Do you stay home or do you go?

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I was married when I was 19 & felt like I was always cramming for an exam I hadn't even taken the class for. The only reason I said yes was because -- well there were a few reasons: being young & stupid wasn't my fault & wasn't really a decision I made -- it was thrust upon me as a choice between being which captivity environment did I want to be in >> the family I was born into (which included several other families) or this one guy who has family but they lived far away. That is how I saw it -- a choice between 2 zoo cages. I chose the cage that I believed I had a key to the door & could have more freedom. Was wrong about that, but I won't go into the details. It is too long of a story.

Anyway, I got through most of it by retreating into my own mind -- not on purpose, but that is just how it happened. When his family visited I was like a zombie -- retreated into my mind & couldn't hear or see much of the details around me. Would end up sneaking out at night & sleeping on the floor of the small laundry room, because my husband would make me sleep with him in the dark. The spare room was actually my room, except when his family visited my room was taken. I sleep with the lights on, & that is why I always slept in the spare room -- he slept with lights off. I'd lay in the dark, sweating & trying not to cry. Soon as I heard him breathing deeply, I got out of there & slept on the laundry room floor.

It took me 2 years to get out of the marriage. I was going to kill myself. He had me committed a few times, & used that as a way to control me. Am much better now that I have independence. I never understood anyone who says they wished they could go back to being younger -- I love aging, because am learning new things about being a person all the time. The real truth of this site is how much I have always felt I'm not really human. Do understand now that I am, just a different kind of human & am forced to learn how to be me undercover & perform trickery in public to conform so am not locked up ever again.

Update: husband and I had a chat about this, and he himself proposed that I only come for two weeks maximum, and that one of those weeks ought to be spent on various day trips and visits to nearby cities. I have a good friend who will certainly put me up a little.

I can't have a relationship with all these people. I will go insane. Add global warming and my sensitivity to heat, and there's a recipe for disaster.

I'll just have to pull back a little. Every year I tell myself it won't be so bad and that I need to be there for my kid, but this is going too far.

2 weeks is a long time, but if the trip was going to be longer than it is better than the original plan. Didn't know funerals & wakes lasted so long. I've only been to 2 funerals - 1 for my maternal grandmother & 1 for a father figure I got along with very well. I didn't go to my mother's funeral because I didn't know she had died. I learned about it 3 months afterward in a letter from the funeral home. Not sure I would have gone, even if I did know about it, because had stopped talking to everyone in my family 5 months before she died. The 2 funerals I attended was only 1 day long each & both were in Florida. I live in Tennessee. Both funerals were before 9/11, so flying was still ok. The airports were not as bad as they are now. Have only flown 1 time after 9/11 (it was a round trip, so maybe I should say 2 times), & that experience made me decide to never fly again.

High-Functioning Autism is kind of a cyclical issue. The autism can make people treat me bad, which makes the autism worse. I grew up in the 80's & 90's like you, so you would be familiar with the terms spaz, ret*d, & the general attitude toward anyone who wasn't "normal". There was very little tolerance -- similar to the older brother of Elliott in the movie ET, or the older brother of Keven in the television show The Wonder Years. Most people, including adults in my family, had their attitude & beliefs & simple-minded thought processes. If a person wasn't like everyone else, then they were considered bad & had to be corrected or picked on.

I have hindsight, age, several inpatient & outpatient experiences to help me now. Had no way of understanding why the world hated me so much as a child. Was told, that is why I developed the coping skill to retreat into my mind. Nothing I did on the outside was ever correct. There is hope though, because if HFA can be made worse, it can be made better. Knowledge & strategy, like for any sport, needs to be learned & applied. I got better by adapting a few different personalities -- took characters from TV & movies I knew really well, & become them when I need to interact with people for an extended period of time. I pick which character to become based on the character the person I'm interacting with reminds me of.

No one in person knows the real me, because I know they wouldn't like the real me -- no one ever has. Only people who watch my YouTube channel for a long time has a small window into who I really am. As long as I don't show anything other than me working on projects -- that is who I am, a worker & helper. Not a social person. I want very much to be useful & not seen as a burden.

Could the idea of becoming a fictional character be helpful to you?

I really like meditation for quieting my inner emotional state. I've been practicing many years and do it several times daily, even if only for 5-7 minutes, it really helps. I decided not to have kids to keep my life overwhelm to a minimum, I live solo, no boyfriend or husband, very very quiet home with an amazing kitty cat. Do what you need to do to take care of yourself and do not feel bad or apologize, everyone has different physical and emotional makeups and different levels of tolerance to stress. Who says you have to accomplish a certain number of things in a day? Get a babysitter to take your kid to the park and wear him out. Do what you can and do not feel bad about it!

I'll share a little of my tolerance level for reference point, and by the way, being around certain animal smells (even though I love animals) can be such a strong stimulant to me that it can make my body feel quite ill for hours if I am breathing it all in for a long time. The killing of the pig sounds horrible.
I do nothing but work during the week, 40 hours, and I make sure to get about 10 hours of sleep on the average night. I save my shopping and errands for the weekend, do some house chores after work, then read or use computer or watch TV til sleep. I exercise midday. On the weekends, if I have a stressful outing as I did two weekends ago, it wears me out for the entire work week. I am finding it is taking two weekends of zero plans and just doing what I want to feel like my energy levels are back up where I like them after the stressful outing. Seriously, I do not go by what everyone else does, I was constantly fighting off colds, stomach aches, you name it. I am healthy and happy now but I do A LOT less than the average person(yet I am super intense at work)! !! My friends and family rarely see me because of it but my independence is my highest priority, along with my health, and I am doing those two things.

I hate being stuck at home. This is one reason I have a nice motor scooter that I can ride pretty much anywhere. Call it the adult version of wandering. I go to garage sales, antique malls and flea markets. I keeps costs low as it gets nearly 75 miles per gallon of gas used. I get very restless if I spend to much time sitting around the house. Mike

I tend to get anxious in new countries at first----but once I walk around a little bit, the anxiety lessens. It never goes away completely, though.

Even so, I enjoy travelling.