Supposed Indifference in Asperger’s
I climbed down
from the tangled branches
of my thoughts
to greet you
but it was too late
you were gone.
Don’t give up on me
I love you can’t you see
but there is such difficulty
all because I am Aspie.
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
Instinct vs. Love
(Click on photo for video)
“Instinct”
they say condescendingly
but it is not.
“Anthroprophism”
they argue
but it is not.
Science now knows
animals show altruism,
animals show love,
elephants, dogs, dolphins…
“Love” they say reverently for man
but it is and is not
Science now knows
hormones course through our bodies,
Oxytocin they say,
I say how clinical,
a dissection of love
for man
and
animals.
A Secret Love
My husband’s look of love scares me,
turns off all emotion,
rendering intimacy hysteria for me
and forces a series of dogged pursuits by my Husband
whom I adore more than life itself.
Can’t turn off the flashbacks
loved Grandpa so
but not enough to do some hanky panky
that even as a child I knew to be wrong.
Bad enough the little sex games we did
when I was REALLY little and knew nothing of right or wrong,
just a fun game we played
till caught by Auntie who pronounced us both “disgusting”!
Why I never knew.
My fear that Grandma was jealous just made her laugh,
“Silly girl” to think such things.
What was there to be jealous of
between a little girl and her older husband?
What indeed!
What a deed!
She told me years later
he never was unfaithful
in all fifty years of marriage
“Ha!” I thought but never said,
“what he did with me
was that not infidelity?”
“You do the hanky panky
and you turn yourself around
and that’s what it’s all about.”
I remember that lewd smile even today.
Will it take me to my dying day to forget?
Oh how I loved him…
Taking me for after dinner walks
to catch fireflies,
silently sitting at the window together
at night after dinner,
watching the neighbors below,
Grandma in the kitchen,
Just him and me
a quiet bond between us,
or telling me bedtime stories of his youth.
My fault–
I was the seductress,
dancing in a hula skirt for him,
with tennis balls tucked into my aunt’s bra for breasts,
Hula dancing
to his songs he played on the mandolin.
Oh how I loved him!
No one knew.
I forgot about the “thing” between us till decades later,
when a friend talked about her incestuous abuse.
Oh how he loved me!
Arm around me always on the living room sofa
watching American Bandstand on the TV
giving me his whiskey-soaked cherry,
teaching me about art
making me the artist I am today.
Preaching the middle way to me
of relevance later, way later,
as it takes me a lifetime to learn the meaning of “I am Bipolar.”
Oh how I idolized him!
He carved the Lincoln Gettysburgh address, you know, in D.C, at the Lincoln Memorial
and many other illustrious statues.
He was a revered lawyer, working with veterans,
a self made man,
knowing no English
when he first came here
all alone at 16
and went to night school to learn English
while working as a sculptor
and then to law school.
He was a hero
helping poor veterans,
himself wounded in the war.
He was a hero
but no one knew
he was my hero.
“Of course he was having strokes,” my doc says.
“Maybe that explains the incest,” he says to me.
Men stick together
To defend the unspeakable
Which I just now speak out blasting loud and clear
in the blogosphere
for all to hear.
Naughty girl/old woman!
Just now allow myself the anger
while preserving the idolatry and Grandpa’s love
for such a love, and not irony this,
such a love is so VERY special!
“Couldn’t Look Away” – Book review by Alistair McHarg of “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things”
I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone interested in psychological exploration – from clinicians to self-diagnosticians to concerned family members to lovers of extraordinary tales well told.
Do not imagine that this is a lesson-plan about Bipolar Disorder, or Asperger’s Syndrome, for that matter. On the contrary, we see Ms. Wolfe wrestling with a panoply of symptoms residing on different points of a spectrum – we never know exactly where we are, and neither does Ms. Wolfe. We get first person, real-time intimacy – the raw data, not the spin.
Asperger’s, autism, schizophrenia, paranoia, mania, depression, and challenging questions of gender identity blur back and forth until one is overpowered by the sense of a shape-shifting, ghostly enemy. We witness Ms. Wolfe inaccurately interpreting social cues the way an anthropologist might puzzle over artifacts from an alien civilization.
The writing is austere, elegant, forceful and almost chillingly honest. There is not an ounce of self-pity to be found, or self-aggrandizement. Serious students of these illnesses could hardly find a more useful document because – using meticulous diaries she kept through the years – Ms. Wolfe has made scrupulous accuracy her battle cry.
From very early on I found myself caring about what happened to Ms. Wolfe, wanting to know more. I sensed sweetness, innocence, and vulnerability – and that made me want to protect her. Consequently, the dread I felt as I watched her struggle with her own mind – and the outside world – created the tension of real drama. One would have to be a cold fish indeed to not suffer along with her as she trudges ahead with heroic determination.
Ms. Wolfe has achieved something quite remarkable. She has applied the direct simplicity of science to a human ordeal and, in the process, accomplished what art does, when it is at its very best. She has fearlessly and generously taken us into her world and – in doing so – enriched us all.
Alistair McHarg
Hooked
You hooked me,
twenty-eight years ago,
with your shy smile
and elusive ways.
I was scared
but you were more so
which made me brave.
I would I had known you all my life
(or even before)
but I feel/felt like I had
although it took years for me to find you.
With your rough hewn edges
you taught me to speak up
when before I spoke not.
I have learned to take care
because you have taught me to dare
and today on our 24th wedding memory,
despite our little irritations and frustrations
as an old married couple,
I am hook-line-and-sinker-
in-love-with-you,
and want to use what time is left
together
to bring one and other to God.
Two Lips of Forever Love
He didn’t “get it,
the “loss thing,”
when my aunt died mid-April,
and I lost my second mother.
Didn’t “get it” when I lost my first.
This was not the only time
he was lost in oblivion and
puzzled by my tears.
*
He didn’t see me hurting
from the loss of my lineage,
and his lack of empathy for my grief
as he made me meet and greet
a friend the next day, as if all was normal.
This time I balked, bolder and older,
and he agreed it was time to ponder
and talk with his mentor.
*
When he came home
one night days later,
full of hugs of apology,
and tulips on the kitchen counter,
it was a breakthrough for us both.
It took a few days
but what came out
brought tears upon tears.
*
Not having grown up
with emotional displays
he didn’t “get” the meaning of loss.
With no models of grief
he didn’t know how to feel it himself
nor how to give solace,
not just lip service,
to those who had lost.
*
I cried for him.
How very sad, as a child
he didn’t know the love I knew.
He, a sensitive child,
in an icebox family
fraught with frigid emotion,
and warm, deep affection only
from his great-aunt, Dot.
*
He brought me pink tulips,
flowers of a contrite heart,
and held me close
and kissed me
with lips full of apologies
but I was the one
who felt sorry for him
for the years he knew not love.
*
Twenty-eight years ago
God told me “Love this man,
trust him and have faith in him,
and hold him to your heart.”
Many moons later, I love him light-years
more than the day we met
and in then-unimaginable ways
has our love strove for the stars.
*
He has brought me:
kindness and gentleness,
generosity of spirit,
goodness of heart,
and healing humor.
What I have taught him:
the glories of love
and agony of loss.
*
From the beginning
the seed of love was sown
for better or worse
deeply within the parched,
but fertile soil of my imperfect heart.
And he has cultivated the growth
of a stalwart, staid evergreen,
amid the blooming two-lips of forever love.
Two of Me?
I look down at the catalogue card on my desk. I look at the first subject heading. It says: “City planning – Zoning.” I see the word “City” and I see the word “planning” but I see them as “City – planning – Zoning,” something I’ve never seen before. I go over to Tony.
“Tony, is this a new subject heading? I’ve never seen the two together before.”
Dr. Lencek is standing by, listening and he says, “Ah, indirect communication.”
I hold the words in my mind. “Indirect communication.” What does he mean?
Tony answers gently, “Ellen, that’s not a new subject heading— we’ve used it before.”
I look down at the card. Of course, it isn’t a new heading. Now the words look normal. “City planning – Zoning.” My face burns hot and red. How stupid! I’ve used the heading for years. I slink back to my desk in embarrassment.
“It will get easier,” Dr. Lencek says.
“INDIRECT COMMUNICATION.” DR. LENCEK SAID THAT AFTER YOU SAID YOU HAD NEVER SEEN THE TWO TOGETHER BEFORE. YOU MEANT THE TWO PERSONALITIES INSIDE YOU. YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE. YOU WERE DESCRIBING YOUR MENTAL STATE IN INDIRECT COMMUNICATION. THAT’S WHAT DR. LENCEK MEANT. THAT’S WHY DR. LENCEK IS ALWAYS TELLING YOU TO FREEZE ONE PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME AND KEEP IT IN THE MEMORY. “HOLD IT IN YOUR MIND,” HE ALWAYS SAYS. HE IS TRYING TO GET YOU TO BE ONE MIND— ONE PERSON. YOU’RE SPLIT IN TWO.
I feel weaker than ever now, though I am sitting. I look over at Dr. Lencek who is standing nearby Tony’s desk working. I want to hug him. All the times I was so nasty to him when he was trying to communicate with me . . .
IT’S THE PLAN. IT’S THE PLAN YOU OVERHEARD DANIELLE DISCUSSING WITH CAROLINE. YOU OVERHEARD DANIELLE SAY HOW SURPRISED SHE WAS THAT THE PERSONNEL HEAD WOULD ALLOW THEM TO GO THROUGH WITH THE PLAN. DANIELLE HAD THOUGHT THE HEAD WOULD HAVE SAID NO. THEY WERE PLANNING TO SHOW YOU HAD TWO PERSONALITIES.
But why would they bother helping me in this way? Why would they bother helping me at all after all my moodiness and fits of anger?
I am shaking now. I try to get up from my desk to look up the call number for the book. Dr. Lencek is standing by. Tony and Danielle are standing to the side watching me as I try to get up. I try to put one foot in front of the other. It is as if I have forgotten how to walk. My legs and feet don’t move the right way. I look up at Danielle. She probably overheard most of the conversation between Tony and me from this morning. She knows what is wrong with me. This is why she has kept away. She is watching me with an expression so dramatic that it is easy for me to see worry and compassion. There are tears in her eyes. For once I can feel the love. I want to run into her arms and cry. But I cannot walk. It is as if I am a big baby and when I finally do manage to walk slowly past them to the back of the room, I am unable to respond when Eva passes by and says hello. It is taking all my power and concentration just to walk to get where I am going. I suddenly am so exposed. Like a baby walking down the aisle. But, no, it is like I am being wheeled down the aisle. Something is moving me down the aisle and it is not my feet. I am in a big, dark, round cave. And in one corner of the cave is a small opening where the light shines in.
From Chapter 11 of my memoir on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Eye-locks-Other-Fearsome-Things-ebook/dp/B007TOOF56/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1345051643&sr=1-1&keywords=eye-locks Also available on Barnes & Noble Nook, iBooks and Smashwords.
At the Brink
This excerpt from Chapter 2 of my Biolar/Asperger’s memoir of finding love shows the beginnings of a psychotic breakdown.
I feel the electric light glowering at me. I look around the room in my basement apartment. The men following me. The phone call from Yvonne. Nothing is making sense. Obeah island witchcraft? Danielle’s thing. Danielle is the island woman. The room spins again. I feel like someone is watching me. I feel someone here— looking in the window.
Jumpy thoughts. Buzzing mind. I know the signs. Feeling the victim of a plot. Fear of being followed— of being watched— of evil spells coming out of an inanimate object— panic— magical thinking— paranoid ideation. I have made the break with reality. I have entered the deep, dark hollows of the paranoid’s world. Terror! I pick up the phone and dial. 242-6637.
“Hello, Dr.’s office.”
“Hello, may I please speak to Dr. Agostinucci?”
“Hold on a minute.”
“Hello, this is Dr. Agustinucci.”
“Hello, Joey. It’s Ellen. I’ve got to talk to you. Can you talk?”
“Yeah, you got me at a good time. I’m just in between sessions. What’s up?”
“Joey, I don’t know. I’m flipping out. I can’t sleep. I called Danielle last night and told her.”
“You told her what?”
“I told her what I told you— that I loved her. And then she told me that she wasn’t ‘that way’. And then . . . ” I start crying. “Oh, Joey, I’m so scared. I mean it means that all along I couldn’t see reality. I’ve been living in this fantasy world all this time, thinking Danielle’s in love with me and gay, and I’ve been drinking and drinking because I haven’t been able to sleep. And then today I started thinking that spells were coming out of the elephant that Sundra gave me. So I took the bus up to Columbia to throw it away. And then I thought two men were following me home. And Yvonne called me up from work and, Joey, I think it’s all a plot . . . ”
“Wait a minute, calm down. You’re all upset!”
I continue. “Yvonne and Danielle are in cahoots. Maybe they’re both testing me to see if I’m gay. Joey, I don’t know how I’m going to go to work tomorrow and face Danielle and face Yvonne . . . ”
“Calm down. One thing at a time. You’re overwrought.”
“But, Joey, I don’t know what is real and what’s not real anymore. I can’t sleep and I can’t stop crying.”
“Okay, look, I’ll give you a prescription. I’ll call in the prescription to the pharmacy. They’re probably still open. I’ll have it delivered. Just give me the name of the pharmacy you use— the one nearest you.”
“Uh . . . I’ve got to look it up— just a second . . .” I run to the bathroom to find a prescription bottle.
“Joey, it’s Rexall on 76th Street. The phone number is 663-7684.”
“Okay, look, I’m going to give you a prescription for Valium, 2 mgs. Take one pill and see what happens. If you still feel very anxious, take two.”
“Okay.”
“Listen, I think you should go to work tomorrow.”
“Joey how can I? I keep bursting into tears.”
“Look, the Valium will help calm you. It’ll be a whole lot worse if you stay home. I suggest you call the Health Service first thing in the morning and make an appointment to see someone. Tell them it’s an emergency.”
“Okay, Joey, I guess you were right. You always told me I needed therapy and I always told you that I felt I’d go to pieces one day and now it seems that day has come.”
“Listen, you’re extremely upset. Take the Valium and try to get some sleep. If you need me you know where to reach me. And if things really get bad you know you can always go over to the emergency room in Lenox Hill.”
“Yeah, that’s right, I can always go there.”
“Listen, when I call in the prescription I’ll arrange for them to deliver it, too, so you don’t have to do anything. You have enough money to pay for it?”
“I don’t know. Let me see. Yeah, I think I do,” I say as I scramble through my purse.
“Okay, look, are you going to be able to answer the door? Or are you still scared of those men?”
“No, the doorbell only rang twice. Whoever it was is long gone. I’m not scared of that anymore.”
“Good. So just wait for the delivery. I’ll tell them to speed it up.”
“Thanks a lot, Joey! Thanks for everything!”
“Okay, take care, get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you are.”
“Okay, thanks a lot, Joey, bye.”
“Bye, Hon.”
For information on the memoir see: http://www.amazon.com/Eye-locks-Other-Fearsome-Things-ebook/dp/B007TOOF56/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1345051643&sr=1-1&keywords=eye-locks The book is also available on Barnes & Noble Nook, iBooks and Smashwords.
“For the Truth Shall Set Ye Free”
I first remember things going wrong at age 5.
I am standing in the corner of the bedroom with my mother beside my brother’s crib. She is telling me I am cold and selfish, like my father’s mother whom she hates. I now think she hates me. She tells me I will wind up all alone.
It is just after the births of my brother and sister, only 11 months apart, and my 25-year-old mother, is totally overwhelmed. My brother is the apple of her eye, with Mom’s dark coloring and the looks of her adored Sicilian born-father. My sister is Daddy’s little girl. I remember feeling all alone, and being cold and hard at that age, confiding only in my stuffed lion, Leo. Many, many years later I come to see this cold, hard me as a dissociated self. Many years later my mother apologizes to me. And I apologize to her.
I set out on a life-long struggle to be different from my father’s mother, doing everything to try to be warm and loving like my mother’s Italian family. I fail. With acute stage fright most of the time, I cannot initiate a smile, nor greet people. The most basic social skills are lost to me, much to the chagrin of my parents. Often I cannot respond to people. At times I cannot organize my thoughts well enough to speak. I feel evil and selfish. I want to fit in and can’t. I want to pass for normal and don’t. I want to have a family and never will. I want to find love and it will take me decades to do so.
The “defensive personality” serves me well, covering up many, but not all, of my autistic symptoms. I live dissociated from many of my numerous fears.
My story begins when I break down. My fiancé, Sundra, goes back to Sri Lanka. I change library jobs from a relatively comfortable clerical position in a small library to a position cataloging art books in a huge office. The new job is in a giant room with three different departments and about 40 employees of all ages and ethnicities. There are no cubicles or dividers so everyone can see and hear everyone else. It is as gossip-ridden as a small town. There is no privacy and there are fluorescent lights. It is all too much. But it is here I meet Danielle who is to change my life forever and, later, Jimmy, who becomes my husband. My journey begins when my autistic shell breaks, at age 28, when the “superficial personality”, the dissociated me, falls apart. I seek therapy and am diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Not until thirty years later do I find out I have Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, as well.
I write my story as a message of hope to all those who are as lost as I was, to those who think, as I did, that they cannot find love. I open my heart to help others avoid the suffering I went through and caused. I nearly lost my job and my mind pursuing love. I hurt other people. I could have been seen as a stalker due to my typical Aspie approach to a romantic interest. Love threw me over the brink of sanity and made me psychotic at times. I didn’t know I was Bipolar and my psychiatrist didn’t know I had Asperger’s syndrome.
Finally, I write this book to psychiatrists and other therapists that they may understand their patients who have the same issues and delusions.
From the Prologue to Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things:
Full Moon Blues
Lunacy prevails
The foundations of daily life are crumbling
It is all “Maya”
a dream we are living thinking it is reality
We have no choice but to go on
All that matters is love
and God is Love.
Blind Attraction
Sometimes
The blind can see
and the seeing are blind.
Attraction goes beyond
Seeing
and becomes
Sensing.
Stars in the Eyes
When I was a little girl of seven, I swallowed the “Prince Charming” myth whole. I cried watching the movie Sleeping Beauty, because I wanted my own prince to come. Then adolescence happened and I found myself a wallflower– not only at socials but in everyday life as well. Few friends and no dates. I had one good friend who was best friends with someone else which somehow negated our relationship. I was painfully shy and full of anxieties. College was a little better. I had my first boyfriend, a run of relationships that mostly went nowhere fast and, again, few friends. High school peers were marrying off. My brief brush with marriage to a Sri Lankan ended when he went back home, promising to return. He never did.
And then it happened, totally out of the blue and beyond my control, I fell in love with an older, West Indian woman at work. I became obsessed with a relationship that was never to be and nearly lost my job in the process. Unable to handle such feelings on so many levels, I went free fall into a downward spiral of depression and psychosis, commonly called a nervous breakdown. It lasted for years. But I still believed in love and Prince Charming (in this case, “Queen” Charming). For years I lived in the netherworld of mental illness, locked in isolation. I explored being gay but like my college relationships, all failed. I will never know the truth of all that happened between the West Indian woman and me. After testing many medications before arriving at the right cocktail, years of therapy taught me about my own fears of love and how to love. I was diagnosed Bipolar but treated as if I had Asperger’s as well, since I could not decipher what in hell’s name was going on in social relationships. I was not officially diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder until some 30 years later.
One day I grew strong enough to stand up to life. For the first time, I could think of what I wanted in a person and look for it. After all I had been through, I still believed in the “Prince Charming” myth. But he never found me. I found him. He didn’t sweep off my feet. I swept him into my arms. I understood him because he was Aspie like me. I knew if I did not make a move he never would. So, with heart-pounding fear, I asked him out and then he asked me out, and we bumbled along and married 4 years later, after I basically said “now or never.”
We remain happily married almost 24 years later. And so came “happily ever after.” But not exactly as I expected. For one thing there were fights which I hated. I had to learn that this was normal. Then, when my best friend died a few months after my father died, both of cancer, it hit me for the first time. There was no “happily ever after.” I realized that marriage either ended in divorce or death. Both dire. And that one of us was going to lose the other except in the unlikely event we both died together. How could I have been so stupid and not have seen this before??
Today my love for my husband runs deep and I realize I am closer to him than to any other human I have ever loved. I live in terror of something happening to him. As we both approach old age every good moment becomes a treasure I try to engrave on my memory. My husband has blossomed into an empathic, caring clinical social worker. He now expresses his deep affection towards me. Even I, who had a hard time recognizing love, can see this. He still teases me relentlessly. This is his way of showing love. I understand that because my father was the same way. But my husband delights in getting away with teasing me. “What joy!” he said one morning, as he played some mischief on me. “I love this “love thing’!” he said. I never thought he would say that or turn out to be so affectionate and loving. Just as I never thought I would find love. And when I looked at him with love in my heart that morning after the teasing stopped, he said, “What?” We still have trouble interpreting expressions and are still shy of eye contact even with each other. I said what I had read long ago that a child had written. When two people in love look at each other, stars come out of their eyes. A wonderful image that comes as close to “happily ever after” as one can get.
Mourning Mania and the Only Path to Take
I once had the fire, raging within, unchecked and veering out of control. Now it glows like a pile of burning embers I sift through periodically, as if panning for gold. Once a cauldron of creativity, ideas bubbled around inside my head at break-neck speed, spinning like a troop of whirling dervishes. But far more valuable, the flames fueled what can only be called the presence of God within, being at one with Jesus. Such beautiful states were sparked by the same fire that also torched a living hell within—for such were the cycles of my mania and depression.
The danger of mania drew nigh when the flames scorched what was left of my reason and my perception of the world, sending me into a morphing reality where I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn’t. This alternative/alternating consciousness clouded my vision as I ran up against the walls of mania and depression, like a little girl, lost in a house of mirrors, not knowing how far she was from the light of day.
To say I could not function is a huge understatement and was a by-product of my living in another dimension. I remember once not being able to respond to a store clerk simply asking if he could help me. That question had always been troublesome for my Aspie nature, but in a Bipolar mania I was unable to open my mouth to speak, and this sent me running out the doors of the store, seeking a hiding place for my tears. One of the many times I lost my speech.
To make matters worse the fire would rage and then die out suddenly and completely, leaving me like a trapeze artist suddenly finding there was no safety net below. Despair was total—no creative juices, no God and a mind replete with self-loathing in a totally black, bleak void. I was a dead tree in the depths of winter, with decaying stumps where branches used to be. There was no future and I had no access to any of the goodness of things past.
Alternating between these two ways of being in the world was exhausting, confusing and totally disorienting. And then I had a breakdown and psychosis spewed forth from the detritus of my mind. I was reborn into a the world that was totally overwhelming and hellishly over-stimulating. I had to learn the lessons of childhood all over again, starting from square one. This time with professional help and MEDICATION! Not the self-medication of alcohol. Psych meds. Heavy duty ones of the Thorazine variety. Anti-psychotics.
At first, it seemed I was now wrapped the “cotton-wool” Virginia Woolf described as her moments of “non-being.” My cotton-wool was more of a mental straight-jacket. The medication had toned down the world outside and inside as if I were under water in John Lilly’s immersion tank. Clearly medication adjustments had to be made and they continued to be made over and over again until my doc and I found a balance—the Golden Mean of medication, with me as a willing patient since I could no longer function at all without it. Medication meant that I didn’t have to go to hospital. Medication meant that I didn’t have to kill myself. Medication meant that therapy could now teach me how to live and, more importantly, how to love. I had been seeking love all my life but was too dazed by the blaze within me to see it, feel it or return it when given. Now, at long last I could.
Most Bipolars are not med-compliant and go off their meds when things get better. And then they veer into the vertiginous descent to hell once more and wind up in hospital/jail/homeless/dead. There is no virtue in my med compliance. I have tried stopping the meds a few times resulting in a reality so painful, that, humbled, I go crawling back to them. Life events have necessitated raising the dosage now and then. Like when my father was dying of cancer and later my mother and, just a year and a half ago, my brother.
Every so often I lament the loss of the raging fire of creativity and the burning desire for communion with God but now my thoughts are slowed down enough that I can sift through the embers and find little sparks which inspire poetry/prose/paintings/photographs/prayer. I find smoldering embers of religious feeling and have to work hard to fan the fire, it’s true. But now I can channel the creativity and religious feeling into works of art that I can be shared with others. Not torn up, destroyed or desecrated in a sudden descent into depression. Now I have to work harder to pray and have practiced meditation to find real religious feeling. Despite the loss of mystical states, I find myself more motivated to become a better person in God’s eyes without the former pseudo-spiritual feeling possessing me and my ego. Most importantly now I can love: people, God, and even myself at times.
Slowing down is not boring. It enables one to function/produce/LOVE. I have accomplished more in every facet of my life after being medicated and treated than I ever did before my breakdown. The same ideas are there but now I can use them as building blocks of art/faith/relationships. I think myself more materialistic and self-seeking than I was when I was totally out of my mind. Yes, it is true that I am, but paradoxically that makes me better able to try to give something back to the world, to love others and to pray harder to God. I have lost the effortlessness of it all and I have to pedal harder to get somewhere where treasured feelings are deeper, and more lasting. I could not love before—not myself, not others.
Sometimes I mourn the manias, until I am reminded of their undesirable attributes as they occasionally race through my mind scaling the protective walls of medication. Now I finally know them for what they are. Dangerous. Scary. Out of control. And I now know they will be followed by a crash. When I mourn the days of raging fire, others remind me that the middle road is far better. I remember my Sicilian grandfather whom I adored, preaching the “Middle Path,” which I think he got from reading Marcus Aurelius. And I wonder if he said this from his own experience of some sort of psychological problems he may have had. His daughter, my Mom, certainly had a mood disorder, if not Bipolar Disorder itself. Maybe he did, too.
My husband is my biggest reminder of the importance of medication. A clinical social worker, he knows well of what he speaks, the bulk of his knowledge coming from 23 years of living with, and loving me through my suicidal depressions and my florid manias. And these days, he is the man I adore. I am still constantly amazed that I am able to give love to a real other, another human being, however imperfectly. In the days when passion fanned the terrifying, tumultuous flames of phantasms of love built upon superficial desire, I could not. Nor did I think I would ever be able to love or be loved.
Medication, therapy and my husband have helped me stay sane and walk the middle road. And the middle road is the only path to take.
Asperger’s Romance, a Feature News Item– Inspiring for all Aspies and Auties
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.)
WELCOME!!
Welcome to samples of my writing showcasing “Eye-locks and Other Fearsome Things.” “Eye-locks” is a Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir in narrative form that describes the triumph of love over mental illness. While not a lesson plan it documents my therapeutic journey to finding love against all odds. Useful for therapists, and for patients with Bipolar Disorder and/or Asperger’s Syndrome. A scholarly, autobiographical case history of my story was the showcase article in vol. 13 no. 1 of Psychoanalytic Inquiry in 1993.
For the full length narrative non-fictional account click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for a short bio, a full description, and to purchase my book.
About MOONSIDE…
Learning to love is an ongoing process and I am writing posts on new lessons learned.
All the original abstract painting is posted to advocate for Bipolar Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome– for it is those very handicaps that feed my art. The more realistic nature art is dedicated to raising consciousness for animals and the environment. All other art work is purely for your enjoyment.
Finally I have also posted selections from my nature writing and poetry. My nature essays were published in a small paper in upstate New York for a year and a half. The poems have appeared throughout my life, coming and going as they please.
This is an award free blog.
All work on this blog is under copyright and may not be used by anyone, for any purpose, without permission.
A Reluctant Tenderness: Asperger’s Fear of Love
June 21, 2012
It is the first heat wave of the summer. For me, that means high anxiety bordering on panic. Not terribly together to begin with, I become totally undone in the heat. Nuzzling up to my husband in bed over morning coffee alleviates some of the gloom and doom. Today, the longest day of the year, is a day I dread, as a child of the longest night.
Tom gets up and brushes his hair. For the first time in all the time I have known him, he offers to brush mine. “It will feel good!” he says. Just in time, I override my almost instinctive Aspie reluctance to try anything new and say, “Okay.” He comes over to me and gently runs his two brushes through my hair. It is hard to say whether it feels GREAT due to the physical act itself or because I feel the love in his hands. I see love all over his face, now wrinkled in a tender smile. As he brushes, he says my hair is beautiful. And to think I almost said no to this. It took me years to learn to overcome my fear of closeness. A battle I still fight.
How did we, two Aspies, get to be so close? We have had 25 years together and gone through some pretty rough times and some pretty tough losses. Maybe the losses have made us more aware of mortality, our own and the mortality of the other. The future is no longer an endless expanse of space reaching up to the sky. It never was. Youth suffers from an “optical delusion of consciousness,” to use Einstein’s words out of context. I now make much more of an attempt to savor every moment with Tom. Of course, I often fall way short of that high aspiration. Partly it is due to my being Aspie, and partly it is a limitation of human nature.
I am infinitely blessed to have Tom in my life, a feeling I have had during most of our time together. It surfaces much more intensely these days. Tom struggles with his Aspieness as well. He shows more love to me while in his “during-the work-week mode.” I understand this now. We both need lots of alone time. It has taken years to learn these lessons but, oh, have the results been well worth the struggle!
Despite our limitations, this moment in time, born this morning, is one I will add to my treasure chest of memories, which I hope will always be there, tucked inside my heart until the day it ceases to beat.
MOONSIDE 
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