Now, I'm in control

April 22, 1986

Cris and the kids, my two problems in life to deal with.

The kids are just pigs - PIGS! I have taken all their toys away, still it is messy. I can't stand it!

Cris doesn't like to stay overnight because of the kids - they drive him up the wall. In my next house, I will take the bedroom so he can have some peace in the morning.

I need to make some money - desperately. I need a house - desperately.

May 16, 1986

Cris wouldn't even be around if it weren't for the kids.

I don't even know why I want him. Probably because its easier - it looks better.

I don't understand it.

What I really should do is just let it rest. It's been about a year since Cris and I haven't been friends. I should just get over him. I don't really need him at all. The kids do - but I don't. I really don't. It would be better if I didn't pursue this relationship any longer.

It's just making me sick.

May 19, 1986

Now, I'm in control.

I see my struggle with being a young mother of three children. We lived in absolute poverty. All of our clothes were hand me downs (thanks fav sis!). I had been a vegetarian for five years by this time. I shopped at Cub occasionally, but often bought bulk at the coop down the street. We ate "eggs in a nest" (Red beans in a bed of rice) and "tofu balls" YUM! (Still my favorite and only way to eat tofu). Lentils and rice were a staple, as was spaghetti. We ate a lot of oatmeal too. I visited the food shelf - so there were lots of canned vegetables - I still love canned green beans, but Anthony does not, so I don't buy them anymore. 

Once I bought creamed corn instead of corn - Cris had a fit - freaked out about it. Yelled about how I never looked at things when I bought them. I didn't think it was such a bad surprise - I like creamed corn. I still find that I will buy strange things. 

That is because I have difficulty seeing the trees because I am looking at either their bark or the entire forest. I see a wall of canned foods. I grab a can - not noticing if it is the same as the can next to it - that is how I think. I am distracted by the wrong details sometimes. It is pretty hard to explain - because it sounds like it should be easy for someone who sees patterns and details so clearly to be much more selective.

In the grocery store, I see canned tomatoes section (here is the forest). I see a variety of tomatoes on the shelf, diced... stewed... petite diced... whole... crushed... paste... flavored... (these are the trees). What can I make with these lovely tomatoes? Possibly some of the them are on sale - then the sale signs distract me (this is the bark - the details). I scan the shelf, looking at prices. I start to lose sight of the purpose (my meal). I am easily swayed by the lowest price. Now I grab products based upon the shelf labels. Actually, I am not sure how I grab the wrong item. I do it. I don't know how. I only know that I do.

My difficulty in "seeing" extends to my classroom. I have so much trouble remembering names. I used to think it was because I had so many girls, and they all look the same to me. Now I realize that it is anyone that doesn't stand out. If you have an odd name, engage me in conversation, like cats - I am likely to remember your name. Don't speak to me, silently move through my surroundings - I will never know you, I will never remember your name. Sometimes I will remember your nameless face, but in the same way that I remember the face of the nameless lady at the check out counter at the corner store. 

I believe I am "face blind" and see only details like hair and people's mouths. I spend lots of time staring at people's mouths. I am mesmerized by them, distracted by the movement of teeth and gums, tongues and lips. Adults with Asperger's have a particular problem reading facial expressions, and body language. Being a visual person doesn't give me a better grasp of what I see when I look at another person. People are objects within my field of vision. There isn't anything "special" about them other than they are usually in my way. /wink

 A forest of canned tomatoes - don't be distracted by the sale signs!

I'm like losing my mind

January 17, 1986

I bought a Karman Ghia today, Wow!

It looked like this - very impracticable for a mom with three kids...

March 11, 1986

Well, I figured it's finally over, it didn't end the way I wanted either. Cris is sleeping with yet another girl friend. He is really a massive asshole. I am really in a mess. I am very depressed. I have zillions of things to do. I can't stand watching the kids anymore. I need a break. I wish I were desperately in love with someone. Here I am again, looking for Prince Charming. I really thought Cris was him. I was wrong.

March 14, 1986

Me, I'm getting pretty strange. I desperately need to rid myself of Cris but it's like I'm on a wild roller coaster, going quickly up and down and up. It is more and more extreme. I'm like losing my mind. Like I demand honesty from Cris, total honesty, yet I am not being very honest myself.

I want to see this new girlfriend Sarah. Char, Sarah, who else?

I really want to kill Cris. He almost killed himself the other night. While I was at home. I was thinking, wow, Cris is hanging himself right now, dangling and twirling in  death. I imagined burning his body until it no longer exists and no funeral but a memorial and not letting Char or Sarah enter even if I had to kill them to keep them away and screaming "You killed my husband!" When in all actuality, I was the one who drove him to it. All me, All Cris with all our heart hell bent on destroying him/self. I am the cause, I cannot let him go - I just can't, but I know I must. I have to. It would be for the best - best for me, best for Cris, best for the kids. I just don't think what damage all this is doing to them. Cris shouting at them in the middle of the night "Anybody seen the drain plug?" God!

Me, I just am so preoccupied, telling them to go away and leave me alone. If I wasn't so obsessed with Cris, I could get on with my life, start my business, go to school, meet someone special, and be happy again. Hopefully not because I met someone - but  happy because I'm at peace with myself. And that's what I want and long for myself - to be at peace - Happy. This feeling right now is hell. I am just like a big scrape on your knuckle, all red and bleeding. Then it gets all shiny and full of puss and then it scabs over and finally gets better. Well, I am that scrape at the shiny, pussy stage - and I keep bumping it and letting it bleed again and in order to scab over I must get rid of Cris. Like really looking out and not looking to get hurt again - like staying with Cris and letting him hurt me so deeply without any consequences and when I do break with him he tries to kill himself - pretty clever way to win me back and just saying enough to make me think that you might at sometime in the indefinite future you just might maybe stop sleeping with other women.

I believe that my low self-esteem was an off-shoot of my Asperger's. I have a hard time maintaining my train of thought when discussing extremely emotionally charged issues. I also believe that, although most people would have trouble dealing with the revelation that their cheating husband has continued to cheat, I was having particular trouble. I really do not have a large "emotional vocabulary" - I tend to paint my emotions with broad strokes - extremes from sad to angry. I also flash between emotions rapidly, angry one minute, happy the next. 

When I confronted Cris with the knowledge of his affair in July of 1985, I was 7 months pregnant - hormones already causing the normal mood swings. I was plunged into despair. I remember considering asking my sister Cindy to adopt my child. I was angry and frightened. I had never drank during a pregnancy before, I am ashamed to say I drank 2 or 3 drinks on 2 separate occasions in the month before ianthe was born. I have always kept this a secret. I think I smoked a couple of times too. I was suffering from moderate persistent depression in the months before and following ianthe's birth. It is common for people with Asperger's to suffer from depression. I had two or three reasons to be depressed: the cheating, the humiliation, the new fresh hell that Cris brought every week into my world.

What a cruel and insensitive man. He is as insensitive today as he was in 1985. Aja showed me a picture of when she was a tiny baby. It was from her father's high school graduation. I commented about how cute she was. She said that her grandmother had given her a bag of old photos; that photo had been included. Indeed? After our divorce, I had sorted through our family photos, choosing photos for Cris. I believed that he would want, even deserved, photos of the children. I gave him nearly a third of the photos, including every important event in the kids' lifetime. I have a nearly photographic memory. This photo was one that I had given away so many years ago. I guess that Cris had not thought the photographs to be quite so important to him as I had imagined.

None of that matters to me anymore. I have grown up with loving people around me that helped me learn coping skills. I am not just a competent woman, I am seen as a leader. I not only have a partner that loves me, but one that thinks that we are partners in life, and who will stand by me as we face challenges head on. 

In a wonderful expression of love Saturday, my lovely husband Anthony, officially adopted all three of our children. It was a wonderful occasion. We were gathered for our grand-daughter's third birthday. The wind was blowing a warm wind. The sun was shining and our hearts were filled with joy. Anthony has been my children's father, handing out advice (and cash) and rides (and hugs) and encouragement (and unconditional love) for the best years of their lives, and he will continue to do so as time moves on. 

 Our happy family - minus the steps!

The wrong side and the right side

August 7, 1985

A Dream...
Cris and Char were in his room and I walked in. They were making love - Char on top. She quickly got off of him and she quickly got off him. She sat between his legs and watched me take a look at the photos of Aja I was looking for...

I wasn't watching them at all. I was even behind the curtain, but after awhile, I told Char it was alright, that she should carry on...

I finished looking in the closet and called "information". They couldn't tell me anything. So when I was finished on the phone, I came out of the closet and Char and Cris were still just laying there. So I knelt down by Cris' head and kissed him and apologized for having interrupted the "proceedings". He said casually that Char wanted to know if I wanted to join in, but I took a shower first and never got around to joining them.

August 1985

I watch Cris now, how he seems. He seems so much happier and at peace. He is very tender when he is in love and I feel he really does love Char and I both. He loves Char with patience I haven't seen in him for a long time. It doesn't hurt so bad anymore. I wish I could wear my ring but I am not - maybe I will again later, nothing matters much anymore. I hope I don't end up a fool in all this.

After I had confronted Cris with the knowledge of his affair, I was so afraid to give him an ultimatum. An ultimatum would give him a chance to choose to leave. I could not live with that. I feared being left.

Cris had been given power by me and Char. I said in an earlier blog entry, that Cris chose vulnerable women. Char and I were his training ground. He wielded his power like a knife and cut out our hearts. He arranged an introduction. He and Char at one side of the booth of a Minneapolis cafe and I alone, very pregnant on the other. He caressed her openly in front of me. He did this to calm her while he destroyed what was left of my fragile ego. My journal continues with an existential quote...

...What counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity...

What I wish for now is no longer happiness but simply awareness...I do not want to choose between right and wrong sides of the world, and I do not like a choice to be made...The great courage is still to gaze as squarely at the light as at death.

"The wrong side and the right side" Albert Camus

Cris has taken a lover

July 1985

Cris has taken a lover. It hurts to know I wasn't enough.

It hurts to know if I had only not gotten pregnant none of this would have happened. It hurts to think that Cris and I were so much in love a year ago.

It hurts to have to share Cris with another. It hurts to let Cris go, the only thing that makes sense is that stupid cliche "If you love someone let them go. If they come back they're yours. If not, they never were."

It is awful having to go through a pregnancy neither of us planned - and that drove Cris apart so much he sought someone else as an escape.

I think sometimes of the request Cris had made, but I am sorry, I just couldn't kill someone just to make him happy. I will stoop incredibly low, but not that far. Now I will be alone, with three children - each of whom is loved less by their father in the order of their birth. When I met Cris, he was so confused (as I) and we needed each other. I loved him. I still love him and I suppose I always will love him. I wrote a poem during our early relationship about how he was everything I'd hoped for - he was and continues to be.

Why don't I meet up to him? It hurts.

But I am so happy he is still around. I wonder how much longer? I want him so bad, more than anyone will ever realize.

Of course now I cringe about this, but at the time, I was so lost. I was so hurt and confused. I was in an Aspergian free-fall into despair, anxiety and terror.

The fear of change prevented me from doing the correct thing - tossing him to the curb. He was not providing me any income. He was rarely home. I was the person that kept our life in order.

Before I was diagnosed with Asperger's Disorder, I wondered in shame why I had not let Cris go sooner than I did. I kept him, clung to him as if he were my safety net. This man, who during our marriage kept me a figurative prisoner. One day a week, Cris would allow me an hour to go to the library. That was it. Other than that, it was me and the children. Alone. I walked to the co-op and to the park with my children. I cooked and cleaned and read. Cris worked for 2-3 years, then in the fall of 1984, he quit his job, and enrolled in the University.

He was gone all day. Late, late, late into the night. He said it was to do studio work in the Art building, or to study, or to work... I don't know. I didn't question it. He took photographs of people I didn't know for his photography class. He said they were classmates. I didn't think anything of it. One day, he came home with ink drawings on his jeans - covering his leg - all the way up to his crotch. I did not recognize it as his "style". His "style" is all scritchy-scratchy short lines smashed together - like hesitant scratches to form the outline of an object. I draw in outlines - one continuous ink line. These decorations were circular, geometric, they were not his. I asked him about them. He said a classmate had drawn them. I was shocked - why would you let someone draw on your thigh? That is a bit personal, is it not? He said he hadn't thought of it that way.

My ex-husband was a sociopath. I didn't know this until very late in the "game". He is very good at finding women/people who are vulnerable and manipulating them to do his will. He watches. He pretends emotions. He acts the way he believes is expected at the moment. He cries at will. He is a strange man. This is a link to his creepy, walking on the line of pedophilic-hypersexual "art" website.  (Here is a bar of soap to wash your eyes off when you are done...) I have as little regard for his "artistic" abilities as I do for his "character".

1. GO FOR HELP

2. Make your own recovery the first priority in your life

I have done this in these means:

• re-evaluated my goals and expectations for myself and am trying to achieve.
• Asserted my wishes to work, now must follow through.
• Am becoming more selfish - guarded about my time - not saying yes to people I don't care about.
• Trying to accept criticism - especially when it hurts - because it probably is correct - try to change.
• Eagerly am looking for ways of things that will help me, not others, for once!

3. Find a support group of peers who understand

• Call: Psychologists
• Look under "Human Services" community crisis hot line
  

4. Develop your spiritual side through daily practice

• I would like to learn about hypnosis and yogi/meditation. I should get a book from the library on these subjects.
• I have been using affirmations.
  
  • Sue, I love you and accept you exactly the way you are.
  • I am free of pain, anger and fear. I enjoy perfect peace and well-being.
  • I every aspect of my life, I am guided to my highest happiness and fulfillment
  • All problems and struggles now fade away: I am serene.
  • The perfect solution for every problem is now manifest. I am free and filled with light.
  • All things are possible through love. Love is working through me to heal me and strengthen me, to calm me to peace.
  • I release all the pain of the past and welcome the health, joy and success that are mine to claim.

5. Stop managing and controlling others

6. Learn not to get hooked into games

It is very hard not to do this. I want to help and shelter Cris. He recognizes this and stops me but I should stop myself.

Game #1
Cris: I do all the work (martyr).
Sue: I'll do it all next time.

Game #2
Cris: I don't want sex if you force me into it.
Sue: I will remember next time, but...

Game #3
Sue: Cris, get out of bed.
Cris: In a little while (falls back to sleep).
Sue: (Angry) Cris, Get Up!
Cris: (Angry) I will. Leave me alone.

Game #4
Cris: I am going out for awhile
Sue: I wish you'd stay with me.
Cris: I feel guilty.
Sue: Don't, go out, have fun.

See Sue? You can recognize the games. Now Stop Playing Them!

7. Courageously face your own problems and shortcomings

8. Cultivate whatever needs to be developed in yourself

Books to read:

• Love and Addiction by Stanton Peele
• Love and Limerance by Dorothy Tennov
• The Art of Selfishness by David Seabury
• The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity by Catherine Ponder

9. Become selfish

10. Share with others what you have experienced and learned

Characteristics of Relationally addicted Women

• Obsessed with relationship
• Denying the extent of the problem
• Lying to cover what is happening in the relationship
• Avoiding people to hide problems with relationship
• Repeated attempts to control the relationship
• Unexplained mood swings
• Anger, depression, guilt
• Resentment
• Irrational acts
• Violence
• Accidents due to preoccupation
• Self-hate of self-justification
• Physical illness due to stress-related diseases

Characteristics of Recovery

• Admitting helplessness to control disease
• Ceasing to blame others for problems
• Focusing on self, taking responsibility for own actions
• Seeking help for recovery from peers
• Beginning to deal with own feelings rather than avoiding them
• Building a circle of well friends, healthy interests

Self-analysis by Karen Horney
Main characteristics
1. The neurotic need for

I like how my journal entry ends mid-sentence. I could laugh at this whole post if I wasn't so repulsed by it. This boring entry was obviously gleaned from a library book on being co-dependent. Just like my second blog entry , I am using my intellect to puzzle out my place in the world. This is a common Aspergian trait. Having to intellectualize "normal" behavior because it is not second nature to us.

One of my "special interests" was schizophrenia. I started researching it in junior high school after reading Sybil. I was fascinated by her mother's catatonic schizophrenia. I read every book in the library and then started devouring my dad's medical texts and journals.

After I had gotten the symptoms memorized, I began to practice. I liked to sit motionless downstairs on the couch staring at the small weaving hanging near the fireplace. I tried to sit as still as possible; blink as little as possible. I still can sit very still. I like to sit motionless, staring straight ahead, in fact, I amuse myself by sitting still for long periods.

My ability to mimic the symptoms of schizophrenia convinced a psychiatrist that I actually had the disease. As a teen, I was proud of that. It was proof that my research had paid off. As I became more involved with Cris, my inability to put myself in the mind of others caused me to "brag" about the diagnosis without explaining all the research that went into it. I don't believe that Cris really understood that I wasn't schizophrenic. He kept telling me I was insane. It was one of the ways he controlled me.

Since my Asperger's diagnosis, I realize that I don't see the forest because all the trees get in the way. I do not have a well developed Theory of Mind. I have only just started to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from mine. All the research I have done in my life never brought me the comfort that my Asperger's diagnosis has.

Throughout my twenties and mid-thirties, I was looking for a reason for why I felt so out of place in the world. In this entry, my new reason was co-dependency. The idea that I was co-dependent was comforting, while I read, and took notes. As a young mother of three, with a cheating, abusive husband, I was desperately trying to find the reason that I continued to stay with a philandering man. I didn't know my undiagnosed Asperger's was telling me to stay because I don't want anything to change.

Change is scary! I hate deviation from my routine. I am hesitant to make any changes. I consider getting together with friends to be a deviation from my schedule. Changes to my routine cause me to become exhausted. I am over-stimulated by being on-my-toes, monitoring my behavior, hoping I don't make too terrible a mistake.

My family has known me all my life, so they are not at all surprised by my ability to dominate a conversation. My family includes a couple other undiagnosed Aspergians, so we are pretty good at wrestling the conversation from one to the next without thinking about it as odd. My mom and dad had a rule when we were growing up that at the dinner table we could each speak in turn, the eldest (non-Aspergian), would go last. He could talk the tail off a brass monkey - he still can! My parents let him have all the time that was left after the five of us had had our say.

My husband's family however, has only known me for 12 years. So they are stunned when I railroad a conversation at a family gathering. I will sit in silence, staring at my plate, bored by their conversation until someone says something that interests me. I will look up and launch into a diatribe about subject, talking loudly over anyone who dare interrupt me or attempt to voice an opinion. I can see it happening. I cannot stop myself. I have the nicest in-laws ever. They love me even if I can bring a pleasant conversation to a standstill.

Since my diagnosis, my dear husband Anthony, has helped stop my overbearing conversational technique during family dinners. He helps me stop. He is my sea of calm. I love him so very much for the support he gives me.