I have no self - no "I" - that I can claim to be my own

I have no self - no "I" - that I can claim to be my own. I feel the need to define it. It is necessary to me as an individual and in order to grow.

What I was...
I was born 5th in a family of 6.
The 3rd of 4 girls.
The girls older than me were ideal-types.
I lost my mother to a younger sister.
My father became mine - although he really wasn't enough.
I tried desperately as a child to gain my parents love - but I never seemed to get it.
Cris has taken my parents role in my fight to win unconditional love.
Cris, like my parents, will never give me the love I seek. The love I want has vanished. There is no way for me to regain the lost love.
I have things that are mine alone. I stole them from others.

Good Susan
I learned easily in school.
Funny - I can't think of anything else to label "good Susan".

Bad Susan
I've always thought of myself as "bad". Cindy and Julie were my opposites. Cindy being directly opposite and Julie was more of a hybrid of us, but closer to Cindy than to me.

Anne doesn't fit into my scale. She has totally different viewpoints. I cannot relate to her at all.

Sexual Feelings
Doing socially unacceptable things
Slut behavior as teenager
Easily aroused - selfishness
Knew/know I don't want to be "caught"

Eaves Dropping
Listening to others conversations
Reading (Cris's) letters/journals/anything
Going out of my way to watch
Coming up with fanciful interpretations

Plotting
Gathering information and then altering plans
Going out of my way (Mileage, financially)
Generally deceitful and sneaky

Procrastinating
Make too many plans
Never motivated
All energy spent on above behavior
Just don't care about some things

What I can become...
a poor welfare mother - totally dependent either on welfare or husband.
a film maker - camera person. Unattached, full of energy.
a school teacher - teaching video. Full of ideas and encouragement.
a clothing designer - working for a Minneapolis pattern maker.
a doctor - dedicated to helping the poor. Also good family member.
a researcher - looking for secrets - working for a Noble prize.
a medical reformer. Changing the U.S. into a socialized public health plan.

If I can rid myself of dependence I could be very successful.

Where do my values lie?

Sexual
I think it best to only have one lover at a time.
I think it is OK to be kinky - but only with someone you know very well.
It is not OK to talk about sexual happenings with people not directly involved.
Love and Sex seem very caught up with one another.

Where am I going wrong?
When I have sex I want to be satisfied (I'm very selfish).
I feel lost and at one with the world - my boundaries fall down when I have an orgasm. This is my symbiosis experience hence sexual activity is very important to me. This is one area that I might be able to change from a negative to a positive. But it will take lots of work.

Things I am not good at (but do anyway)

• I am not an artist.
• I am not a philosopher.
• I don't enjoy "reading into" things.
• I am not into occult religion.
• I am not the best photographer.
• I am not good at "hanging out".

Eavesdropping and playing private eye goes against my better judgment.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I find it very interesting to read this "self-evaluation" of my 24 year old self. As an older version of this person, I see how similar and how different we are. I was very concerned with my "sexual" behavior - that is very clear in this assessment. I wondered out loud about the statement that I made about wanting to be (sexually) "satisfied". Could it be that Cris taught me that it was a selfish desire on my part? (But of course not on his...) Humans are sexual beings after all. 

I am surprised by how much I haven't changed. I still analyze the heck out of my actions, except now I do it in my head, or muttering to myself, or discussing possibilities with my cats. 

In the section titled "What I can become": I like to edit movies - especially my grand kids. I am a teacher. I do teach video. I still love to sew and design things. I have a business license for LeetLootz - so if I suddenly decide to sell my creations, I am ready to go. I am interested in a career change - to become a researcher of sorts - an Archivist - discovering new things. I am an active member of Organizing for America - I sent several letters to congressmen, made interesting posts to compel others to press for Health care reform. I even had a half hour discussion with one of John Kline's staff, explaining my views to him. I believe I made a compelling argument. 

So out of my "list of what I could become", Out of seven possibilities, I have become (or still want to become) FIVE of them. I am actually amazed at my insight into my core  being.

The list of "Things I am not good at (but do anyways)": I agree with the list of things I still despise. After my bone marrow transplant that I had to celebrate my 30th birthday (oh - and to save my life from Hodgekin's Lymphoma), I stopped pretending. The only thing on the list that I still do, begrudgingly, is "hang out", although there has to be a compelling reason to do so.

Only one more thing to address. I say that I cannot relate to my sister Anne at all. I can now. I couldn't when I was younger. She is very critical and judgmental. After I accepted her judgment, we got along. She was my best friend growing up. I played with her all the time. Actually, we played "next" to each other - parallel play - a signature of Aspergians. After my diagnosis, and learning what parts of my personality are Asperger effects, I turned the lens outwards, towards my family. I believe that out of the six children my parents had, three of us are Aspergians, my younger sister and the younger of my brothers. I have three children. I believe all three have Asperger's Disorder. One of them has just received a positive diagnosis.

Welcome to Team Awesome, Banana Pan!

A forgotten page and a strange flat basket

I found this page 5 pages back in my journal...

March 26, 1987

Why is
this empty
page
sitting her in
my journal when
I tried so hard not
to leave any
loose ends lying
about?

March 26, 1987

I am the stupid flat basket that you put under your paper plates in. My reeds are woven so that I cannot bend. They are loosely woven, you can see through me. I am hidden, forgotten. I was lost and now desired. I am precious and valuable, not materially but as a ghost, or as a gift. I am not transferred from hand to hand but I am kept and lost and returned only to be lost again.

I cannot see anything while I am lost. I have no awareness. Only when someone possesses me, do I become aware and can contribute myself. I am not used for my original purpose. Why am I flat? I do not know I must not retain much. I can only retain information while someone possesses me. When I am lost, I hold nothing and must be refilled when I am found again.

I am the gift of creativity. I am longed for but I cannot be aware. I must be found, for I am hidden beneath piles of mechanical rubble - the logic of today. I must be found and only found while those who seek me are not looking for me. I am not visible to those who look directly at me but only to those who let themselves be unaware as to give me awareness. Then I can enter them and become one with them.

I am not here to gratify grandiose desires but I am here to give those who are meek the creativity they so desire. I am elusive. I am not on call. I will not come when beckoned or sought. I do not wish to make those who seek me re-known. I want to stay close to the rubble so that I may be lost and found and lost and found as a wish for I am a gift, but I am not permanent.

Gifts must be given away but I am a gift in itself. The giver and the gift. I belong to Sue and only Sue. I am her own unique creativity. Right now a soldier seeks me with violence. He would kill to find me. That is why I am hiding. I will not come out under threat. Only when he is mulified and forgets that he is looking for me will I come out and in doing so, I will transform him into a prince. For awhile at least, before I am lost again. This is my way of life.

I have no idea what the heck this is about. Maybe it is a "free-association" writing for class. Maybe I was analyzing the strange crazy dream I had. I am not sure. It seems at first that I am talking about my tendency to become those who are around me. A basket that holds another person - thoughts - ideals. A basket that is nothing unless it is filled with another. 

But then I go veering off into the "I am creativity" stuff. What? Maybe that was the writing prompt. I was comforted when I went back to my original idea of being the giver of the gift. The basket that holds your burdens. That is who I am. That is who I became to survive. I am mother, provider of my children: Must Keep Them Alive. I am wife: Must Keep Husband Happy. I am never just me. Just Sue. I was never enough for myself. 

I was always uncomfortable in my own skin. I was always awkward. Clumsy Spaceship Sue - riding around in my head, behind my eyeballs - seriously - that is how I felt when I was an adolescent. How else could I explain my clumsiness? Why else would I purposely break my little finger on the brick wall outside the gym upon hearing we would be playing basketball for two weeks? Did that hurt? A little, but not as much as the humiliation of being picked last. I couldn't hold the ball, much less bounce it. I didn't understand the rules. A broken finger meant I could sit on the side and stare into space and be alone. Spaceship Sue. 

I am afraid to tell you who I really am

There is a fear in me. I am grabbing the old journals off the shelf. I have kept them in a box. After hearing the results of my assessment for Asperger's I crawled under the stairs and dragged them out. It is painful to me to remember the rawness of my pain as a young mother married to a very young man who eventually betrayed my trust; destroyed who I thought I had become. My Asperger's made me very vulnerable.

I had drifted through school, looking at my feet in the hallways, doing my work in class, finding it quite boring. Most of my friends lived in different cities and never knew the same "Sue"that people in my hometown knew. They only knew the "Roller Skater" or the "Skipper of Ski Lessons" or the "Concordia College French Camper" or the "AAer" (You can't throw a stick at someone aged 43-49 in Minneapolis without hitting someone who has been through drug treatment as a teen) . They didn't know the shameful Sue that went to school at South St. Paul, a meat packing town.

I graduated early to escape the terror of high school. I didn't eat for a whole quarter at the U of W, River Falls because I was too afraid of the cafeteria. The Resident Assistant knocked on my door the during orientation week. "We are having a party in the common room tonight!" she said cheerfully, "You cannot come because you are only 16 and we will be serving beer, sorry!"

A young man in my math class showed me some kindness, he eventually seduced me. I got pregnant. When I told him, he said he had never left his girlfriend, I was on my own. I knew and actually hung out with his girlfriend. When she found out, she beat me. She broke my glasses and I curled up in a ball on the floor as she kicked me. I lost the baby. Not because of the assault, I guess it is kinda normal for women to miscarry their first child.

I met my first husband, Cris, at a party in Stillwater. Most of my diaries are about him. He was a high school junior; I, a college freshman. An ex-girlfriend had invited him to the party. We were acquainted. She knew "AA Sue"; the "AA Sue" that slept with every boy in our group. She saw me. Later I learned that she took him aside and told him to stay away from me. Of course, that had the exact opposite affect.

On winter break at home, I told a psychiatrist I had been lying to for 2 years the truth. He listened quietly as I revealed myself. He was bouncing his Birkenstock clog on his left foot. When I was done, and asked for help for the first time. He announced, "I never promised you confidentiality" and called my parents into the room. He listed the embarrassing truths I had revealed. Ordered them to bring me home and kick me out.

I gathered my things in a pillow case. My friend across the street gave me five dollars. I took a bus to Stillwater, then Bayport. I knocked on Cris's door.

I have lived my life deeply ashamed of my over sexualized adolescence. I believed as a young teenager that if a boy had sex with you that they must like you, even if there were four boys waiting for their chance in the next room. Marrying young made me feel that I had a found that one that "loved" me. Although marrying young is almost a recipe for divorce, as an Aspergian, I would have followed him to the end of the world. He had other plans.