I haven’t slept yet.

When I was 6, my sister was traumatized by a clown at the birthday party I shared with my one year old brother, just before we moved away from California to Little Rock, AR, where I remember having one friend I used to walk around the military housing with, in ’87.

Then we moved not to Eatonville, that was a high school field trip that confused me. We moved from Little Rock to Jacksonville for just a couple weeks, then to Orlando, some apartments, until Dad, on his paycheck and Mom’s veteran’s disability following her survival of being shot by my Daddy when I was 3.

My baby brain turned it into a nightmare with a cow skull representing death.

They said I was at the babysitter’s, but in my nightmare, Dad and Daddy wrestle for the gun and it goes off…and mom was the one bleeding in the floor.

Daddy died when I was 5, meeting my new Daddy in California when he got home from deployment from Turkey.

I miss my Dad. I’m so glad we made up before he died.

Was it last year or the year before? I’m triggered again, so it feels like it just happened and it was forever ago.

I wish I’d had access to healthcare in my youth. I stopped seeing the dentist at 15 because Dad was working and grieving and I had no one else.

I’ve felt alone most of my life. I’m safe here. Everyone loves me and wants me and protects me and looks out for me here.

Real friends are too easily lost nowadays. They say they love you so much, then tell you you are bad when you are grieving until they trigger the fuck out of me, and then ignore my bad behavior.

They treated me just like the husband and the gf treated my sister of the heart, when I held her in my arms as she sobbed her heart out, feeling just like they’ve made me feel for melting down at their triggering triggered behavior.

Sister of the heart left my baby daddy because he would never be enough.

But now she treats me like they treated her.

Why did I bother talking about my feelings and experiences?

Because I deserve the same love I give.

And she’s the only one even capable of that, but she loves him, and I can’t stomache him anymore. I wish I processed my feelings more healthily when I’m triggered.

Helps when it’s modeled for me, but who cares if I’m too fucking bipolar to turn on sweetheart mode while being attacked for starting, just trying, to communicate how alone I was feeling.

And they all turned on me, predictably.

I finally understand what they mean by attacks, and I’m sorry, but who cares?

How can I ever trust any of them?

I feel betrayed, abandoned, and violated.

I hope they all feel the same and never ever pretend to care about me again.

I feel like an asshole and I wish I’d never fallen for the hero schtick.

I’m no hero.

I just want to be happy and loved, like everyone else.

But to them, I’m evil.

Fuck their hypocrisy and “love.”

Last time I befriend people with alternative values.

Love heals.

This is “discipline” or “tough love.”

Hope they enjoy their peaceful lives without all my “abusive bullying.”

Everybody loses their shit when overwhelmed with stress.

I am not evil for melting down when I’m grieving and you come at me for not appreciating you reaching out to me.

Now I am sobbing. Hurts me not them.

Why do I care about people who prove how little they care about me every fucking time?

It hurts. That’s why we started the stupid group. So I could help, so they could help. But you couldn’t help me because my grief means nothing to you selfish fucks. You wanna find out if curses are real?

I have my Dad’s graveyard dirt and his permission the last time he spoke, verbal permission to hoodoo him if he died, because he would owe it to me for dying.

And I begged him not to die, like I begged you to wake the fuck up and stop hurting ME!

You win.

I lose.

And I don’t want any of you liars

This is not how you show love to someone who has been begging fucking begging for help.

And you kept your opinions to yourselves until you decided I wasn’t worth being nice to anymore.

My Dad is pissed.

Part of me believes you better get right in the head and heart real fast.

Because you guys are Tarah to me now, and Tarah graduated to I owe her an apology.

She tried to warn me. We both tried to warn Niki.

No wonder I went fucking crazy, trying to believe in the goodness of all these self centered people having drama orgies instead of medication and therapy.

And now, here I am, hurting from the stupid orgy, finally learned my lesson.

People who love me, see the best in me and remind me of it.

People who take me for granted don’t talk to me anymore and hopefully never will again. It hurts to much to think people actually care, just to find out in a few short days I loved them, they judged me harshly privately and pretended to love me too my face. Like they did my sis, but me…it triggered, but who cares about my mental illnesses unless I’m just u

Oh who cares. I don’t want to fight. I want to understand! Why won’t they just help instead of being mean until I get mean back? I hate this! I don’t deserve this! I deserve what i deserve…what I gave when it was, when it was asked of me. They hurt me too much this time.

I’ll be fine. I don’t need them. They’re obviously better off without a big baby like me.

I hate crying. It hurts me and they just get to feel proud of themselves for winning by hurting me even more, because someone shamed me for talking about it and I don’t even know I am writing this.

Fuck em.

I love me exactly as I am and I don’t deserve to be treated like this anymore than she did.

How I Let Go and Let God

My mother died when I was 12, and Dad dated a psychic after she died. That psychic foresaw me becoming a writer and a tarot reader.

And my 13 year old brain accepted the program.  My suffering meant something.  I was going to help people tell their stories, and share mine so others wouldn’t feel alone.

I studied Tarot with the deck and book she gave me and did astrology charts for all my bemused friends at school.

I was so lucky to go to Tuskawilla after Mom died.

That’s where I met my closest and best friends still today.

Before I knew I was autistic, I tried so so hard to understand people’s behavior.  Today I gave up…lol

I am not willing to mask for anyone anymore.

I don’t think I’m a good friend if I secretly hate your life partner…and I fucking hate secrets.

I hate figuring out what my sister meant about “lashing out” six months later, when my friends who did not appreciate me doing the same thing to them this last week…and yet, they acted the same way.

Authoritarian. Unfriended. Passive Aggressive. Ignoring me because I used accurate words to my mood. And then a power play. Lol

Oh no, sweetums.

I am not and never have been a sub.

And not one of you silly people have earned that kind of trust from me.

And not one of you studied autism with me, so what do your apologies mean to me anymore?

Set me up to fail, and watch me fail. Shame on me. Well, now you know shame does not work on my brain the way it does on the people you can control.

I’m not asking if I’m being mean anymore.

I shouldn’t have to ask.

I’ll tell you how I’m feeling, and what I’m thinking and if you don’t like it, then you don’t like me. I don’t go where I feel unwelcome.

And I’m happy now. I have my light. I have control over my feelings. Not spiraling. Not fighting invisible foes.

I can’t change my mood to sweet when you accuse me of being bad and then threaten me with legal action. That was how you two lost my respect, as if you care. I know. It’s too bad. I really love you guys. I hope you find your peace, too.

What I don’t have control over, is how you interpret my behavior. You have your beliefs and no amount of knowledge or memory of older versions of you on my part can overcome that barrier.

That’s all on you. Well, not anymore.

Months of being treated like I’m a bad guy for melting down at being ignored, even if though I apologized. Because your apology fixes everything, but mine is an attack.

Hello, I have brain damage from decades of trauma, starting as a baby. I even came into the world bruised. I lost my 23 year old mother to my 41 year old father and find that age difference disgusting, personally. But to each their own.

I figured out I was autistic by studying it like I was not and thinking reading memoirs by autistic people would be the best way to learn…I was right. But it took so much stress that I lost the ability to take care of myself and dropped 80 pounds in 6 months. My ex psychiatrist took six months to notice.

I only chase off people who show me we’ll never be on the same page about behavior being communication and forgiveness not being earned. It’s a gift I give you, but I gotta earn it from you?

Ha!

Have fun with that emotional manipulation bullshit you all love so much.

I’m accepting my autistic superpowers.

I love you, always and forever and wish you all the very best life has to offer.

I will accept no less.

This is me, taking my power back.

Yay boundaries!

And medication! And good friends with therapists! And my years of therapy and my degrees and my amazing husband and kids and life!

Sorry I had to be so harsh, but hun, look what you were offering me.

And look what you were asking for.

See the inequality?

That’s ableist.

We all have ableist beliefs. Ableist people murder and leave homeless people like us.

So I’m using my brain to look for solutions.

And staying friends with you feeling hurt instead of letting go like you expect me too, since your feelings were obvious to everyone but your autistic best friend…I mean, whaddya want from me?

You know what kind of human I am.

I want the sweet, loving version of you back. But you sacrificed it at the altar of the patriarchy from my evil perspective.

Oh well.

Life is too short for hard feelings.

I only go where I feel welcome, and I only allow voices that choose to validate my progress and innate goodness more than counterattack me for an attack I thought was just me sharing my thoughts and feelings in a safe space.

I block people so my Facebook feed feels like a safe space to me. No other reason.

Anyway, I don’t have to prove myself to anyone.

Thanksgiving used to mean family, feasting, and a trip to the theater.

Back in the good old days, when my parents were the young idiot republicans buying what the billionaires were selling, they lived in a very different economy that we kids couldn’t appreciate.

After 40 years of trickle down economics, I’m raising children in a very different world.

Instead of visiting grandparents and aunts and uncles and Southern feasting, I’m home alone, considering just dropping all contact with the outside world until I feel like humans are worth the hassle again.

Instead of Dad treating the whole family to a movie in the theater for $50, including all the popcorn, I’m streaming Disney+ and glad my boys are visiting their surviving grandparents with their Dad.

They get to have the family and the fun, and I get to have three blissful days of just being me.

No expectations. No needs to put before my own.

No drama unless I allow it.

And I do not. Not today.

Today I am thankful for my amazing husband and our beautiful happy clever boys getting to grow up without being immersed in a society telling them they are wrong on every level and never enough.

I am thankful for my education and the time I have to develop my skills and learn anything I want.

I am thankful I forgave my Dad before he died and that our last words to each other were of love.

I am thankful I don’t feel a need to blame everyone for my feelings anymore.

I am thankful I can face my mistakes without beating myself up for making them.

I am thankful I can love my family without needing attention from them anymore.

I am thankful I found my light again.

I am thankful I got to see Pink on the last day of her tour, and hear her daughter sing with her on stage.

I’m thankful I can see myself and my life more clearly than ever before.

I am thankful I found peace, again.

Writing a poem to work out my feelings, but with the skills of a rusty MFA

I’m sorry I acted like my heart was broken open and I was bleeding out

When you left and refused communication with me

I died

I broke again

And I put myself back together by raging at you

Taking you out of my heart so you couldn’t hurt it more

But I kept the hurt, to protect me

I kept the wound open, to protect me

Once our people used leeches and blades to heal our bodies by bloodletting

Bled out their humours and poisons

Most of the ill died from the treatment

And in 2023 my 42 year old ass still acts like a hurting child,

Lashing out when my heart is broken

Why should I say sorry when I’m the one hurting?

I am hurting!

If I blame you, only you can fix it.

If I stop assigning blame,

decide I want peace instead of battling,

decide I want love, and I will hold the love in my heart

The pain, I’m letting it go

I’m getting back in flow

And I can see clearly now

Coming out of the dark space I hid my light

I’m no longer afraid to shine

I love me exactly as I am

And you too

This is me.

What if we set a federal Maximum Income, and all income above say, $20 million a year, is taken as taxes?

Instead of middle class paying most of the taxes, the very wealthy could be capped so a handful of people don’t get to control everything in our country ever again.

No one person is worth a billion dollars, unless all of us are, if you believe all humans are equally worthy of a good life, free from stress of fearing an inability to feed your children or keep a roof over your heads.

It’s a huge universe and an infinitesimal world of apes pretending to be closer to God because some of us can play God.

We can change our culture if we decide to stop bitching about the way things are and start changing by talking to each other and getting on the same team.

Team America!

Team Humanity!

Yeah I’m manic.

Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Found this on Facebook, using it to spark stories.

Delete this one or there will be two, and you will go, oh no, and forget immediately and years later be embarrassed why are you still reading…oh no…I lost you, didn’t I…if you are reading this, kindly comment and remind my ADHD that this post is the property of the ’tism, currently portrayed as Sheldon Cooper, but we’re only half through season 2, so I’m hoping my ’tism will look more like a different character one day soon. And there is no room for careless error! 🫣

Ok, so…

Were my special interests…Ancient Egypt, animals, Janet Jackson, Micheal to slightly lesser extent…more socially acceptable because I have boobs, or would they be socially acceptable to the penile variety of ’tism as well? I don’t know, I’ve never been accepted as I am, without masking, by a group big enough to be called a society.

Am I oversensitive to sensory stimili, to the point of vomiting, diarrhea, and worse, meltdowns. There is nothing more terrifying than feeling myself lose it while my angry caretaker chased me down in anger and beat my ass until I hyperventilated and “got control of myself.”. This is why I say spanking is abusive.

I remember exactly what it felt like in flashback, like it was yesterday. What’s your super power? 😉 Mine’s trauma! Joking. Or is this sarcasm. Might be sarcasm.

Gotta love Alexythemia. I think she’s the vampire part of me, that sucks all the fun out of my social interactions with Normies, turning it into a performance and an ordeal.

Which of my parts are fighting over whether I can stop feeling defensive now that I reject them back and no longer blame their behavior for my feelings?

My feelings are my interface with reality. I can influence them but only control them with aid, including medical aid, because this world finds retards like me intolerable.

Oh my gods, y’all. I said the R word. No, not Republican, they are not synonyms, shut up Dad. Dad thought it was funny to piss people off. Until I finally lost my shit. Then, of course, I was bad because that behavior is unacceptable, so I was spanked.

Shut away sobbing and wishing I was dead.

That’s why I grew up suicidal.

Because I deserved patience and understanding, like any other person.

But I was being raised by a capitalist culture that keeps the patriarchy in power, and schooling children is not changing the world for the better, and I think I know why.

Some of the whys.

Because since college my special interests have been anthropology (B.A. in 2003, UCF,) creative writing (MFA, 2011, UCF,) parenting, psychology, teaching, and art (creation of more than history of, but both.)

My whole life I believed I suffered what I suffered plus I had a gift for writing equalled my job was to change the world for the better with my writing.

And when my identity fell apart with the double whammy of figuring out I was ADHD while being a terrible mom to my first (we all feel terribly about how we raised or first, when we have too little help, even when our kids say we did great.)

But now I can look at my life and see the ADHD, and the ’tism, and the bipolar, and the kid I started learning all this for.

When I chose to keep him, back when I had a choice…😡🙄😤🥱🤔

I promised him before he was born that I would learn to love myself, because I believed I had to love myself to raise a kid who could love themselves.

I promised him before he was born that I would learn to be happy so I could raise him happy, and there’s my story.

Our story.

I get overstimulated and start screaming, and since he was a toddler, I would hit himself instead of him. I was able to turn the trauma of his few spankings into a game called butt bongo, which I play with his little brother, who thankfully never had that trauma.

My boys love each other. They are eight years apart. We unschool. We practice child led learning. We explore our world in ways that don’t overwhelm us and only Daddy is slave to the working hours since I lost my ever loving mind and took three years to figure out why everyone kept asking me about manic symptoms, and see the mania in my own behavior.

So this year I am finally on the right medication. Not until I had a meltdown that drove my siblings away could I accept that my anger was more than just grief.

I can see their perspectives, but can’t make them see mine. They aren’t interested in empathy for my experience.

I am too old to get away with acting like I’m autistic and ADHD with PTSD from a lifetime of abuse, medical neglect, and how the hell could I know myself before I understood how my brain works?

People watch shows as adults that teach false science, which is stupid from the perspective of people like me, who want all our voting population to get educated, not just the unemancipated minors.

Do you know how many states it’s legal to marry a 12 year old with parental consent, today, in America?

People like me are often misdiagnosed or under diagnosed, and because we have to fit into society to work for wages that keep the vast majority of the Land of the Free in poverty for life. You don’t fall out of poverty.

You have to claw your way, unless you have help. And where is the help?

When Aiden and I were homeless, we found help from another neurodivergent single mother with the same terrible taste in men. The woman engaged to my son’s father.

Profitable writing exercise. ✅

I’m getting better at this whole identity crisis thing.

I was misdiagnosed at 19 with monopolar depression, usually called Major Depressive Disorder.

I was tested so extensively at UCF’s psychology department in 2000, I thought I couldn’t possibly be autistic.

My best friend, the one who’s knew me best after my mother died until I started questioning vaccine safety when I was pregnant, told me she saw the ’tism in me, but I had just watched the documentary on Temple Grandin’s life, and thought I was nothing like her, so no way I could be autistic.

Not autistic was so much a cornerstone of my identity, figuring out I was autistic blew my mind literally, and painfully in the hostile environment my own home had become, as my skills regressed, my mania raged, and I was stubbornly insisting I could not be bipolar because I never experienced mania.

And because so many doctors would have noticed, I assumed.

I blame the ’tism for my naivete and the ADHD for my distractibility. But they are me, too.

My life had to fall apart for me to get the right diagnoses and treatment.

First the ADHD. Then my autism started showing so brightly, even I could see it.

But no one knows what autism is, and even fewer are going to actually talk to us socially tone-deaf weirdos.

I gotta get my happy back.

Singing to my inner Pollyanna this beautiful ballad by Pink, who I see live in 9 DAYS! Woot!

Love this song. Never been in a violent romantic relationship, but I have definitely abused myself.

When I’m happy, I clean and reorganize, so I started today sorting the boys’ clothes, putting away Dylan’s (sorta, we’re going to organize his clothes together later.).

Put Aiden’s in his room. Got my dirty laundry in a basket, off all the floors, including Daddy’s socks from beside the stairs and the towels left in the floor to soak up spills.

The Ritalin is working today.

And if this is mania, I’m going to harness it.

I’ve gotten the best sleep of my life on the new mood stabilizers. I finally feel calm all day.

I wish I didn’t drive everyone away in the recent past. But it’s natural to avoid people who bring you down. My rejection sensitivity only acts up when I’m not getting good sleep.

I’ve committed to using my art supplies, and my voice every day.

I don’t have to earn money to survive right now. That’s the privilege I’ve felt too bad over to abuse properly.

I bought all these paint supplies and books, and enrolled in classes, and I’m finally ready to complete them.

Yay color!

I wish I could have explained what I meant to my Dad before he passed.

2020 broke my brain enough even my PCP could see I was autistic and needed help.

2021 broke my heart. I had to face my internal biases, my fears, my shame, my behavior, and figure myself out so I could change.

But I can’t change the way my brain developed.

I also couldn’t tell that my antidepressants were making me manic. I’d never rapid cycled so much without help before.

It felt like panic attacks, constant terror. Isolation. I couldn’t stop melting down at my kids, so I started screaming, I’m sorry, this isn’t your fault, mommy needs a break, I love you, and into my cool calm quiet cave to recover. All day, every day.

And if I had understood how to track my manic symptoms…

Well, I just learned how. I had to learn it the way my brain learns. Know one could show or tell me what I couldn’t see when I was rapid cycling.

I didn’t even know that term until this year, so of course most people don’t.

How do you explain to your adult siblings, or to your Dad, that you aren’t screaming on purpose, you aren’t angry you are hurting, and you can’t calm down without help because the stress that they don’t feel is overwhelming me to the point of losing my shit to escape, like a panicked cornered animal desperate to survive and get away?

How can they believe your science when all they have is their beliefs developed by their very different lives?

How can I stop hurting when I think about how they failed me as badly as I failed them, and that apologizing for my disability makes me hate them for reminding me one more time just how little they care to learn and understand, stonewalling me, shutting me down and calling me abusive…when the only person I hurt was myself…that’s why I hit myself in the face.

I was trying to stop talking so I’d stop making things worse.

But they just shamed me and said I hope you learn to love yourself and I forgot you get like this.

I don’t get like that.

Except when people treat me like I’m bad when I look to them for understanding and help.

Four plus decades of people shaming me for looking to them for help l, because I can’t afford therapy…and I need care.

My husband has to work, and it’s hard on him. He looks much older than me, but he’s only 9 months and a week older.

My kids have special needs too. We need our community to not be aware of autism, but to embrace and accept our weirdness as normal, as human, as good.

I can’t make myself more tolerant to emotional triggers. My nervous system doesn’t work like that.

I was struggling with something my Dad had done that I wasn’t supposed to know about, but did. The secret was not mine to tell, but it hurt me so badly, I had to talk it out, so I could even sleep.

I didn’t mean to tell it the first time.

I was pregnant with Galen, the son we lost to stillbirth. I trusted my midwife. She didn’t know what to say.

It’s sadly funny that I needed therapy my whole life but never had insurance, so I couldn’t have it.

And the year I did have insurance, I didn’t think I needed therapy. 2008. That’s making me lol with shaking my head and face palming type nostalgia.

I was not understanding what mania and hypomania looked like.

I figured it out finally THIS year, and for the first time I’m being treated for bipolar depression. And it’s actually working.

I sleep 7-8 hours every night, unless I get upset.

My emotions cause my insomnia.

I wish I could have calmed down on command.

I wish I could have figured out what they meant before they lost patience with me.

But that’s not how my brain and body work.

Writing Process: Revision Following Workshop in Bible’s Creation Poem

The best part of workshopping the poem I posted last was figuring out what I was trying to do with it.

After feedback from my group, here is my revision.

Mother Earth, World of the Patriarchs, Becomes

In darkness does the Spirit of God hover over the Waters of Creation.

Before form, creates light. Before morning, creates night.

First morning, second day, from infinite indigo, God forms Space and names Heaven, and Knows it is good.

Morning on the third day, Creator calls Mother Earth to rise up from Her birth waters.

From black fertile skin springs green seed-bearing grasses, herbs, and fruiting trees. Our infant world breathes.

Morning four, God sets the sparks and fires of Heaven in patterns,

Signs in the sky to mark the passing of years, of light-years, setting context for Earth and her children of every age –

the Sun, the Moon, the Stars Creator names, and sets them in the Body of the Heavens to light our Earth – Creator’s Child, God’s Canvas.

Color fills our world before we do.

Green and blue egg twirling in twinkling indigo; more black, brown, red, yellow, up close.

On the fifth day did Creator fill our waters with life, seabound.

On the fifth day did Creator fill our skies with birds, song, and sound.

The fifth night, God blessed them all to renew themselves year round.

And it was good.

Heavens and Earth finished, on the sixth day God called the cattle to rise up,

and all the creeping things, the beasts of the Earth, including at last…

“Let Us make Humanity in Our image,” Creator sings.

Earth’s waters rise to blanket Herself in mist, and from the swirling humid dust…

In the World of the Patriarchs, God breathes life into a male, first,

before blessing us with a whole final day of rest and reflection, before blessing us with time.

Writing Process: Poem Inspired by the Bible’s Creation Story.

The first map in the back of my new Bible.

I started a writing group, and this week wrote a poem to workshop.

One group member mentioned writing prayers, and I got the idea to look for inspiration on this poem in the Bible I bought, intending to read to help me better understand all the Christians in my life.

I was raised Buddhist, and found my spiritual home in Paganism my first year of college, and I studied as an anthropology student Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism from India to China and Tibet and beyond, every religion I came across except Judaism and Christianity, which I thought were basically the same thing.

(See: what happens when you assume instead of looking stuff up.)

I confess I was bigoted against Western religion. I did end up studying Islam because I took Arabic in college, hoping to become an Egyptologist one day.

So here I am, trying to study a Bible Story and make art out of it.

Here’s draft three, not close to done.

John’s Lord God Creates It All, pt. 1

The Spirit of God hovers over the waters of Creation.

Before Form, creates Light.

Before Morning, creates Night.

First morning, second day, from infinite indigo, God forms the Heavens and space.

Day three, Creator calls Mother Earth to rise up from Her birth waters.

From black fertile skin springs green seed-bearing grasses, herbs, fruit trees. Our infant world breathes.

Morning four, God seeds the body of Heaven with starfire, sets our Sun, bright and hot; our moon, reflective and not.

The planets, the comets, the asteroids, the stars whirl around each other;

cosmic dance of form, force, light, and shadow…signs in our sky – guides, beacons.

Color fills our world before we do.

Green and blue egg twirling in the indigo; more black, brown, red, and yellow up close.

On the fifth day did Creator fill our waters with life, seabound.

On the fifth day, did our skies fill with birds, song and sound.

The fifth night God blessed them all to replenish themselves year round.

The sixth day God ordered up cattle and all the creeping things,

beasts of the Earth, including, at last, people, to subdue and watch over all Creation brings.

Let us make humanity in Our Image, Creator sings.

Earth’s waters rise to blanket Her fertile land in mist, and from swirling humid dust,

male and female, John’s Lord God created humans and beasts,

in the World of the Patriarchs, God breathes life into a male first, before

blessing us with rest and reflection on the final day,

blessing us with time.

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