I now when I know myself that people take me for an idiot? The Idiot, Dostoevsky

Alexithymia is a term that describes an impairment in someone's ability to identify and describe feeling states. Tony Attwood says that people with Asperger's Disorder often have a limited vocabulary of words to describe feeling states - especially the more subtle and complex ones.

I see in this journal, that I have resorted to descriptions of the items around me that provoke the physical responses that I recognize as "feelings". I use a wide paint brush to describe my emotions too. I am Sad. I am Hurt. I Hate. I Love.

The quote from The Idiot seems to me now a great expression of how I feel about the world now. It surprises me that I had enough self-awareness to see myself in the writing. 

This is the last entry in this journal. I am actually a little sad to let this one go. It has been a painful and thoughtful journal through this time in my life. I have learned a lot through this stroll down memory lane. Tonight, I will look at the pile of old journals and writings and pick up another. I wonder what I will find within its pages.